Winter maintenance

We decided it made sense to go ahead and get the boat over to the dealership to have the motor serviced now instead of waiting another month or two until there's a long wait with every other boat owner also anticipating getting back on the water. With our winter predicted to be short and mild, we'll undoubtedly be back on the lake enjoying some warmer spring temps in about six weeks. The husband and I made a short trip to the lake house this weekend to get the trailer out of storage, load up the boat at the marina and drive it over to the folks in Austin where we purchased it. They'll check over everything to make sure it's all in great condition. Plus I'm having them give it a good detailing to clean it up before the spring/summer season kicks off. The girls want to give skiing and wakeboarding a try this year, so we'll probably rack up the boat miles while they learn the ins and outs of it all. I can't wait to spend more time at the lake with family and friends!

Tex Mex and the Old Testament

When the college coed was home for semester break at Christmas, we ate Tex Mex at least once a week since she can't get the "good stuff" up in South Carolina where she goes to school. The first couple weeks after she returned to start the spring semester, I didn't want to even contemplate a nacho or enchilada. But of course that passed and I'm back into the groove of enjoying queso and chalupas.

This year we've been studying the book of Genesis in Bible Study Fellowship (BSF). If you're not familiar with BSF, give it a google and check out their website. I absolutely adore my BSF leader, the ladies in my group and the in-depth study of God's word every week. With my love of all things history and archaeology, I've enjoyed rooting around in that lately through a variety of websites and book resources. Just in the month of January, we've delved into the destruction of Sodom when Lot fled to the mountains with his daughters, the miraculous birth of Isaac, and the deaths of Abraham and Sarah. Sure enough, I recalled seeing Lot's Cave as a teeny tiny speck on top of a mountain almost a year ago when the older daughter and I were in Jordan (and Egypt). Jordan is full of sites noted in the Bible, and yet our time there was on the back end of our big sixteen day tour. So I'll really need to return in order to enjoy Jordan at a more leisurely place.

 

Like everybody else on God's green earth, I'm impatiently waiting for this awful coronavirus pandemic to run its course so we can get back to something like normal. And I'm mainly talking about travel. The Holy Lands are at the top of my bucket list, and our study of Genesis has whetted my appetite to return to this region to really delve into sites related to the Old and New Testaments.

 

The Cave of the Patriarchs (and Matriarchs), aka Tomb at Machpelah in Hebron, seen above, is on my rader now thanks to this study in Genesis. When Abraham's wife Sarah died (Genesis 23), he purchased this land and cave in Canaan from Ephron the Hittite, the land God promised Abraham and his descendants as part of His covenant. In addition to Abraham and Sarah, family members also buried in this cave include Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. As king of Judea from 37-4 BC, Herod ordered the construction of fortress like walls built around the land sitting atop the cave, designed in the same style which masons used on the temple mount in Jerusalem during this same period. In the 6th century AD, a Byzantine church was built on this site. A century later, it was converted to a mosque, but then rebuilt as a church by the crusaders in the 12th century. Alas, it was reconverted back to a mosque by Muslim leader Saladin when he conquered the holy lands later in the same century. For 700 years, from 1167 to 1967, the land atop/around it was controlled by muslims, and they didn't allow Jews or Christians past the 7th exterior step, let alone the inside. Since the reunification of Israel over fifty years ago, the Tomb of Machpelah functions as part mosque and synagogue, divided by bullet proof glass. Sign me up, y'all, I definitely have to take a tour of this historic biblical site that is the final resting place for ancestors integral to the Jewish and Christian faiths.

 

Bipolar weather

It's that time of year in Texas, when the high is 48 on a Tuesday, but 78 by Friday. Every year we ride this same rollercoaster of temperature peaks and valleys. The poor plants never seem to know what to do. The paperwhites along our driveway start bursting through the soil on warmer days, thinking about blooming. Then we get a cold front and it stalls them out. Honest to betsy, I saw lots of folks in shorts a couple days this week when I was out running errands. Upside is that my electricity bill should be nice and low since I'm not having to run the heat or AC much these days with us bouncing around on the thermometer so that it stays 67-70 in our house most of the time. Our dogs sure have been enjoying the moderate temps and sunshine out on the back patio.

 

The husband and I spent part of last weekend at the lake since we needed to go check on the boat and jet skis. Plus do some laundry and make sure the pool is looking good. We really enjoy toodling our deck boat around the lake in winter when it's typically still as a pond. To the point that we spied a cluster of waterbirds just chilling with their floating right outside the entrance to our cove.

 

 

See that big white red tile topped house right past the granite outcropping in the pic below? You can have it for a mere 8M. They're practically giving it away, lol!

