Sixth Street on a Saturday Morning

Barton Springs Road Bridge

It’s high time for the bottom of another bridge. This time the small bridge across Barton Springs Road.

I’ve been keeping this one and I find it hard to give it up. I don’t know when I’ll come across anything I like as much. Because it’s short and low above the water, and even lower above the path, it’s almost cozy, intimate even,  in a concrete bridge-bottom kind of way.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Culture

The Invaders Are Here: Bon Appetit!

A blogging friend made me aware of this article in the New York Times about eating invasive species such as feral pigs. Feral pigs are a problem here in Texas and it makes perfect sense to eat them. They’re free-ranging, organic, with no added hormones or antibiotics. So eat them invaders, y’all!

Gruene Market Days

Yesterday T and I went to the Market Days in Gruene, south of Austin and pronounced as ‘Green”. The weather was mild and the market was colorful.

Founders Day Festival at Night

T, R and I spent some time at the Dripping Springs Founders Day Festival last night. I enjoyed the light versus darkness.

One of the first photos I took was of the sign below, at the Knights of Columbus stand, where they sold raffles. The sign shows what you could win. Needless to say, I didn’t buy a raffle ticket. Other than that it was a wonderful time.

Photo Challenge: Up

This is not the sharpest of photos, because I took it with my cell phone at a traffic light here in downtown Austin. At dusk, the grackles congregate on the power lines, preferably along the roads and above parking lots. The sound is indescribable–loud but pleasant, like the sound of the shower in the morning. On hot days it almost makes it feel cooler.

Brigham Young and Infamous Legacies in General

Brigham Young
(image from biography.com)

Well, I’ll probably be banned from ever entering Utah for this, but here goes.

I just read The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. It tells the somewhat parallel stories of two nineteenth wives: Ann Eliza Webb, wife of Brigham Young, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints’  second leader in the 1870s,

Does Your Favorite Post Feel Neglected?

Hey readers,

I have absolutely no inspiration right now. I just read a post by The Byronic Man about being featured on Peg-o-Leg’s Ramblings, and that gave me an idea. Or rather, the idea is to steal this idea.

1978: A Rockin’ Year to be Seventeen

Image from http://www.fanpop.com

Evolution of X just had a post about her memories of 1978. She invited readers to do the same.

So, let’s see. Not in chronological order:

It Runs in the Family

I share a love with my maternal grandfather for office and drawing supplies. In the 1940s and early 1950s, he wrote a series of children’s books about his youth in Friesland, called the Pieterjan books.

Raft Books: My Excuse For Browsing

I’m not big on collections. I used to be. I had all sorts of collections. If I saw something I liked, I would start a collection. Until I felt that I was surrounding myself with things just for the sake of surrounding myself with things, and I got rid of most of them.

Lenin’s Favourite Songs: A Copyright Question

(Image from Wikipedia)

So in my last post I wrote the story of how I got this tape of Russian music, that I thought was called Lenin’s Favourites. I have looked high and low for a CD of the music, in all the music shops, on Amazon, etc. It’s not to be found and no one has even heard of it.

How Lenin Made My Day

(Image from biography.com)

I will have a question in my next post.

But first the story.

In the summer of 1989, two years before I met my husband, my girl friend H and I went backpacking in the Cairngorms in Scotland. We took the ferry from Rotterdam to Hull, hitchhiked to the Cairngorms,

Cursed Be Thy Need!

(Image from glogster.com)

Okay, I’m doing it again: turning a response to someone else’s post into my own post. Lazy, lazy!

On Freshly Pressed I came across TDYLF and the post “To Pee or Not to Pee”.

Yes, so you could just read the post and look for my comment, but then I’d have to think of something else to write. So just read his post, and read my response here. I had fun doing it.

And note to self: must make a flowchart of something. That’s a pretty neat idea. Thanks, TDYLF for all the inspiration!

Beyond the Mopac Bridge

(Image from forum.dallasmetropolis.com)

Time for another bridge post. And no, this one isn’t about the Mopac bridge. For the first time ever, I present to you the bottom of a different bridge. The Lamar Boulevard Bridge, the one east of the Mopac Bridge across Town Lake in Austin, Texas, the United States of America.

Martin Chuzzlewit in the U-nited States

(Image: charlesdickenspage.com}

Since I’ve been blogging about Victor Hugo’s stories, let me jump over to England and Charles Dickens.

This winter break I had the bad luck to get the flu. For days I could barely get out of bed. But every cloud has a silver lining, and this cloud’s lining was that I got to read Martin Chuzzlewit in a few days.

