Western Fun with Mom & Dad

Mom and Dad visited us this Fall. We did some fun western stuff in Fort Worth plus the Benbrook Cowboy Roundup. We also spent some time by Benbrook Lake and ate good vegan food.

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Bed & Breakfast Browser 2.0

We totally redeveloped Bed & Breakfast Browser. The site that had been online since 2006 was “temporary”. This new version uses our custom CMS which lets users submit and manage content such as B&B listings, photos and reviews. Unlike other big B&B directories, this one is free for innkeepers, because we want every bed and breakfast, everywhere, to create and maintain hugely detailed listings. And on the visitor end, we want to build a huge database of uncensored reviews and user-uploaded photos.

Please give the site a browse and tell me if you find any bugs.

Thank you Sudi-Pie for encouraging me with this forever, for the writing and design insight.

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Summer Garden Update

Here are some pics from our garden at this point. We’ve have 300+ tomatoes and we’re starting to get some good cucumbers now. The peppers are few but tasty. Our sunflowers expired. The tallest one was about 9 feet tall. Fun to grow!

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How will I be remembered…

Earlier this summer, on May 14th, I lost a very dear friend/mentor of mine to cancer. I did not talk about it much. I shared it with Steven briefly since I had told him many times how much Joyce meant to me. For the most part my grief was quiet and very personal.

I wrote to her husband telling him what she meant to me. After her memorial service he made a careful compilation of all the memoirs he heard and recieved via letter and email, including mine. Today, I finally had time to read them all.

As I read, I couldn’t stop asking myself. How will I be remembered? If I were to die today what would poeple say about me? Who would show up to my funeral? What kinds of letters and emails would my baby-love receive, if any? Asking myself these questions gave my life a fresh perspective.

I hope I remember to ask myself that question everyday, hopefully a few times every day. Maybe that way I will live more intentionally trying to spread His truth, love, grace, wisdom and generosity, all characteristics I so admired in my friend.

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God Bless America

We enjoyed an unforgettable 4th of July. Steven got me surprise tickets for a Concert & Fireworks Show at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. We arrived at 5:30 and stood in line (we actually sat in our lawn chairs under the shade of a huge Magnolia tree) for an hour. At 6:30 the doors were opened. It was a very hot day, but around 7ish, the temperature dropped to a comfortable 97 degrees so the rest of the night was very enjoyable.

Two options for seating were offered, “lawn” or “tables”. Steven “the genious” got us lawn tickets and we got to sit front and center in front of more than 10,000 people. We really had the best seats (grass) in the house. We laid out our old La Jolla beach towels and enjoyed fun snacks and drinks.

The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra did the fabulous concert. All patriotic marches and good ol’ American classics like Yankee Doodle Dandy. The grand finale was performed by a soloist, a young soprano who sang God Bless America, a huge flag unfolded in the back as she sang and the spectacular fireworks began. We had the time of our lives.

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The Village of Benbrook

This was taken by Sergeant C. P. Devos of the Royal Flying Corps in 1917 or 1918. Benbrook was a training camp during World War I. There are more old Benbrook pictures from Deseronto Archives on flickr.

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Benbrook is Better than Fort Worth is Better than Dallas

I got a nice e-mail from Zillow this morning.

According to the latest Zillow Real Estate Market Reports, home values in Benbrook increased 20.0% in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the first quarter of 2008. Nationally, home values decreased 14.2% during this same period.

Downright amazing for a recession! I clicked through to their market report and saw this (warm is up, cool is down). It’s very interesting to me that every city on the Fort Worth side saw appreciation while every city on the Dallas side saw a loss. And guess which city of all saw the biggest gain? Yep, Benbrook!

I have high hopes for Benbrook. If all goes well during the next five years we’ll have a redesigned main boulevard with landscaping and utilities underground (standard in California but rare here) and some “big box” stores. I also just read in the paper that they are building 10 – 35 acre ranch estates on the south shore of Benbrook Lake. That’s not technically in Benbrook (it’s nowhere) but I think having bazillionaires nearby helps with all things.

There’s also Benbrook Town Center (to my San Diego people, think Otay Ranch Town Center with Dutch architecture) but I don’t think this is possible until the economy is doing really well again. It sure would be cool though.

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Home Storm Chasers II (Video)

We captured enough footage on one day last week to make a whole sequel to Home Storm Chasers. Here it is.

Home Storm Chasers II: 96 Degree Day with Golf Ball Hail and Lightning Striking a Rainbow

Also watch Lightning Storm Video. It shows more of the lightning in slow motion.

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Lightning Storm Video

Here’s the evening lightning storm footage I mentioned earlier. The second half is in slow motion. I’ll post another video tomorrow showing a rainbow, hail and part of the neighbor’s roof flying away. It was a day of sweet footage!

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Latest Thunderstorm Shots

Here are thunderstorm pictures from late May. The dark sky shots were from a storm that barely clipped us. Amazingly it hardly sprinkled. The later pictures are from the 96 degree day with golf ball size hail and lightning striking a rainbow that I wrote about here. I was so lucky to get that lightning shot. Thank you Sudi-Pie for finding the rainbow or I would have missed both.

Later on in the evening we saw near-continuous horizontal lightning very far away. I took a gig of video. This weekend I’ll edit that to show the lightning branching out in slow motion. I think there will be 3 or 4 really cool sequences.

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