Barbers Ink Bastrop County Construction Pact

Last week we shook hands with Nalle Custom Homes, a prominent regional residential custom builder, on the construction of our new home in The Arbors subdivision outside the city of Elgin in Bastrop County, Texas. Nalle is one of the largest, if not the largest residential custom builders in the county, even though their reach extends farther than Bastrop county.

Pictured is me shaking hands with owner Tilghman Nalle (pronounced "Tillman Nawl") in their downtown Elgin Office.

After nearly a year long process, Nalle was chosen based not only on their detailed cost-effective proposal, but also on their reputation for quality and timeliness. Equally important, Nalle was able to help us, in a very diplomatic way, consider material selections and construction methods more prevalent in Central Texas. In other words, they helped us de-California-ize our design concepts in exchange for methods of equal quality, but more appropriate for Central Texas, without making us feel like outsiders.

It also didn't hurt that we were able to visit many of their completed and in-process homes that clearly demonstrated they love what they do and are good at it. Check out the gallery of homes at their website http://www.nallecustomhomes.com/.

Now we're just waiting for our new but larger lot to close escrow so we can start the permitting process. Just think, the first delay is "owner caused"! We are more than ready and look forward to getting out on the parcel and finally visualizing where the house will actually sit.

The picture at left is Karen greeting Owen Nalle. He heads up the company's office and administrative efforts while Lee Nalle (seen with me) keeps his boots dirty in the field.

We are very glad to have found a respected company with a quality resume of well-built homes that added value to our design-build process. We sincerely appreciate all the bidders efforts on our behalf. We know that a responsible bid/proposal takes time and costs money. However, we feel we have made a decision that is clearly in our best interest.

Now it's time to put down the pencils and make some dust!

Living The Vida Local

Karen and I are thankful to be settling into some kind of daily routine finally as the appointments and shopping trips are ebbing. After morning coffee and reflecting on the previous night's thoughts, we have been working our way through a devotional entitled "Amazing Grace, 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions", by Ken Osbeck. It gives the back story for most of the well known traditional hymns and brings back a lot of memories.

From there, one of us takes the lead in encouraging the other to get over to the apartment's gym for a treadmill walk, a very small amount of weights (for me not much at all) and then maybe a short swim. It is of some benefit to be living in a complex populated by young people that work in the tech field during normal working hours, leaving us the run of the facility during the mid-day hours. This avoids a lot of finger pointing and laughing. This routine gets us off to a good start and provides some form of structure that successful retirement seems to demand. From there it's usually, "What's for lunch!?".

We have finally chosen a builder - Nalle (pronounced "Nawl") Custom Homes (NCH). We are very excited to be linked up with them and they will be the subject of our next blog. We still haven't closed escrow on the new lot so we hope it doesn't hold things up too much. NCH is saying 5-6 months to occupancy on the house. We had a great meeting yesterday to review all the details and finalize the drawings. We will meet on the property with the surveyor next week to locate the exact footprint of the house and the route of the driveway.

Perhaps the best news is that I have had a lot of pain relief from the SI joint injection this week. It is the most relief I have felt in many months so I just need to not overdo things. Karen is still doing all the driving but I need to start sitting up to see if we can add a few day trips to our living the Vida Local.

P.S. - Glad to be back in the Library system. Here's a pic of our local branch nearby. I checked out a Bible in Spanish just for fun.

Bloom (or Boom) Where You're Planted

Here is the next installment, in keeping with my plan to post a blog at least once a week mainly about our Texas adventure. Before we left for Austin, I renewed contact with a former beloved pastor, Jim Akins (www.wintervillefirstbaptist.org) by email. I related to him the Reader's Digest version of our family's plan to move to Texas. In his response, he stated that he always thought we had an adventurous family and that we should do well even with the significant difference that Central Texas is from Northern California. I had never thought of our family as being adventurous but perhaps he's right. I think that part of enjoying any new adventure is to bloom where you're planted.

In the construction business, we always found it difficult moving families all around the country for relatively short-term projects. We tried several strategies but nothing ever worked really well, except for one family. Their strategy was that no matter where they were assigned (I remember Las Vegas, NE Florida, Guam, Louisiana etc.) they quickly found what made that area special and jumped into regional activities with great enthusiasm. They found a great way to make frequent travel work for their young family. In fact, they came to look forward to the next assignment, just to find what great things might await them at the next venue.

