My Whacking Stick Saves Me From A Vicious Tandy Hills Dog Attack

In the picture you are looking north, on top of Lost Sunglasses Ridge, on one of the Tandy Hills, today in the noon time frame.

Last year, at this point in time, the Tandy Hills were showing signs of stress to the vegetation, due to the Great North Texas Drought.

This year, at this point in time, the Tandy Hills are showing signs of a prairie being well provided with a sufficient supply of water.

It is getting to the point that there is some vegetative encroachment at some locations on the trails. I do not like vegetative encroachment. I've been avoiding the rain forest like zone one reaches on the north side of Tandy Falls, due to the claustrophobic tunnel-like effect of all the greenery.

Changing the subject from healthy vegetation to an unhealthy canine encounter.

One is supposed to keep ones dog on a leash whilst hiking the Tandy Hills.

Some people do not keep their dog leashed, due to the fact that their dog is well behaved, like Olive the Prairie Dog.

But some people let their dog off leash, even though they know the dog is not well-behaved.

Today, a semi-elderly gentleman was hiking the Tandy Hills with two dogs. Two un-leashed dogs. One of the dogs rushed at me in attack mode, with the semi-elderly gentleman trying to get the vicious dog to return to his control.

I am always armed with a whacking stick when I am out and about in the wild. As the dog took a lunge at me I gave it a sound whack with my whacking stick and it ceased its vicious attack.

When the dog ran back to the semi-elderly gentleman he put the vicious dog on a leash, and also leashed the non-attacking dog.

I can not imagine how a semi-elderly gentleman can feel okay about hiking in a place like this with a dog whose behavior is bad. What if I'd been a little kid the dog tried to attack?

I hope the whacking I gave the dog was sound enough to discourage it from any future vicious attack attempts.

The Next To Last Monday Of April With Theo Tiptoeing Through The Skagit Valley Tulips

It appears, judging from the view from my secondary viewing portal on the outer world, that the next to last Monday of April has dawned with yet one more clear, blue sky morning in Texas.

Currently heated to 18 degrees above freezing, heading to a high of 74, today, if the temperature predictors are correct with their predicting.

Yesterday I mentioned that I bailed on the Hurst In-N-Out due to their being way too many people trying to get a burger.

My eldest nephew, Spencer Jack's dad, then commented to that blogging about In-N-Out, saying that his burger joint, the Fidalgo Drive-In, in Anacortes, was similarly flooded with burger maniacs, due to extremely nice weather and extremely HUGE crowds of tourists in the Skagit Valley due to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

Theo Tiptoeing Through The Skagit Valley Tulips

Yesterday I saw via the Blue and Max blog that my nephews and niece, David, Theo and Ruby had visited the Tulip Festival this past weekend. I don't know if they went to the Fidalgo Drive-In.

Blue and Max took some cute cute pictures of the kids in the tulips, one of which you see here. That is Theo checking out what a tulip smells like.

In the background those big mounds in the distance are something you don't see in Texas. They are called foothills. As in foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The white patches you see high up on the foothills are called snow.

Enough about tulips. I see the temperature has dropped another degree, to 49, since I woke up my temperature monitoring device. I must go swimming before it gets any colder.

Chisholm Park Fishing While Not Easily In-N-Out In Hurst Today

Fishing In Chisholm Park

I went to Hurst today with 3 destinations in mind. ALDI Food Market, In-N-Out and Chisholm Park.

I'd not been to Chisholm Park before. It is the biggest park in Hurst. Chisholm Park has a fishing lake, a big aquatic center, covered picnic pavilions, ballfields, paved trails, big parking lots and a lot of people having fun in the park on this very pleasant Sunday in April.

On a sign by the lake I read "A Freshwater Fishing License is Required For Anglers 17 Years Old and Older (unless born before Sept. 1, 1930)."

Apparently if you are older than 82 you don't need a fishing license, if I am parsing those words correctly.

Chisholm Park regularly stocks the lake with fish. Largemouth Bass, Channel Catfish, Rainbow Trout and Sunfish Species. The Rainbow Trout are stocked only in the colder winter months because that particular breed of fish does not like the temperature of Texas lakes in summer.

Plenty Of Places To Toss Your Bones In Chisholm Park

Judging by the dozens of people I saw fishing there must be a lot of fish to be caught to sustain that level of fishing optimism.

