New Dallas Cowboy Stadium Photo

Yesterday I was at the Super Wal-Mart across the street from the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium, for the first time in months.

So, I took a picture or two. The stadium has gotten huge looking. I should have taken a picture of the view from the east side. That really showed the size of the thing.

It looks like the roof is done. Glass is being installed on the sides. It's all very shiny and bright. The seats are being installed. I don't know what that big yellow and white rectangle thing is. I'm guessing it's some sort of electronic sign or maybe a giant video screen. I don't know why they'd want a giant video screen pointing towards Wal-Mart though.

Dozens of lawsuits, brought by people who believe their homes were stolen from them by the City of Arlington and Jerry Jones, continue to move forward.

Are You Mad At Me? Why Don't You Call?

Awhile back my mom, who I call whenever I get gas to tell her how much it currently costs, told me my sister wanted my mom to ask me what she'd done that had me mad at her.

I asked mom why my sister thought I was mad at her.

My mom said she thinks that because you don't call her anymore.

To which I said, but she never calls me, I'm always the caller, but I don't think she's mad at me due to not calling me.

The psychology of this perplexed me. So, I called my sister and asked her why she was mad at me. Why do you think I'm mad at you my sister asked? Because you never call me, I said.

I don't call because I'm afraid I'd be interrupting something, she said.

If it was interrupting something I wouldn't answer, I said.

Again, the psychology perplexes me.

Now, I have some people who call me all the time. I don't always answer. If they didn't call me I wouldn't think it was because they were mad at me. I have at least one person who no longer calls me due to being irrationally upset with me. But I don't miss those daily phone pesterings.

My biggest sister never calls me. I used to call her about once every couple weeks. But when I was up in Washington a couple years ago her behavior so appalled and annoyed me that I did not call her til about a month before I flew up there in July. Her behavior had not improved this most recent time up north. I wonder if my biggest sister accurately perceived that the lack of calls indicated I was not happy with her?

Probably not. These relatives of mine seldom seem to get anything right.

So, my new way of thinking is I'm assuming anyone who does not call me is mad at me. Why they would be mad at me is a mystery. I won't be calling any of them, well, except for my mom's gas calls. So, they can assume, accurately or not, that I am mad at them.

Oh, I'll likely call my sister who lives in Phoenix. She's a good phone talker. And it's not like she absolutely never calls me. She calls whenever a family friend or relative dies. And she called the morning of August 20 to ask how happy I was to be heading back to Texas. She'd also endured a long stay up north that coincided with part of my stay. We empathize with each other's pains.

However, my Phoenix sister's visiting up north pains are much less painful than mine. She's thinking of going up there again, soon. I don't plan a return to the northwest until 2018 at the earliest.

Lulu and the Beautyberry Bush

Yesterday I mentioned seeing a bush with berries that were an otherworldly color of purple.

Overnight one of my favorite Southern Belles, the soon to be in Texas, Miss Lulu, identified the purple berries as being from a Beautyberry Bush.

So, now I know what it is. I looked up Beautyberry Bush. The berries are edible, but not very tasty. Birds don't like them, so the berries stay on the bushes unmolested. I think I'll taste one when next I see one.

Veteran's Park, Fry's and a Bad Router

Today started off okay. I went swimming early. The water was cold. I liked it. That's not my swimming water you see in the photo. That's a pond at Veteran's Park in Arlington. Those are turtles sitting on the log. I like turtles, but not in water I swim in. I've had a turtle incident or two. Their heads look like a snake when they are swimming towards you. Not a good thing for a snakeaphobe to see.

A few hours after swimming I needed to go to Fry's to get a new network router. That's when the fun began. I like Fry's. I've bought a lot of computer stuff there. I've returned a lot of stuff to Fry's. They are always good about it.

On the way to Fry's I went to the aforementioned Veteran's Park in Arlington to go on a walk. I like Veteran's Park. I see some odd things there at times. Like Disc Golfers. And people dressed like pirates pretending to do battle with each other. Within the past year a Veteran's Memorial has been added to Veteran's Park. It's a nice memorial, except one thing about it sort of disturbs me. As in there are these two marble-like boxes that look like coffins. I don't know what else they could be intended to be.

Today as I walked along the paved trail I saw something amusing. Apparently yesterday someone was walking with someone named Sara and Sara got grumpy. So, Sara's co-walker made note of her grumpiness by chalking a message onto the sidewalk for all to see. I think I'll start leaving chalk messages when I experience moments of inappropriate grumpiness. I would have needed a whole box of chalk when I was up in Tacoma last summer.

Veteran's Park has this rather cool section of the park called the Wildscape. This is a demonstration zone showing Texans how they can landscape using native to Texas plants that require less water and less maintenance. Parts of the Wildscape are paved, other parts are bricked, other parts are a boardwalk and the rest is just a natural trail.

