Sunday, April 8, 2012

Happy Easter Everyone!

I almost titled this "Happy Easter Everybunny" :)

Fluttery

This front yard butterfly wishes you a Happy Easter!

Easter Bunny Came

The Easter Bunny came to Pflugerville this morning. He broke into the house and hid about a dozen plastic eggs with candy around the house for Josh to find. One was in the fridge, some in his office, there was even one in the dryer. Sneaky Easter bunny!

IMG_6515

Candy to share - the chocolate filled Cadbury egg was better than I expected! The little eggs are Reece's Pieces and Whoppers all decked out for the holiday.

Easter Lunch

Josh brought home a special souvenir from his business trip - a cold. We spent most of yesterday resting and napping. Today we took it easy in the morning after the egg-excitement, then went to IHOP for lunch. I had the Lorax's Breakfast with Green Eggs and Ham.

Easter Lunch

It came with a Rooty Tooty Bar-Ba-Looty Blueberry Cone Cake - I giggled the entire time I was ordering it. We went to IHOP because I wanted Easter Ham, but it was just a bonus that they still had the strange Lorax menu because I had wanted to try the silly pancake waffle cone. It was odd and yummy but mostly odd.

Easter Lunch

Josh had some major delicious Red Velvet Pancakes. I think my sis would really like them because they were tasty like her wedding cake!

Lowe's and Flowers

We stopped at Lowe's after lunch to get a new pot for one of our plants and some more potting soil. A female grackle decided it would be fun to hang out inside and they had some cats running around the garden center. That's my kind of place!

Baby Ugly keeps falling over so we needed a wider, sturdier pot. We found a really cool Jack Daniels barrel that was cut in half so it can be a planter - it was all charred inside and still smelled like bourbon. We replanted Baby Ugly when we got home, there will be pictures later as it got dark as we were finishing up around 8pm.

Lowe's and Flowers

I'll leave you with some lovely flowers we saw near Freddy's Frozen Custard.

Lowe's and Flowers

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Visitors to our yard

Our bushes in front of the house have started to bloom. They smell delightful and are attracting adorable visitors. This makes me very happy :)

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Beanie and NiNi

Photo from Apr 2012 Photo Stream
Couch and Blanket and Cat snuggles during a Tuesday afternoon thunderstorm.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Round Rock Donuts

Photos from More Austin

This past Saturday, I took a drive north to Round Rock to experience the famous Round Rock Donuts. Josh and I are going to be cutting back on our sweets this spring so now was a good time to donut it up.


Photos from More Austin

I was told I needed to get to the place really really early (they open at 4am) but I arrived around 9am and there was a quick moving line. They have a drive thru with about 20 cars waiting, but I think I counted only about 10 people in front of me inside the store. Why are people so coo-coo for these donuts?


Photos from More Austin

Josh said it was because they make your donuts after you order them and while you wait. So they are fresh and warm! You know why they have to make your donuts while you wait?

Donut

Because they make THESE behemoths! It's a Texas Sized Donut! There is a regular cake donut on top as a comparison. I think it took us 2 days to eat the thing, sharing it and cutting off wedges. It was pretty good - more breadlike than I expected and the glaze was tasty and not overly sweet.


I also picked up a few sausage and cheese kolaches so we were not fueled by sugar alone on Saturday. Thanks for a tasty treat and the look on Josh's face when I opened up the donut box and showed him the MEGA-DONUT, Round Rock Donuts!



Sunday, April 1, 2012

Hutto Hippos

Hutto Hippo
And now a small history lesson....

"According to local legend, it was in 1915 that a circus train stopped in Hutto, Texas. At some point during this layover, a hippopotamus got out of the railcar and made its way to a nearby creek. This caused much consternation for the circus workers. Local farmers and merchants watched the commotion in amusement and with interest as unsuccessful efforts were made to extricate the hippopotamus from the muddy waters of Cottonwood Creek. It is said that the Depot Agent, who at that time would have been Hal Farley, Jr., telegraphed the communities of Taylor and Round Rock that were eight miles (13 km) to the east and west of Hutto to the effect of: “STOP TRAINS, HIPPO LOOSE IN HUTTO”. After much effort the hippo was prodded from the mud and water that resembled its natural habitat and was reloaded back onto the train car. Soon afterward the Hutto School adopted the hippopotamus as its mascot and as early as 1923 the hippo appeared on official Hutto High School graduation announcements."

Hutto Hippo

So when you are in Hutto, which is close to where we live, you will see many many many many stone hippos about!

Monday, March 26, 2012

I like going to movies, Beanie likes being in them.

I like going to movies, and we have found some excellent theaters down here. First there is a theater similar to Hollywood Blvd. that our Chicago friends and family might be familiar with called Alamo Drafthouse, they have a full kitchen menu they serve during the movie and seriously enforce the no cellphones or talking rule, my kinda theater. They run new movies and have special events like sing a-longs with musicals, quote a-longs to movies filled with great one liners, one of the popular ones is "The Big Lebowski" (I am looking forward to that). They also do heckle nights where you can actually use your cell phone during the movie because they already know they are showing a bad movie and you can text message in your comments and they appear in a stream onscreen with the movie. They also do special menu movies where the food goes along with the film. Tonight we saw "The Hunger Games"on the Cinemark XD screen and it was an enormous screen and a great picture super bright and crisp. Beanie likes to be in the movies, see picture below that she is trying to get into the new American Pie movie.

American Pie Reunion, featuring Bean Bell as that girl that makes faces!

General update, I finally got the garage in order and was able to hand wash and detail the car did both the exterior except for polish and wax (which is a much longer process), and the interior got the line of products I use "equivalent" to "Armor-all" so the interior has sun screen on it now to protect it from the beating of the Texas sun. I've already gotten a tip that I will want to consider getting window tinting done to both keen the dark car cooler and protect the interior, with the side benefit of being a security issue. What thieves don't see they won't steal. The kitchen is very nearly complete, we got some wire shelving to keep pots and pans at "Josh height" while still being easy to reach for Colleen, and to keep the kitchen electrics off the counter. We're getting a Bakers rack for tea and breakfast service, also to display some decorative items. It has 4 wicker baskets that will be excellent to divide with something sturdy and keep dry goods/root vegetables in, I'm kind of excited I think that will finish off a fully functional kitchen. Pictures will follow once everything is in place. We've been bed shopping as our 11 year old bed is pretty much shot and in desperate need of replacing. Trust me its not a badge of courage to stick it out with a old bed, not even for sentimental reasons, think back to the good nights sleep you got on your mattress when it was new, I know we have been struggling with sleep and it's not just my sleep apnea or Beanies sleep talking/walking.

Next week I am flying to San Francisco for work, meeting the rest of the product team I am on. I will be out there being social and deep diving into the technologies of the product and trying to bring enough knowledge back to write support documentation to transfer knowledge to the rest of the admin team, and make it easier to support so I don't have to get woken up in the middle of the night. All of the development and most of the engineering is done out there in San Fran, the rest of the engineering, the administration and support is here in Texas. With one exception, an engineer I found out works remotely from the Des Moines area.

I hope you are all doing well and having fun and enjoying the nicer weather coming back even after a fairly mild winter. Feel free to drop me an email, last inital full first name at me dot com (I hope you can decipher that, avoiding spam bots), or if you are under 30 you're more likely to text me. My Iowa number isn't going away, I've had it for too long.

-Josh

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Orange you glad....


I dub my new hair color Radioactive Carrot!

And yes, I did it to myself with a box of hair dye yesterday. And no, this was not the color it was supposed to be. Oh well!