Texas Visit Pix, Day 2 - Snow and Family in Tyler (Including: Everything In Texas Is Bigger Except the Snowmen)

Ah, first weekend in January, everything getting back to normal after the holiday rush. Home feeling sniffly today, still going to head over to TQ's tonight to break in the Dutch oven he gave me (we really are having hasenpfeffer!), but I'm spending the afternoon drinking hot tea and I figured I'd start putting up some of my Texas pictures (there's a whole album on Facebook already, I put those up because there was family in Texas who wanted to see them quickly, but here I think I only put up one breakfast). Quite a bit of blah blah blah first, if you're in a rush you can probably just skip down to the photos, which start on Day 2. Day 1 was just air travel and mostly unphotogenic - there would have been a grand aerial shot of Jamaica Bay if I'd thought to get the camera out of the bag for the flight, but I didn't, and the rest was just airports and highways. The night before we left (we flew on the 25th) I'd mentioned that there was a bit of a foul-up with our reservations, for some reason US Air "adjusted" our flight from the 25th to the 26th - well, that wouldn't have done at all because we would've completely missed the big family get-together on the 26th (and the snow, too)! Fortunately the US Air customer service rep who I spoke to on Christmas Eve when I went to check in figured it out and was able to sort things out.

The one glitch that we were left to sort out at the airport was that getting us to Texas on the 25th meant switching airports from Newark to LaGuardia, but we didn't change the return, that was still into Newark. Now, when I fly on my own, I don't end up leaving a car in long-term parking, so it didn't occur to me that that we had a slight problem until TQ was driving the Mighty Taurus into Lot P2 at LaGuardia and I started to say something about how nice it was going to be to get off the plane at the end of the trip and have the car waiting for us, and then it suddenly hit me that no, we were going to get off the plane at a different airport entirely! Oops. Fortunately we'd left lots of time for traffic jams and other driving delays and none ever really materialized, so we were there 2 hours early, already checked in and packed in carry-ons, so we had lots of extra time to stop at the ticket counter and explain our predicament to one of the reservation agents and she was able to switch the return half (and she didn't even charge us since the original glitch was US Air's fault). I was SO glad we were flying on Christmas day - the lines were short and tempers were not, I expect we would have seen that situation reversed had we been flying the day before. The only other unpleasant surprise of the trip came at the car rental desk in Houston, where the rental I'd been told would be just under $400 turned out to be closer to $800 after adding taxes and insurance. Worked out well to have our own car, but still, ouch.

Anyways, my dad called just as we were driving out of the airport (I let TQ drive that leg, I'd decided to wait until the next day to take the wheel so that  I could do my first driving in 2 years in daylight and small-town traffic, so I was free to take the call) and told us that they were all getting tired so we should just go to the hotel. That was fine.

Family fun really got going the next day. First we went to my aunt and uncle's place, then I got LOTS of driving practice as we all hit the road to go to the family gathering in Tyler, Texas, more than 100 miles to the north of Huntsville! That all went fine, Texas highways are nice and although I was a little worried about driving at 70 or 75 (that's the speed limit, but it sounded awfully fast to me!) the traffic was pretty light and the main thing I found myself watching out for was when everybody else would suddenly slow down, which always turned out to be a 100% reliable indicator that we were coming to some small town and the speed limit was about to drop to 60, we'd usually see the sign a minute after everybody around us had slowed down. Since it was the highway speed I was all worried about, perhaps it was ironic that the only time I really got us in a jam driving-wise was a couple of nights later on the little dirt road that leads to my aunt and uncle's place - it was dark and had been raining all day and I mis-judged and ended up putting our teeny weeny lightweight economy car into soft soft mud next to the road, where it instantly bogged down and stuck fast. Ugh. Good thing TQ's got AAA, we ended up being a nice easy job for the gigantic tow truck that showed up. :(

But I do digress - the Tyler drive was fine, I eventually got relaxed enough for TQ to turn on the radio, we found a good country-music station where cowboy-sounding people were singing about taking rides on big green tractors ("we can go slow, or we can go faster!") or going fishing in crawdad holes, and it was a really pretty drive through the Texas countryside, and then, well, it was funny, just as we got there, we started seeing this white stuff by the side of the road! Took me a minute to place it here where I never expected to see it, but yeah, that was snow, Not much, but the kids were absolutely tickled with their white Christmas, and boxing day too! Here's one of my little cousins twice removed having a great time playing in the snow.

Everything's bigger in Texas, except the snowmen!

Here's my mom and dad getting ready to take their little American Eskimo dog, Belle, for a walk - she's the little fluffy white one, the border collie mix, Honey, belongs to a cousin once removed (argh, why do relationship terms become so clunky after "cousin"?)  - she was hard to take a picture of because she was always running around really fast, but true to her name, she's a sweet sweet dog!

run honey run!

