Stella was having a rough morning. She got up at 6:50. This really sucks because I’ve already gone out running at that point and that means Julie has to get up with her. Her grandparents were stirring so I think all the wandering around woke her up. We went through our usual morning routine. Including the “Daddy does not have time to feed you breakfast/gnashing of teeth/winging routine”. I took her back upstairs and told her to go see mommy. She wandered down the hall, but detoured into her room. There she picked up a book, and her blanket and headed back down the hall to Mommy’s room.

It was super cute.

This story on CNN is great. Here’s an excerpt:

State Rep. Matthew Barrett was giving a civics lesson Tuesday when he inserted a data memory stick into the school computer and the projected image of a topless woman appeared instead of the graphics presentation he had downloaded.

Barrett said there were a few snickers from the approximately 20 students in the senior government class at Norwalk High School when the image appeared. He said he immediately pulled the memory stick out of the computer.

So what did we learn? Kids can handle an image of a naked lady in their high school civics class. Chances are those snickers were at his complete lack of computer skills. But seems par for the course for the PowerPoint types. I’m surprised this doesn’t happen in more of the meetings I go to at work.

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Comments

Julie (www.juliesdramas.blogspot.,com)

2007-10-04T19:11:58.000Z

Oh, please! “I have no idea where that came from. I’ve never seen a naked woman, what’s a naked woman?!” He should have just fessed up. Come on!

Kate (http://katiekatworld.blogspot.com)

2007-10-05T03:56:57.000Z

Too, too funny. And you’re right that they were probably snickering most at his ineptitude with the technology.

I never blogged about this, but we were driving past Oaks Treatment Center on Stassney a while back. It’s some sort of juvenile group home. And as we drove by we see this teenage girl running for the road, making a break for freedom. Only there’s someone in front of her, so she’s stopped running full out, but she’s still running. And then two men (who I guess are guards) catch her and lead/carry her back to the buildings.

I hope those were guards.

So I’ve been an advocate of making the suburbs more dense as well as the urban core. Looks like I’ll get a chance to test that theory out.

We went by the house yesterday and were shocked to see that one curb was painted bright red and labeled as a fire lane. The other side of the street had parallel parking spaces painted out. Our side of the street has the parking. We were a bit distraught when we saw it. Because, you know, you kind of get to expect that your neighborhood is going to look a certain way, and then they paint an entire curb bright red. Like you’re at the grocery store. I’ve calmed down now. But new home builders are really bad about actually knowing what they’re building, and notifying the new home owners. Or maybe they’re just really smart.

We went in and confronted the on-duty sales lady. She said the sales office had no clue that there wasn’t going to be parking on both sides of the street until they painted in the fire lane. And she said that if people didn’t like it, they could always back out on their house. Then the company could resell. Which they would like because the cost of the houses have gone up about 15-20% since they started selling them. We were both a little taken aback by a little too much honesty there.

Oh, and she said that we shouldn’t have expected that this was a “party” neighborhood. Like we’re planning on having a kegger. ‘Cause having 2 cars worth of people over to dinner is a really big “party”. She was really rather unpleasant. I think we might have gotten the idea that one could have parties in our house, by the fact that one room is labeled the “great room”. I realize some people need a “great room” to house their godzillatron, but I’m assuming many of us expect to simply have multiple people over to visit in our “great rooms”. Plus even the people with the godzillatron might want to invite people over to watch it with them.

So today I got on the city’s website, and looked up all the site plans. Of course, the parking spaces, and fire lanes were in the original site plans. Very clearly labeled. Ah well.

We’re doing better than most. Most of the people on our street can get at most exactly one car into their driveway. By car, I’m referring to a car. Not a sedan, SUV, or boat. We can get two large vehicles in comfortably. Plus we have a parking space in front of our house. Plus we only have one car that we’re going to store in the garage. Of course our neighbor across the street can only place one car in their driveway. Anyone want to take bets on whether or not they’ll always be parking in that space?

I’m really look forward to the parking wars that the new HOA is going to have to deal with. I’m thinking of running for the board.

In looking at the site plans I found out some other interesting things:

1. That pond in the front appears to be just a retention pond (which explains why they appear to be building a fence around it). The actual pond is in the back of the neighborhood.If you look as you get near Stassney on Westgate there’s a creek that goes under the road. That creek appears to drain into the real pond.

