If I could be queen for a day, I'd wear these Michael Kors shoes and not fall down. Because I love love love shoes. And I like these an awful lot. Alas, the price tag is a wee bit high.

Aha! I have a brilliant idea. Since I love shoes so much, I should start another blog on this website. It can be devoted to just shoes. Then I have an actual, legitimate excuse for trolling the shoe sites constantly.

We had some extra granite so Danny, aka Mr. Neat & Organized, decided to use it to construct a nice parking spot in the side yard for the trailer he uses to transport the motorcycle:

It does seriously seem extravagant to craft a parking spot for a trailer out of sheets of granite. But we've had the stacks of granite for years and couldn't make up our mind what to do with it. So he put some of it to use. The cougar sticker on front top of the trailer is from our alma mater, the University of Houston.

Continuing onto the theme from yesterday of wads of insect-like creatures, I give you Texas mosquitoes:

That is only a small patch of the many mosquitoes that are coating the outside of our house and all the other houses, businesses, and the general atmosphere around the entire Texas gulf coast. We had so much rain from the two tropical storms that rolled through here last week. That rain made a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. Oh by the way, it is devilishly difficult to take pictures of the mosquitoes.

The UPS guy came to make a delivery today and I did not want to open the door at all. But he rang the doorbell a couple of times and wanted to deliver the package directly to me. I finally opened the front door and ran outside, slamming it behind me to avoid the mosquitoes getting into the house. I practically grabbed the package from him and said 'good day.' But he wanted to chat! I am standing there swatting mosquitoes and he wants to talk about when we were moving and should he continue to leave our packages on the front step, etc. I finally got rid of him and went back inside to treat the mosquito bites I had acquired all over me.

This weekend has been busy. We have houseguests from Mississippi and Alabama. I picked them up at the airport yesterday. Took them to breakfast at La Madeliene's in the Rice Village. Drove across Houston to LaPorte where Danny took us on a driving tour of the jobsite where his company is working on an erosion control project along the Houston Ship Channel. The mosquitos almost carried us away. We saw lots of pelicans.

Then we visited the San Jacinto Monument. I have always intended to visit this site but just never got around to it. That is one of the good things about having people visit from out of town: you get to take them to the local tourist sites.

The monument commemorates the Battle of San Jacinto where Texas won its freedom from Mexico during the Texas Revolution. You can read more about the monument here. Toot would not go up in the elevator to the top so she and I sat in the museum while our visitors rode the elevator to the top of the monument. Then we drove around by the Battleship Texas which is docked across the street.

After our Texas history lessons for the day, we visited a shop on Westheimer that we like called BJ's Antiques. They have antiques and metal art. Then we drove down the street to the Galleria to have lunch at the Grand Lux Cafe. We had their awesome sloppy joe sandwiches. These are so good. We first had them at the Grand Lux location in Chicago last summer. Now we have our own Grand Lux in Houston so we can get our fix of these great sandwiches made with the meat from beef short ribs. We followed that with dessert: creme brulee.

We spent the evening visiting with friends and family at our house. And finally got to bed late. Today was a more laid-back day. Swimming. Lunch at Fuddruckers. A visit to Target. A stop at Office Max. A leisurely supper.

Taking my cue from Shauna Glenn: What are some of my favorite things lately

Word Warp on my iPhone. It is addictive!

Sweet tea from Chick-Fil-A.

Moo business cards. They have the coolest graphics for business cards.

Handmade silver jewelry from Etsy designers. Like this ring from Christinapdesigns :

Hummus & chips. This is turning out to be the summer of hummus. Danny and I have been snacking on it every day. Our current favorite is the spicy roasted red pepper hummus. I know that I can easily make my own hummus but lately we've been buying it ready-made.

Sunday I spent a good deal of time cleaning one of our vehicles. It was overdue for a good detail job. Of course, that reminded me of a story:

One evening when Danny and I were just newlyweds, living in our first apartment, he asked me for my car keys. He was going to the car wash to clean my car for me. Never one to complain about someone cleaning my car for me unasked, I handed them over as fast as I could.

It was about 7 in the evening when he drove away. I figured he would be about half an hour so I ordered pizza to be delivered. This was back in the day when Dominoes delivered in 30 minutes or less. And pizza delivery was quite a novelty to me because that was the first time in my life I had lived in a place with pizza delivery. Don't laugh! I had always lived in small towns.

8 pm - Danny wasn't back yet. Pizza had been delivered. I ate my part.

8:30 - Wondering where he is. This was back in the years before we had cell phones in our possession so I couldn't just call him.

9 pm - How the hell dirty was my car anyway? It shouldn't take that long to clean it.

9:30 pm - Oh My God! What if he's out messing around on me with another woman and the "cleaning the car" thing was just an excuse? I'm mad. Really mad. He's gonna hear about this when he gets home.

10 pm - This is ridiculous. I would go look for him. But where to look?

10:30 pm - I drink a beer or two. It helps calm my nerves. Should I call his friends? Nah. Should I call my friends? Surely there is a reasonable explanation for taking this long to clean a car? It really wasn't that dirty, I thought.

