During my bike ride today, I took a different route. About 7 kilometers out, I came across this rather unsafe looking bridge. First you have to determine who has right of way because only one car can fit on it at once. Next, you have to be careful to cross it since there is no guard rail. Try doing this drunk, at night, and driving 80 miles per hour.

As you might be able to see, there is not a thing around me except empty land and fences.

Oh yeah, and a gas pipeline. Does a red, white, and blue painted fence post mean gas pipeline in the international usage?

Wow. They turned a Ford F-250 pickup truck into a massive vehicle. I wonder if it gets above 10 miles per gallon?

Mmmmm…. tasty!

Wouldn’t any kind of oil on the road be dangerous?

I saw some rather stacked vehicles this morning…

HEB is building another grocery store on the corner of 79 & 1430. This store is less than one mile away from another HEB on 79. So my question is why are they building so close to one another? There are already 3 stores within a 3 mile area! We need a Central Market and not yet another HEB (don’t get me started on why they insist on being two different stores)!

When I first moved to Round Rock, I dreamed of owning this large corner lot. In this dream, I would build a Central Market on the first floor, an Alamo Drafthouse on the second floor, some good restaurants (like Chuy’s) on the third floor, and a bunch of apartments above that! The other building would be a parking garage that would have a oil change station, gas station, and car wash in it. The rest of the land would be devoted to a park. It would be a great place to live. Why commute if all your needs are in one area? It would be a micro-city.

Today was a day of experimentation. I diagnosed bread kneading, tried to figure out how to take pictures in the kitchen, and installed MTS under Linux.

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Three years ago, I decided to start a garden. I started out small and each year after that I doubled the length of the garden until it is almost to the edge of the house. Unfortunately, I have a problem. I am pretty good at starting the plants in the garden. But I am not so good at eating all of the fruits of my labor. So, in effect, the garden goes to seed. This is what happens when lettuce plants go to seed and then die off. Now my once bare plot is full of lettuce. This time, I dug them out before they went to seed again.

My next problem was the fact that I planted a peppermint in the ground. Little did I realize what a problem it has become. Left unchecked, it grew like a weed and took over the entire plot. So, at the end of the year, I would dig up the garden and try to eradicate it. Unfortunately, some survived and resumed its goal to take over the world. Now, during year 3, it is starting to escape under my St. Augustine sod.

My current dilema is what to do with the garden. I should have not put it next to the house as I want to spray for ants and termites. So I am thinking about converting it into a bed for other plants. What I really should have done was to not sod in the back yard. I never use it except for watering, fertilizing, and mowing it. It is just a chore. I should have used the entire back yard as one big garden. Perhaps for the next house…

Every time I go to Central Market, I seem to spend 80 dollars on groceries and this time was no exception. One thing that I don’t like about Austin is the poor quality of beef. When I drive around town, I will some times see Longhorns grazing on prairie grass and weeds. And that is what the tough and gristly meat tastes like.

So, I decided to splurge and buy a nice thick Black Angus porterhouse steak. Unfortunately, it was 2 pounds which was more than I wanted. So I switched to a T-bone steak (without the tenderloin side). Since I cooked it for lunch, I decided to pair it with some Yukon Gold yogurt & green onion potato chips.

As I eat this steak for lunch, I am reminded of a quote from the movie Sidways:

“Half my life is over and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing! I’m a thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper. I’m a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage.”

No, not that quote! About how Miles was saving his bottle of 1961 Cheval Blac wine for a special occasion and then Maya responds that whenever you drink that bottle of wine it will be a special occasion.

2004 was an interesting weather year. It was slightly cooler. It was very wet (3rd wettest). And we had snow!

Austin definitely has its problems with weather. It is too hot and too dry during summer (100+ degrees, 30+ days without rain). And there are ozone action days and overcast days. It seems that, for 80% of the days in the year, Austin will hit 70 degrees Farenheit. The worst part about the weather is the flash flooding, hail, high winds, and tornadoes.

You said “crack.” Uh hu uh hu…