Wordless Wednesday: for the man who has everything

Things to like about my house

I have been doing really at-home tourist-ing lately since it's too hot to go outside except when absolutely necessary. Specifically, I've been working on some of the large backlog of deferred maintenance on our house. In order to keep what I hope is my generally positive outlook on things, however, even when faced with the ugliness this deferral has caused, I decided to look around and catalog some of the things I like about our house.

And I found quite a lot of things, some in odd places. Like our bathroom floors (see above and on the right), whose vintage tiles I wasn't fond of for several years. But lately their retro-funky-charm has been growing on me. These tiles were no doubt the height of fashion in the '30's when they were laid down and they've certainly held up well.

I like the tile in our guest bathroom shower, too, which you can see at the left. What a nicely whimsical shape for the yellow tiles! It even echoes, a little bit, our city's most famous shape, the top of the chapel of the Alamo (which, however, as you can see here, hasn't always been there!).

One of the best things about our house are the floors. We had them refinished before we've moved in, in 1981, and except for a few high-traffic areas, they still look fantastic. I'm sure this is mostly due to the fairy dust skillful labor provided by our long-time cleaning lady, but our nice collection of oriental rugs (perhaps subjects of a future post) do set the wood grain off beautifully, we think.

There are other examples of nice woodwork elsewhere in the house, woefully un-maintained but occasionally still nice to look at. One of my favorite pieces is the newel post at the bottom of our stairs (please ignore need for painting and refinishing and focus on on the lovely grain of the ball, shown at the left).

Our stairway, in fact, is one of the very best things about the house. Having a two-story house allows you to keep the messiest stuff upstairs out of view of visitors, provides daily exercise [especially if you're forgetful and continually are having to go up and down looking for keys, cell phones, glasses of ice tea, etc.], and also makes a nice place to hang family photos and other artwork. On the right is a view up the stairs from the first floor and on the left is looking down them from the second:


And below is a shot I took sitting on them about half-way up, to show one of their nicest features, a skylight that was suggested by one of Henry's sisters when we were fixing up the house before we moved in (thanks, Z!). What a wonderful addition that is, making lights unnecessary during most of the days' trips up and down in search of the lost objects referred to above.

The family photo collage on view here includes one of our wedding photos, my grandparents' wedding picture, a candid shot of baby Henry with his grandparents and a lovely photo of his mother with her siblings and her mother—sitting on a bench that's now in his office.

Even though I don't spend much time outside the house these days, there are some things in our poor parched yard that I like, too. I'm particularly fond of the view from the second floor north windows, which our cedar elm trees make green and soothing, as you can see on the left. This is the view out the window of my study (formerly a kid's room) where I do most of my blogging under the protection of the good witch you can sort of see hanging there.

Another aspect of our house that has always been practical, but whose odd color has had to grow on us, is the stone with which the exterior is faced.

The house, as I mentioned before, was built a long time ago, back when 2 x 4's were actually 2" x 4", and the stones they used on the outsides of most of the homes around here are close to a foot thick. Which makes great insulation, keeping the houses relatively cool. At least it works this way when it gets below 80 at night and doesn't hit 100 every day! The photo on the right is of our outside wall where the base of the chimney makes an angle with the east side of the house.

Guess I'd better get back to my fixing up. If my efforts are successful, I might have some other items to add to the "like list" eventually.

Wordless Wednesday: biggest. dinner party. ever*

*at our house, anyway

Cool musical interludes

"Cool" in both senses of the word, since the music was fantastic and soul-soothing and the a/c was cranked up to very welcome levels at the Cactus Pear concerts I attended the last two Thursday evenings. This festival happens every summer in south Texas and I have always thought about going, but never actually sent in the money until this year. I think it will be a regular summer feature for me from now on, though!

