New herb garden

New herb garden

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.

Disc Golf 09/20/2009

More trees taken down

We went to Old Settler’s park for some disc golf today. I was quite sad to see even more trees taken down. The years of drought have taken their toll. I really hope they plant new tress to replace them.

Outlaw singles

Fortunately, we missed the Outlaw Singles tournament. There wasn’t anyone out on the field except us.

Lost disc

Jon lost his disc in the trees on hole 4. Can you spot it?

Watering a tree with ice

Apparently, it is so hot out here, that you need to water the trees with ice. But it was probably just discarded from a cooler for the Outlaw Singles tournament cleanup.

New mando signs

I like how they used towels to mark a temporary mando. Unfortunately, these trees are dead and will probably be cut down eventually.

Birdie #1
Birdie #2

I got one easy birdie on the “B” hole. And another one on hole 12.

La Selva

And, of course, we ended with a trip to La Selva.

Johnny T’s BBQ

Johnny T's
Johnny T's food

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.

Disc Golf 09/19/2009

hedge balls

We went down to Leander for some disc golf today. Man, with the recent rains, this place is overgrown! And the Hedge Balls were fruiting as well. Jon took some home for insect control.

overgrown field

It was hard to tell where the field is supposed to be and where the rough begins. It was all rough today.

In the water #1
Int the water #2

It was also rough when we threw our discs in the water. Which was in abundance today.

birdie

I did make one birdie today though.

Burger Central #1
Burger Central #2

We stopped by Burger Central for lunch afterwards. I was hopeful. The had pictures of what meat looks like when it is cooked rare and medium rare (as well as the other degrees). So I ordered a burger with blue cheese cooked “blue” (or rare). Unfortunately, it was cooked well done. And they forget the sweet potato fries as well. I guess the new waitress was partly to blame since she was having a meltdown. But I wouldn’t come back here to try it out again.

An interesting battle

Do not park here

Monument Cafe has had a rather unspoken battle with a handicapped driver. There are, of course, real handicapped parking spots next to the door. But apparently not enough of them. So this car has taken to trying to fit in a spot that is not designed for it. Repeatedly. The poor rose bushes suffer the brunt of the assault. And I wonder how exactly the wheelchair gets on and off the car. Maybe they don’t bother in this case.

So the new response to this situation has been to install a “do not park here” sign. Which was ignored. I wonder what the next step will be?

Game Day 09/13/2009

Plank's pizza

Gravitt held a meetup at a new location. A pizza restaurant called Plank’s near Parmer and IH-35. I tried their plank (style I guess) pizza. It was meh. But they did have ZiegenBock on draft for a buck. You can’t beat that! Hopefully the meetups will continue with a better frequency than they have in the past.

Restaurant

The tables were a little small for gaming. But it’s a restaurant. What do you expect?

Game #1

Race for the Galaxy

Jon and I started out with a quick two player game of Race for the Galaxy.

Game #2

Age of Steam

My big game for the day was a game of Age of Steam on the original map. Jeff had wanted to play it and I was more than happy to oblige. We had two other people join who were also new to the game. Unfortunately, this was not their type of game. But they did keep playing all the same.

My position was not the best. Jon was all alone on one section of the board. I was in the middle of the board surrounded by people. I know Jon commented during the end game that he made a mistake by not upgrading his engine. While he had better goods than I did at the end, t he was not able to catch up to me.

iced tea

iced tea

One of the first drinks that I started to make was iced tea. The amount of sugar in Coke/Pepsi was getting to be too much for me. So I started to look for an alternative. Iced tea sweetened with some lemon juice and agave nectar did the trick. I like the convenience of Celestial Seasonings tea bags. And I found four flavors that I liked at HEB (Mandarin Orange Spice, Black Cherry Berry, Raspberry Zinger, and Wild Berry Zinger). Unfortunately, once I find something that I like, stores stop carrying them. Luckily for me, Amazon does carry those flavors. So I buy a case of each and it lasts me for about a year.

It is not that hard to make. I fill by teapot full of water and bring it to a boil. I then take eight bags of tea and steep them in the water for 6 minutes (actually, you can forget about them and let them steep longer than that without any harm). While the water is coming up to a boil and/or steeping in the tea, I squeeze the juice of three lemons into a clean 64 ounce plastic container. I then pour in 100 grams of organic raw blue agave nectar. I fill the bottle about half way with cold water and wait for the tea to finish steeping. When it is done, I port the tea in and fill it up to the top with cold water and place it in the refrigerator for when I need it (and for it to chill back down).

A hundred grams of agave sweetener in a 64 ounce bottle works out to be 36 calories per 8 ounce serving (10 grams of carbohydrates).

Game Day 09/09/2009

Game #1

Chaos in the Old World

Jeff wanted to play a new area control game about ancient gods. Unfortunately, no one had played it before or read the rules beforehand. So I am sure that we got some things wrong (not even counting the mistake when assembling the board).

While I love dice games, this one had a fatal flaw. When attacking, an enemy unit is killed on a four, five, or six. So far, so good. However, if a six is rolled, you get to roll the dice again for an extra attack. For as long as you keep rolling sixes. This was used to devastating effect on Jeff and Tim almost wiped him off of the board. Thankfully, we called the game after an hour or so and I was able to leave. I was not enjoying that game at all.