A new way to sleep

Just when you might think you've seen everything...

....the gearheads [otherwise known as husbands] come up with something new and cool.

Previously unbeknownst to me, Henry has found a new internet addiction: hammock talk. Apparently there is a lot more to this napping technology than I ever dreamed  of (no pun intended).

They make hammocks that are like little tents, so that you can sleep outdoors anywhere...anywhere with trees to tie up to, that is.

And it turns out to be just as cool as it sounds! I got to try it out and took the picture above before the tarp (analogous to a rain fly) was put on. Things look a little hazy through the bug netting, but you certainly can still see the trees. And, presumably at night, the stars, too. (That is, if you keep your glasses on...but the device has an answer for that, too, with a little built-in hanging storage bag for putting things like that away.)

The picture at the top of the post shows the hammock, weighted down with Henry, complete with the tarp. And here's the view from inside with the "roof" on:

Although I just tried it out for a short nap during our Thanksgiving trip to the hill country, Henry spent a night in it out there.  Plus, he even slept in the second hammock he bought, in the back yard, the other night. Best to try them out with amenities close at hand, before taking them on the road.

Which we may do soon. Stay tuned! [More pix and stories from our Thanksgiving trip are coming soon as well.]

Wordless Wednesday: an early seasonal tree

Paddling the Reach

Readers of this blog might be familiar with the un-engineering works going on south of downtown on our San Antonio River. (This link will take you to my posts about the river our city was named for.)

The de-channelization of the river downstream from downtown—known as the Mission Reach—is proceeding wonderfully. And we had another new experience on one of the most recently finished sections last weekend.

This stretch is really special, since you not only can walk or bike along it, but you can even paddle! The 1.6 mile section from Mission Road to Padre Park has been de-channelized, alright, but they've also put some small channels back in...to accommodate kayakers and canoists.

The features in the picture above are at what is now the end of the navigable stretch and as yet aren't open to boaters, but they will be soon. 

Here's one of the canoe chutes that is open for traffic. We were going back upstream here and Henry was helpful enough to pull my boat part of the way up the chute:

The 5 or 6 of these features on the section of river we paddled are really nice and reasonably well-designed for boating. Given that you can—without too much trouble—go both upstream and down through them, means that you can double the 1.6 miles and give yourself a fairly nice paddle. Eventually, we'll be able to make a 5 mile trip out of it, after they put in some more chutes and re-engineer some upstream drops that weren't made boater-friendly at the outset.

Last Saturday was the formal opening of this little canoe trail and we joined some dignitaries, and several other groups of paddling enthusiasts for the maiden voyage. Here are some of the paddlers, waiting for the politicos to come and do their speechifying (they were only a half hour late):

As you can see, we had a gorgeous day for the event and enjoyed the short journey very much. The bridge you can see above is the VFW Avenue crossing, where we put in and took out. We first (along with the dignitaries) floated down to the features at Padre Park. Then we went back upstream as far as we could (to Mission Road) and then back down to VFW Avenue. 

Along the way we saw lots of birds: several cormorants, like the handsome fellow on the right here, several egrets, and a lot of ducks. You know you're doing your re-naturalization work well if the birds are there in strength.

And the water was surprisingly clear for most of the stretch:

Here's a map of the Mission Reach in its entirety, which gives us a lot to look forward to. In another year or so, we'll be able to paddle all the way down to the last Mission, Espada!

Wordless Wednesday: Library by night

A musical week

I don't get out often enough to enjoy live music. But it just so happened that I was able to attend three events in the past week that were all totally enjoyable, if almost infinitely various. And each presented a special angle that made them even more special to me.

First off, Tuesday night a friend invited me to join her for an organ concert. The organist was Paul Jacobs, who is a big deal in organ circles, but since I don't have much familiarity with these folks, was unknown to me. But I know him now! What a show he put on! In a varied program from Bach to Mozart to modern composers also unknown to me, he was fabulous, putting in virtuoso turns with hands and feet on the lovely organ you see above. A highlight was a last-minute program substitution of "Pomp and Circumstance," which  transcended its familiarity and made it really shine.

Special angle of this concert: it was held at Laurel Heights Methodist Church, where I wait for the bus to work most mornings! If I had once known about the amazing instrument just a few yards from my bus stop steps, I had forgotten about it. Just say that I won't take the handsome classic building so much for granted any more!

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Next up, a production of "Pirates of Penzance," a favorite G-and-S romp, right on the St. Mary's campus and starring several of my choir buddies. They were terrific!—sounding musically gorgeous, and handling the difficult linguistic tricks and turns like pros, I was so proud of them. Here they are in the rambunctious, joyous, if totally nonsensical, finale:

I'm still hearing the catchy, cheerful tunes from the piece on my mental record player. And nothing can brighten your day more emphatically, take my word for it. Or give a listen to a sample.

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Then, to cap off the musical week, we had symphony tickets for Saturday. Here's the way the stage looked from our seats—high up, but a perfect vantage point.

A vantage point, that is, to be able to watch our extremely talented and lovely niece, English horn principal, who had a absolutely gorgeous duet with the pianist in one of the program's pieces. Yes, we had advance notice that this would be a good night to see her featured, but the whole varied program—Copland, Ravel, and Mozart—was all good. 