The husband figured our jet skis might have died since we weren't keeping the batteries juiced. So he launches one and sure enough, it won't crank. He calls me on his cell and I come hustling out of the house for a rescue mission. Too bad nobody was filming us because it would have resembled a Laurel & Hardy skit. Maybe two of the three stooges? He was floating down into the mouth of our cove/canal, and so at least the wind was blowing him in a better direction than towards open water. I dashed into the storage closet on the dock and grabbed the tow rope. On the fourth try, I finally tossed it far enough for him to grab. In the meantime, he had knelt down atop the wobbling jet ski to try and paddle himself back in the direction of our house. Thankfully, our neighbors have an unlocked gate leading from our side yard into theirs, so I dragged the husband, sitting atop the jet ski, down to our backyard with the help of our boat hook to avoid obstacles like the neighbor's hydraulic jet ski lifts. We wrestled it back atop its floating dock, removed the battery and re-covered it. You're never too old to learn new tricks when you're first time lake homeowners with fun toys to maintain.

Snow cold down south

This week we hunkered down a few days of really cold weather, including a touch of snow and sleet. You can see the little bit of accumulation we had, there in the narrow raised bed at the base of the chimney exterior outside the front living area. None of it stuck, thank goodness. It's pretty when it does, but really shuts everything down. And I think we can all agree we've had enough of that with these covid restrictions for almost a year now.

 

In other thrilling family news, our older daughter had to fly out of town for several days to work and so I drove over to meet her in order to fetch her chorkie. Lucky me - he'd been suffering with a case of doggy diarrhea for several days. Not wanting our two terriers to pick up some nasty canine stomach bug, I took him to our vet for a check. Thankfully, the doggy doc decided it wasn't contagious. Chorkie was on high alert when we were at the vet waiting for him to be seen since there was some doggy in the adjacent exam room yapping its little head off.

Chorkie has been enjoying his stay at Nan and Pop's house, playing with his buddy Pepper and sunbathing in the hallway off the family room.

One of these days when I completely run out of other productive stuff to do, I'll finally get around to trading out a few of our old pics on the travel wall to replace them with something from my trips to Peru, Egypt and Jordan.

I was digging through one of my office drawers earlier this week and ran across my long lost cat laser pointer that's in the shape of a mouse. Sure enough, Pepper had the best time chasing it. Between that and the personal grooming, I swear sometimes she's half kitty.

Colonoscopy diet

I started my mammograms on schedule at 40. Not so with the colonoscopies at 50. Because seriously, who wants a camera run up their bum. It's a complete loss of all dignity and control, but that's generally how it goes with so many medical procedures. About three years after I should have started with my first baseline colon check, I'm finally getting around to it on Monday at the *butt* crack of dawn. Sorry, couldn't resist.

So this weekend I'm on a liquid diet. YUM... all the broth and flavored water I can consume. Maybe I'll lose an extra pound this week. I've successfully shed my 'rona weight and have been chipping away at my usual bulk. At my age, you can't lose too much because then you risk looking like your husband's mother. It's a Catch-22 situation... the fuller face as a side effect of having thick thighs. You can only ride the having kids excuse for so long since our girls are both in their 20s. Or the lower weight and wrinkled up face/neck that goes along with it. Take your pick. Just another fun consequence of the aging process, which isn't for the faint-hearted. And yet it beats the alternative of being dead. I've still got things to see and do, so I thank God every day for waking me up to the blessing of another day with my family and chance to learn more from His word.

The older daughter and her chorkie were with us for several days this week since she had to be in town for physical inventory counting at her client's location. I imagine junior newbie auditors get these sorts of assignments. I love the pics of the chorkie I get on my phone from the automated gate system that takes photos of everyone who uses the code to access our property. 

The chorkie always makes himself at home on somebody's lap. The husband is a favorite since he spends a lot of time in his recliner at evenings and weekends. Meanwhile, our two terriers like to cuddle up on or under me when I'm chillin' on our bed reading my Kindle. Rotten much?!

Hello, 2021

We spent a couple days at the lake after Christmas to check on things, take the boat for a spin and pack away the santa decor. As you can imagine, it was nice and quiet up there. We did spy two separate jet skiers on the water, but that was it. Literally smooth boating on a mostly cloudy day.

As you can see in the pic above, some of the die hard conservatives in the lakes region haven't resigned themselves to the results of the 2020 presidential race. We're stuck with Joe and Kamala for the next four years and their brand of semi-socialism, whether you want to face this truth or not.

Like every other sporting event in this age of covid, we attended a unique bowl game on the 29th. There were two things that struck me in a stadium that holds over 60K fans, with only about 11K in attendance. First was all of the elbow room. No lines for the toilets. No feeling like you were infringing on the personal space of the folks in the chairs next to you... because there weren't any. Oh sure, the seat jumpers behind us were a nuisance, but were asked to leave pretty quickly by an usher wielding the large sign telling folks to keep their masks in place throughout the game. But yeah, all that extra breathing room was nice. The weird part was the lack of fan noise. Neither band attended. Maybe half of the Longhorn cheerleaders. However, Bevo made it for some pigskin!

In the endzone area above, you can see the decorated cutouts placed in every other row, left empty throughout the stadium to create some social distancing. They were kinda cute. In the pic below, it seemed as if the entire team dropped to a knee for a quick prayer as they were introduced and ran across the field before heading to their benches. Or at least I like to think they were all offering up a prayer for safety throughout the game.

 

It was another great Alamo Bowl in the books despite their year of pandemic, the husband's Texas Longhorns soundly defeating the Colorado Buffs 55-23.