2. We have a 13” diameter Elm in our front yard, and a 9” diameter hackberry in our backyard. We’ll be getting another tree shading our driveway in front. We’ll also be getting another one in the back to block the view of our back neighbors which is nice. They appear to be putting a lot of the “2 developer provided trees” in the backyard which is good, since many of the front yards are postage stamps that already contain large trees.

3. There will be a nature trail with crushed granite running from the mailboxes into the second phase of the neighborhood.

4. There will be crushed granite trails exiting the neighborhood onto Buffalo Pass in both directions. This is nice, as you can take Buffalo pass up to jones road and hop on the Sunset Valley hike and bike trail. You can also take buffalo pass up to Pack saddle pass and get to Central Market, which will be good for avoiding Westgate while riding my bike.

5. Wow, just looking at the Sunset Valley trails list. That town is lousy with green space.

6. Our neighborhood is zoned SF-6 and are either townhomes or condominiums as far as the city is concerned, no matter what the homebuilder feels like calling them.

So it’s going to be interesting having parties in the new house. I’m thinking about getting one of those electric shuttles like they have at Six Flags and having everyone park at Thrift Town. Then I’ll take my shuttle over there and pick them up. Or people will just have to ride the bus to our new house.

This is going to be interesting.

Update: This Salon story points out some interesting things about the true cost of parking and why you can always find free parking in downtown Austin if you just drive 4 blocks away from your destination.

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Comments

Julie (http://www.juliesdramas.blogspot.com/)

2007-10-01T21:54:04.000Z

I’m glad you’re able to laugh about it, I feel just sick about it! But I think the parking situation for guests will not be as bad as it seems. For the next two years, people coming in the evenings after office hours can park in the parking lot for the models. After they get the walking trail onto Buffalo Pass done, people can park on that street where there is a lot of space and walk up the path just one house over from us to our house. Less than a block, probably. They also can park at Garrison across Manchaca and in the neighborhood to the left of ours. Everything is really well-lit and in close proximity. I think the biggest PITA is going to be giving people complex instructions when they come over. Because F%&k Rhonda, the really crappy sales gal with the bad make-up, I’m having me some damn big-ass parties in that house! That’s part of why I bought it! And even if your family comes over, that’s 4 cars right there! I’ve recovered quite a bit too. But I still am sad that I am going to be living in a neighborhood that looks a hell of a lot like a freakin’ apartment complex!

Ashley

2007-10-01T23:39:17.000Z

I’m gonna guess you weren’t the first to complain and that the salesperson had told more than a few people they could pull out. And of course they would keep any money you have put down and then charge the next person who buys your house for the upgrades that you already paid for. I like that your car is parked in the fire lane. Y’all don’t live there yet and you are bucking the system!

Kate (http://katiekatworld.blogspot.com)

2007-10-02T00:42:41.000Z

Riddle me this, Batman: WHY do you need the firelane there? It could be the perspective, but the street looks pretty wide to me. It’s not like it’s our teeny goat trail of a street. If anyone parks across the street from our driveway it’s nearly impossible not to run into them. I’m annoyed for you, but I’m also tickled by the thought of them trying to discourage parties. God forbid! How are people going to get there for your roast goat in the front yard party? I wouldn’t mind parking far away and taking your tart cart, but you have friends with bebes and I doubt that would be easy to wrestle carseats and the like.

M1EK (http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/)

2007-10-02T21:15:48.000Z

That road looks incredibly wide, actually. I predict speed bumps in your future.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-10-02T21:57:10.000Z

Ooh, I hadn’t thought about that. You’ll probably be able to drag race 3 abreast. I doubt we’ll get speed bumps, though. Berkett and Berkley the two streets south of us are also straight shots from Manchaca to Westgate through residential neighborhoods and they don’t have speed bumps. Speaking of speed bumps. Our last neighborhood had a lot of complaints about people speeding through the neighborhood. The neighborhood has 1 outlet and no stretch of road longer than 100 yards. Meaning, getting up past 30 resembles drag racing. Or perhaps crash testing. We had a lady who would come to each meeting and demand that the HOA lower the speed limit to 15mph. We tried again and again to explain that the city set speed limits, and was probably never going to lower the speed limit on a road that was nearly impossible to hit that speed on anyway. Somehow the board got a few members who got some bad advice from a city bureaucrats (or so they said) and on a Sunday morning we woke up to new speed bumps throughout our neighborhood. On Monday we woke up to holes in the road. Apparently you do not want to screw with the trash collectors.

