"Tea for Two"

One of the many charitable organizations in Austin is called St. Louise House.  This group sponsors transition houses for homeless women with children.  The group also provides these families with many essentials for setting up a new home, including bedding, linens, cookware, dishes, flatware and other such items, which the families can keep and take with them when they are ready to move into a home or apartment of their own.  Their fund raising has been quite successful; at present there are about 35 residences available as transition housing for homeless mothers and children!

A few weeks ago, the organization held their annual Spring Tea and Silent Auction, which was held at Green Pastures, an historical Victorian residence that was converted to a fine dining establishment many years ago.  The residence was left mostly intact with individual dining rooms in various rooms that once were parlors, sitting rooms,  bedrooms, etc.  It is beautifully appointed and sits among a beautifully landscaped site that is very peaceful and serene.  There are several peacocks roaming the property which lends a rather exotic feel to the property.   It was a lovely setting for the Tea and Auction.  The weather was perfect.  The food was delicious, the speaker not too long-winded, and the auction items were unusual.  In addition, there were some activities outside for the younger children.  All in all, very well done!

Ratchlet  has recently become a supporter of the organization, and as this year's theme was Mothers and Daughters, she invited me to join her along with M-T-G for "Tea for Two!"  (Well actually, in our case it was "Tea for  Three!")  As you might expect, the attendees were dressed in lovely Spring dresses and more than a few of the women wore hats....very elegant and sophisticated!

In a break from my usual routine, I actually brought my camera along!  Not only did I bring the camera, I even remembered to take a few photos!  I'm still not much of a photographer, but I thought you might enjoy seeing me and my girls out for High Tea!

 

Just FYI,
Ratchlet  was wearing heels, I was not!
We are  much closer in height than it looks!

M-t-G was not wearing heels and
she is a bit taller than I....sigh!
How did that happen??

As I mentioned there were several peacocks roaming around or perching in the big old oak trees! (Seeing a peacocks take a flying leap into a tree is unnerving!!) Anyway, as we were leaving, a WHITE peacock was strutting around across the street from the grounds. I don't think I have ever seen a white peacock before. It was quite stunning. Of course, it did not spread his tail as I had hoped. Still, I managed a couple of shots for those of you who have never seen one either! Truly a nice addition to an enjoyable afternoon!

A really beautiful bird....

...but when they open their mouths,
the very loud squawk that comes out
really doesn't fit their elegant look at all!! 

"They Call the Wind Maria"

There has been a wind advisory all day today and it is still in effect until 10:00 pm tonight  We've had winds of 20-30 m.p.h. with gusts as high as 50 m.p.h.  That's windy!  In fact, Hurricane force winds begin at 70 m.p.h., just to put it into perspective!    There was no precipitation accompanying the wind.  In fact it was most sunny outside....with a lot of blowing!

Trees and shrubs are bending and whipping around, and fences are blowing down all over town.  Tree branches and yard debris litter lawns and parking lots.  Dust and dirt fill the air at times, looking very much like a dust storm that you often see in open desert-y kinds of terrain.  Street signs and stoplights are bouncing around in the wind and look none too secure.  I didn't see any that actually came loose, but it wouldn't have surprised me if it did happen!

I was having lunch in a restaurant this afternoon and the lights flickered and went out  about 5 or 6 times.  Every time the lights when out and the emergency lights came on, you could hear a chorus of groans and muffled yells of frustration coming out of the kitchen.  As I mentioned it was a mostly sunny day, so the seating areas of the restaurant were not plunged into darkness periodically.  There were lots of windows, so you could still see.  The kitchen however, is buried in the middle of the building with no windows at all.  I surely wouldn't want to be slicing, dicing, or frying something in the almost dark!  And after the sun went down, the almost dark was probably a lot darker!

