A Miscellany of Projects - Gaming, SCA Combat, Arts & Sciences, and Travel

Hidden between Leander and Burnet, well off the beaten path, is Flanigan's Wine and Spirits .  Flanigan's storefront is  located in an old brick building in Bertram, with their production facility across the street.  Immediately upon entering, the first thing you notice is the spectacular decor - they have done a remarkable job of simulating a late-19th Century through Depression-era saloon-hotel, with alcoves, nooks, and private tables scattered across two stories and false doors giving the illusion of hotel rooms, a grand ballroom, and a much larger interior than is actually the case.  A large fireplace and common space dominates one side of the main room, and a bar runs the length of the other, with tables between. I have been to Flanigan's repeatedly, and each time have taken a slightly different approach.  The first time we were there, the proprietors, Kevin and Kathleen Flanigan, were quite busy, but got to us within fifteen minutes; the second, we arrived...

As I've said before elsewhere , I've stayed at a fair number of luxury hotels at this point.  I've stayed in the cheapest rooms available in some, and expensive rooms in others, and my standards have drifted some over the years.  What I have never done, until now, is felt disappointed in a hotel that I had looked forward to staying in. The   Hilton Palacio del Rio   was a disappointment.  I was primed to enjoy my stay, and there are touches to it that I   really  like.  At the same time, though, the construction of the hotel dictates that its rooms are basically those of a large, well-maintained Hampton Inn.  To understand why I was primed to enjoy it, and what that construction dictates, I will have to tell the story of the Palacio del Rio, and of how I found out about it. In 1967, Conrad Hilton faced a problem.  Simply put, there was no Hilton luxury hotel in convenient distance of the 1968 Hemisfair - the World's Fair held in San Anto...

As I discussed   elsewhere , my wife and I went to San Antonio for her birthday, and for one of those days went on a tour of alcohol acquisition in central Texas.  I've already covered the meaderies we visited - Rohan in La Grange and Texas Mead Works in Hye - and here I will cover the other three stops. Hye Cider Company   is, by a quirk of brewing, the oldest meadery in Hye - a cyser is a hybrid made with pears or apples and honey in various proportions, and Hye Cider stocks mostly cyser rather than purebred cider, which uses primarily fruit sugars for fermentation.  That is hardly its only claim to fame, but it is worth noting because my first memory of Hye Cider Company is a few years ago, watching honeybees trying to collect sugars from their countertop.  Their entire sales area is open to the outside world, which can impact tasting flavors depending on the season.  Colder weather tends to suppress some of the aromatic components of taste, while hot we...

Over the years, my wife and I have become drinkers.  Perhaps more importantly, we have a defined palate.  We have a   preferred Washington bourbon provider  (Heritage Distilling Company, for those who don't want to click through, in various spots in the Pacific Northwest), a   preferred Washington cider provider  (Finnriver Cider, in Chimacum, WA), a   preferred Texas meadery  (Dancing Bee, in Rogers, TX), have made elaborate side-trips to stop at   a meadery we like   (Redstone Meadery, Boulder, CO), and have even occasionally made borderline-dangerous U-turns in the rain to stop at   meaderies we spotted from the road   (The Meading Room, Sonoita, AZ).  We have a  preferred import brand of mead  (Dansk Mjød).  It's so far-gone that we currently have something along the lines of twenty stored gallons of homebrew and are considering getting a still. Especially when it comes to mead, in other words, we have s...

Over the July 4th weekend, my wife and I took a trip to San Antonio and environs to celebrate her birthday.  We stayed at the   Emily Morgan Hotel   on Alamo Plaza, in one of their Alamo-view rooms.  I narrowed the choices for this stay to the Emily Morgan and the   Menger ; both are excellent historic hotels with their own stories, and my choice boiled down in the end to the fact that I have a Hilton Honors account and the Emily Morgan is a Hilton hotel. The Emily Morgan is on the north side of Alamo Plaza adjacent to the courthouse and post office, and consists of two wings of fourteen stories each, in a V-shape, with a bell tower or lookout on top of the junction of the V.  There is a pool on the second floor; while it was open, we did not use it.  We also did not take advantage of the hotel restaurant, Oro, or the bar or room service, so I cannot comment on any of these amenities.  We stayed in Room 407, on the southeast corner of the south wi...

Mother Neff State Park is a small-to-medium park located between Waco and Gatesville in central Texas.  Like much of the modern Texas State Park system, it owes its existence to Civilian Conservation Corps labor in the 1930s, and many of the CCC structures are still on site, including as a rental cabin which we did not use but could be useful as a getaway. We went there as part of our continuing program to acclimate the kids to hiking.  The hiking trails at Mother Neff range from extremely easy mowed trails across level grassland to short periods of moderate-difficulty trails across rocky ground.  The overall difficulty, and trail length, for taking the largest and most-difficult currently open trail loop, is easy, about four miles, with plenty of opportunities to stop and look around, so it is an excellent entry-level hike for children, dogs, et cetera, and in March-April it is generally temperate and cool enough not to become a grueling exercise in self-flagellation....