Almost Ready!

In a few days I will start my journey to NY for my first guide dog! I'll be adding entries and photos to my blog as often as I can, just to journal my experiences along the way - through meeting my new dog, my training, and the outings the dog and I will share together. I'm so excited, I can hardly wait! Plus, I don't get to travel out of state much, so this will be a fun treat. :)

With that in mind, I'm looking forward to seeing what NY is like in the spring - what flowers may be blooming, any different plants, flowers, trees than what we have here in Texas. Hopefully you can help me identify them! ;) Stay tuned!!!

Back at it again!

Wow, it's been THAT long since I last blogged? Guess the last few months got away from me! LOTS of things have happened since my last post, all good stuff.
To begin:

• I'm getting a guide dog next month! A month from tomorrow (or thereabouts) I leave for New York to attend Guiding Eyes for the Blind for about 3.5 weeks of intense training with my new pair of eyes. I am beyond excited, and am planning on blogging about the entire experience. I mean to do more photo-blogging, so am taking my camera with me. I've never been to that part of the country, so the whole thing will be an adventure! :)
• For transportation and some practical reasons, Ms Sadie-dog has a new home with my parents out in the country now, and is apparently loving it. She's currently hard at work training them in how to live with a furry dog who sheds enough fur for another whole puppy. lol
  
• Currently, I am working as a tech writer/web marketer for a friend's business - that has kept me busy lately, but I'm so glad it's working out in terms of being gone in NY for a month. My friend is a Guiding Eyes graduate, so knows the routine there, but how lucky am I that this job fell into my lap basically, and will truly fit in with my plans for the next few months!! :)
  

In addition to all that, I'm loving this spring weather! I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter - not sure what I'm doing other than cooking something good and possibly yummy for dessert. Lemon chiffon again perhaps? ;)

Musical Instinct

I just watched an interesting program on PBS -The Musical Instinct. It talked about how music influences us in ways we aren't even aware of, even from before we are born. Every culture has different styles of music, diffent tonal scales, different insturments, but it effects us all in the same way. Researchers have found groups of people who have not been exposed to any kind of music whatsoever in their lives who have responded to happy, sad, and scary music when presented with it in the same way a person would if they'd been around it their entire lives. Beyond that, everything in the universe, whether it's a black hole, a star, the ocean, or the human body, everything has rhythm and pitch. Music is a sort of illustration of how everything, everyone is interconnected with one another.

Music is such a part of my life in many ways - I play the piano, taught myself a little guitar (ok now I don't remember ANY guitar!) and was in the high school choir. I've always adored classical music, and now pretty much enjoy everything but rap. The interesting thing I never gave much thought to until this program - I don't care for angry music at ALL. Possibly because I'm just not an angry person, I simply can't identify with it. I'm not one to get angry, or be angry or hurt more than a couple of minutes. I have to more past it - I'm too happy, optimistic and can only identify with that kind of music. Kind of a neat journey into the personality of ourselves and others is what music affords. :)

So, what's your musical personality? Does the music you listen to reflect your personality?

A Nifty New Widget! Plus a couple of book reviews!

I just added a widget for Shelfari.com with some of the many books I've read in the last few years - I love how it looks like a book shelf! If it makes my blog too slow to load, feel free to let me know. I get so spoiled by not having dialup. Anyway, Feel free to browse through them and suggest something if you want!

Just a couple of book reviews while I'm on the subject:

Chocolat - by Joanne Harris
A lovely book i thought was as good as the movie. It's about a woman and her daughter who move into a small town in France to open up a chocolate shop. This is a very conservative town, and the church are constantly at odds with this woman over her opening of a shop full of 'temptation'. A fun read, though I am so glad I had the audio book available, as I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the reader pronounce the various French words, names. All in all, I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry - by Kathleen Flinn
Ok, admittedly when I first saw the title of this book, I thought it was some sort of murder mystery. I could not have been farther from the truth!! My mom suggested the book to me, and I loved it. It's about a woman to goes to the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. Over the course of the book she presents some of the recipes she made, along with some of the techniques she learned - hence the title of the book. If you have ever read Eat, Pray, Love then this book will remind you of it. I give this book 5 stars out of 5.

There are a few others I'm reading right now, and I'll publish my reviews when I finish. So again, if you would like to recommend anything, go right ahead!! :)

A Trip to the Botannical Gardens

I finally made a trip to the Zilker Botanical Gardens here in Austin - a beautiful walk which I'm SO glad I went early in the morning! It got hot fast. I'm curious to know what it looks like in the fall; the wintery look is beautiful as well. :) I'm not sure what several of these flowers are, so if anyone knows, pipe up! :)

These flowers are at the entrance to the Green Garden - I loved the color. Not sure what they are though.

This was the prehistoric garden - I didn't get to see any dinosaur tracks, but the plants looked nice. They are apparently ones that were around at the time of the dinos! Cool, huh?

These are around the Rose garden.

I just LOVE yellow roses!


Nice calming waterfall.
I love the yellow flowers - I have no idea what they are, but I see them quite often. Anybody know?

Into the forest primeval. . . . .wonder if this is the wrong turn where I got momentarily lost? It's along the butterfly trail - with plants that attract butterflies.

Photo Challenge: Nature

One of the message boards I frequent has a fun 'Shutterbug Challenge" every Wednesday - someone picks a topic and people post pics relating to that subject. Some are easy to do, some are. . . .a challenge. I'm going to try and include my pics in my blog every week from now on - so we shall see my progress! This week's challenge just happens to be nature.

This first pic I took years ago, but it's one of my favorites - in the Davis Mountains of Texas. It's a prominant part of the horizon when we're in our cabin.
A rose by any other name. . . . . . .

Birdsong Blog - Part 1

I just started taking a birdsong course specifically designed for visually impaired people. Since about 80% of birdwatchers identify birds by hearing, as opposed to actually seeing them, what better group of people to tailor a birding class for, right? I'm so excited about it - especially with it being early spring. The birds I hear chirping every day now have always fascinated me, wondering what birds they are. Since this course is self-paced, I essentially have all the time I need in order to complete it. There are four assignments for the course, and I thought it would be fun to include them in this blog as I go along.

My first assignment was to go for a walk and describe the birds I hear along the way. With that in mind, I put Sadie on leash, and we went for a stoll in our local park. Since I live in suburbia, I get a mix of the suburban birds plus some of the ones more commonly found further into the city. I was able to recognize a mourning dove or two on our walk, but also a few wrens. I swear I heard an indigo bunting, but I'm going to have to investigate - I am not positive they would be hanging out in my area or not. They aren't one of the types I hear about a lot around Austin. Finches and sparrows seem to congregate around my apartment complex, because I hear them constantly! It's like constant background music. :) I'm actually waiting to hear a mockingbird - it's our state bird - surely they live around the state capitol, right?