So I was looking at this website to rally support against the development of an apartment complex in the North Loop area:

http://www.ilovenorthloop.com

Don’t bother commenting. They don’t want your input. Unless you’re a property owner in the neighborhood and against the development in question. I can completely understand why a neighborhood that is approx. 70% (often rundown) rentals would not want a set of new luxury apartments next door.

They’re citing traffic concerns though, which I think is a horrible strategy. Supposedly it’s going to add about 2000 new car trips per day, which is about what Grand Oaks added. That’s the neighborhood that was built across from our old neighborhood. You’d encounter 4-7 extra cars at the busiest times of day, but nothing horrible. My guess is that the developers will just get an analysis of the traffic on Koenig and probably point out that 2000 cars go through that area every 30 minutes at peak times of day (or something close to it). 2000 extra trips a day is pretty small potatoes on a major thoroughfare. Of course, it’s easier to frighten people with the image of 2000 cars, rather than pointing out that they’re probably talking about 500 cars (2/per 250 units) taking 4 trips a day.

Of course unless the city gets single district voting, chances are as the inner city gets more and more dense the desires of the residents of these sparsely populated neighborhoods will get heard less and less.

But it got me thinking again about the nature of those neighborhoods and their long term viability. The Chronicle did a writeup on the Domain this week. If you’re not up on what they’re doing out there you should take a look:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A543305

Basically, the thinking right now is that they’ll build a second downtown up North. Second downtown is a euphamism. It’s basically an endcap. If you look at a map of Austin it becomes clear that “downtown” is no longer actually the area bordered by I-35, MoPac, MLK, and the River. Downtown is everything inside the I-35, MoPac, 183, 71 loop. And if you think about the commuter rail and developments like the Domain and the Concordia redevelopment I think the eventual goal is to have downtown encompass everything from downtown to downtown north. The center of town will increasingly become a dense business district with a university and small incredibly affluent pocket communities ala Houston. I think it’s what we’re going to be seeing. I predict the next decade is going to be very interesting for Austin.

I’m really hoping that eventually I’ll be able to walk from my house all the way up to the domain through a vibrant downtown if I want to. I’ve always seen the looping bike paths that run from the UT area all the way down to the Hike and Bike trails as a promise of what Austin could be like. A place to walk and explore. With lots of people out and about. That’d be pretty cool.

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Comments

Ashley

2007-09-28T20:48:02.000Z

Eh, that’s a small neighborhood, I think they can deal with the big luxury apartments. However, that neighborhood is no longer rundown. If it was rundown and only renters lived there I doubt there would be any dissent.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-09-28T21:24:59.000Z

It didn’t look that great when we were driving around in there this winter looking at houses. Very hit or miss. Some really very nice stuff (which is to be expected when you’re paying $250+/square foot) and some really run down crummy properties (especially as you get towards the RR tracks and airport). I only have data from the 2000 census, but there were only 29.5% owner occupied housing units at that point. Obviously that was a long time ago, but the dot-com boom was picking up at that point and it was very affordable, so it seems like it might still be a similar situation.

In case anyone is wondering, I’m doing this documentation so I can look back at it later. I know it’s not the most fascinating thing ever.

Sidetrack On a side note I really need to harass the city about the state of the sidewalks between Westgate and Manchaca on Stassney. There are 5 buses in the area but heaven help you if you want to walk home. Where there is sidewalk it’s split and crumbling, and there are large stretches with no sidewalk at all. How do they get away with this? You start building a sidewalk and then decide you don’t feel like building one 4’x4’ square? It’s really that bad. It’s not just like some builders didn’t feel like connecting their sidewalk to another piece of sidewalk. It’s like the same builder didn’t feel like connecting their own sidewalk to itself. There’s also a really interesting piece right by a bus stop with no sidewalk where you have to go up a 45 degree incline (vertical and horizontal) while dodging a tree. I imagine it’s fun when there’s mud. I know there are a lot of mobility impaired people living in the area, I’m puzzled how they deal with this.

