A Big Drop In Temperature Should Bring About Some Tandy Hill Hiking

As you can see via the graphic generated via my computer based temperature & weather monitoring device it is a bit chilly this Monday morning coming up on 11 o'clock.

There appear to be a collection of clouds providing some direct sun relief.

And there is some wind movement.

I suspect some hill hiking on the Tandy Hills is in the near future for me.

Speaking of hill hiking. Rosie the Rat Dog has updated her Alaska! blog for the first time in days. Rosie and her sisters have been staying in a Dog Spa whilst their humans have been hill hiking inside Denali National Park. Apparently Rosie's humans did a big no-no in camp and got a severe reprimand from a Park Ranger.

Speaking of reprimands, something unfortunate happened to me yesterday in Arlington. I am sorting out the facts before I go through the pain of blogging about it.

I did an hour in the cool pool this morning, staying on the OMG Diet that I did not know I was on til a couple days ago.

Walking The Boardwalk In Arlington's Veterans Park Worrying About Getting Too Skinny

I took a walk on the boardwalk at Veterans Park this morning on my way to Arlington's International District.

The maze of trails that is part of Veterans Park's Xeriscape Garden is heavily shaded and thus quite a bit cooler than being out from under shade, where the sun has direct contact, with no intervention.

The Xeriscape Garden shows locals how to landscape with plants that grow well in the Texas heat whilst requiring less water than plants that aren't as well suited for this harsh climate.

Speaking of this harsh climate, currently it is only 91 degrees, with the humidity making it feel like it is 101.

I found out a couple days ago that without knowing it I have been on the Six Weeks to OMG Get Skinnier Than All Your Friends Diet.

I wondered why I was getting so skinny with seemingly no concerted effort towards that end. Now that I know that the morning swimming, among other things, was making me skinny, I increased the amount of time I've been pooling in the morning.

I hope I don't get too skinny.

A Pleasant Saturday Tandy Hills Hike With My Arizona Sister Til My Mom Interrupted

It looks like the trail I am on on the Tandy Hills leads directly to the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth.

Looks are deceiving in this instance.

Even though it appears that wild prairie continues all the way to downtown Fort Worth, that really is not the case, for the most part.

Is there any other town in America, with a population over a half million, with such large chunks of undeveloped land so near its downtown?

My sister, who is usually in Arizona, rode with me to the Tandy Hills today and then went hill hiking with me til my mom interrupted. At that point my sister left me to enjoy the steam bath alone.

My sister is currently planning to leave Arizona on August 14 to go see our nephews, David and Theo and niece, Ruby Jean. However, my sister may move her flying date forward for two reasons. One is to escape the furnace blast HEAT of the Valley of the Sun. And the second one is that the twins, Theo and Ruby, are looking so darn cute she can't wait to see them.

I am sort of looking forward to seeing David, Theo and Ruby. It's been many years since I have gotten to use my highly evolved uncle skills on new nephews. And I have never ever gotten to use my highly evolved uncle skills on a niece.

And I can't remember the last time I provided piggy back service.

Walking Around Green Fosdick Lake With The Brown Fosducks

Fosdick Lake in Oakland Lake Park has grown greener since my last walkabout in that location.

After that last Fosdick walkabout and finding myself being appalled at the green color of the water I wondered how it was that Green Lake, in Seattle, was not green from pollution, with Green Lake being in a much more densely urbanized zone.

When I blogged about this green lake issue in a blogging titled Trying To Keep From Getting Dirty By Practicing Good Habits When I Walk Around Fosdick Lake the irony of me comparing green Fosdick Lake to a lake called Green Lake, flew right over my head, til now.

The Fosducks seem to be happy with their green lake.

My camera did not quite capture how cool the coloring was on the brown duck you see in the picture. Multiple shades of brown.

Brown is my favorite color. I've been previously accused of brown being my signature color. Apparently a lot of what I wear is brown.

It was 87 degrees when I went walking with the ducks, with the humidity making it, supposedly, feel like 99. However, a good wind was blowing across the lake, which really did not feel at all HOT.

Get A Peach Julep Saturday At The Parker County Peach Festival In Weatherford

Tomorrow, Saturday, July 14 the Parker County Peach Festival takes place in the area around Weatherford's historical Parker County Courthouse square.

The festival opens at 8am and closes at 5pm.

You can find all the info you need to find your way to the Parker County Peach Festival on my Eyes on Texas website.