The servers said that it had been happening all day.  The lights didn't stay out for long, probably no more that 30-45 seconds, but when it happens 5 or 6 times in an hour for about 5 hours, that's got to be annoying!  The servers also said that every time the lights go out, of course, that means that the computers go out too.  That was wreaking havoc on orders to the kitchen and on creating the bills for customers, because unlike light bulbs which immediately re-light when the electricity comes back on, computers took a long time to get back up and running again.  I overheard part of a conversation from a table across from me, and learned that the mini-outages had been happening in the nearby mall as well.

To give credit where due, however, my lunch was not affected at all that I could tell.  It was served in a timely manner and was piping hot just as it should have been.  Kudos to the staff of The Olive Garden.  Nice job guys!

It is frequently windy in Austin, partly due to all the hills and valleys (I think), but today was over the top.  Because of the high winds they have also issued a fire weather alert.  The wind could quickly fan the smallest spark into a major wildfire.  Since the wildfires of a couple of winters ago in several sections around Austin, everyone is aware that, yes, it could happen here again!  So they are a bit more vigilant about fire safety.

I have never much cared for wind.  I'm a small (okay....short) person and if I'm outside, some of those gusts can make me feel like I could just be picked up and blown away.  Strong winds usually mean that a cold front is moving into the area, so usually the winds are cold too.  The wind chill for today as 49F while the actual temperature was in the low 60s.   This kind of wind blows cars around on the road and that is not a great feeling either!  As I sat in my car for a few minutes after lunch, I was bouncing around just like I was flying into turbulence at 30,000 ft!  It was disconcerting!

Since I got home, the winds have died down a little.  I can still hear things outside so it's still pretty blowy out there, but it's not too bad.  The good news is I don't see any evidence that the power went out (clocks are still correct) and our fence seems to be all in one piece, thank goodness.

According a lovely musical, named Paint Your Wagon, "....the rain is Bess, the fire Joe, and  They Call the Wind Maria", but today in Austin, they just call it a pain in the rump-us room!

"It Might As Well Be Spring"

This has been a pretty mild winter this year (at least so far.)  But today it skipped right over to Spring!  The high temperature today was right around 80F.  Sunny, slight breeze and 80 degrees!   "It Might As Well Be Spring!"  I didn't even need a sweater outside today.  Ahhhh, my kind of weather.

Austin's winters can be a real mixed bag.  Some years we get ice, freezing temps, even a bit of snow!   Other years it just is cold and damp with a lot of rain.  This year has been dry,  medium cold, with lots of grey skies but no real wintery-days.  We haven't had a really rainy winter in several years, which is really a shame because we are still officially in a drought.  This year there has been a bit of rain but  not enough to come anywhere close to ending the drought.

Lake Travis, which is actually part of the Lower Colorado river, is a good size resevoir, with a dam and everything.  It's not as large and impressive as the Hoover Dam, but the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) controls when and how much water is released from the  reservoir to flow downstream to other parts of Texas south of here.  The water level in the lake is significantly below normal (something like 16' low) so there just isn't that much water available to release.

I never realized it but evidently there are rice farmers south of Austin, somewhere along the course of the river.  Somehow I would never have thought of  Texas as a good place to grow rice.  If anything I would have thought that rice was grown in wet, kind of swampy, places with lots of rain.  Shows you what I know!  Nevertheless, Texas is a rice state!  How about that?  The water for the rice farms comes from the waters released from the reservoir at Lake Travis.  Well evidently, the LCRA is not going to release water any time soon   They can't, I guess.  The lake is already so low that this huge reservoir has islands!!  Really!  It's very sad looking.

Anyway, if they don't release water for the rice farmers, it will be a very poor year for rice (among other things).

I don't know much about climate change, or global warming, or water conservation other than what you hear on the news and such.  But with days in the upper 70s, not much precipitation (neither rain nor snow) while it is still the middle of February (!) even I have to admit that we need rain a lot more than we need more warm sunny days!   I think this is the third or fourth time I written about drought but it sure doesn't seem to be getting much better.