Pansies didn't look quite as happy with the snow as various dogs and children...

This is Aggie territory (please note little cap worn by snowman maker above)!

Texas connection, or at least part of it (plus TQ and me and my mom & dad of course). Great seeing these folks again, and meeting the ones I hadn't met, it had been far too long! 

Can't resist showing the background with the people cleared out, it's such a nice picture in itself. I can't remember where everyone was the last time I was down here but my cousin once removed H. (cripes, can I just say "C.O.R.???") and her husband have definitely gotten this place since then.

Where's My Hasenpfeffer?

Marinating in a bag in the refrigerator. Where's YOUR hasenpfeffer?

aaaand, seven hours later or so - does that look any better? :D

Hmmmm...

Oh, boy, TQ got me a Dutch oven for Christmas and I am SO excited! Hmm, whatever shall I cook to break it in this weekend?

Motivated.

Winter's definitely with us here in NYC, but yesterday (my first day back at work after vacation) it didn't feel too bitingly cold when I walked out of the office at 6, and I decided I was in the mood for a bit of an after-work stroll. I hoofed it across the Manhattan Bridge, through downtown Brooklyn, and up to Atlantic Terminal. That's a little over 3 miles, but I got a little off-course by misjudging the course of a curving road (and also expecting the clock on the former Williamsburg Bank building to be lit, that's a grand landmark for walking to Atlantic Avenue, but the clock was out last night) and the end total ended up being about 3 and a half miles.

At one point it crossed my mind that I could keep walking to Courtelyou Road and then have a nice dinner at one of the restaurants there, but I had a nice chuck steak in the 'fridge that needed to be cooked, so when I got to Atlantic I jumped on the train and took that the rest of the way.

Tonight, though, I think I may have the motivation to do the longer walk! The good folks at Purple Yam posted the above photo over on Facebook with the caption "Recovery food: soy glazed pork belly with soba. We will be putting up more ramen and other noodle soups at PY for the winter".

Well well well. Can you imagine how good this (and maybe some buko pie) would taste after a 7-mile urban hike? I may just need to go find out (weather cooperating, of course).

Welcoming the New Year, Sebago style!

From Sebago Canoe Club Annual Frostbite Regatta (plus New Year's annual meeting)

Happy New Year! Here's a link to a few (by my standards anyways) photos from this morning's annual New Year's Day paddle at the Sebago Canoe Club. Always a nice way to start off a year. Welcome 2013!

Time to make the pecans!

Happy New Year's Eve Day to all! Guess it's time for me to get going on my contribution for the Frostbite Regatta potluck tomorrow.

I always threaten to make spam musubi, but since we just got back from Texas yesterday I'm sticking with something simpler - sugared pecans. I wish I could've brought some genuine Texas pecans, but I didn't have a chance to track down a fancy food place in Huntsville that sold local nuts, and the ones my sister brought from her tree in Austin were to good to swipe from the family. They had pecans at the airport stores but they'd already been enrobed in caramel and chocolate! Ah well, the ones from the local deli will do. This is a great recipe, very simple, very yummy, easy easy cleanup, got it from my mom.

Bonnie's Mom's Pecans

Ingredients:
1 pound pecans
1 egg white
1 tblsp. water
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt


Preheat oven to 270 degrees (fahrenheit, or 132 celsius for the rest of the planet)Beat egg white and water until frothy (don't bother with a mixer, a fork is fine). Add pecans, mix until coated. Mix sugar, salt & cinnamon in a brown bag (that's my mom's instructions - I used a produce bag tonight, I think the brown bag may absorb a little of the excess egg white but the produce bag worked OK too). Add pecans, shake 'til coated. Spread out on a cookie sheet (lining the cookie sheet with foil will seriously save cleanup time) and bake for 1 hour, stirring occasionally (I checked in on 'em every 15 minutes). Don't overcook or they will burn.

Naturally, it is highly recommended to sample some while they are still warm from the oven, you do want to make sure they are good enough to share with your friends or co-workers or whoever, right? If you make a pound there may even be a few left to give to those people after you have finished the preliminary sampling process.

Howdy from Huntsville, TX

Mmm-mmm-Migas!!!

Migas con huevos - fried tortilla pieces with eggs, jalapenos and tomatoes, a great Tex-Mex breakfast at Lindo Mexico Taqueria here in Huntsville, Texas. Good barbeque too, yes yes, and lots of catching up with family I haven't seen in far too long. Having a very nice visit down here in Texas. Back soon!

