The Allure of the Quilt

by Celia Hayes

Once again this last weekend, we were lured to the pleasant bedroom-slipper community of Boerne by the charms of the Squirrel's Nest on Main Street, which supports the totally worthy services provided by Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation to animal-kind of this part of Texas. This visit also coincided with the celebration of a uniquely American art form – with contemporary examples hung from storefronts, and along the sides of Boerne's town plaza. They made a splendid show, all through downtown, and many of the businesses along Main Street (or Hauptstrasse) also had window displays incorporating quilts – and many of them were offering drinks ... although we had to turn down the offers of margaritas at one

Korean Delights

by Celia Hayes

So, many of the headlines this week concern themselves with Korea, a country which I have some slight connection to; that is where my father was serving a tour when I was born. And a good few decades later, I did a year-long tour there myself. About the very first thing that I realized was that Korea in the 1990s looked nothing like the TV series MASH ... and only very little like what my father remembered. Dad and his platoon with their mobile radar set-up lived in several different tent encampments near the DMZ. I spent the year living at Yongsan Garrison, in the heart of a bustling and very cosmopolitan Seoul. The garrison was itself a fairly un-crowded green island in the middle of a very built-up city – rather as

Central Texas about to get second area code: 737

Callers in the Austin area code may soon be required to begin dialing the area code in order to complete the calls. Austin continues to grow and in order to provide a continous supply of phone number a new area code (737) has been implemented.

Since two area codes will not be servicing the same geographic area, local callers may be required to include the area code when dialing, including calls within the same area code. Check with your landline or cellphone providers for more details and the exact implementation dates.

In addition to the long standing 512 area code, the new area code of 737 has been implemented as an available area code for the Austin area. See the blue area in the image.

Selling Your Home with Pets

Moving can be a stressful time for all members of the family, including our pets. As a home seller, you're not only managing your dog's stress, you're trying to maximize the value of your home. You will have a lot of strangers coming in and out of your home while it's on the market. If you have a busy home, your dog may be used to meeting lots of new people. But this probably occurs when you are home. Without you, he may not understand that these "intruders" are your prospective buyers. Will he become territorial? Stressed? Will he bark excessively? Or follow the new folks around jumping up, licking, or otherwise trying to make friends? Regardless, all of these attention-getting behaviors are signs of stress.

Here are a

IH 35 Road Trip – Part 2

(<--IH 35 Road Trip - Part 1)

by Celia Hayes

The road was long, and went on and on in the dark. I thought that we'd see the sunrise about the time that we passed Round Rock, but no – thanks to daylight savings time, we didn't see it even begin to get light until we passed through Waco. At that juncture, something moved us to want to take a break. Well, actually three things moved us: we were getting hungry again, my daughter wanted to top up the gas tank, and we both needed to use the bathroom facilities. And there was a billboard advertising the Czech Stop Bakery, and not a truck plaza or another Buc'ees in sight, in a little hiccup of a town called West. So, pull off the highway onto the access road, looking for the

Texas Boasts More Jobs Than Last Year

COLLEGE STATION (Real Estate Center) – All Texas industries and the state's government sector had more jobs in February 2013 than in February 2012.

According to the Real Estate Center's latest Monthly Review of the Texas Economy, the state's construction industry ranked first in job creation, followed by mining and logging, leisure and hospitality, other services, professional and business services and trade.

The state's economy was robust, gaining 355,600 nonagricultural jobs from February 2012 to February 2013, an annual growth rate of 3.3 percent compared with 1.5 percent for the United States. The state's private sector added 336,800 jobs, an annual growth rate of 3.8 percent compared with 1.9 percent for

IH-35 Road Trip Part 1

Texas Road Trip Part 2-->

Find your new home on our San Antonio MLS Home Search

by Celia Hayes

Having a book event last Saturday in Belton – a very pleasant and prosperous town overtaken and reduced to mere suburb status by the mighty municipalities of Fort Worth on one side and Dallas on the other. Not having more than a day available to spend on this excursion, and depending on the takings from sales of books at it for any extraneous adventures, we did not take any scenic and exciting backcountry routes to and from. Instead, we took the simple and uncomplicated road – IH-35, at a consistent 60 to 70 MPH, except for twenty minutes on the return journey, stuck in Austin traffic at a slow crawl. How they can manage a

Eating on the Go

by Celia Hayes

Well, there is fast food, and then there is fast food – fast food that comes to the customer. When I was stationed in Korea such a convenience was called the 'chogi' truck, or as the local national employees called it 'roooch-coachie'. It came around mid-morning to the building where I worked, dispensing hot sandwiches, snacks, candy bars, ice cream and bags of salted or sugared snack foods. But the chogi truck is to a food truck today as a Model T is to a Jeep Cherokee. They're gasoline-powered motor vehicles, and they dispense food to the hungry ... but the 21st century food truck tends to be a specialty gourmet kitchen on wheels. Certainly in a large and

Ft Sam and Brook Army Medical Center Complex

by Celia Hayes

Having been in pretty good health over the last two or three years, it has been that long since I had to make an appointment to see a doctor – which since I am a military retiree, usually meant a long trek into the wilds of Brooke Army Medical Center, or BAMC – or as I liked to call it 'the world's largest red-brick Skinner box'. I was better acquainted with the grounds around it though; during a time when I worked in an office nearby. During my lunch hour, I used to walk across the street, flash my retiree ID at the gate, and walk briskly around the footpath which circuited the grounds – skirting the parking lot at the top of the hill, around the back of the tall brick structure, down to

Comfort Food – Mac & Cheese

by Celia Hayes

When my younger brother and sister and I were in elementary school, my father was a grad-student in hot pursuit of a doctorate in zoology, and my mother was – in the tradition of the time – a full-time stay-at-home mom. This was in the late 1950s to early 60s, and it was the commonly accepted practice. As there were three of us (later to be four) it was really the only practical option – and one of the reasons that it worked was that Mom was a fair to middling cook, very much into the traditional D-I-Y household arts (including sewing childrens' clothes and decorating our home with cast-off and inexpensive furniture. I would hasten to add that it was usually quality stuff; ages later, when Mom and Dad were