I saw something in Chisholm Park I'd never seen before. Each of the picnic pavilions, each with a large BBQ pit, were ringed with 8 angled garbage cans.

I was completely bum puzzled and bamboozled til the engineer, Big Ed, figured out that all the angled garbage cans were likely in that configuration to facilitate the easy tossing of bones during a BBQ eating frenzy.

I saw a group of 3 people working on a big BBQ. It smelled real good.

After smelling the BBQ I was hungry. So, it was off to the newly opened Hurst In-N-Out Burger joint.

Well, no luck at In-N-Out.

In-N-Out was over run with customers. There were In-N-Out traffic directors, splitting the incoming cars, with one line going the dine-in option, the other the drive-thru option. There were dozens of cars in the drive-thru. The In-N-Out traffic directors led incoming dine-in customers to a parking spot.

I got led to my parking spot and proceeded inside. I figure this would be like my recent In-N-Out experience in Tempe where it appeared to be really busy but there was no line due to how efficient In-N-Out is.

Well, the Hurst In-N-Out appeared to be very efficient, but there was a line, a long one, almost out the door. And a lot of people were standing waiting for their order number to be  called.

I decided to bail.

I liked Chisholm Park. Since it is so close to ALDI, I'll be back. And I'll try In-N-Out in Hurst, again, when it quits being over run by burger maniacs.

The Sunny 4th Sunday Morning Of April

Looking out my primary viewing portal on the outer world on the 22nd morning of April I see no lizards.

I like my morning views to be lizard free.

At 20 degrees above freezing, this morning is warmer than yesterday's morning.

I read this morning that due to Saturday's extremely pleasant weather the crowd was HUGE at the Fort Worth Main St. Arts Festival.

So, I think it was a good thing I did not go yesterday and experience human gridlock.

I think I'll go swimming now before it gets any hotter. I am 100% certain the pool will be free of human gridlock.

Late Saturday Afternoon Visit From A Pair Of Mini-Alligators

A few minutes ago I was peacefully minding my business, clacking away on the computer keyboard, when suddenly frantic motion caught the periphery of my vision, with the motion occurring on the ledge outside my primary viewing portal.

A pair of big mini-alligators were engaging in some sort of ritual. Mating maybe? Territorial fight? I have no idea. I am not well-tuned into the lizard mindset.

As soon as they caught my attention the pair of mini-alligators quit what they were doing and went into a sort of frozen posture, trying to not be noticed, I suppose.

This frozen posing made it easy to take some mini-gator photos.

When I left the room and continued to observe from outside the mini-gator's view, the pair resumed their strange gyrating behavior. That lasted less than a minute, with one of the pair disappearing. Leaving behind one mini-alligator who remains perched on my window ledge.

I feel fairly safe from the big mini-lizards. I am fairly certain they can not get through the window screen. Just to be safe, maybe I should shut the window, lest I end up in bed with a cold-blooded lizard. Would not be the first time.

Viewing My Favorite Stubby Skyscraper With Elsie Hotpepper On The Tandy Hills

In the picture you are looking at one of my favorite stubby skyscrapers that make up the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth.

This beautiful view, with yellow wildflowers in the foreground, is from the vantage point of the Tandy Hills, where Elsie Hotpepper walked with me today.

You may be wondering why I did not pose Elsie Hotpepper in the picture.

Well.

Ever since a controversial photo incident at the Woodshed Smokehouse, with widened hip allegations, Elsie Hotpepper has refused to get in front of any camera I am holding.

I had planned on going to the Main St. Arts Festival today, near that stunning stubby skyscraper, but circumstances, pretty much beyond my control, have thwarted that plan.

There is always tomorrow. Or next year.

I forgot to mention, Elsie Hotpepper did not wear her new high heels on the Tandy Hills today.

The Cold Dawn Of The 21st Morning Of April In Texas

The view through the bars of my patio prison cell on this 21st morning of April indicates the sky over this part of the planet is free of clouds.

What you can not see via the view through the bars of my patio prison cell is that it is only 16 degrees above freezing in the outer world.

48 degrees. Brrrr.

The temperature predictors are predicting a high of 75, with low humidity today.

This would seem to be a perfect day to go to the Fort Worth Main St. Arts Festival.

The last time I went to the Main St. Arts Festival it was a cloudy, hot, muggy Saturday. Today will not be a cloudy, hot, muggy Saturday.