The Austin area is the Eastern edge of the Texas Hill Country.  It's supposed to be green, with lots of farms with produce and/or livestock.  If it doesn't start to rain occasionally and if the reservoir doesn't fill up pretty soon, our pretty, green, hilly part the State will begin to look like West Texas with everything brown, dry, windblown, and bare just like an old cowboy movie!  And that would NOT be good!

"My Kind of Town"

Austin has an un-official motto that is extremely popular and really true...."Keep Austin Weird!."   Now I don't know if Austin has an official motto, but for my money, I think the un-official one is just about perfect.

I had occasion to go into downtown Austin this afternoon.  While I was only on the fringes of downtown (i.e., south of the river), I wasn't in one of the quirky parts of the city.  It was a mix of offices, restaurants, and cultural stuff, pretty mainstream and quite well-travelled.  As I was waiting at a stop light while looking for a place to park, there was a guy walking by who was clean, dressed casually but not oddly, about 30 or so and carrying a backpack.  He was using his iphone, or ipad, or kindle or some sort of electronic gadget while he was walking.  On his right shoulder was a tail-twitching, highly alert squirrel.  The squirrel didn't appear to be attached to a tether or anything.  He was just sitting there looking around. Of course, it never occurred to me to whip out my phone/camera and snap a few pics.  It never does (sigh), I'm hopeless when it comes to photos, so I can't prove a thing!   Was he a pet or just hitchin' a ride??  Don't know, but it's not something you see every day.  Weird!

About an hour later, after I completed my errand, I was walking back to my car on the same street where the guy with the squirrel had been, and along came a cowboy riding a horse....neither the horse nor the cowboy were anything special, they weren't all gussied up like for a parade or a rodeo or anything....just a guy in jeans, a plaid shirt, boots, and a big Stetson riding a big brown horse.   Now I know that Austin is in Texas and Texas is home to lots of cowboys, but they are not typically riding down the street in Austin in the middle of rush hour!  Austin is a very urban city!   I've lived here 12 years and I've never seen a cowboy riding his horse through downtown before. I smiled, and the cowboy tipped his hat....very gallant!  Still.... Weird!

See, that un-official motto makes more sense now, doesn't it?    You just never know what you are going see when you're in Austin.  Keepin' it Weird!!     :)

"My Kind of Town?"  ---   yep, gotta love it!!

"Baby, It's Cold Outside"

For the last week or so, we have been having winter in Austin.  " Baby, It's Cold Outside"!  The low temps overnight have been in the high 20s, with daytime highs right around 50F.   Not my favorite weather, but bearable.  This, however, is not one of my usual (and futile) complaints about cold weather!  As I said, the highs around 50F with the sun shining, really doesn't feel too bad.  My entire exposure to the outside air is limited to the time it takes me to walk from my car to the entrance of the store, restaurant, house, or whatever I am visiting.  Hardly long enough to even get a real chill. 

Some plants, on the other hand, do not stand a chance!  This, of course, is not their fault.  It is just that there are some people who insist on planting things that are not meant to grow in this climate!  Not only do they plant the wrong things, they do nothing to protect them when the temps fall below their tolerance level.   Some folks just don't get the idea that in a battle between Man and Nature, Nature will ALWAYS win.  ALWAYS!

For instance, there is a house not far from here that I pass everyday on my way in and out of the neighborhood.  Several years ago, they put in a pool in their backyard.  The house was subsequently on the market and I went to an open house,  The backyard pool area was a lovely tropical paradise.  In the middle of summer it looked terrific, like a resort in the Caribbean, filled with lush plants and gorgeous blooms.  And in the corner of the yard were planted several Banana plants.  Banana plants have lovely, long leaves that can look like fronds due to how easily the leaves can be torn by wind.  

I know from the years I lived in Florida, that in the right place,  these trees can practically grow wild.  They are a lot like bamboo too, in that they spread over time.  They can grow to as much as 30 ft. tall, but are usually smaller than that.

