Bottlecaps

Foto Friday

A quick hit of fotos while the youngest boy is snoozing …

The crowd goes wild.

Ready for the Spurs.

Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.

This is what happens when I say "smile."

Showing off the new haircut.

Have a good weekend, everybody.

Happy Texas Independence Day

Today is our terquasquicentennial, but I wouldn't recommend walking into the nearest honky-tonk and telling everyone "hey, have a great terquasquicentennial!"

Plenty has happened at the Bottlecaps household in the past few weeks: The older boy got a very short haircut (pictures to come on Friday, I hope). The younger boy has begun to reach for his bottle and try to hoist it to his mouth. But we'll carry on about the kids later.

Today in 1836, Texas signed its declaration of independence. And yet, probably because the label was designed by Yankees who don't know better, Lone Star beer still features a "Since 1845" on its label. Texas did become a state in 1845, but we were Texas a decade before that. And the beer? It showed up almost a hundred years later.

Some time ago, I wrote a letter to Lone Star, and was ignored. What do you think? Should I hassle them some more?

After all, I've consumed plenty of Lone Star in the past month during my honky-tonk tour of Austin. The enormous story, in which I review some of Austin's joints based on their Texan-ness, is scheduled to run this Sunday, and yet nobody has asked me to help cut a word and I've gotten nary a word of feedback.

I wrote the opening to the story about a year ago when I got the idea, have been working on it on and off since November, I'm pretty much at the point where I don't know if it's good or if it's terrible.

Assuming all goes well, I will post a link to the story next week.

In the past month I made my second trip to Kreuz Market, though I don't recall the first. I've also been to the Salt Lick and to Cooper's in New Braunfels. Don't have anything to say about them, in particular, I'm just bragging.

Was thumbing through an old Texas Monthly the other day and ran across a story about photographer Keith Carter, who not only taught a freshman photography course at Lamar University in Beaumont, but was so impressive in a lecture that I happened to see, that I actually enrolled in Lamar to take the class.

(Of course, the 8 a.m. class was difficult for a 28-year-old copy editor who worked until midnight and liked to drink beer into the wee hours. Ultimately, I dropped out and got an "F." But for the half-semester that I attended, I learned a lot.)

(Another problem, of course, was that photography was expensive in the pre-digital age. I had a good camera from my dad, but I was constantly buying film and photo paper and darkroom supplies and that cut heavily into the alms I received from the Enterprise.)

Anyway, in this Texas Monthly article,' Keith Carter managed to drive home another lesson. The writer was talking about how Carter, as an artist, needed to have a sense of place. Suddenly, he no longer needed to go to NYC or Paris or L.A. to be an artist, he could do that right there in Southeast Texas.

Once he felt the kinship with his surroundings, he was able to flourish (I know, a decidedly non-Texan word to use, but my coffee has grown cold and I don't have another word handy).

I've been thinking about that recently, as I've been visiting the joints in Austin that should feel the most like home to me. But Austin, with its growth/hip/ wealthy/tech complex, seems to have left me behind. It's weird to think that for as hard as I worked to get here, I arrived to find out it wasn't what it used to be.

Of course, the real question is, was it ever?

I'm not going anywhere of course. I have a good job and a mortgage and a wonderful network of professionals we do business with, from preschools to dentists.

And I'm not saying that if I went back to San Angelo that I would be an artist or even more sucessful than I am now.

But I do miss my sense of place.

Maybe I can go visit this summer for a weekend.

Mid-February update

So the gate has been 75% repaired, the alarm system is installed and working and the temperatures have returned to normal Texas weather.

The boys are fine, nobody is sick, my story that I've been working on is about 75% done.

Shit, I guess it's time to return to the house-cleaning, exercising, dieting motivated guy i was in January before things went tits up around here.

Look for a link to that story in about three weeks. Other than that, there's no real point to this blog, other than Shannon got tired of looking at the last one …

Fortress South Austin

"Get the shotgun" Shannon said. "The TV is gone."

That's how I woke up at 5:15 on Friday morning.

Sometime after I turned out the lights upstairs at 1 a.m. and when Shannon woke up at 5 a.m., some son of a bitch pulled the screen off a window on the back porch, crawled through the window (which had been unlocked), grabbed our 46-inch TV (not yet paid off) and Shannon's purse and departed through the back door.

They did this while we were all asleep upstairs, my wife, my two young children and me. I even had the door open — When we moved into the big house back in 2004, I was freaked out for several nights because I did not like sleeping upstairs where I could not hear what was happening downstairs. I got used to it, somewhat, but would always sleep with the door open, obviously to little success.

The taking of the TV was an insult. The taking of Shannon's purse was a huge inconvenience and a bigger stab at her sense of privacy and well-being. But the coming into my house … that is unforgivable. I want the bastard caught.

It is true that we had become terribly lax about our security. All the windows facing the backyard were unlocked. And the backyard was easily accessible because our gate had collapsed and I hadn't yet fixed it. We lived in a safe neighborhood, I thought. There's no real access, save for one big road in and out. People don't go through our neighborhood. The only people here are
… our neighbors.

I got to admit, I'm positive we were targeted by somebody in the neighborhood. Possibly somebody close enough to know when I come home from work, and when I turn the lights off. After all, who else is going to break into our house in the middle of a snowstorm when the streets are so iced over that people wouldn't go to work? Perhaps someone who knew that my immediate neighbor's dogs would be inside on such a cold night?

