Wildlife

We had two exciting Texas experiences before Christmas.

First, I spotted the cat dragging something larger than usual across the yard. I mentioned it to the electrician who was working on the house, who said, "Does it look kind of like a dinosaur?" I said yes. He said "That's a Horny Toad". And it was. A huge kind of lizard quite rare in Texas. It's scales are beautiful - almost like feathers. Fortunately, Ollie the Texas Cat only scratched its leg from what we could see. And we were able to photograph it.

The other really cool thing happened as part of Phil's engineering and flood control project, which has just about finished. The embankment on the far side of the pool is now grown in with random grasses and weeds, and we intend to plant a border of Native Plants, as they are most likely to survive the difficult weather and terrain. But while scrounging around for rocks, he found this:

Cantelope!! growing wild. Or semi-wild, as they must have been dropped by an animal or lost garbage. There were three melons and we ate 2 of them and they were perfect! I can't wait to see what I can grow with a bit of nurturing!

Back in the Saddle

After taking four months off, I returned to my triathlon class at the YMCA today. That is just one of a number of pleasant activities I can resume to now that I've passed that exam.

Today the only attendees were me, Lucy and Jessica (who came along as a one-off because they were on school holidays and the coach is fond of them), but it was wonderful to be running on the Town Lake Trail again. We spent most of the time doing a track workout at Austin High School, which is about 1 mile from the Y. After some running drills and a warm up, we ran 6 quarter-mile laps of the track with 1 minute rest intervals and were supposed to decrease our time on each lap, ie, get faster. This is a pacing exercise. And just to give you some idea of what poor shape I'm in, Jessica ran her slowest lap at 2:40, and her fastest at 1:20. I started with my slowest lap at 3:07 (UGH!) and ran my fastest at 1:49, but that last lap was murder and I was almost sick at the end. We swim on Wednesday

Happy Boxing Day!

We celebrated Christmas on the 26th, Boxing Day, because we spent most of the 25th traveling back from a fabulous skiing vacation near Big Sky, Montana. I have returned feeling very refreshed and enthusiastic, having left a week ago completely stressed and convinced that it was all going to be too much hassle. That's shows you what a bit of luxurious living can do.

Here is one of the views from the top ski lift - guaranteed to lift your spirits:

Here, very briefly are a few updates, which I will expand upon shortly:

1 - Despite a horrible experience on the day, I passed the NCLEX. I got the results 4 days before we left town. I now need to pass a small examination on the Texas Nursing Act, called the Jurisprudence exam, but it seems that is a doddle. Then I am a licensed RN in the state of Texas.

2 - It looks like Fred is potty trained, at least during the day. He wore underpants every day on vacation and had only one accident, despite taking baby ski lessons in 15F temperatures with complete strangers, while wearing a zip up snow suit and ski boots. I don't know how he managed.

3 - Boseman, MT has the nicest airport I've ever seen. Even nicer than Austin, because it's smaller. It has only 5 departure gates makes it easy to run from the restaurant to the gate and the views from the windows are spectacular.

4 - Father Christmas brought me a Kindle, which I have decided is absolutely the coolest item of technology since the iPod. Not only can you read anywhere, and switch it to voice narration if you need to do something distracting, like cook dinner or pick up stitches for a sock gusset, but Amazon is selling dozens of classic novels for free. This is fabulous as outside of book club selections, that's about all I read. I have downloaded - wirelessly from across the house - the King James Bible, Alice Through the Looking Glass, (which I'm ashamed to say I'd never read), some short works by Edith Wharton which delighted me because I'd never heard of them, and Pride and Prejudice, which no one can ever grow tired of. Last night I went up to bed at about 1230am, after we'd attended a neighbor's After Christmas party, and I read until 230am without even realizing it. And you can adjust the type size if you can't find your glasses....