 And as long as they are in the right climate they will grow for years.  But that is the trick.  The right climate....and Austin is not the right climate in the winter time!  Every time the temperature drops below freezing, the banana plants freeze!  The whole plant turns brown and the leaves just hang there dejectedly and look pathetic. 

The house close to us has had their bananas freeze about every other year!  Well, of course, they do.  Austin is not tropical, despite the 100F temps in the summer.  In the winter we can get frost, and snow, and ice and that most definitely is NOT tropical.

The first few times those bananas froze, I thought the owners must have replaced them because by Spring the bananas were lush and green.  But they have gone through this cycle several times now.  Either those plants can recover from the effects of a freeze (who knows?), or those people are spending beau coup bucks replacing a plant that doesn't belong here in the first place! 

It must be incredibly annoying to the plants, cuz believe me, "Baby It's Cold Outside!!"

"Fire and Rain"

Tonight I did something I have never, ever done in my whole entire life!

I have lived in Florida, Illinois, California, and Texas.  In Florida there are hurricanes, Illinois has tornadoes, California gets earthquakes, mudslides, and wildfires, Texas has drought which brings about great danger of fire. 

When I was 14, Hurricane Donna passed right through our town.  There was a lot of wind damage, broken windows, trees down, and a week without power or water and no school.  At 14 the one that had the biggest impact as no school!  A whole week without classes!  That wasn't bad news to us kids!

In Chicago, we had several tornado warnings and watches every year.  But despite having them all around us, I never even saw a funnel cloud.

In California, despite living there for 10 years, I never experienced a major quake.  The wildfires and mudslides were typically close to L.A., but we lived near San Jose and those things were not too much of a threat to that area.

And now here in Texas this is the third time since we came here that we have official drought and this is the worst of the three!  We haven't had rain for months, so now there are mandatory water restrictions.  The grass and trees are like tinder and crops and livestock are are extreme risk.  But the biggest danger is fire.

And today, the fires arrived.  There are severe wildfires and residential fires all around Austin....to the Southeast in Bastrop....to the Southwest in Spicewood....to the Northwest in Cedar Park....and to the North in Pflugerville....and only 5 miles South down the road from us in a development called Steiner Ranch.  According to the news there were somewhere between 20-30 homes destroyed in that development!!  There was heavy smoke visible to the South and West.  We could even smell the smoke by our house.  As fire goes, that is pretty damn close!  There are several mandatory evacuations being enforced.  And it has been extremely windy all day.

There hasn't been any mention made of immediate danger or evacuations for us, but wind and fire are a deadly combination and are capricious and unpredictable.    There is STILL no sign of rain anywhere in our immediate future, so once these types of fires start, it's up to firefighters and others to get it under control.  There is no help from the skies!

So tonight, the Big Guy and I packed up all of our photographs, especially the irreplaceable and treasured ones.  We got out our fire resistant box for important papers and added in some other things that we wanted to protect.  We (well, at least I, Mikey said he's get to it) packed a bag with some clean clothes, my medications, my good jewelry (of which there is very little!), my favorite hairbrush and makeup stuff, pajamas, some shoes, socks, clean undies, and my camera, phone, and Kindle.  All of them are packed and standing at the door to the garage, ready to load.

Space has been made in both cars.  If necessary, they can be loaded into the cars in about 5 minutes.  If we get a call to evacuate we will grab the laptop and the 2 CPUs, and can be out of the house in 10 minutes or less, and save our most important belongings to boot! 

We're as ready as we can be.  There are other things I wish we could carry out quickly, but the rest of the things are just....things!  Replaceable and without emotional ties.  But those things we love are already packed up and are ready to move; they will stay standing by the doorway until the damn drought is OVER and the rains are once again falling on our lands. 

And then, the only time I ever want to consider "Fire and Rain" is when I hear Sweet Baby James (Taylor) sing!!

Cripes, this has been one pip of a year! 

