Name this plant...

Feels kinda "Little Shop of Horrors" to me. We got this as a housewarming gift. And this morning it had it first flower. Not sure what kind of cactus it is.
Up close:
If it starts yelling "feed me" - take out stock in Band-Aids!

Bracken Bat Cave II

We went last year in September and loved it. This year when we got the invitation, we were so excited to be able to go again. I love this cave. The land around it, the path up to the cave, the fascinating opening, and then the “emergence” – the moment the bats fly out. They say there are anywhere from 20-40 million bats here. It is the largest concentration of mammals on the planet!

Here are the photos from this trip. (Funny, fancier camera, worse photos? Maybe I better read the manual before we go back). To start off the night, we had a beautiful sunset!
The cave. The crowd watching. They were right over head. The guano mine. Featured on the Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" show. The path they speak of,
The critter I saw in the outhouse! Click on this one to really see the bats.

Traveling to Texas? Try this new funky tool

Let me introduce all my friends and family to Kayak. Full disclosure, my friend Joel K told me about it – I did not discover it, but I did introduce Ian to it which is pretty cool, since he is an internet deity.

Kayak (from what I can tell is a pretty fancy aggregator, and probably only makes money thru advertisements. Since when you find the flight right for you, you click off to the airlines’ site and buy directly through them. No middle man.

What I like about Kayak is that it is perfect for (1) if you know you want to go someplace and (2) you want to get the lowest price possible.

So, since all of you want to come down to visit us, here are the tips of Kayak and how to accomplish those two goals.

Easy to get started, put in your destination airport, suggested dates and hit search – just like any other travel site.

Now, wait for it to load, it is going through every airline site, not just the flights it has acquired from the partner airlines, ah-hem Travelocity/Orbits/Expedia.

Then, know your tabs:

The first is List, self-explanatory, you see it all. You can use filters to take away airlines you don’t like, you can change the departure times, you can say nonstop only, etc….you get it.


Then, the new tab, Matrix shows you all the flights (somewhat like Travelocity/Expedia/Orbitz) on a chart – for those of you who are comfortable with that visual it is nice to see it.

Finally, the third tab, is Chart (note, some destination combos, may not have this tab).

This is my favorite tab. The first chart shows when the best time to buy is. If the chart is high. Looking at this chart, right now is the lowest it has been and I would buy before it had a chance to go back up.

The second chart shows the entire month of September and what are the best dates by price out there. So, on this example I chose to travel Thursday thinking it would save money, but it looks like Friday has a slightly better fare. Or, if I could, I would try to fly closer to the beginning of the month where Sept 5-9th is a little cheaper over all.

Now, you may ask, why the big advertisement? Well, the only thing I get out of the deal is my favorite friends and family finding cheap deals so they come and visit – I would say if this gets a few of you here, then it was totally worth the blog post.

She is talking and standing....

I can not believe it. She is only 9 months! I just saw her a month ago and she wasn’t crawling – she would try, get frustrated and then grumble about the disappointment. Now, a month later she is up and she can say blueberry! Wow!

Tell your mommy and daddy you want to come to Texas and learn how to say "Sarge."

Way to go Peanut!

Happy Anniversary to Jax, French, Ian and Me!

It was a year ago, this weekend, that we all meet at the Bat Run.

Funny, how much can happen in a year. You can make the best of friends, you can buy a new house, you can start to get used to the oppressive heat, you can wave goodbye to other wonderful friends, and still, you can’t hold two margaritas!

Last night we went out to Vivo, a restaurant on the East Side that my DC-friend Magda highly recommended. She, like Jax, is a veggie-hugger, an has said that it is a great Mexican place for vegetarians. This is good since the Mexican joint where we all went out the first time has a tendency of putting meat in the veggie meals – not good! Jax seriously had a hard time choosing which veggie option to go with last night. That’s a good sign.

At the end of dinner every woman is given a rose to take home.

Overall, it was a lovely anniversary.

Hey Chicago what do ya say?

Today, we waved goodbye some of our most special Austin friends. Micah and Erica are off to Chicago. We are going to miss you both dearly, and The Baum-Price-Jindrich-Wirt-Sylvester-Pilhofer-Swanson-Foulke-Hardig-Snyder
-Choi-Moore-Carlson-Marjoram-McClure-Rochelle-Morawski-etc... Suite is all yours come September and any other time.

Here is my favorite place to visit in the Windy City:

And my favorite place for a burger just outside city limits: (PS: I am still tempted to start a letter writing campaign to tell the head of the art history program where to stick it.)

The sun dance....

that I did this morning didn't work. Bummer.

Funny lookin’ dog

Sarge had been getting a little shaggy.

After his last trip to Shampooch (the grooming place that gave him razor burn and a lopsided cut) I had been on the lookout for a new groomer. Midtown Grooming in Austin was the winner, so we dropped him off to get trimmed. I okayed a summer cut on his body – but I never expected to see his head looking like this!

He is half-Bichon for crying out loud.Guess we are going to have to keep searching….I hear good things about Groomingdales. One thing’s for sure, he won’t need to be cut for a while!

See hoops and yoyo reach the million mark?!?!?!?

