Emily has started posting a lot of her art over here. In my completely unbiased opinion, it’s pretty awesome. Check it out!

Last Thursday, I skipped out of work so that Abigail and I could spend the day together before school starts back up for her. She had entreated me to bring her to The Simpsons Movie, so we started the day with a visit to the movie theater at Barton Creek Square Mall to see the animated family in action. (One of my friends’ description of the movie as “three episodes stuck together” seemed pretty apt — nothing over the top, but a solid installment in the series.) From there, we wandered the mall for a while, stopping in at candy stores (for her) and The Apple Store (for me). Kudos to the latter’s staff who let me print out a replacement ticket for the show we were headed to later.

From the mall, we went to Zilker Park, where I had planned for us to spend a few hours swimming at Barton Springs pool. Unfortunately, we were foiled by the staff who had decided that a Thursday in the middle of prime swimming season would be an excellent time to close the pool for cleaning. So we instead took a ride on the Zilker Zephyr to see more of the park. We were taken with the beauty of the place, so took an adventure hike (read “Dad got lost”) through the woods, across the river, and through a nearby housing development. (I still don’t understand how we crossed the river 3 times and ended up back where we started.)

Once back to civilization, I vaguely remembered that there was a botanical garden somewhere in the park. Deciding that we were ready for some well-maintained trails, we motored over to see the plants. We were taken with the whole beautiful area, but especially astonished by the Oriental Garden. Created by Isamu Taniguchi as a gift to the city he loved, it’s a beautiful, intricate oasis in the middle of the city. Koi ponds, lilies, paths, streams, trees, and stepping stones all interweave to create a marvelously beautiful and enjoyable place. Abigail’s relaxation was however briefly disrupted when she realized that there was lurking in the bottom of the pool where she was wetting her feet a 4 foot long snake. Fortunately, both snake and girl escaped uninjured from their encounter.

Finally we headed off to the Austin School for the Deaf, where the Zachary Scott Theater was staging a production of Disney’s High School Musical. The cast was made up of kids just a few years older than Abigail who did a uniformly excellent job with the show. One could tell that they had all worked extremely hard, polishing their performances to a high level of quality, and were past worrying about the mechanics of singing, dancing and acting. They were able to relax into their roles and just have a great time performing. After the show, Abigail darted through the crowd, collecting autographs from various performers with whom she was especially taken.

CROTCHETY ASIDE: The great performances didn’t mask the treacly unrealistic writing or the homogeneous music. After Disney’s delightful Menken/Rice collaborations, it’s disappointing to find them fielding something this bland. Additionally, I have little patience for the Gospel of Self-Esteem: just believe in yourself, follow your heart, and everything will work out great. There was no hard decision for the leads in this show to make — they could win the big game, star in the eponymous musical, and retain all of their friends all at once. There are no opportunity costs in the Wonderful Word of Disney. Instilling this message seems a superb way to sabotage children’s ability to deal with real life when things don’t go well or easily. END CROCHETY ASIDE.

All in all, it was a great day together, and I remain extremely grateful for these opportunities to spend some special time this summer with some of my very favorite people.

Just got a call from Shawn, a friend of mine. Here’s the reconstructed transcript:

• Maggie: Hello?
• Shawn: Can I speak with your Dad?
• Maggie: Who is it?
• Shawn: The President.
• Maggie: Daddy! It’s Mister Shawn!
• Me: Hello?
• Shawn: Dude, your kids are getting too smart.
• Me: Yeah, Maggie’s pretty much the brains of this operation.

A week ago I posted an advertisement on the San Marcos Craig’s List Free section:

We have an approximately 8,000 gallon above-ground swimming pool in our backyard. It’s shaped like this:

 ___
(___)

It has served well for the seven years we’ve been in our house, but since we live only about 5 minutes from the river, we’ve decided to just go there when we want to have a swim instead of keeping up with a pool.

Thus, we’d like to give the pool to someone who will enjoy it. If you’re willing to come and break it down and take it, it’s yours. Skimmer, chlorinator, pump, lining, walls all included. We’ll also throw in any useful pool chemicals we still have around.

Please respond via email or call at 940 239 4202 if you’re interested so that we can give you the location and arrange a time. Thanks!

Once the advertisement went up, I had 5 responses within 10 minutes, and quickly yanked the ad back down. We did a little back and forth with a few people, and finally got things lined up for a family down in San Antonio with 3 young kids to come adopt it.

This was a hard decision for us, as we’ve gotten a ton of use out of the pool over the past several years. The kids all love to swim, and it made a great focal point for backyard parties. However, we had to run the pump pretty much continuously and dump in enormous quantities of chlorine to keep it blue during the hottest parts of summer. The electricity for that combined with chemicals and water added up to a goodly sum — money which seemed ridiculous to spend that way when we have a beautiful river so close by.

The father of the family that agreed to relocate the pool and one of his friends showed up on Sunday to tear the thing down. It ended up being a more formidable task than any of us had anticipated, and eventually required me to jump into the mucky swampwater that remained in it and scoop out the rotting leaf goop that had accumulated by hand. I kept expecting some sort of creature with an abundance of eyes and fins to pop out and strike up a conversation: “I say, what are you doing to my home? I’ve just got it set up the way I like it!”

Surprisingly, after about 5 hours of work, they decided that, since some of the metal bits were rusty, they didn’t want the pool after all. They toted away a fair chunk of the pool parts, but left us with a healthy pile of debris that we’ll be working on breaking down soon ourselves. Still, they contributed a long afternoon of free labor, so we’ve nothing to complain about!

Now the question is: what do we do with the space? Ideas floated so far: outdoor movie theater, garden, volleyball court, washers/horseshoes pit, and miniature golf course. Got any ideas? Let us know!