11 pm - Danny walks in the door. I'm asleep on the couch and I wake up and give him a piece of my mind. He claims to have really been at the car wash cleaning and detailing my car. I storm off to bed.

The next morning I go downstairs to my car. It looks brand new. I mean it looks really really good inside and out. Not a speck of dirt or grime anywhere. I guess I have to believe him because here is the proof. And sure enough, over the many years we have been together, he has continued to clean our vehicles to utter sparkling newness. It just takes him hours and hours. But now I know that his attention to detail is boundless when it comes to cleaning. And organizing. But that's another story. Maybe I'll show a picture of his closet soon. The hangers are all matching and lined up EXACTLY 1 inch apart.

For the past three weeks my daughter attended a summer program for gifted and talented children. The location of the program was an hour away from where we live and I drove her there each day. I would drop her off each morning and then take my laptop and work from a local coffee shop all day. Traffic was not lovely. At all. But it was rather nice to get out of my regular office.

Part of the summer program was teaching them how to get by in the world as a gifted person. Because gifted children are different. They think differently. They are very creative and smart. They are the future leaders of our world in so many areas like arts and sciences. But sometimes other children pick on them because they are different. I appreciate that there is a program available for these children. I was also a gifted child. But we had a gifted program in our school so I went to the classes every week during the school year.

At the end of the program there was an entire day of show-and-tell where the parents and family members got to see the amazing things the children learned over the three weeks. The children wrote computer programs using object oriented programming, they learned entire tap dance routines, they put on an Iron Chef competition, and they designed houses from the blueprints to the decorating. Those are just a few of the many many classes the program offered.

I snapped a picture of a particularly funny item on the show-and-tell tour. It is pictured above. It is a Cross Bow Flyer that was created in the Inventions class. The young man who made this intended it to "help the Air Force" in the "Protection of Bombers." It was one of the fancier inventions because it featured gold coins! Just think what these children will create someday if their imaginations are continually encouraged.

My daughter downloaded an app called DoodleBuddy onto my iPhone. It makes for great fun when we are waiting to be seated at a restaurant. Last week she took pictures of everyone in our party and "decorated" them with DoodleBuddy. Unfortunately, they all made me promise on everything that is important, not to post their pictures on my blog. But of course, I can post my daughter's picture:

I am having a glass of chardonnay, which I don't normally drink since it tastes too "oaky" for me. But the bottle was left over from my BlogHer 2010 planning party last week and god knows we can't let alcohol go to waste around here.

I finished mowing the backyard at 8:30 this evening.  I have one of those eco-friendly push mowers that my friends and family think I am completely crazy for owning. You charge the mower by plugging it into a standard outlet for 12 hours. Then you get about 1 hour of mowing time out of it. It costs about 40 cents to charge it for 12 hours. And truthfully, I am such a wuss that I can't mow for more than an hour at a time anyway. I mean really. The Texas heat and humidity will kill you in an hour. I have no idea how the construction workers around here stay alive. So I wait until 7:30 at night to even begin mowing.

And yes, I have a lawn service sometimes. But I use the mowing as way to get my exercise. I hate hate hate to exercise. So I have a mower that is not self-propelled. Yes, I push the thing around in 100 degree heat. It is an amazing workout! And there is something very satisfying about mowing the grass. I can't explain it.

And it is very satisfying to NOT be contributing emissions from my yard equipment.

Danny did the weed-eating while I mowed this evening. Bless his heart, after a 12 hour day at work and a 2-hour round trip drive, he still had enough energy to weed-eat the back yard.

And I made tacos for dinner. Because I was tired. And I was working all day too. I got home at 4:30. And this keeping-the-house-spotless thing is driving me crazy. When you have your house on the market for sale, you have to keep everything perfect and I hate it. We never really have a messy house (mainly because I live with one of the greatest Neat Freaks in the world.) But this is something else altogether. We have to keep it show-room ready and it is grating on my nerves.

So that is why I have my glass of chardonnay. I know. You had to read this whole thing to find out why I am really drinking the chardonnay this evening. Well, there it is. Now I am going to bed early.

I have been strangely captivated by the Doctor Who series on BBCAmerica lately. I watched a couple of episodes of the old Doctor Who many, many years ago. And I was not impressed at all. But the new Doctor Who, that I like.

Last Thursday Danny and I watched an episode we had recorded on the dvr called "Blink." It was an episode from 2007 and came highly recommended by Danny's dad. In fact, he told us that it was the best Doctor Who episode he had ever seen.

So we watched it. And we liked it. But it was creepy. And sad beyond words. There are these stone angels that come alive when you aren't looking at them. Hence, the title of the show was Blink. Because you don't even want to blink when one of these things is coming after you. If you blink or look away, they kill you by sending you back in time with only the clothes on your back.

I couldn't stop thinking about this episode. I even woke up during the night Thursday and had what might have been night terrors. I didn't go back to sleep for about 2 hours. I'm telling you that whole episode with the stone angels was creepy. And I still can't figure out why this resonated so strongly with me. But I can sleep now. And I am not scared to get up in the night to go to the bathroom in my own house. Because that would just be silly, right? And yet, Blink still sits in my mind and pokes its stoney fingers into my consciousness every so often these past few days.