Every time there’s the slightest amount of snow in Central Texas, the entire city of Austin shuts down. Usually, this is an overreaction.

Today was different. When I got up this morning, it was already sleeting. A couple of hours later, it turned to snow, and it’s been snowing on and off since then. In nearly four decades in Austin, I’m not sure I can remember when we’ve gotten so much snow.

The Wife and I made the trek last weekend to Arlington for the Big 12 Championship between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Texas Longhorns. It was our first trip to Jerry World, so we of course took lots of pictures.

We were sitting in the lower level, so the pictures were much closer than we’re used too.

Just FYI, the picture of Colt McCoy’s butt was taken by the Wife. I accept neither credit nor blame for it.

While I was shooting video of the pre-game between the Kansas Jayhawks and the Texas Longhorns, the Wife took the following pictures.

Two hours before every home game, the Texas Longhorns players and coaches walk from their buses, through the north gate of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, and across the field to their locker room to get ready for the game. They are greeted by hundreds of cheering fans around the gate, both inside and outside the stadium.

I took this as an opportunity to try out my new Flip Video UltraHD. I actually haven’t shot very much video before, so it was definitely a learning experience.

Wednesday evening, the Texas Longhorns football team held an open practice at Frank Denius Fields (southeast corner of 26th Street and Red River) from 7pm to 9pm. Although it was raining prior to the practice and for the first thirty minutes of the practice), it looked like as many as two thousand people showed up.

I stayed for the first hour and came home with the following pictures.

The wife and I took a four day-three night cruise on Carnival recently to celebrate our first anniversary. We sailed from the Port of Miami, spent a day in the Bahamas, and then took a circular route back. I’ll post more pictures from the trip later, but in the meantime, here are some pictures of [...]

The Wife was off on Thursday, so the two of us drove to Georgetown, Texas to take one of the tours at Inner Space Cavern. This series of caves was discovered by the Texas Highways Department while they were surveying for Interstate 35.

We took the Adventure Tour, as the Explorer Tour was sold out for the day. As usual, taking pictures was one of my main goals. Unfortunately, the tour guide kept us going at a fairly fast pace. As a result, I only got wide angle photos, not the close-ups I really wanted.

A few miles north of San Antonio you’ll find Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, a drive-through wildlife preserve of herbivores. The Wife and I drove out there last weekend to try out my new Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 lens. As it turned out, the animals were way too close for such a long lens.

Part of the entrance fee gets you a bag of feed for the critters, which draws the hungry ones right up to your vehicle. In fact, we even had an ostrich stick its head a foot or two into the Chevy. That’s something that doesn’t happen every day.

Just south of New Braunfels on Interstate 35 is a reptile park that has been both fascinating people and creeping them out for more than four decades. Opened in 1967, Snake Farm was purchased by Eric Trager in December 2007, Snake Farm has been renamed Animal World and Snake Farm, although the reptiles are still the star attractions.

The Wife, the in-laws and I went to the Rock Rock Express game Friday night. I took the Nikon Coolpix P80, but apparently the Dell Diamond doesn’t have any camera restrictions, as there was at least one guy in the stands with what looked like a 70-200mm lens.

I wonder if they’d let me bring the Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 in.