Writing Prompt 1984: Paquette and the Nazis

(Image from Oo.Cities.org)

Writing prompt 1984 asks about being locked in a room with my greatest fear. I suppose that having nightmares is a pretty good metaphor for being locked in a room with my fears.

When B was about six months old, we were staying with my in-laws for what was supposed to be a week to ten days, because the front windows in our house were being replaced. It ended up taking more than two months. But don’t get me started on construction work in South Texas . . .

Les Miserables: Pretty Miserable

(Image from Wikipedia)

High time for a new post, but I have very little time right now. So I’m being lazy and posting a comment I left on a post about Les Miserables. (How do you put accents on letters in WordPress?)

I saw the show about twenty years ago, in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. I read the book about 15 years ago, and I saw the movie recently. I absolutely loved the book. It’s like a Dickens novel on steroids and suffering from depression.

Happy Holidays!

Okay, so yesterday I was a bit of a Debbie Downer, it being Christmas Eve, but both our kids have the flu. They were upstairs in their rooms, feeling miserable, and we decided to pretend that today is Christmas Eve and we’ll have presents under the tree tomorrow. So that’s my excuse.

An Audience of One: My Dad

The daily writing prompt a few days ago: to write a post for someone I wish was reading my blog.

It feels a bit weird to write to you in English, and I don’t think I can call you Dad instead of Pappie, but here goes.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

I was very tempted to use a bridge photo, but that would be a spoiler for a future post. I like this one, too, though, because it shows reflections of different things in different sections.

In Yellowstone National Park, dogs are allowed in cars and campers, but not outside except for in the campsites, on leashes. I took this picture of a small dog in a huge RV in a parking lot near a waterfall. I was wondering when I was going to use this picture. Thanks for the challenge!

 

Autumn Morning

The view from our window this morning:

WordPress Daily Prompt: Connecting the Dots

The prompt: Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow.

The book: The Talisman by Stephen Kind and Peter Straub.

—

Thanksgiving 3: Friends all Over

‘s up?

I am thankful for my friends. From my best friend since we were almost fifteen and my other Dutch friends, to my friends right next door here in Austin, and everyone in between. I don’t need to blog about my appreciation of them, because I connect with them in other ways. (But if you’re reading this: Hi. I love you.)

Here, I want to give thanks to the blogging friends I’ve made.

Thanksgiving 2: Living in Austin

I really, really, really appreciate living in Austin. Even though we live on the edge of the Hill Country, we have an Austin address. We literally have the best of both worlds. I drive all the way into town every day, so I go from seeing deer graze behind our house

Thanksgiving 1: Green

I think I’ll do a few posts abut what I’m thankful for, on our way to Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for all the green around me, here in the Texas Hill Country.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal

(Image from Wikipedia)

The lava flow of the Valley of Fires in New Mexico was formed about 5,000 years ago; it’s one of the youngest lava flows in America. The vegetation still looks like it started popping up rather recently. And in geological time it has.

Click here for a short but informative video about the Valley of Fire.

I Dream of Being Stephen King

In Spirit Lights the Way, a blog I follow, I read a post about a writing prompt for a short story to be written by two writers together:

Hamilton Pool: An Autumn Walk

Another beautiful spot only 30 minutes from our house is Hamilton Pool. It’s a small park, with a path going along a small stream to the Pedernales River in one direction, and in the other direction it goes to the actual pool.

Weekly Writing Challenge: Dad and Lilly and Me

This week’s Writing Challenge was to write about the picture below.

 

Oh Jeez, where the heck did you ever find that photo? Really? All these years?

Top Ten Musical Memories

When I hear a song I haven’t heard for a while, I immediately remember where I first heard it, or where I bought it, or which hangout played it a lot. . .

I thought I’d share some of them.

1. Morning Town Ride by The Seekers

Weekly Photo Challenge: Geometry

 

Freshly Pressed: The Aftermath

Ah, it was wonderful, being Freshly Pressed. But it has its downside as well.

Before Being Freshly Pressed (BFP), I was perfectly content with my 72 followers, which meant that about an average of one new reader per week was joining. I was proud of my stats, which showed that my record number of visits in one day was 139. People from an average of ten countries visited my blog each day, and I enjoyed seeing them on Feedjit.

Oh my Gosh, I’m Freshly Pressed!

What an honor! Thank you WordPress. And thanks to everyone who visits my blog. I suddenly got so many likes and responses today that it will take me a while to visit all y’all’s blogs, but I will try. How exciting!