What happens when you wait 28 hours to see hoops and yoyo reach the million mark?!?!?!? Dunt-dun-dun...

We were sooooooooooo excited to see what they would do! And NOW we are soooooooooo disappointed! Nothing, nothing happened! I am a major supporter of Hallmark (I buy a lot of cards) but o-no, they can’t complete the simple tasking of programming it? What, they didn’t think that anyone would devote 28 hours to watching it go?

It is a sad day for hoops and yoyo.

200th Post!

We have lived in Texas for 380 days, and this is my 200^th post on the Phlog! In honor of this post, I am going to share a few key tidbits about the phlog and in the comments section I would like you to leave a note about your favorite phlog post, photos, quote, etc…

The tidbits:

• 4, 468 people have visited the phlog
• the number one visited page on the pholg is “Home Buying One-Oh-My-Goodness-We-Did-It!!!”
• "AT&T Sucks" is the post that got the most comments – coming in at 11!
• According to Technorati 23 other blogs link to the phlog
• Phlog visitors come from near and far:

The top Google search terms driving people to the phlog are:

1. salon evolve
2. austin girl's phlog
3. sarge the wonder dog
4. dogs who lick frogs
5. pollo verde

Thank you all for reading! Again, please take a moment to comment about your favorite phlog thing!

Nana, nana, nana, nana - Batrun!

Sorry it has been so long, it was a crazy-busy week. I am sure some those reading this know nothing about being crazy-busy, right!?!?!?! (A-hem Mom!)

First, we had folks in from our other offices here for 5 days of training and meetings. It was nonstop morning to night. Then, to top it off Ian and I volunteered at the Batrun on Friday from 5-7. And then, I did the run. Oh, by the way it was 99 degrees out!

Meg, one of my coworkers, who is in from the SF office did it with me – even her husband came along.

Next up! Bracken Bat Cave (ya'll remember this!) and the BAT FEST!

Working in the coal mine...

...going down, down down...

We have folks in from the other offices all week. I am swamped. Wish I had time to put up posts, but it would just be pictures of meetings since that is all I have done.

More this weekend, once things get back to normal.

One from the vault: the Austin Sky line

"Itty-bitty Energizer Bunny from Hell"

Austin has one of the coolest movie theater companies in the world. The Alamo Drafthouse; they are always putting on interesting events, they serve booze and good food during the movie and they are 100% local. Last night, they put on a special show. One day before the official release, they had Transformers showing on all five screens AND in the paring lot they had a pre-movie presentation of ROBOSAURAS…I kid you not!

The shows were sold out, it was pouring rain, and it was awesome! We had a blast and the movie was really good.

Greg, this is what you call "proof."

I thought it was really funny that the show was sponsored by AT&T and the cars to be eaten were labeled “Cable Co.”

Here is the slo-mo:

A new take on not drinking and driving!

To quote Tim League, the owner of the Alamo, “we'd like to thank paramount pictures for thinking this was a good and safe idea.”

One year in Texas!

This is it; we celebrated our one year anniversary in Texas. We went to Mandolas Winery in Driftwood. Then we went over to the Salt Lick for good BBQ fun.

Why you should take out stock in aloe....

I spent the last 6 days in heaven relaxing with my mom and my brother. We hadn’t had a vacation like this since before my brother got married 5 (YES FIVE!) years ago. And, this one was a bit of a milestone, because we will never have another like it – since I am about to become Auntie M in December.

We returned to our family’s favorite vacation spot, Chippewa Resort in William’s Bay on beautiful Lake Geneva. My mom has been vacationing there since she was 5 years old, and we started going when I was 5 years old, so it is a place packed with wonderful memories. My favorite moment is when we come around the bend and see the lake for the first time.

Before arriving, JJ and I stopped at Grandma J’s house to take her out for brunch. She hadn’t seen Josh since his wedding.

The first day we arrived, we were lucky to spend the afternoon with the Spatz family. And celebrate Josh’s birthday (the big 26). We spent the majority of the time lying by the lake coated in sunscreen, relaxing. I made it through 3 ¾ novels. My other great accomplishment was to hike from William’s Bay to Lake Geneva (about 10 miles – getting ready for AustinFound). Maybe next year I will make it all the way around!

We even got out on the lake in Josh’s super raft – it is eleven feet across. I prefer my little floatie because you actually get wet. But, the other vacationers looked longingly at the world’s largest donut wishing they could have a go.
On Wednesday, Mom and Josh ditched me for the day to drive in to Chicago to see the Cubs beat the Rockies (6-4). I hear it was a good game, next year we will be sure to bring Ian along so we can get him in to Wrigley! I had mom by him a tee-shirt from the game and when I gave it to him last night he looked at it and said, “They spelled Red Sox wrong.”

That night, while mom and JJ were fighting traffic back to the lake, I had the best sunset. It was a beautiful dusk over the lake.

Josh had to leave on Friday, but mom and I got an extra day and night at the lake, only problem is we forgot to apply extra sunscreen and we burnt to little crisps on Saturday. We were doing so well! I thought we were going to make it through the week without turning in to little “lobstas” – as Dana would say. But, no, I got on the plane bright red and happy! It was a great week…

This is the totem pole where we always too family photos as a kid…can’t wait for next year!