Yes, the next morning, the bastard's bootprints were there in the snow, all over my back porch.

By 6 a.m. we had the debit card, the bank account, the credit cards all canceled. We had a fraud alert put out on Shannon's finances. Later that day we would sign up for a credit monitoring service for her. We had the cell phone shut down and replaced by that afternoon. We had the satellite radio receiver shut down.

And we had our one real victory, when Shannon put on her coat and found her keys in the pocket. We had feared they were taken as well, which would have been an extraordinary inconvenience.

And within 12 hours of finding my TV gone … I had a new one, a bigger one, sitting in its place. How about that? That's a big "fuck you" to the person who thought they were ruining my Super Bowl weekend. This one is big enough that one person can't carry it off.

The security is a little slower in coming. The windows are locked, of course, the shades pulled. The fence will be repaired by the end of the weekend. The security system is still being researched, but we'll have one, too. In the meantime, I've set up a few security touches of my own.

And, one more point, when Shannon said "get the shotgun" … I did. 

There's no victims at Fortress South Austin. Just some pissed-off Texans.

Foto Friday

Ah. Friday. Good.

The return of the playground shot.

The boy does his Brad Pitt "12 Monkeys" impersonation. And I know somebody is going to Google that and end up with this photo. Sorry about that.

One more time.

Didn't photoshop it a bit. That's how the photo came out. Girls, you can start lining up now.

This would be a better photo if his shirt wasn't smeared with peanut butter.

Have a good weekend everybody.

Foto Thursday

Day two of the photo catch-up …

The older boy and his … cousin? … playing over Christmas.

The boy runs his car off the road. It won't be the last time.

R.C. cars were the thrill of the day in San Antone.

That, or raiding the sugar cookies.

A grandma's work is never done.

Christmas 2010.

"Hey, Dad! Taking pictures of Bullworker? Can I be in one?"

"Jesus. Christmas lasts forever around here."

Foto Wednesday

OK, grandparents are clamoring for photos, I am feeling guilty for not blogging, you get three consecutive days of fotos. Shit yeah.

"You mean it's not Christmas yet?"

Two little monkeys.

Yes, the boy is on the floor, the filthy floor, using the filthy floor mat as a blanket. I just got a camera.

Soylent Green is Little People!

Christmas. Yay.

"Screw all those hundreds of dollars of toys! I! Have! Chocolate!"

"Wait … whut?"

"The hell you say!"

"I'll kick his ASS!"

Why is life so cruel?

Dear Abby …

It is 2 a.m. and I keep reaching for my beer with my left hand …

… only to find that the beer is at least six inches farther to the left than the spot where I reached.

Why is life so cruel?

Sincerely,

Mr. Bottlecaps.

Happy 2011

Both boys went to Mornings with the Messiah this morning, giving me time to exercise (New Year's resolution) and time to download photos for the first time.

More photos coming Friday, but for now …

We are really excited about 2011.

 

Foto Friday: Year in Review

I wanted to do this up right. You know, on Thursday, post the runners-up, 20 through 11, and start off this blog … we're doing the Top 10 Photos of the Year, by the way … with a rambling introduction about what makes a photo important: news value, artistry, composition, lighting, cute kids, etc.

And I was going to make important points about whether I should go with the BEST photos, or try to make sure all the grandparents were represented (Bullworker, for example, tends to take real good photos with the older boy, in part because he tends to "hunker" a lot and they're often at eye level) … you know, crisis-level stuff.

But, it's 12:32 and every minute I spend on this, is one less minute of sleep I get.

Besides, I've already spent a LOT of time on this particular blog, going through all the photos of 2010 and narrowing them down to a folder of 51 photos, from which I semi-randomly picked the 10 that I feel were the best at that moment.

With no further sleep delays …

No. 10: Shannon took this one of the younger boy and I watching the A&M/Nebraska game. What makes it, is not just the expression of total involvement in the younger boy's face, but the matching bottle of milk and pint of beer on the windowsill.

No. 9: I overlooked this photo earlier in the year, but this is the older boy's first ride on the Zilker Zephyr when he was old enough to know what was going on. We had been sitting here in the sun for 10 minutes (an eternity for a 3-year-old) and he was wondering why in the hell we weren't going back to the swings. This photo was taken at the exact moment that the train began to move and the boy realized, "Holy shit, we are going to GO somewhere on this train!"

No. 8: I took a mess of artistic photos in October in a burst of inspiration. Three of them made my folder o' 51. But I have to go with "The Farmhouse at Dawn" as the entry in the Top 10.

No. 7: My attempt to photograph the older boy's Christmas program at Mornings with the Messiah was a bust. Fortunately, I was looking out for other opportunities …

No. 6: I'm not sure who took this photo of grandma with the boys, but the older boy's expression pretty much says it all.

No. 5: I wanted to go back and retry this photo on a different day with better clouds and a more contrasty shirt, but it didn't happen. I guess this will do.

No. 4: My sister took this shot of mama and her boys. We've tried and tried, and haven't done better yet.

No. 3: This year's official wildflower photo.

No. 2: The official "younger boy is born" photo.

No. 1: Grandma took this photo of me and the older boy riding in the tractor.

 

Have a good new year, everybody.