pictures of Easter weekend

There are now pictures from the weekend on my Picasa web album, which you can access via the link on the left (oops, originally I said it was on the right. Guess I don't know my directions. With the other template I was using before this one, the link was on the right). I will include some highlights here.

Friday, Rodgers and I went to San Antonio. I had visited the old Spanish Missions as a kid, but I wanted to go back and see them, and Rodgers and I wanted to spend a day doing something fun together, so that's what we did!

There are 5 missions: Mission Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuna, Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, Mission San Francisco de Espada, Mission San Juan Capitrano, and Mission San Antonio de Valero (which is better known as The Alamo). We went to 4 of them, excluding The Alamo since Rodgers has been there, and I've been there a g'jillion times.

So we got to SA around 11:30 or so in the morning, and started at Mission Concepcion. I took 6 pictures there and then my camera told me the memory was full! Ludicrous! I never leave pictures on my card, and I only took 6, there's no way 6 pictures filled up 512 MB. Then I remembered that I had the card in the card reader here on Akira and might not have remembered to return it to the camera. I opened the flap, and sure enough, no card!

Rodgers and I at Mission Concepcion

So we continued to Mission San Jose, where I took one blurry picture with my phone camera. And then we had lunch.

After lunch, we went to WalMart, where I bought another SD card. Then, we headed down south to Mission Espada. The Convento at Espada is still occupied. The church is also still used, but the churches at all the old missions are still used. Being that it was Good Friday, there were quite a lot of people in the churches.

Mission Espada. You can see the Convento on the left.

Then we went to Mission San Juan. The missions all have walls surrounding a large area. The walls include living quarters, which is where the Indian converts lived. There was a lot of open area for herds and workshops. At San Juan, there is a cross in the open space. Being San Antonio, the cross is surrounded by prickly pear cacti.

A guy taking a picture of the cross at Mission San Juan.

After the Missions, we went downtown. As we were trying to find a place to park, which was no easy task, the car was overheating. About the time that we pulled into a parking lot, there was smoke coming out from under the hood and the sweet smell of burning coolant filled the air. We parked, leaving trails of coolant as we went. Then we realized neither of us had any cash at all. After pleading with the lot staff, we got to run to the nearest ATM to get money. Then we tried to figure out what part of downtown we were in and where we should walk to. We were just across the street from La Villita, which is a cute little shopping area. We sat in a cafe sipping Coke and Diet Coke, and then went down to the Riverwalk. We found ourselves at the Rivercenter Mall, and Rodgers remembered a flag store there and wanted to get a Kenya flag for his car. I also got stickers of the flags of the 8 countries I visited during my time on Doulos. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but I'll think of something.

I wanted to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We started walking back towards the car, and then I realized it was dinner time, so we checked the map to see where the restaurant I had picked out was. Turns out it was on the other side of the mall, which we had just come from. My feet were too tired to walk all the way back passed the mall. But we were near Casa Rio, so we thought we'd eat there. When we got there, they were not taking any more names for tables because it was more than an hour wait. So we went to the next restaurant, which just happened to be The Republic of Texas. They told us it would be a 35 minute wait, if we would take the first available table, and it would of course be longer if we wanted to sit outside on the Riverwalk. We went for first available and were seated in less than 15 minutes.

After eating, we put some water in the car, and headed back to Brenham. It was almost dark when we left, so it wasn't too hot, although I think most of that water evaporated by the time we got back to Brenham.

Saturday was Claire and Matt's moving day, so we helped them get their stuff into their new apartment. I looked at a car that I decided not to buy. And we cooked some delicious steak for dinner, which we had with Rodgers' Brenham mom and one of her granddaughters.

Sunday we went to church and had lunch with my family. Then we went back to Brenham and took pictures in a field of bluebonnets.

