Family visit in Austin ; ‘The Turn of the Screw’ ; the drive home to PA
(posted from home!)
(This post covers October 23 – 29, 2009)
-----------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 29 October-
We were on the road by 0900 today despite our late start. Our 250-mile drive up I-81 seemed to go quickly, helped along by listening to podcasts of ‘RadioLab’ and ‘This American Life’.
We would have made it home by 1430 or so but diverted at the last moment. I wanted to pick up some candy for tonight (since Halloween in our neighborhood is always the Thursday before) and to pick up a movie since we won’t have television or internet until I get the cable re-connected.
While we were away our grocery store moved so this was also our first time in the new Giant. After seeing dozens of upscale grocery stores on our trip, I can’t say our new one qualifies as an upscale store like the Albertson’s at Jackson, WY, the new Safeways in Canada, or the Von’s in Bishop, CA. There’s no Starbucks counter (no coffee counter at all, in fact), no olive bar, not even a decent selection of foreign cheeses. The aisles are wider and Labashi did find they now carry La Factory low-carb tortillas (our favorite) and now there’s a Giant gas station there so we can more easily use our gas points. And the new store is definitely a visual improvement over the old.
We were very happy to find everything in order with our house. We turned the power on and spent an hour unloading the van and putting things in order.
That evening we only had five trick-or-treaters so we started a movie. We watched ‘State of Play’ with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. It’s well done, though the intricate plot almost lost us (thank goodness for the Back button on the remote!).
This one I can recommend.
-------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 28 October-
Last night was a noisy one. Some fool trucker (it only takes one) decided to park near us and keep his engine idling all night. Around midnight we moved but the other side of the Wal-mart wasn’t much better. The parking lot itself was quiet enough but for some reason there was a constant stream of buzzbombs and muffler-challenged pickups zooming by most of the night.
Today was a MUCH better day for driving. As we neared Knoxville in mid-afternoon, the sun came out and revealed the bright Fall colors around us. Off in the distance we could see the Smokies, colorful down low but a rust-brown up high.
Shortly after Knoxville we hit I-81 north and though we were still many miles from home it seemed like our backyard.
At the I-77 junction we found a steakhouse and took an hour out for a filet mignon and baby-back ribs, then pressed on for a few hours, giving us a 500-mile day.
By 2130 we were nearing the I-64 junction at Lexington, Virginia and there we found a Wal-mart for the night. Since it was at the junction of two interstates I didn’t expect we’d want to stay but it was actually a quiet one—at least for awhile. Around 2300 some kid decided we all wanted to hear his boom-boom music but that only lasted for an hour or so. I was a bit wound from the driving so it took me awhile to drift off but then I slept the sleep of the innocent and we woke late (0830-ish) to beautiful sun.
-------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 27 October-
Today was another driving day as we head for good old P-A. The rains and wind continued as we left Texarkana and passed by Little Rock on I-30 and turned onto I-40. By late afternoon we had crossed Arkansas and entered Tennessee at Memphis. We continued on through steady rain, sometimes heavy, until dark. For some reason we came upon four car accidents in the last hour of our driving. We don’t know if there had been an especially heavy downpour or what but we first saw a rollover (with emergency crews still there), then three spinouts, i.e., situations where the driver lost control and spun into the medial strip or an embankment along the interstate. And again, emergency crews were still there. And we saw ambulances passing in both directions.
We were pushing to get to a Wal-mart at Dickson, TN for the night and had no problem ourselves other than lower visibility in the harder rains but it was surreal to see all these wrecks along the way.
That evening we watched two episodes from the ‘Planet Earth’ DVD set, ‘Deep Ocean’ and the first part of the ‘The Future’ extras disk.
----------------------------------------------------
Monday, 26 October-
We had thunderstorms in the night and were in no mood to leave our hosts this morning. We had a long, leisurely breakfast of ‘migas’ and tortillas and finally said our fond goodbyes at 1030.
We spent the day driving northeast, now ‘heading for the barn’. We drove through heavy rain for several hours, then light rain the remainder of the day.
We ended up at the Wal-mart at Atlanta, Tx, (near Texarkana and the Arkansas and Louisiana borders). We rented ‘Gran Torino’ with Clint Eastwood from the Redbox. What a terrible movie!
----------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 25 October-
We spent the morning and much of the afternoon continuing our wide-ranging conversations with our hosts. Labashi had mentioned theatre and we soon learned of a play going on this evening—‘The Turn of the Screw’—and bought tickets online.