Ok, on to the pictures. They finished the plumbing at the same time. It’s really startling to have a home builder who can have 2 teams working on the house at once.

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Comments

M1EK (http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/)

2007-09-25T19:29:41.000Z

Prior to about 1990, Austin was still run by good-old-boys not much differently than the rest of Texas, in which you’ll see that roads built in the same era rarely have sidewalks. The theory was that we could fix this by having developers put them in when they developed properties on the road (and that somehow we wouldn’t mind the gaps in the meantime). This has been abandoned - essentially all new arterial construction, at least by the city, since about 1990 has included sidewalks. The state is another beast entirely - they build sidewalks grudgingly if at all even today, even in corridors which are fully developed, and as if that latent hostility isn’t enough, they’ve often built their frontage roads in ways which preclude sidewalks from being built later.

You know what I realized on my vacation? There is only one reason Austin is getting so many toll roads. We have a Republican legislature. That’s it. End of story. I came upon this realization as I was driving on a 4 lane freeway by Rockport, TX. This freeway dead ends into a 2 lane road, and does not appear to actually go anywhere. This freeway is brand new. Our state doesn’t have any transportation dollars yet it can build brand new highways in the backwaters of Texas? This wasn’t the only road like it I saw. It was just the most obvious example.

We get toll roads because we’re the most liberal city in Texas and the legislature hates us for it and won’t give us transportation dollars as punishment. It’s obvious. The ledge in Texas is so corrupt that if they didn’t hate us they’d have built amazing transportation to get from their home towns to Austin as quickly and easily as possible. We’d see a straight shot super-highway from Amarillo to Austin just so their rep could get here faster. But they hate us, so they’re willing to cut off their own nose to spite the face.

How do we fix it? We take over the legislature. We’re apparently only something like 6 house members away from taking the house and stopping the Austin hate.

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Comments

M1EK (http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/)

2007-09-25T16:22:43.000Z

If you care at all about urban vs. suburban, and sprawl vs. non-sprawl, tolls are the best thing to happen to Austin in a very very long time. Nothing says “reconsider living in Circle C” like the prospect of paying a couple bucks each way - and the toll dollars stay in the region rather than getting diverted to rural highways (like gas taxes do). Plus, no sales/property tax ‘donations’ required, as was previously the case with ‘free’ways.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-09-25T16:35:45.000Z

Yeah, I’m torn by toll roads. I guess I lean towards socialism in the emotional part of my head a little too much. There seems to be something inherently unfair about roads that only some people can drive on. Especially since most of the affordable houses in Austin are being built in BFE. That said, I definitely would prefer to get people thinking about driving. We really should get capmetro putting bus lines on all the toll roads (of course right now all the toll roads are in cities that have opted out of paying for capmetro services) to ensure that people immediately have that option. There can’t be a delay. My worry is that we’ll just become like Houston. People will get used to paying the toll and it will have no impact on traffic or where people live. The only impact will be that taxpayers get ripped off by helping to build private roads.

M1EK (http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/)

2007-09-25T19:27:23.000Z

Well, the “ripoff” actually improves for taxpayers with toll roads - the gas tax as it stands today is a subsidy from urban drivers to suburban drivers (guys as far out as you and farther, basically, i.e. in areas where more major arterials are parts of the state highway system). With tolls, we at least have the possibility of funding transit in the same corridor. But even if we don’t, they’re still better than what we have today - costs that you pay at the time of the trip are going to have more of an effect than costs you pay when you fill up your car, which has much more of an effect on driving than costs you pay yearly no matter how much or even if you drive. “fair” would look something like tolls on ALL major ‘free’ways, plus a buck a gallon gas tax, distributed down to localities similar to how the Federal gas tax is spent at the state level (guaranteed no less than 90% return). The main reason why it’s so ‘affordable’ to live in BFE is precisely subsidies like these. This affordability is artificial, paid for by urbanites both rich AND poor, and not sustainable in the long-run anyways.

kelli (gillysmama.blogspot.com)

2007-09-25T20:50:17.000Z

I am perplexed by this. Are you against toll roads all the time? I’m used to them here in Dallas and it’s not something I really think about. And since we’re planning to move to the Austin area in the near future, I was sort of pleased to see that there was a new one so there would be an alternative to going down I35, which I hate. Do Democrats not build toll roads? I don’t see how this is the fault of the Republicans. I mean, I’m willing to concede that it might be, but it isn’t obvious to me.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-09-25T21:32:33.000Z

