Stately Oak

This old tree is on the campus of St. Ed's. It's great to see trees preserved although I wonder if this one couldn't use a little more unpaved area around it.

Finished Spring?

With tall buildings rising all around, it is our fervent hope that the money for them will last long enough to top them out and glass them in. We know sales have been tough and contracts falling off, but projects like this one (Spring on Bowie and Fourth near Lamar) would look pretty unsightly unfinished. That much smaller one, the project idle on Lavaca (I showed you the crane here), is said to be starting up again after stalling. But we'll see. Times are tough. The last bust left us the Intel shell, a tiny eyesore compared to the potential of some of the current projects.

Home Security

I could take a hike from my downtown condo and be standing in front of this house where security is enforced by chain link and old-fashioned iron bars on the windows instead of computer-controlled fobs and concierges and security cams. You don't see many people putting bars on their windows these days (there is the small matter of getting out in an emergency). I saw something different on this visit (Sunday for E.A.S.T.) to the area in newer infills and rehabs, though. Reflective mirror windows. I'm guessing for heat transfer and privacy? Like a one-way mirror? It was daytime and they looked exactly like mirrors.

Not Christmas

It's Thanksgiving. You would have thought it was Christmas since Halloween except for the independent shops like this one on SoCo called Blackmail. They were just transforming their window on Tuesday when we walked down there to enjoy a nice cool, sunny afternoon. This is Christmas at its 'blackest.' Very elegant like all the clothing and accessories in this store.

E.A.S.T. Artist

Every year artists in East Austin have the East Austin Studio Tour (E.A.S.T.). We went for a small stroll through a very small number of the venues Sunday. We will let the fabulous Jennifer Balkan represent the tour for the second year in a row. (See her with her work last year here.) This unfinished painting will have a collage or sewn surround, I think she said.

Old Main

St. Edward's University, a Catholic school perched on a hill off South Congress overlooking the Capital City has a main building with an architecture befitting a university back east. Built around the same time as the Capitol, the building has been through fires and tornadoes but has been rebuilt and remains the stately hub of this campus. If you turn around from where I stood to take this shot, you see the changing skyline of Austin but it was a dreary day with a little fog on the river and I don't have that great a camera so I didn't get a great picture.

Cooking Thai

The way it works in Austin is you meet some people for dinner, bump into some other people and then end up getting invited to a Thai dinner on another night at someone's downtown abode. This is Sally Jackson and she and her sister have been stirring things up since returning to Texas to take care of their Mom. She was the lead cook. The food was stunning. The Jackson gals have a WEB site. They are funny and boy can they cook. Our other friends' uber-sized downtown apartment made a nice venue. The rest of us contributed wine or cocktails.