The concerts are offered in different locations nearby, but we opted for the closest, that being Travis Park Methodist Church downtown. In addition to being a very nicely-designed venue for music, whose sanctuary looks almost more like a small theatre than a church, it's just minutes from our house. The outside fo the church is in the photo above and their unusual concert hall sanctuary is shown during an intermission below:

The musical performances were really first rate and more than once reminded me of some of the wonderful concerts I heard in various churches while in London last fall. My favorite pieces ended up being selections other than those I'd most anticipated from the program—the Mendelssohn and Elgar quintets that closed the concerts—so I had the bonus delight of learning to love some unfamiliar music. On the right is a surreptitious shot I took during the Elgar. You can see a bit of the church's impressive organ pipes in the background, though these weren't used in the CP concerts.

The lady in blue is the festival's founder Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio, who, besides having such a neat name was the concertmaster of our symphony here for many years before moving on. I'm so glad she continues to do her Cactus Pear thing here, though. I only wish I hadn't waited so many years to check it out!

Wordless Wednesday: a rare scene

Green-ness and water—two qualities in short supply around here lately.

Down a lazy river...

...in this case, the San Marcos, which, being spring-fed, is the only navigable stream worthy of the adjective during this beastly, 100+ every day drought. In addition to water, it also has a fair amount of shade, at least for the first part of our paddle last Saturday. On the right is a rather extreme example of the river's shade trees, a monumental cypress that was big enough to have its own island.

The picture above was taken as I was trying out one of our new kayaks (see both awaiting their maiden voyages at the left) while the car-shuttlers were shuttling at the beginning of the trip. This was my first experience with a sit-on-top kayak and I must say the ease with which you can dip hot feet in cool water, not to mention the easier getting-in-and-out-of-the-boat process, has made me a fan—at least for warm weather paddling.

Along with several other groups of boaters we took a long break at Cummings Dam** to swim in the extra-cool water below it.

That's especially welcome after the somewhat arduous process you have to go through to lower your boats down the side of it (only really crazy people try and go over). And it was even more welcome for us since we'd just made a Henry-inspired paddle up a very sluggish and bath-watery Blanco River (which joins the San Marcos a ways upstream from this dam) to a less-than-ideal lunch spot. Main problems with the site: warm, nearly stagnant water deprived us of our usual post-prandial swim, and there was very little shade. The little sojourn definitely reinforced my gut feeling that "paddling" and "upstream" are two words that should never be used together.

It was crowded on the river, much moreso than usual on our trips, but not surprisingly since this is the only water for miles around. But I wasn't ready for just how crowded it was until after Westerfield Crossing, when we ran into this sea—almost literally—of tubers. [not potatoes or turnips but "toobers"—otherwise known as floating globs of minors in possession]

You can only get a general idea of what this is like from this photo. But believe me, I felt like the guy in the lifeboats looking for Kate Winslet among the bobbing bodies after the Titanic went down. It was almost that hard to steer around the fun-loving young floaters. I thought you only saw this kind of traffic on the Guadalupe below Canyon Dam, but they must have been restricting the flow from that dam on Saturday to keep the lake from getting too low, and the toobers had nowhere else to go.

We need some rain! and we need it soon, but unfortunately the forecast looks pretty grim. I might have made my last paddle for a while....

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**Corrected by this email from Henry: That is Cummings Dam, not Martindale Dam. The latter is the one you dread, as you actually had to assist with the portage rather than watch the men (and Julie) do all of the work.

Independence Day @ the Shoals

We were happy to spend our Saturday 4th of July out of the city, although it was still super hot even on the shores of this lovely lake, which was originally called Lake Granite Shoals (it's not too far from Enchanted Rock) before being re-christened for the Hill Country's favorite son.

Thanks to our friends Greg and Renée for including us in their very fun holiday plans. We spent an inordinate portion of the day and evening eating [what is it about country air that makes good food taste even better and sharpens hunger to boot?] but also were treated to a nice boat ride around the lake, saw some fabulous fireworks, and got up close and personal with some personal watercraft. (For more pictures from the holiday, see Henry's blog post—I was somewhat lazy in the photo department.)