I've been to the Parker County Peach Festival twice. Both times were not good years for Parker County Peaches. I've been told this year's crop is a good year for Parker County Peaches.

The Parker County Peach Festival is BIG. It seems to me to be an awful lot effort for a one day festival that is only open for 9 hours.

There is a $5 admission charge. You get a lot of free entertainment for your 5 bucks.

It will be HOT tomorrow. The Parker County Peach Festival has several walk through misters to help you cool down. Along with Peach Juleps, Peach Ice Cream and likely some other cool Peach Products that I am not remembering right now.

The Peach Julep is non-alcoholic. You will need to bring your own whiskey to make the Peach Julep fortified. I don't know if Weatherford and Parker County is wet, dry or damp.

For you reading this who live in a state where Prohibition long ago ended, in Texas some areas are still totally in Prohibition mode, as in dry. Others are damp, as in you can buy wine and beer. Others are totally wet, like Fort Worth, where you can buy beer, wine and whiskey and any other type alcoholic product.

In Fort Worth you can even attend Happy Hour Inner Tube Floating events in the Trinity River. Fort Worth is a very liberal town.

See you tomorrow at the Parker County Peach Festival.

Maybe.

A Little Lady From Vietnam Made Waiting In A Long Texas Line Less Annoying

Yesterday, while I was aggravated regarding the Third World backwardness of the Texas Driver's License Renewal process, I did what I usually do when I'm aggravated, as in do my best to turn the lemon into lemonade.

I was helped in the lemonade making process by the funny people I was in the Soviet-style line with.

I just ended a sentence with a preposition. I should have said funny people with whom I was in line.

Somewhere around the hour mark, in the slow moving line, the Little Lady behind me said something regarding when she moved to Texas from Oklahoma. This Little Lady had had me laughing for an hour at that point. And she laughed heartily at my attempts at being amusing. I always appreciate it when people laugh at my attempts at being amusing.

When the Little Lady said she'd moved from Oklahoma I wondered to myself if she was Native American. But, one does not directly ask such things. At least I don't.

Soon after the one hour mark a guy came up to the Little Lady and said something to her in a foreign language. She replied in a foreign language. I thought it might be Cherokee or Choctaw or Comanche.

So, I asked the Little Lady what that language was that she was speaking.

Vietnamese, she told me. Vietnamese? You're from Vietnam asked I?

Yes, she said, she got to America in 1975.

1975? She confirmed the year with a nod.

You escaped on a boat? Yes, she replied.

Did you already speak English when you were in Vietnam? No, she said she had to learn English fast once she got to America.

But, you speak perfect English, with no accent, said I. She thanked me for that remark and others around us then chimed in with their amazement at her perfect English.

She said when the war ended, with the north taking over, the people she was a nanny for quickly had to escape, taking her with them. She did not have time to tell her mom. She got to America and began writing letters to her mom. It took 9 years, in 1984, for the Little Lady from Vietnam to hear back from her mom, that her mom now knew she was safe, in America.

When the Little Lady from Vietnam arrived in America she was placed in holding camps at forts in Arkansas, and then Oklahoma, waiting for a sponsor. Eventually, in what year, I did not ask, a Texan in Arlington became her sponsor.

I think a lot of Texans in Arlington must have become sponsors, which is why Arlington has such a large Vietnamese community.

Six years ago, the Little Lady from Vietnam was able to return to Vietnam, to Danang, to see her mom for the first time in 31 years.

I asked if Vietnam had changed a lot from the way she remembered it.

She said she'd become so spoiled by life in America that Vietnam was a bit of a shock to her. No air-conditioning was one shock. The Little Lady from Vietnam said she did not like how unsanitary Vietnam was, and that she was shocked to see men urinating at the side of the road as she toured the country. The Texan in line behind the Little Lady from Vietnam chimed in with, oh, I see that here in Texas. I then said, I've done that myself in Texas.

The Little Lady from Vietnam  had a very hearty laugh, which erupted frequently. How do you get another language's humor and be funny yourself in that other language?

The rest of the time in the long line, waiting to get our ticket to get in the next line, moved real fast after all of us around the Little Lady found out she was a Boat Person from Vietnam.

After we got our tickets the Little Lady from Vietnam and I figured out how to answer the questions on the small print form we had to fill out. The first question was are you a United States Citizen. The Little Lady from Vietnam read that question and said I'm working on it.