Around 1530 we loaded up the car and drove to the SoCo district’s Austin Playhouse. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ was great. In this case, it’s a two-actor play of Henry Jame’s late 1800’s novella. It’s the story of a young English governess who tells a ghostly tale and we’re not sure if she’s imagining, telling us the truth, or deliberately misleading us. The male lead plays multiple characters, including a middle-aged female housekeeper and a ten-year-old boy. He also verbally does the sound effects.
The female lead evolves from a shy girl to a screaming madwoman, all in the bounds of a 75-minute-long play where the only prop is a chair.
We loved it! It made us think, it made us marvel at the actors’ skill.
We then had supper at Guero’s Restaurant, an Austin Tex-Mex institution only a few blocks from the theater.
Back home we had a celebratory fire in the back yard fire-ring and drank champagne and had butter pecan ice cream with berries in milk-and-white-chocolate tulips (!!!!) before ending our day.
----------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 24 October-
Today was yet another perfect-weather day and on top of that it’s our 39th anniversary. Our hosts treated us to a wonderful day.
We toured their favorite Austin neighborhoods and it was a treat. They’re real estate agents and have refurbished several houses so it was fascinating to hear their tales of their experiences with properties and with the people buying and selling them.
Our tour also took us to the ritzy side of the city and we walked the bluffs about the lake, looking down on the multi-million dollar estates on the lake.
We also dropped in to Central Market, an upscale produce and grocery market where we pursued and found prickly-pear fruit. The produce guy was a treat here. When asked whether he had any prickly-pear fruit, he not only took us to a basket of the fruit hidden away under a stand but also cut slices for each of us to try. And then it turned out the prickly-pear fruit only cost $1 for five of them. It was hardly a money-making proposition for him to spend some 20 minutes with us for a $1 sale but he certainly made an impression. We took the five fruits along for later.
Late in the afternoon our hosts took us to ‘The Oasis’ overlooking Lake Travis. This is a fabulous restaurant on the hillside some 500 feet above the lake. Terraces overlook the lake and contain tables enough for hundreds of people to watch the sunset while having Mexican food and drinks. Our hosts talked our server into taking the prickly-pear fruit to the head bartender and requesting he make prickly-pear margaritas for us. Surprisingly (to us, anyway) it was no problem. Prickly-pear maragaritas are excellent. Like the taste of the fruit slice we had at Central Market, the taste of the margarita is sweet and soft, toning down the harshness of the tequila. (Labashi and I had four of them, just to be sure!)
We finished up our meal just 20 minutes before sunset and then enjoyed the view over the lake as the sun dove behind the hills in the distance. Magnifico!
We spent the rest of the evening back home on the porch as the gentle evening breezes caressed us.
-----------------------------------------------------
Friday, 23 October-
We had a pretty morning this morning and decided not to go back into the city today as we had planned yesterday. Instead, we started off hiking a few of the McKinney Park trails. I had taken a walk last night after supper, touring the campground after dark. I like to see what types of rigs the other campers have but in this case there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. But for some reason I had extra energy to burn off and I enjoyed the walk.
Our walk this morning also originated at our campsite but we walked to the visitor’s center (which, it turns out, is only open on weekends), then along the creek. This trail took us under a rock shelter carved out of limestone over many years. We kept following the creek and the trail brought us out to a massive rock outcropping typical of the Austin area. Where there is soil, it’s relatively thin and lies on a relatively porous rock. It seems odd to us to be walking through what appears to be a woods much like the woods back home but then to come to a meadow sprinkled with prickly-pear cactus.
After our walk we once again changed our minds and drove into the city. Yesterday’s plan was to visit another museum or two but we decided instead to check out the SoCo (South Congress) district of funky shops and restaurants on our way to Labashi’s brother’s neighborhood. We weren’t scheduled to show up to his house until 1500 so once we found the general area, we looked up the nearest library. That library happened to be closed on Fridays but the wi-fi still worked (we learned that latter fact from a fellow parked in the library parking lot and working away on his laptop). We spent the next two hours doing our normal wi-fi stuff, i.e., checking email, posting a blog update, checking weather and news and some favorite hobby forums.
Some 15 minutes before our appointed time, we shut down the laptops but mine popped up a Windows update message. It picked that time to install 18 updates, which meant I couldn’t power down the PC. The updates took more than a half hour and I didn’t want to take a chance on driving around while the disk drive was working so hard. That made us late but then again it had been an ‘around-1500’ time so it didn’t really matter.
We easily found her brother’s house and were warmly greeted. The lady of the house was working but we enjoyed learning about two inventions he’s perfecting and was working on in his backyard shop. He showed us prototypes (which I’ll deliberately keep vague here) and we received a quick course in what it takes to bring a new twist to a familiar object to market.
We toured the house and then spent the evening on the magnificent back porch. We had perfect weather and sat around talking and having a bit of wine (after a steak dinner!) late into the evening.
