Every day I see “Word Power” etched into the concrete at the corner of 7th and Brazos. And “Miss Teen Wordpower” gets stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

So this article from CNN is much more what I would expect from a disaster. Plucky survivors who’ve lost everything, but are determined to soldier on and rebuild their lives. It’s the kind of story that actually makes you want to go help people.

But it got me thinking about why that story bugged me so much in the first place. I think it’s because I’m at a position now in my career (career? I’m old.) where the jobs pay really well. And it all seems so easy. And it’s what we all supposedly dream of. And I’m definitely not complaining about the fact that Stella going to the hospital twice in one night did not have much of an impact on our finances. Because there are a lot of people for whom that is not the case.

But the money and the point in your career also traps you. When you make $30,000 a year life isn’t that hot. You don’t have money for a lot of things you’d like to do. If your dog gets sick you might not eat for a month. But you also can just switch jobs, and careers. Because there are lots of jobs available that pay that much. And people are more likely to give you a chance. But double that, and there are fewer jobs. And they really expect you to know what you’re doing. Double that and they expect you to be an expert and there are even fewer jobs. And it keeps going. The higher up you go, the more insulated you are from life’s twists and turns. But you get soft and the easy stuff starts seeming really hard.

And we’re human beings and we like to complain. We probably should have been called homo whinicus. And sometimes it’s hard to remember that when life is not what we want. Because life is often not what we want. I definitely would be upset and whiny if my 6500 square foot house was potentially on fire. And I would need to be reminded that there are trailer homes burning down. And there are people without insurance. And yet that still doesn’t make my personal situation any easier. We are so self-centered.

I’d like to have some sort of homily here. So many people whose blogs I read tie things up in such beautiful ways. But I’ve got nothing. We need to be sympathized with when we perceive our life is rough. And then we need someone to point out that other people have it much worse and we’re being an ass. And then we need to be sympathized with again. We are very complicated beings.

Wow. This article on CNN should be a poster child for not only how not to win sympathy, and perhaps also how to start a revolution. It almost smacks of “Let them eat cake”. Some choice quotes:

the fires that are consuming millions of dollars of homes all over the region

Because really, it’s the value of the homes that matters

Across the street from the high school, multimillion dollar homes behind gates are ashes.

Should have gotten that fire-retardent gate.

Quaalcom Stadium is filled with folks with no other place to go. Like Hurricane Katrina, it is a setup for criminal activity but so far they do have electricity and running water.

I had not clue that rich people went Lord of the Flies so quickly.

We do have insurance, of course. Before all of this, we were planning on putting the house on the market in the late winter and look to sell and downsize. SJ and Alex will be in college next fall and we certainly don’t need a 6,500 square foot home to maintain and pay taxes on. So, who knows what the future holds now?

An insurance settlement and an anecdote for cocktail parties? Rebuilding on the same spot so it can be burned down again in a few years? I dunno, but the future certainly seems exciting

I’m sure that there are normal people being affected by this (I’m guessing that there aren’t 250,000 rich people who can’t get a hotel room in San Diego), but I wouldn’t know it from CNN.

Oh, wait. They have a new headline in my newsfeed – “Fire affects TV shows, celebrities”. This is exactly like Katrina.

So yesterday my mom walked on that sidewalk that no one walks on and took the bus to her church. She was impressed by all the places she could go on the bus. I tell you, you just got to get the people on the bus once…

AustinContrarian has an interesting post on banning plastic bags. I’m definitely against this ban even though I have grown to absolutely despise plastic bags. I get in fights with Julie and/or the bagger almost every time we go to the store. But I think the ban will just inspire a massive anti-environmental front setting back attitudes by decades. I imagine it would have the same effect culturally as if someone had banned smoking in 1975.

YerMama has a post about the Village going VMU. I can’t really get nostalgic about that hole of a property although I do like a lot of the businesses. The VMU should be nice though. Hopefully it will inspire some of the other businesses in the area to move towards the street. It’s nearly impossible to see any of the businesses off of Anderson. Julie has been trying to describe to me (unsuccessfully) for months where Sun Harvest is on Anderson. That neighborhood is one of the worst “strip malls with tiny little signs dwarfed by huge parking lots” in existence. I’m surprised any of the businesses survive. I think they’re all subsisting on word of mouth. I’m hoping the Alamo will stay in the new VMU though. They’d be fools not to try to keep it as an anchor. I think 90% of the shopping traffic on Anderson is probably related to the Alamo. And if they make the sidewalk nicer I could see actually taking the bus up their to do some window shopping. Julie used to live in the area, and I miss spending time their.

So there’s my opinion, but what do you think?

For the past two nights I’ve taken the bus to the Dougherty Arts Center where Julie is rehearsing for Loaded Gun Theory’s production of Little Murders. I’ve bundled up Stella and her stroller, and we’ve taken the bus the rest of the way home. Last night things were crazy. It was one of those traffic days. You have an inkling of these days when you’re a driver, but they’re much more apparent when you’re a pedestrian. People were running lights. There was lots of backed up traffic for no reason. People were making U-Turns in the middle of busy roads. That sort of thing.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I had trouble crossing Barton Springs. I walked with the signal and got half way across the road. At this point cars turning left are unprotected. They see me in the middle of the street and don’t attempt to turn left. You know, because I have the right of way and all that. But last night a car turned in front of me. No big deal, I figured that one car just didn’t see me and the neon green stroller I was pushing. But then another car went. Then another. Six cars. The last one was a Mini. I was figuring, surely the Mini won’t leave me stranded out here in the middle of the road. It turned too. I still made it across the street in time, and there was a concrete median I could have hung out on if I hadn’t made it in time, so I wasn’t in danger.

I disliked being a driver in a world where most people don’t know the traffic laws, but it sucks even more to be a pedestrian.

The reason I had to pick up Stella was that my mom went to the city meeting where they discussed the plans for improving Westgate and Davis. They have lots of interesting ideas (and some that would be horrible). One of the poorer plans would be having Westgate be a 4 lane road, while Davis intersects it as 2 lanes with no middle turn lane. I can only imagine how backed up that would get.

So my mom was talking about the meeting, and she said, “They don’t really need sidewalks on both sides of Davis. No one I know of ever uses that sidewalk.” I demanded, “Who said that?” She said, “I did. That was my comment. That we don’t need sidewalks on both sides of Davis. They should just extend the sidewalk on the south side.” I nearly spit out my dinner, “You don’t know anyone who takes that sidewalk? I take that sidewalk every single morning to walk to the bus! I have to jaywalk across the road at the top of a fairly blind hill, then cross again at the light.” She mentioned that she thought I took the trail. My mom, while frequently going on recreational walks, is definitely not a pedestrian.

The Grand Oaks trail does indeed go from Davis Lane to Manchaca. But the first place you can get off the trail onto a real sidewalk is almost equidistant between two southbound bus stops. You have to backtrack about 1/8 of a mile to get to the light. And that’s just if you want to take the #3 route. If you want to take the #103 there is currently no sidewalk or trail to get there. Which is one of the reasons I don’t take it.

Sometimes you realizes why representative democracy is really important. Otherwise we’d have all sorts of crazy roads and sidewalks that didn’t go anywhere. A patchwork of ideas that were good for one person or another, but don’t connect in any meaningful way.

They are currently providing two sizes of disposable plastic umbrella bags in our lobby. To put your umbrella in. A disposable bag. Someone should point out that they wouldn’t need the umbrella bags if they hadn’t decided to put marble on the floor of the elevators.