Holiday Greeting from NYC, and a snowflake generator

Rockefeller Center Tree 2012

Rockefeller Center Tree 2012

57th St. Snowflake

Merry Christmas and (in case I don't get in another post before then) Happy New Year from NYC! Much family togetherness, no kayaking this year - just back from a long-overdue visit to TQ's folks, and now getting ready for an even MORE overdue visit to the relatives in Texas - haven't been there since 2007. The trip is turning out to be very confusing somehow, plans seem to change every time I hear from my folks, but whatever happens, it should be fun, Mom's side of the family finally gets to meet the guy I've been dating for ages, I'll get to practice driving a bit (eek, look out Texas, it's been a while!), and maybe we'll even hunt down a little barbeque this time (I think my aunt & uncle aren't big BBQ fans so we haven't really ever done that, but with TQ coming along I thought maybe we could put in a request, and it's met with a friendly reception).

We're not really doing presents, I hope (although I've gotten everything else wrong so I may have gotten that wrong too), but of course I have got some NYC goodies to take along - a box of Teuscher, which I've managed to stay out of, mostly by bribing myself with other kinds of candy...note to self: please stop being a slug and resume exercising after New Year, and then I made a special quick run into the city today after we got back from CT 'cause I found out that Joe's Dairy was open today (they're usually closed Mondays but since it's the day before Christmas they made an exception. Have smoked mozzarella & sausage, will travel!

Wanna make a snowflake? Click here for the Barkley US Snowflake Generator! The snowflake generator is fun, I made this one for the purpose of embellishing the "on-vacation" sign I put up on my computer at work on my last night before vacation, I was beginning to feel festive & couldn't resist dressing up the sign a bit.

Note later: Oy. I am recalling now why I started staying in Brooklyn for the holidays. The changes to the family holiday plans were tricky to keep up with but I was more or less following. But then US Airways decided to get into the "confuse the heck out of this poor woman" game too. It's like those coffee commercials - "We've secretly replaced Bonnie and TQ's Christmas day flight with a boxing day flight. Let's see what happens!" Thank goodness for online check in, I called US Air and a helpful rep there saw what had happened & helped get us back into flying on Christmas day. I am crossing my fingers that nothing else goes wrong and I'm not uncrossing them until we pull into my aunt & uncle's driveway. Here we go, fingers crossed, Boy iet;s haerd to typw thid way!

Updated sidebar for the season (due to CG search on the Hudson)

Just moved my cold-water boating safety list to the top of the lists, I am sad to say that I was reminded that it's past time to bring up the cold-water boating list when a friend sent out a link to an article about a Coast Guard search for a couple of people who for some reason decided to go out in a canoe on the Hudson in the middle of the night up around Poughkeepsie last night and then capsized.

None were wearing lifejackets (lifejacket wear is required by NY state boating law for anyone in a recreational vessel less than 20 feet long from Nov. 1 - May 1). One of the three made it ashore, the other 2 are being looked for now. Story here.

Tis The Season...

Another fine holiday seisiun at Dempseys last night, and tonight, the annual shop-window trip with Mandy, starting with a stop for my favorite, easy-to-transport, one-size-fits-all, won't-clutter-up-the-house-for-long type presents for the family at Teuscher Chocolates (aka "Torture" according to at least one chocolate-loving friend, as in "Mmmmm, Torture Chocolate!":) at Rockefeller Center. Caught this kid at the candy store window in 2008, figured I'd put him up again.

So that's what I'm up to tonight - meanwhile, here at the blog, yep, it's time for the Hawaiian Twelve Days Of Christmas again! Yaaaay! Numbah one day of Christmas, my tutu give to me...

Mele Kalikimaka and all that jazz! And once again, Mahalo nui loa, Joe, for Surfin' Santa!

The Season's Upon Us

Back to happier subjects - here's my current second favorite Christmas song for you! I'd thought I'd be putting up my most favorite one today (fiiiiiive big fat pigs, oink, oink!) but I went for this one 'cause I'm getting psyched for the annual Dempsey's holiday seisiun tonight. Sláinte!

Making the Second Amendment Work (just a link)

I'd planned a more seasonal post for my next one, and I'll get back to that, but tonight I just want to share something that a friend from college wrote in response to Friday's awfulness. It makes a lot of sense to me and I've seen a lot of similar responses, too. I'm always at a complete loss for words with things like this - but if one hasn't got words of one's own, maybe the next best thing is to share thoughtful words from a friend. Click here for Tony's article.

May our elected officials finally be driven to taking a serious look at sensible suggestions like these. Although it feels rather crass to say this, I found myself thinking, as I read Tony's article and others like it - gun control shouldn't only be about people not having guns any more than birth control should only be about people not having sex. Oh, sure, there are people in the world who would like things to be that way - but a person can't really expect to get much traction with that argument.

p.s. - yes, I know this was also about the way the mentally ill are cared for, or maybe not cared for - just haven't seen anything on that aspect that struck me quite as much as these rational calls for gun regulation have.

p.p.s. - also saddened tonight by the passing of Senator Daniel Inouye. A true hero, and one of Hawaii's senators since I was a kid growing up in Aiea (and before). Somehow it just seemed like he always would be.

