Estoy Nueces

I don't know why mosquitos find me so irresistable. No other group of creatures on earth is so attracted to me. Twice this week I have spent some enjoyable time outside and each time I have come in covered in mosquito bites. Right now I am fighting the urge to scratch. I have applied the requisite Caladryl Clear but it has not relieved the itching yet. I prefer Respite lotion but I didn't see it close at hand and I needed some relief.

We have had a very fun Austin-y day. Last night I heard a guy from the group SoulHat on KGSR talking about having a "beautiful Austin day" and I was thinking how unique that is to us. Does anyone have a "Houston day" or a "Dallas day"? If so, it sounds like it wouldn't have the adjective beautiful in front of it. It sounds pretty miserable.

Today we are both off of work. I suppose it has been a couple of months at least since we both were free for the whole day. Mark has been having a regular Sunday gig but it was canceled for tonight for some reason. It was nice to have no obligations and no deadlines on our fun.

We ate the brunch at the Nutty Brown Cafe again today, like I did with my sister last weekend. It was cooler than last weekend but we still sat outside and it was very pleasant. Leaving the parking lot we saw that irresistable piece of cardboard: "Moving Sale." We went down the road and found a lot of fun junk at a moving sale. If we had had $1200 we could have had a brand new leather sofa. There were lots of really nice things but we got some of the less nice, fun and funky stuff. Mark snatched up the pocket knives, I got flower pots and little wooden boxes. We even got a half dozen little Stetson hats that will fit the cat perfectly! Cute Christmas card picture, yee-haw.

We drove on up through the Hill Country to our favorite cactus and glass chunks store and stocked up. On toward home and through the cool Barton Creek Country Club for some gawking at the homes of the rich. A stop at the flamingo nursery place on Bee Cave and then on home.

I swore today that I would do something creative and I actually did. I used some of the glass chunks we bought and made hanging bits of glass chunks. Okay, in print it doesn't sound like it required much creativity, and, honestly, in the light of day tomorrow they may look like a bunch of crap, too, but tonight I am proud of my hanging chunks of glass.

Today is my older nephew's fourteenth birthday so I called him this afternoon to hear about his day. Fourteen years ago today I was in New York City desperately trying to get out of snowed in airport to get home to see my new baby nephew. A long exhuasting tear-filled day. And then I got home to find that he was in ICU and I couldn't see him anyway. I didn't meet him until four days later when he got out of ICU. Poor sick baby had to stay in the hospital lots longer than my sister and finally was home the next week. You'd never know about that sickly start if you saw that taller-than-his-aunt boy today.