Martha's Marvellous Munchies

The green flag went down and the low grumble of the 900 hp engines swelled to a roar as the trucks rounded the corner into the straightaway. The race was on! A dozen mean machines bounded over bumps, skidded around the corners and bashed each other's bumpers as they hurtled around the dirt track. Up in the stands, we jumped up and down as we cheered on our chosen drivers to the finish line. The once-shiny trucks got muddier and muddier, the track got more and more littered with broken-off pieces, and the competition got more and more intense until finally the chequered flag waved and the winner went into his victory spin. We'd been downtown on a Thursday evening when Graham noticed some powerful trucks standing by the kerb, and went over to have a look. One of the drivers answered some of his questions and then produced a voucher for four free tickets to the Traxxas TORC race at the Texas Motor Speedway that weekend. So it was that I found myself doing something complet...

This blog is turning out to read rather like a travel journal, full of all the places we've been. We do stay in the apartment occasionally though. Here's a few snaps of what's happening around here. The balcony is turning into a miniature jungle, helped out by the rainforest-style weather we've been having lately. The tomato plants are shooting up so quickly I'm sure you could see them growing if you watched them for half an hour. They're just starting to look like flowering, so hopefully we'll have a crop soon! The lettuces are kind of floppy but starting to look more lettuce-like, rather than just a random collection of leaves. The habanero plants, after producing tons of flowers and next to no fruit, have obviously found a pollinator - practically overnight they sprouted about a dozen little peppers! Just outside, we have a couple of barn swallows nesting in the stairwell. They're smart little birds, with a pink waistcoat and blue tailcoat, ...

The area around DFW is never short of a few festivals, it seems, and we made it along to a couple more this weekend. We had originally hoped to go canoeing but there was a distinct chance of thunderstorms. These never materialised, though Saturday evening was rather cool with a bit of rain, which wasn't ideal for listening to music on an outdoor stage; conversely, Sunday was very warm and muggy, which didn't look fun for all the people dressed in full Renaissance costume! So, first up was Taste Addison. Addison is a well-to-do area north of Dallas, and this festival was a chance for the local restaurants to have a stand and sell snack-size portions of their wares for around $5. I tried fish & chips (not quite up there with the British seaside version, but not bad), chilli and gumbo (much more American) and spring rolls (double size portion because it was almost the end of the festival). For dessert there was a very delicious honey flan with fruit. This is the Mexican v...

Well, I wrote about Bats, Bluebonnets and Breakfast Tacos in a previous post, but that only seemed to cover about half of what we actually did in Austin (were we really there only for a weekend?). And we had several more great photos that Graham has been bugging me to post on my blog, so prepare yourselves for an extravaganza of colour, light and image! Austin is known as a great place for live music, which presumably explains the psychadelic guitars left lying around the streets. Here's Graham with a couple of his dream instruments. We visited the Texas State Capitol, built on a grand scale from tons of pink granite and limestone. The state capit o l, you understand, is located in the state capit a l. Don't get confused. Americans definitely tend towards the domes-and-pillars school of architecture for their governmental buildings. I had a feeling this was true, so did a quick search for corroborating evidence and discovered this great site by a ph...

I know... three posts in one day. Bit over the top, isn't it? But this is just a quickie. A guy I know called Anil is part of a band called Mirrorkicks, and they've just put their latest song and video on YouTube - a stop-action Lego extravaganza! Watch and enjoy...

I suppose it must be some kind of growing-up rite: the first time your parents come to stay with you, rather than you descending on them, hoping for some home-cooking and maybe a few clean clothes. Apart from a brief overnight stay in Bristol, this was the first time that I was entertaining Mom and Dad in my own home - and the first time for Graham entertaining his in-laws! All four of us had a really good time. This will be a brief photo tour as much as anything, because we managed to cram a lot of stuff into a mere week. Most of the places that we went to have had previous entries on this blog, anyway, so if you want more pictures of the scenery you can always browse backwards till you find what you're looking for. The first couple of days Graham and I had to work, but Mom and Dad walked to the Botanic Gardens and Modern Art Museum and along the Trinity trails. I had the morning off one day so took them into downtown to see the water gardens and other sights - here...

Know what these words mean? No? Well, nor did I till we went to the Japanese Festival last Sunday at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. They're both musical instruments, and we heard them played by some very talented people in a spectacularly beautiful setting. The koto is a long stringed instrument, which can have 13, 17 or even 22 strings. Fumiko Coburn, a dainty lady with halting English but a great sense of humour, has the 13 string version. As we watched, she tuned it up by inserting wooden bridges under each string, and adjusting them carefully to give the right pitch for each song. She explained that most of the older tunes for koto included a song, whereas the new ones were mostly for koto solo. It was interesting to hear the difference as she played a piece from 400 years ago and one from 4 years ago. In the older tune, the notes dropped singly into the silence, scattered across time and pitch. Like brush strokes in a Japanese painting, each note had its own place...