Farewells

My nephew Chris made the trek from Bozo’s Port. He and his wife went back early Sunday via my Dad’s.

Photo by: Parker

After the wedding, Suna and I honeymooned at a local hotel, where we had champagne as a midnight snack and for breakfast. Sweetness and Suna’s family joined us for brunch at the hotel. Sweetness went home to her kids from the hotel, and we went home and spent a quiet day catching up on important things like Facebook and family.

Today we said goodbye to the Prince and Suna’s sister. We dropped the Prince off at the airport and went to lunch with SS at the new Kirby Lane. The food is as good as ever, but they have completely ruined the atmosphere. The interior of the new restaurant seems to be designed to amplify the least sound enough to raise the ambient noise level past the threshold of pain. This was at 13:30, and the room was far from full.

We left after a tasty but deafening meal and visited the Amish Furniture store down the sidewalk. Then we took SS back to the house to pick up her rental car and said farewell.

Everyone eventually made it home safely, and our house is returning to its “normal” levels of chaos.

So this week I am grateful to have formed a new family and to feel so welcome in it. I am grateful to everyone who traveled to attend Thanksgiving and the wedding—and to everyone one who just crossed town. I am grateful to everyone—Parker, SS, Elizabeth, and many others—who helped the wedding come of smoothly. And I am grateful to be able to enjoy some relative peace and quiet at home again.

Thanksgiving

Suna and I enjoy a glass of wine before Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends. More photos are on Facebook.

Photo by: Mystery Photog

We had a full house for Thanksgiving. Suna’s sister flew in yesterday, and her father arrived this morning. TubaBoy drove Suna and Beccano to the airport to greet him. I stayed home to finish a couple couple of cleaning projects and a few odds and ends around the house.

Suna’s friend arrived with her daughter, Cakegirl, and Cakegirl’s significant other. They brought a delicious duck dish and duck stuffing, in addition to working on the wedding cake some more. I say significant other because, although they are planning to get married on 10/10/10 (they didn’t say what time), they came very close to being common law married. In Texas, that’s scarily easy.

Thanksgiving dinner was wonderful, and the company was enjoyable.

I delayed Grateful Monday until today because what better time to be grateful than on Thanksgiving. Today I am grateful for family and good friends.

It’s Curtains

New curtains hang in the dining room.

Suna and I ordered some new red curtains to complete the update to the dining room and parlor. We were told that they wouldn’t be in until the 28^th, but Penny’s beat expectations by delivering them the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

I was able to get the ones in the ones in the dining room hung last night and the valance hung in the parlor, but we lost some of the hardware for the parlor curtains. Suna went out this morning and bought a new rod for the curtains, and I hung them this morning.

Now everything will be ready for when the Prince arrives.

Farewell and Choir

Today started out by taking The Prince to the airport. Because of Spring Break (I guess), traffic was lighter in morning rush hour than it was in the evening we picked him up. I really enjoyed his trip and getting to know him. I hope his flight home is better than the trip out here. Maybe then he will come back some time.

Choir this evening was fun. We had almost a full compliment, or as full as it gets. I sang fairly well, I think. Some times it’s there. Sometimes it ain’t.

50-50

“Yep. That’s a fire”

Photo by: Suna

Again with the working from home. I took off a little early because today is my birthday. Suna and I are both 50 now. And I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate that to work in the yard. The Prince pulled down a bunch of old, dead vines from the front of the house while I removed a sickly sage.

We sat around on the back porch while dinner cooked. After the sun got low, it turned a little chilly. So Beccano and I started a fire in the BBQ. It turns out the potbellied pit makes a pretty good fire pit. Just a few logs got hot enough to take the chill out of the air.

I cooked dinner tonight, and—as usual—the beef turned out tough but tasty. Tonight’s was not as tough as some I’ve cooked. I don’t know why it always turned out that way. I cooked it at a fairly low temperature in the oven for about an hour. Then I put it on the grill for a few minutes to absorb some of the oak smoke.

On the Eve of Fifty

I worked from home today so that I could spend some time with The Prince and the Boys, who are on Spring Break. Mostly I worked. When Suna got home, she told me that she would not have to pay for her insurance at the University, but she can’t add me until we are actually married. The good news is that if she works there for five years (?), she will have insurance for life.

The Prince insisted on paying at the Chinese restaurant where we had dinner. Hunan Ranch is a strange name, but it fits in with the Avery Ranch theme of the neighborhood. We used to joke about Avery Ranch being a type of salad dressing, and Hunan was a ranch dressing with Hunan seasonings. This joke got even funnier when the “A” on one of the signs burned out, leaving “very Ranch” after dark.