Thirsty Fish On Friday

Is it a problem if you drink like a fish if you actually ARE a fish? Found on boatinglocal.com. Thanks for the oddness!

Horses! I almost forgot the horses!

And why have I suddenly got horses on the brain tonight? Spur-of-the-moment trip to see the stage production of War Horse tonight, that's why. I've been toying with the thought of going to see it for ages -- my company published the book, which I really liked, and I was very intrigued by the puppets -- but with the last show being on January 6th, time was running out fast. I hadn't thought about it recently but a friend went to see the matinee today, and when she mentioned that, it hit me that I didn't really have any plans tonight and maybe it would be good to just go already! It was. I'll give a bit more of a review tomorrow, even if it's just copying a long blithery comment from Facebook, but for now - look, aren't they beautiful? This was the Parade of Breeds show at the Lexington Horse Park in Kentucky, which we visited during the family's September get-together for my mom and dad's 50th anniversary. Featured breeds during the show we watched:

Oldenburg

Connemara

 American Paint (new thing I learned about spotted horses on this trip: a Paint is always a pinto, but a pinto isn't always a Paint).

Friesian (made famous in the movie Ladyhawke)

And the mighty Shire!

Special addition to this show - Cowgirl Express western drill team.

After the show, all the little girls can't wait to meet the horses

And some of the bigger girls enjoyed saying hello, too!

Must be cool to be a Cowgirl!

Split Pea Soup Break

Because I really just needed to slow down for at least a day.

I'm almost over the latest in a string of ailments - hard to make myself take a quiet day at home during the holidays, when there are so many fun things to do, but I felt like I really did need to today, so I'm home making split pea soup. Yum. I got a gorgeous ham hock and some bacon ends when a friend and I went the Union Square greenmarket yesterday, carrots, potatoes and onions at the Cortelyou Road one today - now everything's sliced and diced and the soup's a-simmering on the stove and I think it might be time to take a nap.

Oh, and speaking of gorgeous food - have you ever seen noodles that candlelight could shine through like this?

This was what I had at Kelly and Ping's after my rainbow hunt the other day. I went there with a certain really wonderful duck dish of theirs in mind, but they had jap chae, a Korean dish that is another favorite of mine, on the specials. These are sweet potato noodles and even though I felt a little silly doing it, when I noticed the play of light through the transluscent noodles, I couldn't resist trying to take a picture. One of the weirder things I think I've ever tried to photograph, but it's kind of pretty, right? Oh, yes, and they tasted very good, too.

Pearl Harbor

A friend posted a picture taken inside the Arizona Memorial today. Reminded me I had some Pearl Harbor pictures on my last trip to visit my parents there and had never shared them. Here are some of those. Click for better views, as usual.

Ford Island

The less well-known Utah Memorial. We were on a Navy-run tour because my father is a retired Naval officer - this is on Ford Island and I think they said that you would not see it on an ordinary tour.

Battleship Missouri, Arizona Memorial in the distance. 

Approaching the Arizona. The white concrete structures are where the ships were moored that day. The Navy keeps them clean and white with the names marked on them. 

At the Arizona Memorial

BOYCOTT TRUMP. BUY GLENFIDDICH!

Can't resist. Click here and read. Jeeze. PETA should boycott this guy for keeping too many bats in one belfry. Me? I usually go for the Balvenie on the rare occasion I buy a bottle of scotch but I swear that the next time I get home early enough for the liquor store to be open I'm buying a bottle of Glenfiddich. Whitman classmate & professional liquor writer (true, and yes, be jealous, be very jealous) Robert Haynes-Peterson posted this story on his Facebook. I shared it there and had to share it here, too. Oooh, and speaking of PETA, I just had a great idea - how about that town that PETA stopped from having their Possum Drop on New Year's Eve have a Trump Drop instead? Or if that's too much heavy lifting they could just send somebody to swipe that thing Trump wears on his head and put that in the box in which they used to drop the possum. It would make a splendid possum substitute.

Post - Sandy - Volunteer day in Rockaway

Post - Sandy - Volunteer day in Rockaway, a set on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
For a lot of us, things are back to normal - but not for the people who live on the city's edge. They'll still be cleaning up for a long time. I joined Carl Steiniger, a fellow NYC kayaker, who's been doing an amazing amount of volunteering in the wake of the storm. I'd done one day at Coney Island and reading his Facebook posts, I decided to join him for another. Another rewarding day, and a good reminder for me of how far from normal things still are for so many people in this city. Visit this gallery on Flickr for a better view of our volunteer day and subsequent trip down the peninsula to the Gil Hodges Bridge, and a couple of links about the rally for jetties we happened to stumble across just as it was breaking up.