Recently in Interesting Category

Snow in Round Rock from Mark Hamzy on Vimeo.

Since I was driving out to Houston for Lone Star, I decided to head out to New Orleans for a vacation. Nick and Stephanie were in Lafayette, Louisiana at the time, so I stopped and ate lunch with them at Julien's Famous Cajun Style Poboys Store No 1. Unfortunately, the store closed early for the holidays. So we all headed over to Olde Tyme Grocery.

I arrived at the Sheraton on Canal Street later during the day. Unfortunately, it was Christmas Eve and many restaurants were closed. But, I stumbled upon the Gumbo Shop. The line was down the street at 6:30! But I lucked out when they were asking for two people or less and everyone else was in a group with more than that.

The hotel was situated on the edge of the French Quarter and close to the river. And the view from the window was not so bad.

More details after the cut...

It looks like, with the construction work going on to expand 1460, that a group of people took the time to clean up what once was a desolate cemetery.

I couldn't really escape my reflection on some of the holes today. But it did make for an interesting picture...

Not one, but two different Austin Photographers meetups are scheduled for this weekend. One is on Saturday and one is on Sunday. How odd.

I started off in the Capitol Building. Which I have never been in before. So sad.

A few Christmas ornaments on a scraggly tree turn a little more interesting with a thin depth of field and Christmas lights bokeh.

There are these customized art sculptures of guitars around the streets of Austin. I played around with killing the background with my one 580EXII flash set on full manual power. I dialed the exposure down two more stops in post-production to almost kill boring urban background.

I also played around with a slow shutter speed (1/10 second) and dragging the camera downward. One neon light can turn into many...

It also works when you change the zoom as the picture is being taken...

We also played chicken with traffic while we took a picture of the Capitol building.

An urban mural turned more interesting with a picture of Frost Bank in the background.

The night was rather foggy out. Which was sad. What can you do? I still had a fun time though. And I also learned not to use the flash when taking a picture of something in the distance. The fog really reflected the light!

At BGG.con this year, there were some AWESOME, hand-painted crokinole boards! I normally hate finger-flicking dexterity games, but I would love to own the Dragon's Lair or Magicola board.

I went to Ventanas for lunch today. But first I paused for a bit to watch the removal of a bunch of Italian Cypress trees. Around half of them died this year. So the solution it seems is to remove all of them. One of the things that I hate about our site's policy is that they never replant trees. So sad. And so environmentally unfriendly...

I had the French Onion soup, an eggplant dish, and an apple tart. All of them were very tasty!

It's time for the yearly German celebration around October. And, because there was a lot of German immigrants in Central Texas, there are some good places to go to. Unfortunately, I went alone this year. But I was still in a mood to go. Even after having gone recently to the Oktoberfest in Lantana.

I also wanted to stop by the New Braunfels Smokehouse. My eyes were certainly bigger than my stomach. I bought five pounds of peppered bacon, two and a half pounds of smoked boneless ham, and a half a pound of smoked cheddar cheese. When I got home, I immediately cut the bacon into three sections, wrapped two of them and put them into the freezer.

Okay, I have to ask. What is a swamp boat doing here in Austin? That is something I would expect to see in Florida. Not the center of Texas...

One of my gaming buddies, Mike P., had a performance at a bar. So I skipped game night and went down to watch him play the guitar with his brother. This is in a rather seedy part of town. But I guess you take what opportunities are given to you.

According to this, the title of the show was "Dan Coyle, solo acoustic & another band." Apparently another musician was visiting Austin and booked this night to play. He then posted something on Craigslist for other performers to join him. Two others did (Mike was one of them). Since we were only interested in Mike, we arrived a little late. The bar was almost empty. Only a few tables were occupied. But what really surprised me was that one of my yoga teachers, Sapphire Bell was playing! I didn't even suspect her other side since she never played, sang, or even talked about it during the yoga class. I did find a video of her playing in 2004, so you can get an idea of what she sounded like. She was pretty good! And she even has a CD out.

Mike was good and had one amusing song about his younger brother...

The Flying Saucer Draught Emporium held its second annual Fall Beer festival. Unfortunately, I missed the first one.

For $15, you get a four ounce glass cup and 10 tastings. And, for an extra $5, you also get the option of tasting at a special tent with some rare beers.

Full details of the beer follows:

It's been far too long since I have visited the family. So I coordinated a good time a couple of month ago and hoped that no hurricanes would show up then. Which none did! In fact, I escaped some cold and rainy weather in Austin while South Florida was warm and sunny.

I was supposed to fly out on the 6th of October, but fate intervened. I had just got into my car and started the trip down to the airport when I received an automated call from American Airlines informing me that my flight had been canceled. So I pulled over into a parking lot and called AA. Since I was on the last flight to WPB, I had no choice but to schedule for the next day. And, thankfully, Super Shuttle rescheduled with no charge as well.

Since I was vacationing, during my birthday, I decided to splurge in the car rental. I picked the "large" version of the car on the web. And, when I arrived, the agent talked me into the Dodge Challenger. Which looks awesome. It is definitely a homage to the 70's muscle car. However, I did not like how the car handled or drove. It is a really large car. It feels like you are driving a super-sized Cadillac. The handling is not tight and the acceleration was weak. But I was still glad that I tried it out...

I spent my vacation visiting family and friends, going to the beach, and eating at Cuban restaurants.

My Mom got a new dog.

My Dad has five dogs now. Good luck trying to get them all into the same frame. Two are new and, sadly, one has inoperable cancer.

My grandma is still going strong. Although I suspect that she trades off height for vigor.

So is my Aunt Jill.

I was happy to see Sean again and finally meet Bunny. Too bad my friends are all spread out over Florida.

The beach was awesome. Every day was warm and sunny.

I swam a lot. Which is a lot more difficult in the ocean. You have to deal with waves and jellyfish. Which freak me out when I smack into one of them with my arms. Thankfully, they weren't the stinging kind.

Swimming at South Palm Beach from Mark Hamzy on Vimeo.

I also walked a lot.

Walking on South Palm Beach beach from Mark Hamzy on Vimeo.

I even did some yoga. How can you resist doing sun salutations during sunrise?

I drove by my first house. It was completely different. The front is now a wall of ficus bushes. And the siding has changed. Sigh. At least I have my memories...

I did have one piece of equipment failure during the trip. My shoes started to come unglued a while ago. I thought nothing of it until one day during my trip when both soles came off as I was walking.

And I took one interesting picture during the sunset when a sign reflected the sun into a rainbow...

I like this cute little restaurant in the Arboretum. And it seems that they changed their name. But not their owners.

And not their menu, thankfully. They still serve the Salmon Bento box! Its also nice that Amy's Ice cream is next door for dessert.

It looks like Monument Cafe planted a new herb garden on some unused land. Which is certainly cool. All restaurants should do something like this in my opinion. Actually, if it were up to me, I would design a restaurant where the entire roof would be a greenhouse. And it would collect and store rainwater as well. The first floor would be a parking garage. All of the outside trees would be fruit or nut bearing trees. Heck, you could probably maintain a honeybee hive somewhere on the property as well.

Jeff told me about this place and that I had to try it out. They have some pretty good sides. The tamale potato casserole was good, the apple slaw was nice and tart (perhaps a little too tart),. The pulled pork was on the dry side, however. And, while the desserts sounded good, they turned out to not be homemade. The Cheeky Monkey Parfait used banana pudding from a can.

My yogi tea gave me an interesting pattern of condensation. Which I turned into a desktop background.