Weekend update

Friday:

Dinner with some former coworkers at El Centinela

Saturday:

Up at 3:55 to catch a flight to Denver
Landed, picked up a rental and drove to Colorado Springs
Helped out at a family reunion for a branch of the family with which my branch has not been in touch for about 140 years.

Sunday:

Up at 4:30 to drive back to Denver for the flight home
Back home at 2 p.m.
Mowed the charity house
Pizza for dinner

Monday:

Up at 4:45 to go pick blueberries
Picked 30 pounds of blueberries
Nap
Baked angel food cake and Garlic Knot Rolls
Steak for dinner
Watched the first half of the Rockets game

Weekend update

Friday:

Started working on gumbo for the reunion
Lunch at Habanero's with K
Dropped the truck off at McRee
More gumbo work

Saturday:

Up early to load up for reunion
Tweaked back while loading
Drive to reunion
Reunion
Drive back from reunion
Collapse

Sunday:

Wake up lateish
Rest my back.
Make salsa with veggies from reunion silent auction
Grill burgers

Weekend update

Friday:

Lunch with my sisters and mom and Skipper's Cafe
Boot shopping at Cavender's
At the movies with "The Accountant"

Saturday:

Mowed the Creek
Picked up Boots from Mom
Dinner with the family at Mia Luna and The Chocolate Bar

Sunday:

Football/Nap

Weekend update

Friday:

Up late at 7:30, heated up the oven and got the sourdough ready to bake
Started working on Kolaches for the reunion
Baked the sourdough
Baked the kolaches
Did some more prep work for the reunion

Saturday

Up at 5:30
Left the house for Corn Hill at 7:15 a.m.
Got to Corn Hill around 10:30
Reunion
Left the reunion around 5:15
Got home around 8:30

Sunday

Slept in til 7:30 or so.
Got in a nap
Went up to Intergalactic Airport to help K. with the convention a bit
Drove back around 5
Read some in the new Elizabeth Moon book: "Limits of Power"

Aikido Saturday Afternoon - 6/22/13

Went to a family reunion, so did not go to class.

Aikido Friday Night - 6/21/13

Was doing some prep work for a family reunion, so I did not go to class.

Weekend update

Friday:

Aikido

Saturday:

Up early to drive to New Corn Hill for a family reunion
Family reunion - my focaccia bread was well-received
Stopped by the old family house in Granger
Drove back home

Sunday:

Managed to sleep in until 7:30
Off to ApolloCon for a 10 am meeting
Back home around 1:30
Watched Wimbledon on TV
Granger sausage and sauerkraut for dinner

Weekend update

Friday:

No aikido. It was to have been just Sensei and I and, since Sensei is not supposed to be on the mat, we called it off. I spent the evening cooking and prepping for the trip to the reunion.

Saturday:

Up bright and early (4:45 a.m.) to go to New Corn Hill for the 20th reunion of my great grandparents family. We left at 6 a.m. and made it to the church hall shortly after 9 a.m. (1 hour quicker than google maps said). 8 hours of meeting, greeting and eating. A great time!

The stained glass panels (Czech flag and Texas flag) I made did ok in the silent auction. They didn't make back their glass costs, but that's ok. The goal was to offset the cost and they did a good job toward that goal. The Texas flag was the item that sold for the most amount of money in the auction.

A jar of pickles had the most bids in the auction: 14. Final bid on the pickles (made by an uncle Joe Fojtik) was $16.

I was outbid on most items I wanted: banana bread, pickles, poppyseed cookies, among others.

Sunday:

Got out to meet my college roommate and his wife for brunch. They were in town on a stop of their weeklong tour of Texas. We got to catch up on some stuff that they'd been doing since we last met.

K and I then went to my mom's, prior to heading into town to see the HMNS's exhibit: "Terra Cotta Warriors." It was a nice exhibit. I was impressed at how tall the statues were. It looked like they were about 5'9." Which, I thought, seemed a bit tall for that long ago.

We then hit Star Pizza for dinner and then went home.

I am so looking forward to a 3-day weekend.

Stained glass - Texas flag

Here is the Texas flag stained glass piece I just completed. Actual size is about 13"x20".

Stained glass - Czech flag

Here is the Czech flag stained glass piece I just finished. Actual size is about 13"x20"

Two more stained glass projects

I've got a family reunion coming up in a few weeks. One of the things we do, to pay for the hall and other expenses, is hold a silent auction. There are usually canned goods from gardens and various other items. I usually put in a pen or bottle stopper that I've turned on the lathe.

This year, I think I'll put in a bottle stopper, a box I've recently made, and two stained glass pieces. One will be a Texas state flag and the other will be the Czech flag.

Here are the states of the projects

Texas

Done - Design the pattern
Done - Cut out the pattern pieces
Done - Cut out the glass pieces
Done - Grind the glass pieces smooth
Done - Foil the glass pieces
TBD - Solder the pieces
TBD - Solder the zinc border
TBD - Patina the entire thing

Czech

Done - Design the pattern
Done - Cut out the pattern pieces
Done - Cut out the glass pieces
Done - Grind the glass pieces smooth
TBD - Foil the glass pieces
TBD - Solder the pieces
TBD - Solder the zinc border
TBD - Patina the entire thing

I should be able to get both pieces soldered tonight. If that happens, I might be able to do the patina as well.