Early Morning Walk

I thought you might like something nice, after the last post. This morning, after dropping the kids off at school early (their math teacher has office hours at 7:30 am), I went on a brief walk around Town Lake here in Austin. The sun was only just up when I started, and it was slightly misty. I only had my phone with me, but I’m always amazed that the pictures aren’t half bad.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette

My then boyfriend T in our canoe in Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada, 1991. I actually took this picture in broad daylight, so it’s technically a pathetic failure but I love the result.

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 6

This is the last Pedernales Falls post. Well, the last one about this spot in the state park, anyway.

Toward the left of the main stretch of rocky falls is one of my favorite spots:

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 5

It doesn’t look like the water is very forceful, but people kept drowning around here. The water has formed big holes in the rock under water, and there are treacherous currents. So since the end of the seventies, swimming is no longer allowed.

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 4

When you get down the rocky kind-of-stairs, you come to a sandy beach. This part was a setting in the movie Sharkboy and Lavagirl by Robert Rodriguez. And that’s the only interesting titbit of information you’re going to get. Time to explore.

Just a Little Something on the Side

Don’t worry, I will continue what probably seems like my endless series of photos of Pedernales Falls later (I aim to bore, but you love me anyway, right?), but I just had to give you this link to a another blogger’s post about a famous Dutch person. Dutchies, don’t get proud just yet…

See you later on the rocks.

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 3

The Pedernales River winds across the Texas Hill Country, and at Pedernales Falls State Park it has a wide stretch of rock falls. The word “falls” suggests water falling from a height, but it’s actually a gradual sloping stretch of rock about a mile long, that the water runs over, or slips over. So it’s not as vertically spectacular as, say, Niagara Falls, but it’s still pretty grand, in that low-key Texas Hill Country way. In short, I’m building it up, but I don’t want to set you up for disappointment, either. Because then you might voice that disappointment, and I don’t know if I could handle that, since I’m really rather fond of Pedernales Falls.

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 2

After driving to the parking lot nearest the falls, you have a three minute walk through a cedar forest. On an overcast day it’s always slightly claustrophobic. When the kids were younger, I insisted they stay close, because I was worried about mountain lions. T thinks that’s very funny. But just the other day a mountain lion attacked a horse closer into town than Pedernales Falls. You just never know in woods like these…

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 1

I’m going to be very busy with translations this coming week, and I took about 100 photos yesterday when B and I went to Pedernales Falls, so I’m going to spread them out.

FIve of the Hardest Things I’ve Ever Done

A much younger R

Well, let’s see.

Literally one of the hardest things was the first time I dived off a diving board. This was in a swimming pool in Switzerland. I was twelve, and on vacation with my then best friend Dees. We went to that pool several times, and she dove in like a pro. Toward the end I finally took what was meant to be the plunge. But it was a belly flop instead. Although the term belly flop doesn’t really cover it. A flop sounds soft. This was not soft. In fact, I can still remember just how hard it was, slapping flat onto that water. Very hard indeed.

My American Dream

This is what I dreamed last night.

I was in a school gym, remembering how we would be made to run laps around a gym just like that in high school in the Netherlands. And I remembered that I could. I’d be tired, and I’d be protesting loudly like any self-respecting un-sporty teenage girl should, but that’s all. And I resented–in this dream–that I can’t run for two minutes now without having a gimpy knee for the next two weeks (this is real; I ran for two minutes last weekend, and now it hurts when I walk down steps).

Nine First Lines And a Paragraph

One of my blogging friends–Fork in My Eye, go visit her–wrote a post about first lines of her favorite books and invited others to do the same. So here’s mine. My favorite books in English, that is.  Some of them. And literature. I’ll do another list with books from other languages, and also one from popular fiction. I’m not going to tell you which books the lines–and one paragraph, you’ll see why–are from. Some are obvious because a name gives it away. Let me know which ones you recognize. No looking them up, though. That would be cheating.

A Dream Come True: The Tea Embassy in Austin

During and after library school, in the Netherlands, I had several dreams. Like working as a jillaroo on an Australian sheep station (which I dropped when I realized how much I’d be sweating).  And the one I had with my room mate, where we would move to London after graduation and share an apartment,  living off the money we would make being maids in hotels and such (so glad my parents talked me out of that one). Or the last one, when I had already been working as a librarian for several years, which was taking a group of Aussie and Kiwi guys up on their invitation to join them driving a jeep across Africa for a year (which I wouldn’t have dared by then, in fear of never getting a library job again if I was out of the market for that long).

Something Colorful From the Rockies

Just some more milking. This is in Silverton, Colorado.

Some Black and White Rockies