One of the things that we have found that makes Austin great is the numerous lush city parks. They have set aside over 16,000 acres for 206 parks, 12 nature preserves and 26 green belts. Less than a mile and a half from our apartment is Walnut Creek Park. It's just under 300 acres with six miles of easy trails. So we headed out twice this week and were surprised at finding this beautiful public space right next door, with a creek swollen from all the recent rains. The riparian area well illustrates the indigenous limestone strata that is ever-present in this area. Texas limestone or sandstone will eventually serve as our new home's exterior. I hope you enjoy the pics at our gallery.

After I left the Army in 1978, my first private sector job was selling computers. I often found that when a prospect bought a competitor's product instead of mine, that no matter how the product actually performed, to hear the prospect tell it, it was the greatest purchase decision they had ever made. Sort of the opposite of buyer's remorse. Let's call it buyer's "morse" just for fun.
We don't want to have buyer's morse about our decision to move to Texas. We will either like it or not. It will either work out well or not. But it will have a lot to do with enthusiastically finding what makes this area special and jumping in, health permitting. And it will have an even greater thing to do with the opportunities the decision brings for our children. So far that area looks pretty good.

But I promise...no buyer's "morse" code from me!

Cosmic Symphony

I thought I would take a chance and share with you a little bit of what I have been learning lately. This might seem like heady stuff but I think you might like the ending.

Since college I have been interested in physics but never had a chance to pursue the field. So I have been doing a lot of reading about the topic now that I have the time. Recently I attended a lecture at U.C. Davis. The speaker was an icon in theoretical physics, especially in what has been called "String Theory".

For many years, scientists thought that the smallest particles of matter were protons, neutrons and electrons. But some time ago they discovered that even these elementary atomic particles were made up of a whole menu of sub-atomic particles given such strange names as quarks, neutrinos, muons, etc. In fact, they have found 19 or more even smaller building blocks of matter.

Scientists didn't like how "messy" this is. For some reason, nature is supposed to be more symmetrical or "elegant" as they like to say. Therefore they began to suspect that there might be even smaller fundamental building blocks of nature. Because these new particles would be so very very small, current technology can not see them at all. They only have indirect knowledge of their existence. However, they can prove mathematically that they should exist.

They now believe that all matter could be made up of the same particle, an infinitesimally small vibrating string. It is analogous to a violin string. The only difference between one substance and another is the frequency and resonance of the comprising vibrating strings. It seems that music may be the underlying structure holding all things together.

To give you an idea though of how small a theoretical string is, consider that the distance from a person to the outer edge of the known universe is on the same scale as the distance from a person down to a string. Pretty small huh? But isn't it interesting that man, God's highest creation, sits right in the middle, size wise, of His total creation?

Randy Jackson of American Idol fame was once asked why he thought that Idol was so very popular. In a rather profound moment he simply said, "everybody needs music in their lives." Music is an "instrumental" (ha!) part of our life, all through our lives. Could it be that music touches something very basic within us all, something primeval? We all wonder why music can stir up such deep emotions and responses. But it's probably no wonder to God.

Could it be that we are all part of a great cosmic symphony with a Divine conductor arranging music all throughout creation?

It may take decades before this can be proven but the possibility has stirred a renewed interest in theoretical physics not seen since the golden years of Einstein's E=MC2. Even after all his achievements, Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life chasing the idea of this one unifying particle theory or, as they have now coined, "The Theory of Everything", but he came up short.

So I look forward now to listening to a new icon at UT. I'll be watching his lecture schedule as he is also one of most prominent proponents of String Theory. I suspect I will be listening to music, both on the drive to his remarks, and throughout his lecture as well.

Play on...

We're not in Kansas Anymore

Today we got wired...with Cable TV (300+ channels and nothing on), digital phone (free local & long distance for one year) and high-speed Internet service. Time Warner calls it Road Runner and the 3-part package runs less than $100 a month! So no more trips to the apartment business center to try and stay connected.

BTW our apartment phone number is 512-906-0637 and we will keep the cell of 916-622-0183 until our family package expires. So what's been happening?