I hope they generate interest in the silent auction, they've got about $70 worth of glass in each of them. I'll post pictures when they're done.

Weekend update

Friday: Wedding rehearsal for my niece

Saturday: Pick up my sister at the airport and then off to the wedding

Sunday: Brunch at my other sister's and then "The Soloist"

Monday: Spent a lot of time working on "Art Show Helper", a web-based program for convention art shows to use. "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" on DVD

A gorgeous quilt

My mom gifted us with a gorgeous quilt (and two pillow cases) yesterday!

Nihongo

I spent the last weekend in a Japanese class with my niece and two other folks. All together, there a four folks in the class: two adult, two not.

The youngsters are doing the best, far and away. I'm having fun, but the brain gives out around 2:30 each day.

The hardest part is paying attention to what the instructor is saying as she's asking me to translate. I have to concentrate hard, process what was said, and the process the translation. It requires a lot of energy.

Weekend update: Memorial Day weekend

Friday: aikido

Saturday: Wired the set cabinets destined to be the new stained glass work table for the fluorescent fixtures. Caused myself some minor damage in the process. Lots of blood, though. Aikido. Dinner at Durango's. 3 DVDs: Casino Royale, Music & Lyrics and Lucky Number Slevin.

Sunday: Up early to fetch Kim and the in-laws from their cruise ship. I went early enough, I thought, to get into Galveston in time for some breakfast. I was looking for the restaurant when I got a call from Kim saying they were ready. So, I went and picked them up and they joined me at the restaurant to watch me eat breakfast.

In the afternoon I grilled out burgers and we dined well.

Monday: Yard work in the morning during which I discovered that the riding mower needs some work. In the afternoon, I grilled fish, shrimp and sausage. Once again, the family dined well. Oh, I also made some shortcakes and a coffee cake. Good stuff.

Garage sale

Due to the construction, we put a lot of stuff into a storage unit. Now that construction is *this close* to being complete, we're slowly getting stuff out of storage. However, some of that stuff does not need to come back out. It needs to go away.

To achieve that, we had a garage sale on Saturday.

A bunch of stuff from my in-laws, a couple of items from my mom, and a bunch of our own stuff.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous. In the past, we've had a garage sale in the summer and we've closed up shop by 11:00 am to get out of the heat. Saturday, the high was in the low 70's so we were quite happy to stay out selling stuff until 2:00pm.

All of the big stuff (lawn mower, picnic table, table saw) sold. Most of the little stuff sold, too. What didn't sell is now out in front of our house, free for the taking.

While we didn't make a lot of money in absolute terms, we did bring in enough to make it worth our while. And we cleared out a bunch of junk.

Weekend update

Driving. Lots of driving.

Up to New Corn Hill bright and early Saturday morning for the family reunion.

A good time was had at the reunion eating and chatting with the cousins. One part of the family was notable in their absence, but they often don't show at these events.

Turns out the gumbo I made for the event was a little too spicy. Must remember to tone it down a bit next time.

Back home from New Corn Hill via a different route. Gently rolling farmland throughout central Texas.

8 hours driving so far.

Then I drove up to the north side of Houston to drop by Apollocon. Hung around there for a couple of hours, chatting with friends. Drove home.

Total driving time for the day? Around 10 hours.

Sunday found me unconscious for most of the day. Dinner at Joe's Bar-B-Q in Alvin. Yummmmm.

Weekend update

Saturday: up at too blasted early (4am) to head off to College Station for a judo tournament. Kim and I went to a training session and then sat as technical officials for the two tournaments they held there. I think we got home around 7pm and were greeted by the dogs and Kim's parents. They'd come in town to look after the dogs and for Father's Day.

Sunday: up at a decent hour to go shopping for the FD grill-out. Made blueberry muffins, bread for dinner, grilled out salmon and beer brats. Everyone else also went out shopping for items for the apartment while I chilled.

A good, and very tiring, weekend.

Weekend update

Friday: dinner with friends: K, S, and B at Durango's. The preferred destination for this collection of people, Rico's, is still closed fro some reason. They say they had a fire a while back.

Saturday: at the dojo. Filming Jeff and Gail working on their Nidan demonstration. Lunch with them afterwards, and then on to extracting the video from the camera. Watched a movie with Kim: "The Illusionist".

Sunday: picking blueberries. They weren't nearly as sweet as they have been in past years.

Then on to watch a minor league game with the Bay Area Toros. They're in an independent league of about 6 teams in Texas. Or maybe it's just four teams. We left in the middle of the 5th inning, with the Toros trailing 5-4. They ended up losing 13-7. It was a fun time . The weather was perfect, once the sun went down but that made it too late to stick around.

Weekend update

Friday: at the dojo taking pictures, since my back is still ailing.

Saturday: trip to Huntsville to deliver the scooter back to the in-laws. Stop off on the way back at a Steak and Ale for a judo tournament meeting.

Sunday: bread-making. 4 loaves of ciabatta. I'm still not happy with how they're turning out. Party at fellow aikidoka's place (his 4th annual house-warming party).