Weekend weather

This evening finds a comfortable, steady rain in the middle of Texas. The birds are sorted with their heads buried in their feathers and the cat is on the porch with the most pathetic of expressions on her face. How dare nature be so cruel as to relegate a cat to a damp, wet porch?

The last couple days have been nice. I think I've already mentioned the gymnastic rings. I hung them from a tree in the backyard and have been using them pretty regularly. It's generally just a helluva lotta fun. Some people were born to be wild. I was born comfortably happy with my primate manufacture.

I've been riding my bike every Friday and Saturday morning through South Austin and am starting to make good progress. Ray and I rode about 25 miles on Friday morning and about 35 yesterday morning. We did both at about 16mph and I was surprisingly still generally mobile by the time I rode home. All told, I did about 40 miles yesterday morning. When I got home, my breakfast consisted of a peanut butter and honey sandwich, a can of tuna and a few Reese's peanut butter cups. It was... a utilitarian meal.

I spent the rest of the day with my sister who needed some help moving things in a Uhaul to her new place. I was physically worthless but was able to dig deep enough to haul new kayaks down to the water and go out for a paddle.

She knew her place had "lake access" but didn't really know exactly how that would translate. Lake Travis is just generally huge and neither of us have been on much of it. At any rate, it turns out it's just about a one-hundred yard walk through the woods to the water. It's about a ten minute paddle through the narrow inlet, past some turbo wealthy folks' boat houses and then it opens up. It's really awesome. The coolest part, aside from being able to kayak comfortably in shorts on a November evening, was that we found a cove. Audrey was content just tooling around on the open water but I convinced her that we needed to explore. So we did. Now, I'm not going to do justice by describing it. But I'll try.

The leaves are just starting to really turn here. Along the banks are beautiful red cypress trees whose lowest branches allowed us to glide right under them. The sun was setting away from neon clouds and the views would have satisfied a Disney cinematographer. Each dead end turned into another secluded leg of the inlet, all of which sleep quietly in between two huge rock faces. The forty foot cliffs on either side hide any trace of development. The busy roads less than a mile away are completely out of sight and out of mind. Our attentions were entertained by great blue herons, curious owls and ferns, all close to the water. All of us enjoyed the dripping, the microscopic waterfalls traveling down the entire wall and working to fill the lake. I glided under one of the cedar tree's lowest branches and leaned back to look at the sky. Add a sprinkle of floating seedpods and you've got at least three scenes from Fantasia. The colors and smells reminded us of Adventure from our time spent in New Hampshire as kids. I haven't been able to get back there yet so this was a brilliantly crafted visual and memorable simile. All we could really imagine last night was waiting for it to warm up and being able to spend hours in a private, lagoon... in the middle of the freaking city. It was amazing.

After riding, kayaking and helping her move a bunch of furniture, she took me out to dinner. I demolished a super dirty hamburger (on my mind all day) and then I rolled kindly out of the restaurant. Had my day been complete after the burger, I would have been fine with it.

But I am apparently much luckier than most. My fuel pump went out on my car last week and although it didn't register immediately, I found out my fuel gauge has also given out. The car runs great, but I guess I just need to be a bit quicker to the gas station if the signal reads 1/4 of a gallon for more than a couple days. I came to a pitiful, sputtering stop about 5 blocks from home.

I wandered with throbbing legs to the house, got a gas can from the barn and pedaled my busted ass down to the gas station and back. I rode awkwardly back to the car, spilling all over myself, and gave the girl a drink.

A few weeks ago I actually determined that the weekend might as well not even exist if I couldn't meaningfully redirect my mental state. It turns out that for me, it matters very little what's actually done to fill the time so long as my interests completely engage my mind elsewhere. I realized the failed fuel sensor pretty quickly when my car was keeling over so I was able to adopt a surprisingly light-hearted approach to the whole thing. I made it back and passed out with really tired legs and hands that smelled like gasoline. I was out like a light.

I woke up for the 8th day in a row to the chihuahuas out back. My neighbor likes to let them out to go flipshit at 7am every day. They bark at the ground and trees and... really anything that might or might not be of general importance. I take comfort in the fact that I will outlive those animals. Whether here or there, I will outlive them.

And in case you or anyone you know is considering running Windows 7 on a tablet computer, I say,"Do it." It's already integrated with a much-improved handwriting recognition system. And the OS itself runs just like XP... smooth and easy. I've been loving it. It's worlds easier on my video card and... it's more intuitive than XP. Just make sure you have the legacy drivers. I had to look pretty hard to find them. But the screen orientation tricks and the tablet buttons are all live and working great. It's... I'm a happy geek.

I'm gonna update my charts and spreadsheets and get some sleep before the hellions start shrieking out back again.

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