To my fellow Texas Bloggers, stay safe and stay alert!

"Rainy Days and Mondays"

And when it's Monday and it is raining cats, dogs, and elephants, that REALLY gets me down!!  I had been out today, as I have been for the last few months, to take M-t-G to her violin lesson.   Afterward, I had taken her back to her house and stayed till her mom came home from work.  It was right around the beginning of rush hour....never a good time to be out and about in Austin, trust me.

So I ran a couple of small errands, then went to get some dinner as a means for killing some time so that I wouldn't have to deal with the heaviest traffic getting home.  For a town the size of Austin, the amount of traffic can be unbelievable!  At about 6:30 I thought I'd have missed the worst of it so I decided to head for home.  All day it had been sunny, then a little cloudy, then back to sunny, but it was dry.....until I decided to head home.

While I was having my dinner, an enormous bank of black rain clouds had moved into the area.  I hadn't driven two blocks, when the rain started.  Of course, the ominous looking clouds moved northwest right along with me but the rain didn't get any heavier.  I thought I just might make it all the way home before it really let go.  WRONG!  The last three miles of the journey is when the deluge hit.  The big ugly clouds came to rest right over the area where I live....and it poured!  There was thunder and lots of lightning very close by.   It sounded like there might have been some hail, but I couldn't see any.  In truth, nobody could see much of anything!  For once most drivers had the good sense to slow waaaay down.  We had to, we couldn't see the road!  Or each other!!  It was a tad scary!

I've lived in places that frequently have pretty heavy rains (FL, CA), but today felt like the worst I had ever driven in.  I now know how Noah must have felt on the ark.  It was coming down so hard with so much water that the streets began to look like lakes....long, skinny, lakes  (some people might have said rivers, but not me, to me they were lakes---mostly because I didn't think of "rivers" before I thought of "lakes"!  lol!)

Anyway, I finally made it to my house and got safely inside the garage without having to row!  But it continued to rain, thunder, lightning, for another hour....still seeming stalled right over my house!  In fact, I think it's still sprinkling a bit now. 

I believe it's time to switch songs.  OK, all together now, "Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day."  Please?

"Mona Lisa"

Austin is a very active town.  With the University, and the State Capital, and the number of music performance venues and events, plus all the organizations that sponsor 5K, 10K, 1/2 marathons, there is ALWAYS something to do in Austin.  Some of the events are pretty straightforward and traditional like the races and concerts, some are more quirky like the Kite Festival, Eeyore's Birthday, and SXSW (South By Southwest - a uniquely Austin music event).  And those are just a few.  Weekends are chock full of events in various parts of the city and that is pretty cool.

Like most folks who live here, we don't go to everything!  In fact, the events that we actually attend are few and far between.  But the events go on without us very well! 

Through a quirk of scheduling the last two weekends we managed to attend events during both.  Its also kind of odd, considering how few we go to, that both weekends, we went to Art Festivals.  The one last week was the "fine arts" one sponsored by the Austin Arts Alliance.  This weekend was the Pecan Street Arts and Crafts Festival. 

I don't know if these kinds of shows are prevalent all across the country, but they had them in CA and now here.  Its the kind of thing that takes place in a park or by blocking off streets and having artist booths all lined up in the streets with food booths and entertainment stages thrown in.We first discovered this kind of festival when we lived in CA. 

The one last weekend was a juried show with an entrance fee.  The exhibitors were by invitation only, so the quality of the artwork displayed for sale, was quite high.  This weekend's was free and open to any vendor.  It tended more to crafty kinds of things like jewelry, stained glass, and really odd combinations of items like sun-catchers and hummingbird feeders, ceramics, and leather goods. 

Last weekend's show was a lot smaller, but nicely spread out over the street that was blocked off, not crowded at all.  We saw some beautiful pieces and several that we would have loved to have purchased, had we had a little more "discretionary" funds hanging around.  Of course the numbers of attendees were smaller too, making it easy to get to each booth and to linger looking at their work. 