I think I will go swimming now before it gets any colder and ponder whether or not I want to go to the bother of going to downtown Fort Worth today to mingle with a HUGE crowd of people.

Heavy Rain Sends Me To Sam's Club Where I Was Accosted By A Large Woman With Eucalyptus Oil

Sam's Club Hibiscus Under A Stormy Sky

Even though there was some rain that hit the ground in the middle of the night, last night, my plan was to go hiking the hills of Tandy today.

But then around 11 this morning the rain returned, so I nixed the Tandy Hills and went to Sam's Club to walk around Sam's Hibiscus Tropical Garden and push a cart around inside Sam's.

As you can see, via the sky view, we had ourselves a bit of a storm of short duration today.

Now, hours later, blue sky has returned.

I imagine the rain was wreaking havoc with the Fort Worth Main St. Arts Festival til it abated. I don't know if I'm going to go ahead with my plan to go to the Main St. Arts Festival tomorrow.

Changing the subject back to Sam's Club. The last couple times I've been in Sam's I've noticed that the people hawking samples have gotten way pushier. Barely in the door today there were samples of bread doused in olive oil being hawked. Along with dipping sauce.

I barely got past the oily bread when a large woman with big red lips accosted me by handing me a bottle of cleaner. She told me that, unlike other cleaners, this one smelled good because the main ingredient was Eucalyptus oil, not something nasty like bleach. She shoved an open bottle under my nose. It did smell good, but I acted like I'd just been sprayed by a skunk. I told her I like how bleach smells. Then she started a demo showing the cleaner in action while asking if I had kids and pets. She was still talking as I walked away.

By the food area I came upon a guy pushing green olives. He was giving his spiel to a lady in a wheelchair who seem fascinated by the olive tale. I picked up a cup with 2 olives in it and was mortified to pop them in my mouth to discover they'd been spiked with some hot pepper. Habanero maybe.

Next I was accosted by a woman pushing a cart and hawking little pieces of a Clif Bar. The time previous, at Sam's, I was accosted by a woman pushing a cart with a cooler full of some new Coke product she was hawking. The mobile hawking carts is a new wrinkle at Sam's.

There were multiple others aggressively pushing products, but I did not get accosted by any of them. It all reminded me too much of visiting a Mexican border town. But I like visiting Mexican border towns and getting accosted by all the product hawkers.

I don't like products hawked at me when I am at Sam's Club.

The Dawn Of Another Blue Day Trying To Make Fort Worth Hip

Blue seems to be the dominant color scheme on this morning of the 3rd Friday of April.

I'm feeling a bit blue this morning. I am very stodgy and don't like change. This morning Google changed its Blogger product. Google seems to change its products way too much. The changes never seem like an improvement to me.

For me, the changes to Google AdSense made AdSense a total mess.

In addition to Google annoying me, Mother Nature had a big fit in the middle of the night, tossing rain to the ground, along with some lightning bolts. The booming did not last too long.

This morning I read that something called Travel+Leisure ranked 10 American towns according to their Hipster friendliness.

I am not sure I know what a Hipster is. Modern era Hippie? I don't know.

I clicked through the Top Ten Hipster City List expecting to find Fort Worth near the top.

But, the only Texas town on the Hipster List is Austin at #7.

7. Austin: "The Texas capital has long been a hotbed for live music as well as offbeat types, but the trendsetting locals also scored big points for being tech-fluent." 

The Number 3 Hipster town is San Francisco. Number 2 is a few miles north of San Francisco, the town of Portland. And #1 is.........

1. Seattle: "These northwesterners prove that a key to hipsterness is being ahead of the curve: they won the survey for their smarts, their tech savvy, and their high-octane coffee. As a result, the geek chic may be a little more buttoned-down here than in other cities." 

I have tried to import smarts, tech savvy and high-octane coffee to Fort Worth, but there is only so much one person can do to amp up a town's hipness.

It is 30 degrees above freezing right now. I think I will go swimming before it gets any hotter.

Elsie Hotpepper's Hot New High Heels

This morning I got an urgent message from a semi-frantic Elsie Hotpepper saying she needed some help getting dressed.

Why do I get calls about such things?

But, even when I am perplexed about why I am being asked to do something, I still try and help. This is one of the hazards of having a helpful nature.

I found these high heels today that totally said Elsie Hotpepper to me. I think Elsie can wear them without needing a concealed weapon permit.