********************* END OF POST ***************
(posted from home!)
(This post covers October 23 – 29, 2009)
-----------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 29 October-
We were on the road by 0900 today despite our late start. Our 250-mile drive up I-81 seemed to go quickly, helped along by listening to podcasts of ‘RadioLab’ and ‘This American Life’.
We would have made it home by 1430 or so but diverted at the last moment. I wanted to pick up some candy for tonight (since Halloween in our neighborhood is always the Thursday before) and to pick up a movie since we won’t have television or internet until I get the cable re-connected.
While we were away our grocery store moved so this was also our first time in the new Giant. After seeing dozens of upscale grocery stores on our trip, I can’t say our new one qualifies as an upscale store like the Albertson’s at Jackson, WY, the new Safeways in Canada, or the Von’s in Bishop, CA. There’s no Starbucks counter (no coffee counter at all, in fact), no olive bar, not even a decent selection of foreign cheeses. The aisles are wider and Labashi did find they now carry La Factory low-carb tortillas (our favorite) and now there’s a Giant gas station there so we can more easily use our gas points. And the new store is definitely a visual improvement over the old.
We were very happy to find everything in order with our house. We turned the power on and spent an hour unloading the van and putting things in order.
That evening we only had five trick-or-treaters so we started a movie. We watched ‘State of Play’ with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. It’s well done, though the intricate plot almost lost us (thank goodness for the Back button on the remote!).
This one I can recommend.
-------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 28 October-
Last night was a noisy one. Some fool trucker (it only takes one) decided to park near us and keep his engine idling all night. Around midnight we moved but the other side of the Wal-mart wasn’t much better. The parking lot itself was quiet enough but for some reason there was a constant stream of buzzbombs and muffler-challenged pickups zooming by most of the night.
Today was a MUCH better day for driving. As we neared Knoxville in mid-afternoon, the sun came out and revealed the bright Fall colors around us. Off in the distance we could see the Smokies, colorful down low but a rust-brown up high.
Shortly after Knoxville we hit I-81 north and though we were still many miles from home it seemed like our backyard.
At the I-77 junction we found a steakhouse and took an hour out for a filet mignon and baby-back ribs, then pressed on for a few hours, giving us a 500-mile day.
By 2130 we were nearing the I-64 junction at Lexington, Virginia and there we found a Wal-mart for the night. Since it was at the junction of two interstates I didn’t expect we’d want to stay but it was actually a quiet one—at least for awhile. Around 2300 some kid decided we all wanted to hear his boom-boom music but that only lasted for an hour or so. I was a bit wound from the driving so it took me awhile to drift off but then I slept the sleep of the innocent and we woke late (0830-ish) to beautiful sun.
-------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 27 October-
Today was another driving day as we head for good old P-A. The rains and wind continued as we left Texarkana and passed by Little Rock on I-30 and turned onto I-40. By late afternoon we had crossed Arkansas and entered Tennessee at Memphis. We continued on through steady rain, sometimes heavy, until dark. For some reason we came upon four car accidents in the last hour of our driving. We don’t know if there had been an especially heavy downpour or what but we first saw a rollover (with emergency crews still there), then three spinouts, i.e., situations where the driver lost control and spun into the medial strip or an embankment along the interstate. And again, emergency crews were still there. And we saw ambulances passing in both directions.
We were pushing to get to a Wal-mart at Dickson, TN for the night and had no problem ourselves other than lower visibility in the harder rains but it was surreal to see all these wrecks along the way.
That evening we watched two episodes from the ‘Planet Earth’ DVD set, ‘Deep Ocean’ and the first part of the ‘The Future’ extras disk.
----------------------------------------------------
Monday, 26 October-
We had thunderstorms in the night and were in no mood to leave our hosts this morning. We had a long, leisurely breakfast of ‘migas’ and tortillas and finally said our fond goodbyes at 1030.
We spent the day driving northeast, now ‘heading for the barn’. We drove through heavy rain for several hours, then light rain the remainder of the day.
We ended up at the Wal-mart at Atlanta, Tx, (near Texarkana and the Arkansas and Louisiana borders). We rented ‘Gran Torino’ with Clint Eastwood from the Redbox. What a terrible movie!
----------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 25 October-
We spent the morning and much of the afternoon continuing our wide-ranging conversations with our hosts. Labashi had mentioned theatre and we soon learned of a play going on this evening—‘The Turn of the Screw’—and bought tickets online.
Around 1530 we loaded up the car and drove to the SoCo district’s Austin Playhouse. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ was great. In this case, it’s a two-actor play of Henry Jame’s late 1800’s novella. It’s the story of a young English governess who tells a ghostly tale and we’re not sure if she’s imagining, telling us the truth, or deliberately misleading us. The male lead plays multiple characters, including a middle-aged female housekeeper and a ten-year-old boy. He also verbally does the sound effects.