We were, however, especially happy to get to see her shine. And it won't be the last time. She's got some good gigs coming up in the spring, too. So there will be more live music in our future. Although I'm not sure I'll have another week as chock full of it as this one!

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Henry has a post about our night at the symphony, with more pictures, here.

A good camping river

Readers of my blog might remember two earlier river camping trips I've taken on Texas' Colorado River.

Last weekend, almost exactly 2 years after our first such outing, we found ourselves on this lovely river again, with camping gear in the boats.

Above is the view downstream from our starting point at the the FM 969 bridge. The weather was much nicer (for the most part; more about the negatives later) for this trip than for our jaunt in 2010. I remember the start being quite chilly then, but last weekend's temperatures were delightful...we didn't even pack a sleeping bag.

our campsite on Boy Scout Island

As you see, we did put up the rain fly on our tent, but although rain was forecast, we just got sprinkled on a little bit Sunday morning.

The negative weather feature was a pretty strong headwind, which makes the paddling part of the trip less fun than optimal. However, it wasn't a steady wind and it dropped off frequently enough to give our shoulders a periodic rest. 

As usually happens on camping trips, micro views (which require a macro setting, oddly enough) are as interesting as macro views (which require a wide-angle lens). An example of the former is the natural planter box you see on the right. This large driftwood tree near our campsite had started to split, giving a little colony of plants all the encouragement it needed. (For an example of the latter, see yesterday's Wordless Wednesday post.)

A big draw on these river campouts is getting to sit around a fire and visit with friends...

...and, of course, eating. It helps when some of said friends are maestros of campfire cooking, presenting us with such gorgeous, and scrumptious, dishes as this seafood frittata. A five-star breakfast Sunday morning! What more could you want?!

you'll have to take my word for it, but it tasted as good as it looked!

And as if gourmet campfire food wasn't enough, several of us headed home via the center-of-the-bbq-universe (otherwise known as Lockhart, TX) for lunch at Black's, one of the local institutions.

Sausage, cole slaw, mac/cheese, and sweet tea! A perfect coda to a nearly perfect (only "nearly" because of that pesky wind!) weekend.

Wordless Wednesday: Big sky

Wordless Wednesday: Fixing faulty towers

We've got learning in common...

We've undergone some big changes at my workplace—Blume Library, St. Mary's University—since the beginning of the year.

The popular, welcoming, expertly-decorated (if we do say so ourselves) space that you see above is a complete transformation from what it looked liked last year at this time.

What you see is the Library's bottom floor, which used to house our print periodicals. It's now the Cotrell Learning Commons, named after our recently-retired President.

Now, it wasn't a terribly unpleasant place when filled with rows of historical Life magazines, Academy of Management Journals, etc. But it was completely different.

Open spaces where you can work together, mix studying and socializing (and eating and drinking), and have plenty of plugs for recharging your multitude of necessary electronic devices—this seems to be what many of today's college students want. (Although there also seem to be a lot of folks taking advantage of the quiet study spaces on the building's other two floors; where I would certainly have to be if I wanted to get anything academic done. But, then, I wasn't raised to be a multi-tasker like these kids were.)

We even provide some of the eating and drinking materials at our new in-library Starbucks (see above left), where our students are invited to spend [what seems to me, a non-coffee-drinker] exorbitant amounts of their parents' hard-earned cash on lattes and other mysterious beverages. But there is a lot of actual studying that goes on in the Commons, as I think you can see from these pictures.

In hopeful anticipation of the Commons' popularity (which anticipation has been proven wildly accurate!) we moved our Reference Desk from the second floor down to the new space, and renamed it the Research Desk. As you can see on the right. I spend 8 hours a week on the desk here, and get to witness daily the success of the work put into the transformation of this space. Here's the view from our swanky new Research counter:

The entire library staff did put in a lot of work to make this change happen, and so it's doubly satisfying to see the students take to it so enthusiastically. 

There was intellectual work—deciding what print periodicals and reference books we could do without, given the array of electronic resources we now have access to, as well as visualizing the best configurations for the new layout (an especially hard job for someone such as myself who's spatial-imaginatively-challenged)...

Emotional work—some wrenching decisions to eliminate long runs of journals that we were partial to, but that just weren't being used...and a lot of physical work—clearing the shelves, pushing books to the recycling dumpster, inventorying furniture that could be saved/refurbished, etc.

(We do still have print periodicals, btw; they are now on the second floor, where the reference books used to be. The pared-down print reference collection is in the Commons; you can see the shelves—with "antique" print-on-paper books—above on the right.)

One of the best things about the Commons is that it puts some of the University's technical support staff in a better location to help students and faculty (and occasionally-perplexed librarians). In addition to a tech help desk, there's a very nice classroom for holding workshops, meetings, and other gatherings requiring computer projections. (see this room on the left)

And all of this activity is right next door to our student center. In fact, our director's initial idea was to take advantage of this proximity by making a second entrance to the Library right off the University Center's patio. Here's a shot of these new doors, which connect us more conveniently with this busy campus corridor:

You'll notice the patio furniture, recently set up, that is particularly inviting on the nice fall days we're having right now (in the middle of summer, maybe not so much):

view from our patio to the University Center

our patio

looking down at our patio from the bridge to the UC

Not exactly the traditional picture of a library, but, like many other institutions in this day and age, we've got to adapt and change or die off. Hopefully the Learning Commons will postpone our demise at least for a little while.