I think the Little Lady from Vietnam should be granted citizen status with no further delay.

The United States took in around 823,000 Vietnamese after 1975.

Many of those Vietnamese have become very successful Americans.

I suspect all those successful Vietnamese Americans have probably paid more in taxes, in the years after 1975, than what the United States spent on the Vietnam War.

I have no idea what point I am trying to make.

A HOT Walk With The Village Creek Indian Ghosts

Currently my computer based temperature monitoring device is telling me it is 89 degrees in the outer world, at my location, with the humidity making it really feel like 99.

It really felt HOTTER than 99 when I left my abode for my daily constitutional. I was drenched in water leakage even before I entered the outer world today.

I opted for walking with the Indian Ghosts who haunt the Village Creek Natural Historical Area.

As you can see the trees are providing a pleasant level of shade. It was still HOT.

I saw a water snake slithering in Village Creek today. It slithered to fast for me to get my camera out of my pocket and turned on.

A few days ago, when we had a string of days over 100, the water in my swimming pool was starting to get warm enough to not be all that refreshing.

The past couple days the water in the pool has been back being a refreshing level of cool. I suspect this will not last long.

I am thinking of going to Camp Bowie bingo tomorrow. Not to bingo, but to observe and take pictures. I have intended to do this for a long time, but something always seems to interfere.

Is The Fort Worth Modern Art Museums's Lucian Freud Portraits Exhibit Making Other Art Museums Green With Envy?

That is England's Queen Elizabeth you are looking at in a beautiful portrait by Sigmund Freud's grandson, Lucian.

I can't imagine why this flattering portrait of England's current queen is controversial, but, apparently it is.

I also do not know if this flattering likeness of the Queen of England is currently visiting Fort Worth, along with a lot of other Lucian Freud portraits which are currently visiting Fort Worth, temporarily housed in Fort Worth's Modern Art Museum.

The Fort Worth Modern Art Museum's Lucian Freud: Portraits exhibit runs til October 28. To see it will cost you $10 unless you are a student, then it's $4. It's free for kids 12 and under. Free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month and half price on Wednesdays.

I don't know if kids 12 and under should be seeing this exhibit. Lucian Freud painted a lot of very realistic portraits of people sans clothing. Some of which might cause kids to have nightmares.

I think I have mentioned, previously, that I used to be appalled by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when that newspaper would use verbiage of the Green with Envy sort to describe something totally lame in Fort Worth to be somehow causing spasms of envy in other towns in America. Or the world.

Now, I really don't think anything about any town causes another town to become Green with Envy. That's just a goofy concept.

However, if the Green with Envy concept was ever legitimately applicable I can see how one might claim that Fort Worth had some sort of bragging rights with the Lucian Freud exhibit causing art aficionados in other towns in America to be Green with Envy because little ol' Fort Worth snagged this exhibit.

Apparently the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum's chief curator, Michael Auping, flew to London multiple times to meet with the reclusive Lucian Freud, prior to Freud's death in 2011. Auping's goal was to get Freud's permission to exhibit Freud's portraits in Fort Worth. Freud had a fascination with Texas and cowboys and was soon sold on the idea of having his portraits displayed in Fort Worth.

The collective value of the Freud exhibit in Fort Worth is worth more than the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium cost. As in more than a billion dollars.

Usually an artist's art gets valuable after the artist has died. Freud's art was breaking records at art auction houses even before he died.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping

In 2008 a Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, paid $33.6 million for a portrait titled Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, portraying an extremely fat, naked woman, asleep on a couch.

I do not know if the Russian loaned his expensive portrait to the Lucian Freud: Portraits exhibit, or not.

I do know I would not want that particular portrait hanging on any of my walls. I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather buy with $33.6 million.

Texas Really Badly Needs To Fix Its Department Of Public Safety's Unsafe Driver's License Renewal Operation

When I moved to Texas. over a decade ago, I found myself sort of culture shocked a time or two or three. Sometimes I found the culture shock to be a pleasant thing. Other times, not so much.

I think the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, which may be called the Texas Department of Public Safety, may be the worst culture shock I've experienced in Texas. If I remember right, dealing with the Texas DMV, or whatever it is called, was the first time I thought to myself I've moved to a 3rd World country.

After what I went through today, to renew my driver's license, I can say the Texas DMV situation has worsened since I first experienced it.

