Where's the heat?

I know that we haven't had a 100°F day since we moved here. It's been kind of rainy, with some hurricane remnants passing through first, then a tropical depression, then some tropical storm remnants the past few days. The weatherman was talking about this on the 6 o'clock news just now, so I thought I'd share some of his Triple Digit Temperature Trivia.

Average number of 100 degree days each year in Austin: 11.4

Greatest number of 100 degree days in one year: 69 (1925) In 2009 we had 68!

Average date of the first 100 degree day: July 11th

Average date of the last 100 degree day: August 20th

Earliest 100 degree day: May 4th (1984)

Latest 100 degree day: October 2nd (1938)

Years without a 100 degree day: 10 (1987, 1979, 1975, 1973, 1968, 1919, 1908, 1907, 1906, 1904)

The highest recorded temperature was 112 °F (44 °C) on September 5, 2000

On the forecast tonight, he says that we can expect to hit 100°F by Monday. Yay.

Allergies

Back in spring 2009, Logan had several cases, back-to-back, of bronchitis. She was pretty sick for a while, and when she got better her doctor did an allergy RAST test. It came back with tons of positives, several really big positives. But since she didn't have many outward symptoms and hadn't had any trouble with the foods that were positive, he said we could just wait and see. Then we moved to North Carolina, and she was OK for that period of time.

Now that we're back in Texas (cedar land) and have a dog, I thought I better take her to an allergist before she starts getting symptomatic. Since we got the dog, she's had some problems with hives on her arms when she holds the dog. At the first visit last week, she was diagnosed with RAD and put on a daily inhaler. He asked us to come back for scratch testing to confirm the blood test results. That's what we did today.

The photo is her back after about 3 minutes. She ended up positive on her back for 53 out of 54 allergens. They retested the one negative on her arm, and it came up positive within 2 minutes.

We're headed back tomorrow to discuss the results and come up with a plan for allergy shots.

More Austin

• Austin is home to the 5th largest university in the country. University of Texas has over 50,000 students.
• UT stadium holds 100,199
• Austin is the only city in the world still known to operate moonlight towers
• Barton Springs is a natural pool filled by an underground spring that stays at 68°F year-round
• Austin has its own mascot - Leslie Cochran

All About Austin

Since I'm back home, I'm enjoying getting reacquainted with the area. I thought I'd share some info on the blog, and maybe discover some new stuff I didn't know before.

• Austin is the 15th largest city in America
• The metro area population is 1.5 million - 735,000 in Austin city limits
• 300 days of sunshine annually, with an avg year-round temp of 68.5°F
• Austin is home to North America’s largest urban bat population, with up to 1.5 million Mexican free- tailed bats roosting under the Congress Avenue Bridge from April through November (there's also a smaller bat colony underneath IH 35 at McNeil Rd in Round Rock - we used to see them every evening as I took the girls to gymnastics)
• Austin has about 1500 Airstream Cuisine vendors, who sell delicious food right out of mobile kitchens (there is a Hey Cupcake! trailer just outside of our neighborhood)
• Our favorite Austin eateries are Rudy's BBQ, Texadelphia, Chuy's, Mangia
• Every year, there is a celebration of Eeyore's Birthday at Pease Park, where there is live music, food, drink, and a festival type atmostphere. Oh, and everyone comes in costume.

And... we're back!

So yeah, I live in Austin. Feels damn good to say that again. Cass got here about 4 weeks ago, and the kids and I got here 3 weeks ago. It's already home.

We love our new house. I've pretty much gotten everything unpacked. We have to get some new furniture to go in our family room, and we need some new bookcases. When we get that done, we can unpack the rest of the boxes (mostly just books).

I have submitted all the paperwork to get the kids registered in their schools. Cameron needs 2 vaccinations (chicken pox booster and meningoococcal) before they will actually register her. She's getting them tomorrow. Her middle school does an Eagle Camp for incoming 6th graders and new students - so she'll go to that in early August. Logan and Luke will go to meet the teacher night, probably the Friday before school starts. I've ordered school supply kits for all of them.

Since we didn't already have enough to do, we adopted a rescue dog just over a week ago. It has gone far better than I was expecting. We ended up with a younger dog (puppy) than I wanted, but he's a Yorkie mix and he's pretty darn cute and friendly. The kids have done all of the housetraining cleanup without complaint. I hope that he's pretty trained by the time school starts. His name is Bernie.

I am currently looking at a program for CLS (clinical laboratory science). UT doesn't really have anything that I want to do, but ASH does. That's right, Austin State Hospital has a CLS training program. It's one year, and it would start for me in September 2011. I'm going to apply, but I've got to really think about it. And what I would do with it when I'm finished.

And just to prove to Marcus that there are some sane people who live in Texas :), this is an article about a school district that has dropped abstinence-only sex-ed in favor of abstinence plus sex-ed. We're not in either of the school districts mentioned (San Marcos and Lake Travis) - but Lake Travis is literally on the other side of the river from us. Of course, my kids all get their sex-ed info from me.