First order of business was getting Texas license plates. To do that we needed a vehicle. We found a car on-line ahead of our move and it was wonderful to have it waiting for us the day after our arrival. We bought a 2007 Previa, actually known as a Toyota Sienna Van. Karen drives while I sprawl out across the 2nd row of seats. We really love it and it meets our needs perfectly. Check out the gallery for pics. We put it to good use right away as my 2nd cousin Karen Manhart was in Austin for a wedding and needed a ride to the airport to fly back to Sacto. So after a brief visit and lunch she made the popular Southwest connection. We will be looking into Express Jet in the near future too, as they have started low cost direct service from San Antonio to Sacto.

We knew we weren't in CA anymore when local TV reported that they're expecting a very bad flea season! Karen also met a few fire ants while checking in on our property. But we had never seen our parcel in summer before, fully leafed out, and it is beautiful. We are also looking into a couple of nearby parcels, just in case we have some camp followers in the distant future. We met some new neighbors that had just transplanted from the Northeast to be near their children that also live in The Arbors. Imagine that!

We have narrowed down contractors to two bidders and hope to get final numbers next week. Best guess is 7-8 months to move in. We can't turn around at this point anyway as we were forced to surrender our CA driver's licenses in exchange for new Texas ones. Our license numbers are one digit apart just like Michael and Sharon's. They will be over later today to help us finalize all the new connections and maybe go swimming if the weather permits.

So far the weather has been very hospitable with some rain most days. Austin has had record spring rainfall and everything is very green, yet not too humid at this point. We have been thinking of that special family member who has a heat-related skin problem. Even though it gets very hot here, we think the extra moisture might actually help the condition. Just a thought.

It is hard to believe that when we got married 34 years ago today that our dream back then of retiring in Austin would come true so quickly. BTW my meds are affecting my memory so it may not have actually been Austin. But I know our dream was to experience every new adventure together. So it remains to be seen what new adventures the next 34 years will bring. But for now we hope to fully embrace the Austin Adventure and to endeavor to keep in touch. We hope you will consider doing the same.

Goodbyes to Good Friends & Family

When we collectively decided to go to Austin well over a year ago it was impossible to project ahead to the emotions we would have when the time finally came to go especially emotions about people. Initially we characterized our departure not as us leaving, but as us inviting others to share the journey with us. We knew down deep inside that it was not very realistic for relatives to simply drop their lives and move to Austin but it was a romantic notion and felt better than to simply feel we were leaving them behind. I have openly wept and mourned the pending separation from close family. But even with the tears, I still believe that we are rightly headed in a new direction. And...thank Southwest for those occasional tremendous fares for quick returns and reunions.

Today we said goodbye to some good friends we met in 1990, Martin and Joy Cherrington. Actually Martin was my boss from 1990 to 1996 and we have remained in close contact ever since. Karen developed an equal kinship with his wife Joy. I don't know how often your employer also becomes a close friend but it did with Martin. So today we broke bread, reminisced about the good, bad and ugly and speculated about our respective futures. I don't know what it is in life when you really connect with someone and develop a close affection. I think it is rare for all of us. But when it does happen, its hard to leave and not look over your shoulder. But as it is with any good friend, they want your best and they will always be there for you.

Done Deal - Well Almost

June 14th we set sail on The S.S. Southwest for a one way ride to Austin. Our home of 18 years in Newcastle CA passes into the hands of another family to enjoy on the 15th. Our first nine months in country we will be suffering at the San Paloma Texas Adaption Center (see related links for what it's like to suffer in Texas for $675 a month). Our secure unit (lovingly arranged by Michael & Sharon) under 24 hour watch will be:


12501 Tech Ridge Blvd. #1516
Austin, TX 78753.

If we successfully adapt and our builder is on-time, we will eventually be allowed to move to:

375 Arbors Circle
Elgin, TX 78621

They will allow us to keep our cell phone 916-622-0183 until they discover that the area code is a bit farther west of Austin than we represented.

Our travels and travails will be chronicled regularly at this blog. Here is plenty of information that will allow you to email, snail-mail or call. We hope to hear from you so we don't lose heart. Plus, we might owe you money and Texas is not an extradition state. Stay tuned...