One of the good things about a Texas Driver's License is it is good for 6 years. After 6 years you can renew your license online. You can not renew online after another 6 years has passed.

I don't remember how often I had to renew my Washington driver's license. I do know it was way more frequently than every 6 years. I also know that renewing my Washington driver's license was a speedy, painless, efficient, modern operation. And that was way back in the last century.

I'd been warned not to go the DMV near where I live, that being the one in Hurst, due to it being the busiest in the D/FW zone, with parking hard to find. I opted for the Texas D.P.S. Driver License Field Office in Arlington, near Veterans Park.

I arrived at the DMV parking lot, easily found a parking space. Finding the DMV entry, in the strip mall in which it was located, was not so easy. Eventually I found it, tucked in a corner.

I entered to find myself mortified by a line and a lot of chairs with a lot of people sitting in them. I asked the first guy I saw what the line was for. He told me you had to get in line to get your ticket to be in line to get your license.

Is this not the type thing the former Soviet Union was infamous for, with the long suffering Soviets waiting in long lines caused by the inept Soviet bureaucracy?

Waiting In Line To Get A Ticket To Wait In Line

I took a long look at the Soviet-ish line and said, screw this, and left. Then thought about it, knew I wanted a new driver's license to replace my soon to expire one, so I didn't have any incident with I.D. getting on an airplane.

So, I turned around and went back inside, eventually found my way to the end of a line that snaked all the way to the back of the office.

I told myself I'd make the best of this and that it'd make good blogging fodder. Eventually I reached the top spot in the line and got my number, which was 30. All morning long I'd been hearing the robo-voice call numbers in the high number range, like 794, 899. None in the double digits.

After A Half Hour The Line Had Moved To Where
I Could See The Lucky People Seated Who
Had Successfully Got Their Line Ticket

I entertained myself whilst doing the line waiting by having amusing conversations with my fellow Soviets. It felt sort of like those instant friendships you strike up when you are in travel mode, like waiting to get on a plane, or while in the air.

I finally exited the DMV around noon and headed to ALDI. The ALDI checkout lady politely asked how I was today. I said I was miserable. She laughed and asked why. I said I'd just spent 3 hours getting my driver's license renewed.

The ALDI checkout lady said she could not believe it the first time she experienced the Texas DMV. She'd moved from New Jersey, where, like Washington, getting your driver's license renewed is an efficient operation.

Even though I put up with this 3rd World backwards nonsense today, without complaining, til now, I wondered to myself, why do Texans put up with this sort of governmental incompetence? When people in other states, don't?

Does Rick Perry have to wait in line to get his driver's license renewed? How about Fort Worth Mayor, Betsy Price? Do, those who make the laws get to experience the Texas driver's license renewal experience? Does J.D. Granger have to renew his license the way us common folk do? Or does his Big Mama Kay somehow take care of that for him, like she does so much else?

One Thing Is Certain: Fort Worth Is Not Safe For Either The Living Or The Dead

This morning I got email from Don Young with a couple links I did not get around to clicking on til this afternoon.

The email message...

In their latest angle on covering the dangers of drilling-fracking, the national media is fixated on the DEAD. While I welcome almost any media attention to the most important environmental/human health issue of our times, this one is kind of like a red herring, distracting the public from more important issues.

When the media came calling last week to inquire about my long-dead father I did my best to steer them back on track. We all have respect for the dead but when industry is fouling the planet at a breakneck pace we must focus on the LIVING.

One thing is certain: Fort Worth, Texas is not safe for either.

One of the links went to a New York Times article titled "Drilling for Gas Under Cemeteries Raises Concerns." The other link went to a CNN article titled "Fracking Under The Dead."

Below is an excerpt from the New York Times article...

FORT WORTH — Henry Donald Young Sr. is buried in a small pioneer cemetery next to his parents here, beneath the drooping leaves of an old tree at the industrial edge of one of the largest cities in Texas.

But Mr. Young’s relatives wonder how restful his final resting place has become. Thousands of feet beneath the cemetery, a company has been drilling for natural gas using the controversial technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

“I would imagine that drilling and fracking and all that vibration is bound to cause some damage,” Mr. Young’s son, Don, said of the 134-year-old Handley Cemetery. “But who’s going to dig up their dead relatives to see if there’s a crack in the casket? What’s being done to Fort Worth in general, whether it’s to the living or the dead, it’s immoral.”