We dropped in to Hunan Ranch a couple of months ago, just on a lark. I am glad we did. The food has been consistently good, no matter what we try. The prices are reasonable, and the atmosphere is relaxing. Even though they took the industrial approach to the ceilings and air conditioning system, the floors are carpeted, and the walls seem to absorb the much of ambient noise. You can talk without screaming to be heard over the pep rally that seems to be an annoyingly consistent feature of restaurants these days. As usual, we each ordered what we wanted and then sampled from everybody else’s.

Grateful Monday

So this week I am grateful to have The Prince come visit. I really like hanging around with him. Too bad he lives so far away.

Celebrating Our Birthdays

Suna looks at a birthday card from TubaBoy while he is busy texting his friends. The card features a large biker-type wearing hotpants he doesn’t have the butt for.

The Prince came with us to church. After a rough night (my sinuses closed completely down after dinner), I finally took half a Benadryl at about 6:00. I slept through most of Rev. K’s sermon.

We spent the afternoon working on the house. The Prince and Suna pulled up vines and other weeds in the back flower beds. They have them looking very good. I finally got around to cutting a couple of fence boards that a tree had grown into. They no longer make that annoying creaking in a wind. The only other thing I got accomplished was to trim a shelf so that it fits in the cabinet with the new brackets. One shattered the other day, and we realized that another had been missing for a while. I had wanted to make a tennoning jig, but I realized that the piece of scrap I wanted to use was too badly warped. Looks like I’ll have to buy a little MDF. It’s more stable and will last longer, anyway.

The Prince treated us to dinner at Artz Rib House, where we enjoyed the music of Danny Santos and Eddie Collins, who asked me if I would be interested in playing bass with him, assuming his current bass player actually quits. The boys ate a lot of meat. The Prince seemed to enjoy the meal and the music. Jeff Tveraas also showed up and played part of the break set, the 20 minutes between sets.

When we came home, we celebrated our respective birthdays. Mine is on Tuesday. Suna’s was last Wednesday. The Prince’s was in February. TubaBoy got me a 4G USB key. Suna got me a collector’s edition of The Long Way Home, a collection of the first “episode” of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8. The Prince and Princess gave Suna a bracelet. It had been a gift from The Prince to The Princess that they had planned to bequeath to Suna. But they decided to give it to her when they could enjoy her reaction.

A Loop through Central Texas

Beccano, The Prince, and I laugh at something. We are in front of a large moon-shaped fountain/sundial. Photo by Suna

We went started out today with lunch at a new chain called Which Wich. It is a standard sub shop with an interesting twist. When you go into the store, you pick out a sandwich wrapper from a category like Italian or Vegetarian. Then you mark all the options on the wrapper, hand it to the cashier, and pay. Sometime later, your sub pops out of the oven, fully grown. The sandwiches are tasty enough—not outstanding, but tasty—but the place has the school gym atmosphere that seems to be more and more common. My ears were ringing from the ambient noise by the time we left.

From there we went on a circular tour of Central Texas, out 1431 to 281 and back on 290. We stopped at Whittington’s in Johnson City that specializes in jerky. They sell it for $26/pound, but it is very good. They even ship it free to solder. (I think they mean soldier.)

Then we came back home. The Prince and I smoked some pork loin on the pit, had a couple of Black and Tans*, and generally kicked back. Suna cut and seasoned some veggies. I smoked them with the meat like kabobs. A little pre-packaged potato salad, and we were set.

---

* Prince, you’ll want to click on that link. The first picture in the article is of Yuengling’s Black and Tan lable. They suggest pouring the lighter beer first.

Old Man

The Prince Relaxes in the Garden

Old Man, look at my life. I’m a lot like you were.

—Niel Young

Today, I met Suna’s father and his wife. My first impressions of them were all positive. The Prince and Princess are very nice, and the Prince genuinely cares about his daughter, who has forsaken her royal titles. They are a very active couple in their eighties. Something was always happening in the household.

I had been a little worried about sleeping arrangements as Suna and I are not married and I knew that the Prince was an officer in his church. (It turns out that he was retiring from a global leadership position in the church around the time of our visit.) But my worries were for naught. On our arrival, he cheerfully helped us carry our bags into the guest room, where we were greeted by two twin beds on opposite walls.

Even the step walls were home to flowers in pots.

I believe the house was built in the 1930s or earlier, but it was well-maintained and improved. It was in much better shape than my house would have been had I already finished all of the renovations I planned but never got around to. There was a substantial addition, central air, nice bathrooms, and hardwood floors. Really lovely.

Speaking of air conditioning. You could really tell that we weren’t in Texas. The nights were cool enough that I would have turned off the air and opened the windows. The days were warm and pleasant. The only complaint I heard was that the air conditioning couldn’t get the house down to 70 in the daytime. I would never think of running the air that cold; I couldn’t afford a bill higher than my house payment.

The Princess is a retired photographer and active gardener. She kept the grounds lovely and always had fresh cut flowers for every room. She has a quick laugh and a wonderful sense of humor. Can you tell that I got along with and liked them both?