The female lead evolves from a shy girl to a screaming madwoman, all in the bounds of a 75-minute-long play where the only prop is a chair.
We loved it! It made us think, it made us marvel at the actors’ skill.
We then had supper at Guero’s Restaurant, an Austin Tex-Mex institution only a few blocks from the theater.
Back home we had a celebratory fire in the back yard fire-ring and drank champagne and had butter pecan ice cream with berries in milk-and-white-chocolate tulips (!!!!) before ending our day.
----------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 24 October-
Today was yet another perfect-weather day and on top of that it’s our 39th anniversary. Our hosts treated us to a wonderful day.
We toured their favorite Austin neighborhoods and it was a treat. They’re real estate agents and have refurbished several houses so it was fascinating to hear their tales of their experiences with properties and with the people buying and selling them.
Our tour also took us to the ritzy side of the city and we walked the bluffs about the lake, looking down on the multi-million dollar estates on the lake.
We also dropped in to Central Market, an upscale produce and grocery market where we pursued and found prickly-pear fruit. The produce guy was a treat here. When asked whether he had any prickly-pear fruit, he not only took us to a basket of the fruit hidden away under a stand but also cut slices for each of us to try. And then it turned out the prickly-pear fruit only cost $1 for five of them. It was hardly a money-making proposition for him to spend some 20 minutes with us for a $1 sale but he certainly made an impression. We took the five fruits along for later.
Late in the afternoon our hosts took us to ‘The Oasis’ overlooking Lake Travis. This is a fabulous restaurant on the hillside some 500 feet above the lake. Terraces overlook the lake and contain tables enough for hundreds of people to watch the sunset while having Mexican food and drinks. Our hosts talked our server into taking the prickly-pear fruit to the head bartender and requesting he make prickly-pear margaritas for us. Surprisingly (to us, anyway) it was no problem. Prickly-pear maragaritas are excellent. Like the taste of the fruit slice we had at Central Market, the taste of the margarita is sweet and soft, toning down the harshness of the tequila. (Labashi and I had four of them, just to be sure!)
We finished up our meal just 20 minutes before sunset and then enjoyed the view over the lake as the sun dove behind the hills in the distance. Magnifico!
We spent the rest of the evening back home on the porch as the gentle evening breezes caressed us.
-----------------------------------------------------
Friday, 23 October-
We had a pretty morning this morning and decided not to go back into the city today as we had planned yesterday. Instead, we started off hiking a few of the McKinney Park trails. I had taken a walk last night after supper, touring the campground after dark. I like to see what types of rigs the other campers have but in this case there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. But for some reason I had extra energy to burn off and I enjoyed the walk.
Our walk this morning also originated at our campsite but we walked to the visitor’s center (which, it turns out, is only open on weekends), then along the creek. This trail took us under a rock shelter carved out of limestone over many years. We kept following the creek and the trail brought us out to a massive rock outcropping typical of the Austin area. Where there is soil, it’s relatively thin and lies on a relatively porous rock. It seems odd to us to be walking through what appears to be a woods much like the woods back home but then to come to a meadow sprinkled with prickly-pear cactus.
After our walk we once again changed our minds and drove into the city. Yesterday’s plan was to visit another museum or two but we decided instead to check out the SoCo (South Congress) district of funky shops and restaurants on our way to Labashi’s brother’s neighborhood. We weren’t scheduled to show up to his house until 1500 so once we found the general area, we looked up the nearest library. That library happened to be closed on Fridays but the wi-fi still worked (we learned that latter fact from a fellow parked in the library parking lot and working away on his laptop). We spent the next two hours doing our normal wi-fi stuff, i.e., checking email, posting a blog update, checking weather and news and some favorite hobby forums.
Some 15 minutes before our appointed time, we shut down the laptops but mine popped up a Windows update message. It picked that time to install 18 updates, which meant I couldn’t power down the PC. The updates took more than a half hour and I didn’t want to take a chance on driving around while the disk drive was working so hard. That made us late but then again it had been an ‘around-1500’ time so it didn’t really matter.
We easily found her brother’s house and were warmly greeted. The lady of the house was working but we enjoyed learning about two inventions he’s perfecting and was working on in his backyard shop. He showed us prototypes (which I’ll deliberately keep vague here) and we received a quick course in what it takes to bring a new twist to a familiar object to market.
We toured the house and then spent the evening on the magnificent back porch. We had perfect weather and sat around talking and having a bit of wine (after a steak dinner!) late into the evening.
********************* END OF POST ***************
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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