The views above and at the right were taken from our host's balcony, and you can see right away that Lake LBJ is a really different lake experience from Canyon, where we're most used to spending our laketime.

The main reason for this is that LBJ is a constant level lake, which allows lakehouse owners to own land right down to the lakeshore and to build, with reasonable confidence, permanent structures there. Being one of a chain of lakes on the Colorado River that can thus get water from upstream to keep the level up, and having power plants on its shores that need a constant supply of water, the result is a much more dense development than you find at Canyon. (Although we learned that they do occasionally have floods, since other rivers join the Colorado between Lake Buchanan, the next one upstream, and LBJ.)

We even saw some real mansions on the lakeside during our boat tour. One of them is pictured at the left. Some of these huge lakehouses are owned by folks our hosts call "Dellionaires" from Austin. Just a little weekend getaway, for the computer geek who has everything, right?

Our hosts' place, while certainly not on this scale, was plenty luxurious for us, although admittedly air conditioning, beds and a kitchen is really all that was required. But we even got to watch the end of the exciting Wimbledon final while enjoying one of our
practically constantmeals.

I was able to get this nice nice evening view of the house from the end of the pier, just before getting on board for our voyage to the fireworks, about the best my unsophisticated camera can do in low light. You really should check out Henry's cool photos of show, which was a highlight of our holiday. (I chose one of his more surrealistic shots for my last Wordless Wednesday post.)

In addition to the powered personal watercraft we got to sample (and which you can see on Henry's blog) we test drove a couple of the person-powered variety as well. Yes, we are now proud parents of yet two MORE kayaks, purchased from our hosts' nice neighbor, and bringing our
garage'sboathouse's total to TEN. They're lovely boats, though, and we plan to try them out tomorrow on the [fortunately] spring-fed San Marcos. I'll let you know if they're yar!

Wordless Wednesday: happy, colorful 4th

For more of Henry's terrific fireworks photos, see his blog.

We got us some culture down heah

I'm finally taking keyboard in hand to finish up reporting on the full week of tourist-ing undertaken when Joan came visiting. Our last tourist attraction was a jewel of a little museum somewhat surprisingly tucked away in my little city—the McNay Art Museum.

The museum has recently acquired a nice new addition and I hadn't been to visit in quite some time. Although the new wing makes it a much larger museum, it's still possible to see it all in a reasonable amount of time, which is a consideration when my memory still reels with my attempts to see everything in the British Museum.

As you can see from these photos, the building is almost as much an attraction as the fine artworks it houses. Originally Mrs. McNay's custom-designed home, the original part of the museum and its grounds have been popular settings for wedding and other portraits for many years. The tiled stairway on the left above is in the fine courtyard of the house, as is this impressive peacock tilework (Mrs. McNay liked peacocks):

She was a really interesting person, an accomplished artist in her own right, and, obviously, a very astute collector. We took the time to watch a short biographical video, something I recommend to any museum visitors, and learned a lot about her fascinating life and how she ended up in San Antonio—a happy outcome for us!

They let you take photos in the permanent collection part of the museum, although without flash, so I didn't get too many good photos of the art itself. This bronze, on the right, caught my eye in a lovely sculpture gallery.

The museum even has haut-design features in the loo. On the left is a close-up of perhaps the most stylish sink fixture I've ever seen, or, at least, ever used. In order to make sure you get the full effect of this amazing piece of plumbing, I'm also including this shot of Joan demonstrating it in use. Cool, eh!?


I'll close with this glimpse out one of the museum's windows showcasing some of the outdoor sculpture that dresses up the museum's impressive grounds. If the sculpture in the fountain outside looks familiar, that's because it was a Wordless Wednesday feature a couple of weeks ago.

I hope to get back on something closer to a real-time schedule with my next posts, but want to thank my guest again for coming to visit and inspire me to take my hometown tourist title seriously!

Wordless Wednesday: whirling wisteria

...in a tree much too tall to be in San Antonio...