This weekend's was HUGE, probably the largest we have ever been to.  According to their website, the Pecan Street event's attendence is usually around  (take a deep breath) 300,000 people over two days!!   I couldn't swear to it, of course, but I am pretty sure that all 300,000 were there this afternoon!!  It was packed, curb to curb people....and their dogs!  It was hot, crowded, and very, very loud. 

[Aside:  Why, oh why, do so many bands insist on keeping their speakers cranked up to a nearly intolerable level??  I love music, really I do, but not when it is so loud that I get an instant headache!]

Last week we saw just about every booth and explored almost the whole thing in about 2 1/2 hours.  Today, we only lasted about an hour and only got to about a third of it.  Then we went off and had a lovely lunch at the historic Driskoll Hotel.

Unfortunately we didn't come across an undiscovered "Mona Lisa" or a discounted Rodin sculpture at either event and so we came home empty handed.  Ahh, well, maybe next year!

"Another One Bites the Dust"

WARNING:  This post is about smoking, those of us who still smoke, and those who would grind it out of existence.  If you don't like smoking or reading about smoking, then don't read this!  

I am a fairly recent transplant to Austin so I had no opportunity to cast my ballot against efforts to legislate and control smoking by adults with the city limits.  Austin prohibits smoking in restaurants, public buildings, and a bunch ofother places, including bars!

There has been all this panic about how dangerous smoking is and how second hand smoke is even worse.  And one by one cities and states have surrendered to the rabid and fanatic crusaders who seem to think that their opinion is more important than mine.

I have always found it very telling that there has been very little effort anywhere to ban the sale of cigarettes completely. This country still subsidizes tobacco growing, for Pete's sake!!  Sooo, its okay to grow tobacco and its okay to sell tobacco, but not to smoke tobacco??  How hypocritical!!  All that lovely tax revenue, advertising money, etc. is a cash cow that the government freely and expediently takes and uses with no qualms.  If cigarettes, cigars, and pipes would disappear, so would all that money!   Can't have that!   So instead, we'll just hound smokers every single day and label them pariahs and outcasts!

About 30 years ago, after Koop's diatribe against smoking, we smokers began accommodating the escalating demands of non-smokers. Since then we have graciously given up smoking in our offices, our businesses, stores, restaurants, bars, and indoors in general so as not to offend anyone. Many smokers have even stopped smoking in their own homes lest the "taint" that a smoker lived there adversely affect the resale of those homes! (Including me, I only smoke in my garage or outdoors at home!)  And am I the only one who finds it fascinating to note how many people are smoking in cars!  Unfortunately, in an effort to avoid "offending" others and to be "cooperative" and a "good guy", smokers have pretty much given up without a fight.

I recognize the rights of non-smokers to choose not to smoke, but I do not believe that means smokers have no rights at all.


Smokers' willingness to completely bend to the will of others has only fed the endlessly increasing demands by non-smokers! Like all bullies, the more non-smokers can intimidate others, the stronger and more unreasonable their demands become. It is time to stop this onslaught of one group of individuals' rights at the expense of anothers'.

Now I am not naive.  I know we lost the war, the very first time some smoker agreed to put out his cigarette at the demand of someone else without protest.  What doesn't make sense to me is that no matter what "victory" the non-smokers win, it is NEVER enough.  Lots and lots of people do not frequent bars, taverns, saloons, bowling alleys, poolhalls, cocktail lounges, or casinos.  In fact, a lot don't even frequent restaurants much at all.  Never mind, some of them still voted to ban smoking in all those places!  Why??  What earthly difference could it make to them? 

While sitting in a legal smoking section usually in the bar, I have personally seen restaurant patrons separated by a glass wall and sitting as far away as possible, start to cough and fan themselves as soon as they see me pick up a cigarette....before its even lit!!!  That is absurd!  Truly!  (I can't help but laugh, I mean, really!)