What you’re planning on moving to Austin? ahhh the toll roads in Austin. It’s an enormous issue. Not the least of which is because they’ve come up with some truly bizarre toll roads ideas (like tolling just an exit ramp). Almost everyone in the city is against them, except that almost everyone in the city loves the one they just built. I waffle on them. I like them as possible agents of change, but I’m pessimistic and think they’re mostly just a way to line someone’s pockets with public funds. I love what M1EK is saying, but I’m too pessimistic to believe that legislated change is possible at this point. I think we’re going to have to have gridlock first. That said, the whole Republican thing is that Austin is constantly getting tromped on by the legislature. Because they’re here and controlled by Republicans they’ve had a habit in the past of passing state laws that are written for the express purpose of striking down Austin city ordinances. Also having Democratic reps and senators in a Republican controlled state is not a great way to get pork, for obvious reasons. So I’m not really complaining about Republicans in this case. Just saying that the best way for Austin to get some nice new road pork would be to flip the majority in the legislature. It will be interesting to see if Dallas’ infrastructure starts to suffer now that it’s controlled by Democrats.

kelli (gillysmama.blogspot.com)

2007-09-25T22:05:27.000Z

yes, that would be the drama making me tired that I haven’t blogged about yet. But I figure none of my daycare families read your blog and it’s safe to tell you. We’ll likely be in north Austin though. Hutto, we think? I am about the most unpolitical person ever. It doesn’t occur to me that something going on is about the legislature. And I didn’t even know Dallas is now controlled by Democrats. I’m probably one of those people you hate for not getting involved. But I’m always interested to learn, and trying to get better.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-09-25T22:20:46.000Z

Wow, well let us know if/when things get settled. We’d love to see you guys. If you do move to Hutto you will be really thankful for the new toll roads. I honestly don’t hate people who aren’t involved politically. Hate’s just such a convenient word. :D

So I added a widget on the left to keep track of my running. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it up to date. I’m using a site called runometer which looks to make it easier to keep track of what I’m doing than the “official” site. Plus this will let me stop managing my iPod with Julie’s computer running Vista.

The only problem with posting my runs is that my iPod is a little jacked in the distance department. I’ve looked at a 5k I ran competitively (that should be pretty darn close to 5k in distance), and compared that with what my iPod thinks. If my iPod thinks I’ve run a 5k I’ve actually run 4 miles (rather than 3.2). Just to let you know that I’m not as slow as the widget makes me out to be.

Julie and I went to Port Aransas this past weekend. We dropped off Stella with her MiMi in Houston and just took off. We stayed in a condo with a pool and a hottub. It was wonderful. We ate lots of food. Friday was fried seafood (not so good), Saturday was Mexican Seafood (fantastic crab enchiladas), and Sunday was Italian Seafood (lump crab and sausage pasta). Did I mention it was relaxing? We did nothing. We sat in the hot tub every night. We spent hours talking on the balcony and drinking wine. We took a walk on the beach in the dark. The most tiring thing we did was buying a new bathing suit for Julie. Her old one was practically falling off in the waves. So Julie now has a bikini. It was a good vacation.

We came back and they’d made great progress on the house. See below.

My Mom’s currently in Michigan taking care of my Grandma, and my Dad has gone to Houston for the weekend, so last night Julie and I had a pizza and a bottle of wine. Which was wonderful.

Plus we went to take pictures for a calendar that ACOT is putting together. It was a lot of fun. We took them at a new park that’s just opened. Afterwards the kids got to play in the water fountains and pools. This picture totally sums up how I feel this week:

Relaxed.

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Comments

kelli (gillysmama.blogspot.com)

2007-09-22T03:53:28.000Z

I did not know they made Janis Joplin shirts in such small sizes. How fun is that! Your vacation sounds wonderful.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/list/tim.html)

2007-09-22T05:42:45.000Z

That shirt is from her most wonderful Auntie Christine. Her aunties find her the most wonderful things.

We went to see the house on Tuesday and they’ve really kept working. The second floor is done, the gables are up, and everything’s coming along. This week they’ve added siding and the decking for the roof. It’s going fast. Here are some new pictures:

The roofline

The view from the playroom.