The Wildscape has a lot of flowers and herbs and things that grow what look like berries. One of the berry bushes has these clumps of whatever it is in the most unnatural shade of purple. My photo does not do justice to the color.

So, after I was done at Veteran's Park it was time to go to Fry's. I bought a router. Or so I thought. But, I had been misdirected by a Fry's employee, few of whom speak anything but an Indian dialect of English.

I left Fry's and headed to Arlington's Chinatown to get goodies at my favorite Asian Market. That went well. Got back here and quickly figured out I'd not been sold a router. So, back to Fry's. It is about 15 miles from here, maybe 20. Got to Fry's, got rid of the non-router, got an actual router. Got back here, plugged it in and all is well again in Durango World.

It doesn't take much to make me happy.

Sunday's Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief Protest

Incoming from Don Young about Sunday's Fort Worth protest at an event featuring Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief....

A skeptical group of protesters in front of the Railhead Smokehouse.

From left, Ed Sakerka, Mike Phipps and Don Young.

We were also joined by Debora Young who took the pics.

2008 Emmy Awards Award For Being Bad TV

I got home a bit before 7. Made a bowl of popcorn and turned on the TV. I tried to watch the Emmy Awards. Sometimes those type shows can be amusing. But it's been years since I've managed to make it through to the end of one of them. Not the Academy Awards, not the Tony Awards and definitely not the Emmy Awards.

I lasted about 10 minutes last night. For the first time the hosts of reality shows were nominated. The 5 reality show hosts were the hosts of the Emmy Awards. This did not go well. Only 2 of them, American Idol's Ryan Seacrest and Dancing with the Star's Tom Bergeron do their hosting thing on a live show. Survivor's Jeff Probst, Project Runway's Heidi Klum and the host of that awful game show, Deal or No Deal, Howie Mandel were the other 3 reality hosts. Jeff Probst was the winner.

The host of the reality show that always wins as best reality show, Phil Keoghan, was not one of the 5 best reality show hosts, even though his show, The Amazing Race, won again as best reality show.

The Emmy Awards reality show hosts seemed to be working without a script. For the majority of them ad-libbing was not a forte. It was painful to watch. And sort of embarrassing. I turned to another channel about a minute after Tom Bergeron and William Shatner decided Heidi Klum was over dressed, so they started taking her clothes off til she was stripped down to hotpants.

Normally I would find such a thing worthy highbrow entertainment. But last night it rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe because it wasn't funny.

Speaking of Tom Bergeron and Dancing with the Stars. Tonight starts the new season of that show. I liked Dancing with the Stars. Til last season when I bailed about 2 weeks in. There just were no amusing characters that I enjoyed watching. But, this season we have 82 year old Cloris Leachman trying to dance. She's funny. Susan Lucci should be amusing. That awful pseudo-celebrity, big-butted Kim Kardashian should be amusing. But, from what I've seen of her on her Keeping Up With The Kardashians reality show, she's really stupid. I don't see how she'll be able to remember the dance moves. Lance Bass of boy band fame might be funny. Rocco DiSpirito, celebrity chef and reality show star, can be funny. He can get sort of intense and temperamental.

I'll let you know if I make it through 2 hours of Dancing with the Stars tonight. Highly unlikely. Unless it's real amusing.

Sunday Biking at River Legacy Park

I'm convinced there is something good happening in my zone of Texas. As in there is a big increase in the number of Texans going outside and getting exercise.

When I first discovered River Legacy Park in Arlington, soon after my exile to Texas, I was amazed such a nice park with such good trails had so few users. That is no longer the case. Today there where hundreds of Texans out biking, walking, roller blading and jogging.

A couple years ago River Legacy Park built a bridge across the Trinity River to connect to new paved trails and a new parking/picnic zone on the north side of the river. This added about 4 new miles to the trails. It was a good addition, going through old growth oak trees that I call the Emerald Forest of River Legacy. That's part of the new trail and the bridge across Hurricane Creek, in the photo.

The long range plan for this Metro zone is to supposedly have paved trails along the Trinity River running all the way between Dallas and Fort Worth. Fort Worth needs to add some more miles of trails to get to the Arlington trails. Dallas needs to head further west with its trails on the Trinity. Grand Prairie, that is a town between Dallas and Arlington, just opened a section of trail along the Trinity. So, piece by piece it is slowly coming together. Likely not to be completed in my lifetime, but maybe by the time my grandchildren, if I had any, are my age.

Fannie Mae Freddie Mac Attack

I am not too embarrassed to admit I really don't understand any of this current Wall Street mess. Or why the Federal government, meaning the taxpayers, are about to bail out the mess with 700 billion bucks. That's $2000 for every man, woman and child in America.