Now in Austin there is only one place left for us to go. Hooter's!  No other place where it is still possible to have a meal, a drink, and a cigarette indoors, sitting down, and in peace!  Great choice!!  Excuse me, but I find Hooter's offensive.  I don't want to support a place that treats women so horribly!  I have been there.  I have watched a bunch of drunken louts sit and ogle and insult  the  waitstaff women with their breasts spilling out of their "uniforms".

That's it though, only Hooter's is left of those places which were "grandfathered" out of required compliance.  One, in a city of approximately 5,000 restaurants/bars!

If non-smokers don't like having smokers in the same building with them, then they should go somewhere else, just like smokers have had to do for years. Believe me, there are scores of places that are completely smoke-free! There are plenty of choices.  One by one we smokers have watched as smoking sections have disappeared from their favorite restaurants.  If an establishment is willing to accommodate the gazillion restrictions requiring separate ventilation, separate rooms, separate everything, let them do it in peace!


But no.  We've all let the bullies take over.   I really think they could have figured out that being in the proximity of a smoker is NOT an automatic death sentence.  Even the experts agree that breathing in second-hand smoke becomes dangerous after exposure over a long period of time, NOT after spending an hour or so in a restaurant that has a completely separate smoking section!  

Just outside of Austin, in the town of Cedar Park, TX. there is a Chili's restaurant and bar.  Cedar Park appears not to have a no smoking ordinance.  I have been driving the approximate 15 miles from my house to that restaurant for lunch several times a week for the past 2-3 years.  I drive past about 50 other restaurants on my way, including another Chili's.  Why??  They still have smoking allowed in the bar and it is legal.  There is a separate ventilation device and a wall separating the bar from the restaurant.  But as we all know (ha!) those measures are totally ineffective and folks who brave the smoky, smelly, unhealthy restaurant air will curl up and die of lung cancer before they can consume their dessert!

Last week Chili's posted a single piece of paper on the exit door, "As of March 1, 2010 Chili's will become a non-smoking restaurant."  Based on complaints received and the abuse the waitstaff had to take, the Corporate Office decided to cave in.

So "Another One Bites the Dust."  AAArrrrrgggghhhh!    And  again, the smokers go down without a whimper!

I wonder if anyone ever told all the fanatics the unpleasant truth.  It's easy to avoid facing the facts, but no matter how much you bully others and ignore reality, the truth is....
 

100% of Non-Smokers Die!

And all those bullies, fanatics, rabid, frothing busybodies should beware.  Losing freedoms is an extremely slippery slope, and sooner or later something you enjoy will be targeted by a different group of bullies and know-it-alls and YOU will become evil incarnate!!  I can hardly wait!

"The Windmills of My Mind"

Did you ever have one of those days when You can't stay focused on any one thing for any length of time??  Today is that day for me.  It feels like the various "windmills of my mind" are all spinning in different directions.  Jumbled, restless, dissatisfied, just generally unsettled, that's me.  I don't think there is a particular reason for it, its sort of recurring occurance (Hmm, that sounds like an oxymoron or something).  Every so often, I get this feeling that I want to be doing something, but I just can't figure out what it is.  Its very frustrating.

It used to be that when this feeling cropped up, I could correct the problem by going for a long drive, usually with the windows open and the radio blasting away while I sang my little heart out.  That worked really well in Chicago, where you could drive for a very long distance and never leave town!  There was always something interesting to see.  I would usually try to find a road that I didn't use very often and just drive wherever it took me. And sooner or later all those windmills would stop their unsettling turning and come back into line and all was once again right with the world.

I loved doing that.  Doesn't work very well in Austin, though.  Too many roads that end up running into the river or the hills or "no outlet".  Some of those roads could get you seriously lost, even if you've lived here for 9 1/2 years!

