Dutch & LuLu

Besides the baby boy moving in Diane’s belly (more on that next), the other thing that has really moved me lately, was the inauguration of Barak Obama as our 44th President. I don’t mean all the pomp & circumstance, the ceromonies, or the balls, but the actual fact that this man is now our representative in the White House. He ran on a platform of “Hope & Change”, and while I’m feeling a bit naive actually believing political rhetoric, I really do feel like President Obama has the country’s best interests at heart. I am truely hopeful that things are already changing for the better. What a great time to have and raise a child!

MoveOn.org Obama Sticker

This is an ultra-cool Shep Fairey Obama sticker celebrating President Obama’s Inauguration. They’re free from MoveOn.org’s website. Sign up for their propoganda, see if you’re like minded, and then see if you can lend a hand and help make things change for the better for all of us.

Saturn Street Strummers at Sea Turtle Inc.

Ok. I know I’ve left it a bit long, but I thought I’d do one or two catchup posts, and then say that I’m back on track. The Holidays were fantastic this year! Diane and I haven’t had the chance to celebrate, just the two of us, since we were first married. And this was our last chance, since next year we’ll be three of us!

We learned lots of Christmas carols on our ukes, and even played some of them for people at Sea Turtle Inc’s Christmas mixer. Thanks for the nog! We played on the steps of the new city hall, too, and welcomed Santa to town. Here we are at Sea Turtle, with the sunset in the background. Sorry, it’s blurry, but it really captured the moment.  Thanks to Amazin’ Walter for the photo.

the Pirate Crew of Sand Castle Days

Sand Castle Days 2008 has come & gone and I have to say the new venue at Isla Blanca Park has made it the best Sand Castle Days ever! The sculptors really enjoyed their laid back group accomodations, and the plumbing that gave them each a hose to work with. The vendors really loved the shade of the pavilion, and the awsome view of the surf.  I also hope the crowd enjoyed the amazing sculptures and the easy access to them that the park provided.  Plenty of parking at those empty campsites, right?  Considering that it was the first real cold front of the season, the weather was pretty darn good as well, though some hot drinks for the sculptors through the day on Thursday wouldn’t have gone amiss. 

The Wednesday night cruise aboard the Black Dragon Pirate Ship was a huge hit with everyone involved, especially the squirt gun fights and the free drinks provided by one of our generous sponsors.  There’s nothing like the high seas, even if it is just out to the jetty’s & back!

It’s our favorite time of year again folks!  Sand Castle Days is here again and this year is going to be better than ever. For the first time ever Sand Castle Days will be held at Isla Blanca Park at the southern tip of the island. Not only can anyone compete in this sandsculpting contest, as well as get free lessons, or shop with the food & craft vendors, but you can also watch as piles of sand are transformed into works of art by master sculptors from all over North America and even Singapore!  Be sure to look for us in the Lerma Pavilion selling all sorts of beachy trinkets and maybe even a few of our latest handmade creations.

Here’s a dramatic demonstration of why we need a continuous dune line. Next time you’re at the beach pick up some sand and stare at it.  Get a good close look.  See the tiny white grains; they look solid enough.  But make a fist, turn your hand over, and open it up a bit.  That sand’ll run through your fingers slick as a whistle.  We all know this, and yet we think our island starts at the waters edge.  It doesn’t start at the low tide line, or the high tide line, or even at the “vegitation line” as defined by the Texas Open Beaches Act.  The island starts where the plants start.  That dune covered in vegitation as much of a boundry between the surf and dry land as you can get on a sandbar, which don’t forget, is where we all live.  Our beaches look beautiful, but soak them down and let the swell give them a kick and they flow just like the shot I’ll be tossin’ back the next time I hear there’s a storm brewing out in the Gulf.

ps.  Thanks to Jerry Wilson for taking this and several other dramatic shots posted here.

Welcome Ike back to South Padre Island.  This time it’s the debris that’s drifted down from Galveston.  It may be littered with sunglasses and soda cans, but there were also lots of nice drift seeds and shells.  Until Saturday, I’d only ever found one star palm seed and one mermaids purse, and really Diane found those.  Well, we found tons of both!  We brought back about a bucket full of drift seeds, tumbled pumice, shells and even a couple small coconuts!  I spent most of the afternoon washing and sorting it all.  Now, if it would just stop raining, we’ll get it all dried out, and wait till you see what we’re going to do with it!

Ike has brought a lot to a lot of people, but he also brought us butterflies!  Mostly snouts, but there were several other ones also & at least three different types of dragonflies.  I guess the North - West wind blew them here and they were able to take refuge in our brazilian pepper trees.  Here’s a brief clip:08-snouts

The swell from Ike has been washing our beaches hard for a while now. Our maintenance crew has taken up the mat that leads thru our beach access and built a sand berm across the path. Amazingly it has been washed down both sides, but didn’t get wet enough to really flow & wash away. Once the water came over the berm, it flowed downhill along the path all the way back to the shower at the restrooms!

This is really nothing, though, compared to the scene just a bit north of there, where a condo at Hibiscus Street had a reasonable dune behind it, but without proper vegitation. The swell has been cresting it, hitting their bulkhead, and flowing downhill from there through this poor place:

I thought I’d start with nice neat bios of my wife, Diane and myself, but that’s right out the window now.  We spent the whole day in Weslaco on Monday so we could go to the birthing center and then to the hospital for an ultrasound.  WOW!  I thought we’d be able to listen to the baby’s heartbeat, but this was really amazing. There’s a tiny little person in her tummy!  I wasn’t able to bring home a picture, cause I was too awstruck to even get out the phone and snap a pic, but I’ll slip one in here anyway:

The flickering, wavering picture allows you to see a stream of images that make up a tiny little baby.  This image is about as good as they get, but when you watch the monitor you can really tell there’s someone in there.  I could even see the tiny chambers of the heart pumping!