I remember the first time I ever heard of Fannie Mae was way back in Economics 101 in college. I thought it an odd childish sounding thing to call what I think then was a federal agency. I'm probably wrong about that. I did not get good grades in economics. I don't think Freddie Mac had been invented yet.

I know Fannie and Freddie have something to do with shoveling out money to those who lend money to those who can't afford the money they are borrowing.

Back when the flood of foreclosures started up I don't recollect there being any sort of emergency program proposed to help those caught up in bad loans.

So, Mr. Bad Debt loses his house, the bank then takes possession of the house. The value of the house may have taken a hit, but it is still able to be sold to a new buyer. So, the banks loaned out all this bad credit, that didn't get re-paid, putting the banks in jeopardy. I guess that's it. But how did it add up to almost a trillion dollars?

I really don't get it. Why is 7/10s of a trillion dollars needed to rescue the money lenders? And why is there this rush to get this legislation passed in record time? Where did all the money that got loaned go? Why hasn't there been some sort of effort to fix the bad loans, as in re-structure the loans that suddenly had their monthly payments go way up to the point the home buyer could not afford the mortgage payment? Why wasn't/isn't that where the fix is?

Like I said, I did not do well at economics in school. It was very confusing to me. Still is.

Sunday Protest Against Fort Worth Mayor Moncrief

Incoming from Don Young. Get yourself downtown to protest Fort Worth's Mayor Mikey and his outrageously corrupt conflicts of interest regarding natural gas drilling in his town, from which he receives revenue in a criminal conflict of interest that would have had him booted out of office and serving time in jail had this taken place in more enlightened locales in America.

Below is the Protest Information.....

Who among you are willing to exercise your right to protest the Mike Moncrief administration?

You can do so today...

When: Sunday, 9/21/08. Noon - 2 pm

What: Mayor Mike Meat & Greet (fundraiser)

Where: Railhead Smokehouse (on the sidewalk around the building)
2900 Montgomery St. (just south of I-30 behind the Shell station)
Parking on the street

Bring: A picket sign with your message for Mayor Mikey.

Many people believe that Moncrief with the support and collusion of his "Seventh Street Gang" of good old boys, his Oil and Gas buddies and hand-picked elected officials are DIRECTLY responsible for an out of control gas drilling ordinance that affects YOUR health and safety, YOUR property values and YOUR parks and quality of life.

In Fort Worth, the buck stops with Mike Moncrief.

Hiking and Picnicking at Rockledge Park on Lake Grapevine

It seems like I'd just gone to Rockledge Park on Lake Grapevine. But it was way back on Memorial Day, at the start of summer. It was hot and crowded on Memorial Day. Today there were a lot of people playing in the water, but the park was not crowded. And it was hot.

Today me and my entourage mainly stayed on the beach, with one renegade taking the upper trails.

There were several people fishing. Unlike some lakes in Texas you can eat fish you catch in Lake Grapevine. Even clams grow in this lake. I saw a lot of clam shells today. I doubt there are any fresh water crabs in the lake. But I wouldn't be too shocked if there were.

Lake Grapevine is a legitimate Army Corps of Engineers flood control project, unlike the dubious Fort Worth Trinity River Vision. The Army Corps of Engineers built several nice parks on the shores of Lake Grapevine. There are dozens of miles of mountain bike and hiking trails. Well maintained by the Dallas Off Road Bicycle Association (DORBA) people.

I believe Lake Grapevine is my favorite outdoor place in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. I used to live way closer to it and played there way more often. Now it's only a few times a year.

Lake Grapevine was made 50 or 60 years ago when a giant earthen dam blocked a little creek. I think the name is Denton Creek, but I'm not sure. You drive across the dam to get to Rockledge Park from the town of Grapevine. Part of the road across the dam goes over the dam's flood spillway. I don't know if the lake has ever gotten flooded enough to go over the spillway. I have seen Lake Grapevine high enough to flood the parks and cover the picnic tables. If it got high enough to go over the spillway, this would be a bad thing. Grapevine Mills, a mall on steroids, is in the shadow of the dam. I think it'd get wet if water went over the spillway.

Today when we first got to Rockledge there were dozens of what appeared to be students of some sort, with clipboards, climbing all over the cliffs. I don't know what they were doing. The photo does not do justice to how odd it looked.

After the hiking, Costco pizzas were our picnic. It was a good picnic. After the picnic I went to my favorite grocery, Sprouts Farmers Market, in Southlake. Got all sorts of good stuff. Sprouts is opening more stores in this metro zone, with one rumored to be in Fort Worth. I hope it is in my zone of Fort Worth. That'd be a good thing.