Chicago, on the other hand, is almost impossible to get lost in.  It is a very logically laid out city.  A gazillion years ago, some inspired genius (actualy I think it was the city council or some group like that) sat down with a map of the city and drew a grid over the whole space and decreed that all Chicago roads would follow that grid, i.e., roads would go either North/South or East/West and they would be reasonably straight.  Chicago doesn't do twists and turns and curves, and backtracks, or other such nonsense.  There are a few diagonal streets, but they stick to the same grid and numbers. The streets are numbered sequentially from Ground Zero (more commonly known as State and Madison), until there is no more city to number.  This area gets bigger and bigger all the time.  Chicago is a BIG town.

For those of you who might find this to be interesting, here is a link which tells you all about it.    Streets_and_highways_of_Chicago 

As I was growing I always lived in towns (albeit much smaller towns in Florida) that were pretty much laid out the same way, i.e., North/South and East/West.  I thought (if I actually ever thought about it, which I doubt) this was pretty much always the way it was done.  I thought it was some kind of city planning law or something.  It was always logical, clear, understandable, and got you where you needed to be.  It was wonderful.

But then....duh, duh, DUH!  (that is what Ratchlet used to call danger music),  we moved to California and ultimately to Texas and all bets  were off.  There are NO STRAIGHT STREETS in California or this part of Texas....none, truly! 

In addition, Austin is kind of tilted along a NE by SW axis that doesn't correlate to anything!!  There are no clues anywhere that all of a sudden a road would stop, or twist and turn all over the place depositing you in totally the wrong place; or disappear up a hill, or come to the river with no bridge in sight; and if that weren't bad enough, street names would change for no reason at all! 

Then, if, by some miracle, you managed to navigate all that and still have some little kernal of knowlege of where you needed to be in relation to where you were, you'd quickly realize that you CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE!!  Its no wonder my hair is gray!  In fact, its amazing I have any hair at all.  I've been mighty tempted to start tearing my hair out and screaming. 

You see what I failed to consider in my assumption that all towns were laid out logically, like Chicago, was that Chicago is in Illinois.
Illinois is kind of at the center of the Midwest.  The whole state is pretty much flat as a pancake.  No hills, mountains, no need for all those twisty windy streets.  If a river popped up, they would build a bridge over it.  Simple.  They could put the roads wherever they wanted to and the roads would  be nice and straight and flat too!  Upon reflection, I realized that Florida was pretty much the same way, so they could put their roads wherever they wanted to. 

But alas, central CA and Austin both must deal with the terrain that is no where near flat or straight.  Mountains (ok, little mountains) and hills are all over the place.  It is a reality that even I can understand, that it is easier and cheaper to build a road AROUND a mountain than to build one that goes THROUGH a mountain. 

Another fatality of this terrain is my sense of direction.  I used to have one!  I don't anymore.  I think I am heading north and suddenly realize I'm looking right at the sun!  Well, I learned in grade school that the sun can be in the East, the South, or the West, but NEVER in the North, so where the hell am I???  And more importantly, how do I get to where I'm going????

I think you get the picture.  I may not be lost exactly all the time, but if I venture onto a road that is new to me, it's pretty much a sure thing that I will have no idea where I end up or how to get where I should be.  At night its much, much worse.  The moon is not nearly as good a homing point as the sun, and I never did learn how to read the stars.  So I end up somewhere unknown on a darkened roadway tearing my hair out and screaming. 

The upshot of all this is that I no longer have a surefire way to clear out my mind and get those windmills in line.  What a bummer!

"Deep in the Heart of Texas"

Here, "deep in the Heart of Texas", it snowed today!  Snowed!!  Ratchlet was very happy.  I didn't even mind it.  "Hmmm, that doesn't sound like you", you might be saying.  It is true!  It snowed here, in Austin.  It snowed with medium-sized fluffy flakes for about 15 minutes around Noon, with the sun shining brightly!  It didn't even stick to the grass, much less anything else.  Now THAT's snow I can live with!   I would be cheerfully satisfied if this is the only snow we get this year, but I'm not going to bet on it.