It's Bedtime

It's not even 5pm but I'm feeling like it's bedtime. But I must stay up for 3 more hours to watch the finale of Amazing Race. I could set the VCR to record it but I somehow usually screw that up. So, why am I dead tired? I think it must be because I've been up since about 3am. I woke up then and about 4am I decided if the Sunday paper was here I was going to get up, make coffee and read the paper. And so I did. I'm not sure I can manage to string together words in my current condition.

We'll see.

In the Sunday paper there was a lot of info about the Stephenville UFO. It's been so long ago now but I can see I then blogged about this and posted it at 4:41am. The morning seemed to pass fairly quickly as I did various tasks, most computer related.

About 7am I took the meat off a couple chickens because I'd decided I wanted to make Chicken Tortilla Soup today. That decision sort of determined how the next few hours went. Yesterday I'd decided I wanted to go to Tandy Hills Park today and take a photo of a tower.

That tower being the Fort Worth Space Needle, modeled after towers in Seattle and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. This may seem a bit goofy and may not seem to your eyes to look anything like the Seattle Space Needle or that tower in Paris. Fort Worth has a long history of building things modeled after things in other places. The Fort Worth Space Needle is Fort Worth's second major homage to Seattle, the first being a public market in Fort Worth claimed to be modeled after Pike Place in Seattle. You can read all about that here. Another big Fort Worth project that has not quite gotten started yet is called the Trinity River Vision. Basically they want to take a perfectly fine river and turn it into a lake with canals. For awhile they were claiming it would make Fort Worth the Vancouver of the South. Then I think someone from Fort Worth actually went to Vancouver and realized how goofy it was to think turning a river into a lake with some canals would make Fort Worth into the Vancouver of the South. Seems more like Fort Worth is trying to copy the success of San Antonio's Riverwalk. Which, I guess, would then make Fort Worth the San Antonio of the North Part of Texas.

So, after I got my pics of the Fort Worth Space Needle (that's the pic at the top) I headed to Arlington to Chinatown to get vegetables for my tortilla soup. The vegetable buying was uneventful. I always enjoy going to the Hong Kong Market. Usually I am the only non-Asian in the store. It always makes me feel very tall when I'm there. It's a very well run store, the clerks are all whizzes, sort of the anti-Wal-Mart. I got giant red peppers today. And some more Chinese Garlic. Among other things.

So, I'm going from making a rude Wal-Mart remark in the above paragraph to now telling you I left the Hong Kong Market and headed to the Super Wal-Mart across from the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium. As I headed in that direction I remembered I wanted to take pics of the industrial wasteland that the south side of the stadium will face. I think visitor's at the Super Bowl of 2011 are going to be appalled when they see this. Maybe there are plans to use more eminent domain abuse and clean it all up.

So, Wal-Mart went fast, in and out very quick. Then headed back here to make the tortilla soup. On the way back here I needed gas. When I get gas I call my mom in Phoenix and tell her how much it cost. If I don't make a gas call within a reasonable amount of time my mom calls me and asks why I'm not buying any gas. So, our gas conversation was going fine, but my phone started doing the bloop bloop noise. And then it made an explosion noise. I'd forgotten the short bloops bloops indicated the battery was low. So, I got back here and plugged the phone in and called my mom back to tell her I'd figured out what was causing the bloop bloop.

Then as I was finishing up the tortilla soup I started getting calls. And voice mails. When I finally got around to listening to the messages they were from this former alien heading back to her home country whom I guess I said I'd take to the airport tomorrow and she was getting a bit concerned that I was going to bail on her. I don't like taking her to the airport because she requires a high level of fortification to get on a plane. Well, actually, she requires that for just about anything. She flies out at 9:35am. I'll drop her off 2 hours earlier. She will be drunk. I don't know how she manages to get through security. The last time I provided this service I swore it'd be the last. My issue that time was with the return pickup. Of course, she was a bit tipsy, having been in Miami for 4 hours with her sister. Back at D/FW one of her pieces of luggage turned up missing, this turned into a big brouhaha, much of it in Spanish with Puerto Rican swear words flying about the airport.

Okay. I can not type another word. I'm exhausted. And the Chicken Tortilla Soup wasn't all that great.