AbsolutBlog

This week presented itself with the unfortunate experience of a busted water heater.  At first I noticed we had no hot water.  I just figured the laundry took it all and there wasn’t much available for my dishes.

Then Alisha informed me the next morning that we were still out when she jumped into a cold shower.  Blah.  I went out to the garage to light the pilot and noticed water everywhere.  While the water heater is in the garage, it shares a wall with my closet so guess what…water is all over my closet floor too.  Ugh.

Aparently the lower portion of the glass tub decided to crack and spill water everywhere (it is a 40 gallon tub constantly refilling).  I had a plumer out to install a brand new unit and you will be happy (as we were) to know that we have hot water and can now take comfortable showers, i.e. we don’t stink as bad.

One funny side note: when mentioning this to my neighbor, she started laughing and told me the same thing happened to her in the beginning of the month, then our neighbor across the street had her water heater go out two weeks ago.  I guess we got a bad batch as we all have water softeners and our houses were built within a few months of eachother.

Life is getting more back to normal.  The rush of visitors in April has slowed.  Thanks to Dad and Connie, Krysten, Chrissy, and Tim and Shelley for staying with us and entertaining Madison.  I have submitted a paper for publication and am working on a poster presentation for work.  We had a garage sale this weekend and sold some things.  The rest will be put up on http://austin.craigslist.com. 

Alisha and I got our first taste of german bowling at Tim and Shelley’s wedding shower.  Tim’s family rented out the Bracken Bowling Lanes just north of San Antonio Texas.  From the Handbook of Texas Online I found this, "Ninepins was the most popular form of bowling in much of the United States from colonial times until the early nineteenth century, when it was outlawed in many areas and replaced by tenpins. Today, ninepins has disappeared from all of the United States except Texas, where both nine and ten pin bowling have been known since the 1830s."

Pictures are up and we had a ball (no pun intended).  The pins are arranged in a diamond with a red pin in the center.  There are 6 frames and 6 bowlers/frame.  You get two rolls.  You must knock down all the pins before the pinsetters (teenage boys behind a screen) will set them back up.  If you knock down all the pins then you get 9 points and if you knock down all but the center red pin you get 12 points.  If you fail to knock down all the pins (red one optional), then the next bowler gets a chance.  This continues till the end of the frame when the number of pins standing is subtracted from 9 and all the pins are reset.  The team works to get as many pins down as possible and there is no order to the bowlers in any one frame (but all must get one turn of 2 rolls).  You add up the points at the end of each frame and compare with the other teams.  I would love to provide a link with a better description, but 9-pin is a lost art/game.  You can only play if you are member of club (or know someone who is in this case).

So my buddy Dave was down last weekend to just chill out.  Thanks for the grill Dave !  So, he wanted to go to the Texas Rollergirls Roller Derby at the Convention Center.  If you have seen the show on A&E, it is basically the same…if you haven’t seen the show, then I would recommend it if only for the awesome shots of local Austin (not the stuff the visitors center would want you to see, but REAL Austin).

Basically, take a short banked wooden track, add two teams of ~10 girls in skimpy clothes, NASCAR, roller skates, random penalties, then stir and shake.  No fancy umbrellas here, this is pure guy night wiskey.  Bryant went with us and pictures are up here.  The bout involved the Holy Rollers and the Cherry Bombs.

We were able to get personal pictures with a number of the girls including Lux, Venis Envy, Chola, Catalac, and Miss Conduct.  I have tried to comment where possible.  The Holy Rollers (pictured here) won by a small margin.

In other news, my parents were in town last week, we got a new dishwasher because the one that came with the house died.  I also installed a screen door in the garage to provide nice airflow from the front of the house, through the kitchen and out the back.

Oh, and we scored CHEAP tickets to ACL Fest!!! $35 for two plus taxes and fees.  These 3000 tickets sold out in less than 45 mins.  The $90 sold out in a day (up and out yesterday).  Now they are up for $100.  Lisa/Chris Wilson and the Johnsons have already purchased tickets ($90 I think), and I hope you are next!!!  I have been telling you for the past 4 years this is a festival not to miss…well, PollStar voted Austin City Limits Music Festival "Festival of the Year".  We would love to have you out for the party.  The tickets will go up in price fast as the tiers are sold out.  The picture below is from their website…I wasn’t able to get this picture for all the dust last year…