Monday, March 23, 2009

Austin Rodeo, BBQ, and House Projects


Well it's Monday morning and everyone has left. My parents were in town this weekend and Jeremy came down from Houston. It was the first time the four of us hung out, but it went really well. Thursday night we did the traditional Rudy's BBQ dinner and just relaxed for the rest of the night. Friday, Dad and I decided to install a light off the back deck of the house by the grill. A few trips ago we had installed a light on the other deck, but I was getting tired of grilling by headlamp, so I decided that it was a good time to put a light on the grill side too. It went fairly well, and in the end there was only one extra drill hole that had to be patched up. Not too shabby. We also tried installing a heat radiant barrier on the skylight in my living room. That project did not go so well, and after about an hour or less we decided that it would be better to call someone to have this done instead of trying it ourselves. (On a side note, I've since learned that domed skylights cannot be tinted, or it's impossible to find someone to do it. So I need to move onto plan B for the summer, which is to rig up some kinda shade structure over the skylight) Saturday the four of us went to the Austin Rodeo and Livestock Show. It was AWESOME! This past weekend happened to be the BBQ Cook off, which is so much fun! So there were about 20 different teams there all cooking away for the entire weekend in different competitions (beans, bloody marys, ribs, brisket, etc). Then what they do is allow you to sample all of the food, the only thing they ask is for a small donation which all goes to charity. Basically the four of us ate all we could eat for like $15. Oh and did I mention the drinks are free too? It was INSANE. We all ate way too much, but the BBQ was so delicious. After leaving the BBQ cook off and walking around the rest of the rodeo for a while we thought about going back, but then decided that our stomachs probably couldn't take in any more food. So what did we do next? Well naturally we went home and cooked more food for dinner! Sunday we spent most of the day working on the front yard, redoing some of the landscaping. After about 6 hours of that, we went to Mandola winery and then to the Saltlick. Overall it was a wonderful weekend. And now I'm looking forward to a relaxing week.


Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Limestoner is over... and my parents are coming this week!


So first, the Limestoner recap. Last Thursday we made a collective decision to push the Limestoner to Sunday instead of Saturday. The threat of rain for Saturday was still about 30% and it was supposed to pour all day on Friday, thus making the rock very wet to climb on Saturday. So we pushed it, and so the weather decided to turn. Saturday turned out to be "okay," in that it didn't rain at all, but it was cloudy and overcast all day and the rock was still very wet from Friday. Then Sunday came... and so did the rain! It rained from about 8am - 11am. Not pouring rain, but the nice steady pain in the butt type rain. Fortunately we have a lot of dedicated climbers here in Austin and about 40 people registered for the comp, even though it was raining all during registration. And also, fortunately, it was still relatively warm. By about 11am the rain had stopped and the clouds were beginning to part. After crawling out of the car (where I was hiding after I got everyone registered), we walked down to check out some of the climbing activity. As the clouds continued to lift, so did peoples spirits, and by 3pm people were pretty happy and just having a good time. There will still a few clouds in the sky but the sun was shinning brightly and it got really warm. Overall it turned out to be a good day and we even made a little money. Which is great considering the weather we had to work with. I'm told that Joe's slideshow went great, but I only stayed for part of it, because I was dead tired from the day. Check out ctmrocks.com for updates on who won what categories. Congrats to everyone who won and thanks to everyone who showed up!!!

Also, my parents are coming into town this weekend! They are coming in Thursday afternoon and will be here through Monday morning. We may try to go downtown and check out some of the free SXSW shows and at some point I'm going to take them to the saltlick, and probably go out to Rodeo Austin. We'll probably also work on the yard out front, relax in my new patio furniture, and grill some steaks and fish. If we're really motivated, we may try to put a light out back by the grilling area so one doesn't have to use a headlamp at night to grill. It's going to be a fun weekend. Oh yea, and did I mention that Jeremy hasn't met my parents yet? It could be an interesting weekend.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Lots going on... as usual.


This past weekend was crazy as usual. I came down to Houston on Friday night, and I'm still here as I type this message. Friday night we went out for Sushi (at Tokyo Bowl of course) and then Saturday we went to the St. Arnolds Brewery for the 1pm tour. As always, a great time was had by all. After a short trip back to the house to make some green rice crispy treats, we headed over to the O'Medina birthday/st. patties day party. Yea it's a bit early, but who says you can't party for the whole month of March? We played a game called "guess what's under Edgar's hat." Okay, maybe it doesn't sound like that much fun now, but when you've been drinking... it gets interesting. Sunday we just hung around the house most of the day and relaxed. Yea, nothing too interesting. The daylight savings change really threw me off.

But in more exciting news, this weekend is the 10th Annual Limestoner Climbing Competition! Make sure you come out and compete, because there are a lot of great prizes this year.

Well I wish I had more interesting to write, but I don't. Hope to see ya'll this weekend out at Reimers!