Then it was time for me to return to Fort Worth. Sad to leave, but it was a great weekend. It's good to be home, though. I can get enough sleep here. :D

weekend

I had a fabulous weekend-visiting Rodgers, my family, San Antonio, and the bluebonnets. Pictures: coming soon to a Picasa album near you!

i'm a chihuahua or a german shepherd

Well, I was torn on some of the answers, so I took the quiz twice. Half German Shepherd and half Chihuahua is an interesting mix.

dogs

When I was living in Georgetown, I started looking for a dog. Then I realized I wouldn't be living there long enough to keep a dog. I had decided on a long-coat chihuahua, which I would name Rosita Chiquita Juanita Chihuahua. That's too long a name to call the dog on a regular basis, so she would go by Rosie.

I have now decided that I prefer big floppy dogs. My favorite is the black and tan coonhound. There is a coonhound rescue group, which has a black and tan one in Texas, needing to be adopted, named Rosie. It would be perfect if I had room for her. So sad now.

A Black and Tan Coonhound. Look at that face. And those ears!


Rosie

snow!!

Yep, that's right! It snowed today. In southwest Fort Worth, the ground was too warm for the snow to stick around very long. But it was fun watching it snow. I took some pictures.

Enjoying the swirling of humongous snowflakes around me.


The Nautilus was colder than the ground, so the snow accumulated on it better.


My nose was starting to get red by then.

The complete photo album, with all the pictures I took, minus the ones that looked terrible, is here: http://picasaweb.google.com/justrachet/Snow

naming the inanimate

It may seem silly, but I like to name inanimate objects. This way, even when I'm "alone," I'm still surrounded by friends, or at least named things that seem friendly since they have names. I guess it's sort of like little kids naming their stuffed animals or dolls. But don't think for a minute that it's an immature thing to do. Naming things as a kid would doesn't make me a kid. You know, kids have good ideas sometimes.

The first thing I remember naming post-childhood was my first car. You always have big dreams about what your car will be. But in the end, you buy what you can afford. So of course, it's a bit of a letdown, but you still have your very own car, for the very first time. And your first loan. But nothing can replace that freedom of being able to take off anywhere you want anytime you want, because you have your own wheels. It was a 1996 Saturn sedan, copper colored. I thought, "She's (because cars are girls after all) the same color as a new penny." Thus, she earned the name Penny.

I have already written about my current set of wheels, which isn't mine at all, but still deserves a name: Nancy the Nautilus.

My first computer was graciously given to me by my parents. It was an old one. It had lots of problems and was possibly demon possessed. I called it Legions.

Then there was the Dell. It was new, also graciously given me by my parents. I don't think I ever named it. But it always worked good. (Did you know today's National Grammar Day, or some such nonsense?)

This computer is the first one I bought myself. It's a Toshiba. When I opened it up and turned it on for the first time, I saw the word "Toshiba" and thought of Japan. That made me think of Japanese people. I know several which I could have named this laptop after, but the only name that fit was Akira. I never told him that my laptop bears his name. I'm not really sure how he would take it. Incidentally, I looked up the meaning of the name Akira today. It means "bright." This will be important later.

At work I have another computer, purchased by The Seed Company. It's a Dell laptop. It is huge. Seriously, it must weigh 2 or 3 times as much as Akira (Akira the computer, not Akira the man - just assume all further references to Akira refer to the computer). One day, I was talking about that computer and the name Bertha just came out of my mouth. Because it's big, like Big Bertha. Bertha is a German name. It means "bright." I didn't know that when I named her.

Today, a new piece of equipment was parked at my desk. It is a Disc Publisher. It burns CDs and DVDs and also prints on them. So, no more sticky labels and trying to get them right on the discs. It has an arm that moves the discs from one station to another: input stack, disc burner, printer, output stack, and reject slot. This arm is called a "robotic disc transporter." How cool is that? There's a robot sitting on my desk right now. I will be nice to him so that he doesn't wreak havoc while I'm gone. His name is Braxton. Braxton means "Brock's town." And Brock means "badger." So you got to figure that Braxton actually means "the town of the badger." Why don't they just say that on the baby names website? It's like dictionary definitions which use words that no one's ever heard of before, and you wind up looking up 3 words just to find the meaning of one.

the weekend

I don't have anything clever to say today. I did, however, upload some pictures of my weekend in 2 cities beginning with the letter B, on my web album. Maybe there will be more. I know Rodgers took some, too.

http://picasaweb.google.com/justrachet/HikingAndMakingChapati