Sunday, October 28, 2012

Chihuly, first visit

My sister Linda and her husband Al made a quick trick up from San Antonio this week to go to the Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum. We all four schlepped over there (it's a 53 minute drive from our house). It's really spectacular! Well, the Chihuly pieces are amazing, but the Arboretum itself is well worth the drive.

I've seen some pretty great gardens, from Bellingrath on the Alabama Gulf coast to Buchart on Vancouver Island, the Borromeo Palace garden on Isola Bella in northern Italy (where the bamboo had its own gardener) to Fragrant Hills Park and Beihai Park in Beijing.

The Arboretum has lovely formal areas, but is so very appealing because (besides being on the same continent, conveniently reachable by car) it has all these quiet tucked-away spots where I could easily see myself sitting and reading, or sitting and chatting, or just sitting for a while. And a lot of those spots are beside White Rock Lake or near charming water features that include little water falls or things that look like springs or creeks. And I do love me a spring or creek!

The Chihuly show was scheduled to end next week, but is so popular it's been extended through the end of the year. Our good friend Pat is coming up next weekend to go, so I'll be visiting it again. If you're in the area, you should too!
That's the "Dallas Star" piece behind me. And that's me looking
surprised that blue spikes are coming out of my head.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

The wisest hockey columnist

Most of the time I like Brandon Worley and others at Defending Big D, probably my favorite hockey blog. Good information and usually good opinions. (Sometimes their 'doom & gloom' outlook gets to me, or they'd be my unqualified favorites.)

Picture of Benn & Morrow for no particular reason
other than I can and the team can't.
I like Ian Hudson's take on the current NHL lockout. He's a professor of economics at the University of Manitoba, and his views are pretty sensible. (Gee, that's a shock, right?)

I like Jeff Gordon columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (or, actually, STLtoday.com). He distilled the issues between the NHL owners and players to its very essence, as far as I'm concerned.

But they could both be usurped by Gavin Bard, from the Heckler Spray blog ("Internet villainy & grown-up gossip since 2005") just because of this one quote:
Gary Bettman, the weaselly grim reaper of the National Hockey League, is quite possibly the worst human being in the world.
Yeah. You tell 'em, Gavin.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

A quick note about two things

First, if you bought the most recent Groupon for Classic Cafe, it expires on Wednesday, so you need to get there in the next couple of days. Second, if you get there in the next couple of days and they're still getting okra from their garden, order the fried okra. Yeah, it's not something you'd expect them to have on their upscale menu, but it was incredible. I never thought of okra as being something that would be much better home-grown — I mean, it's not like tomatoes, right? —but it made an amazing difference. (Plus, of course, you probably have to know just exactly how to cook it, which is something Classic Cafe is very, very good at.)