End of Silence

Today was the deadline to file as a candidate for the 2006 elections here in Texas. The big news is that Carole Keeton Strayhorn (or Rylander or whatever the hell her last name is these days) has filed as an independent and not a republican. This allows her to avoid a nasty primary battle for the GOP nomination with our current governor, Rick Perry. It looks to be a four-way race between Perry, Strayhorn, the winner of the democratic primary (Bell or Gammage?) and Kinky Friedman. There’s a lot of speculation going on around the Texas political blogosphere. Check out Off the Kuff, Burnt Orange Report or Pink Dome among others for more info going forward.

Both Strayhorn and Friedman have to collect enough signatures before they’re official and apparently those signatures have to come from people who do not vote in either the republican or democratic primary as I understand it. This means that if you’re going to push for Friedman or Strayhorn, you’ll want to abstain from voting in the primary? I guess they check that on your voter registration? How does that work? What if you vote in some other races in the primary, but abstain from picking a nominee for governor in either party?

For those not familiar with Texas politics, you should pay attention, because what’s been going on here for the last 20 years was a breeding ground for Rove et al. You should also know that Strayhorn is White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s mother, which is enough to make me avoid her like the plague no matter how much trouble she causes for Perry.

Update: Here’s some more admittedly left-leaning analysis on the race.

The family and I hit First Night earlier than Andy. We were there from 3pm until 5:30 or 6. We too opted not to buy the buttons this time. I think the overall feel was nice. I agree that they should probably block off Congress in addition to blocking off Cesar Chavez and the South First Bridge. It sounded like they were having problems with pedestrian traffic on Congress anyway from what I overheard on volunteers’ radios. You can check out my Flickr set to see how it all looked during the “Family Festival”.

I would’ve liked to have seen the climbers on the Radisson at night with the film being projected on the side of the building and it would’ve been nice to check out the dragon and the fireworks on Town Lake. The food could’ve been better, although the butter-soaked pretzel from Hoffbrau was a big hit with the adults and the kids. Mmmmm….butter. Blocking off the South First Bridge and letting people go nuts with colored chalk was a cool idea. We took the opportunity to get family photos in all directions since it’s not often that you can safely stand on that bridge. We’ll go again next year.

Following up on M.J.L. Kellogg’s post, the buzz is building on the city’s 1st First Night this New Year’s Eve. The program starts at 2pm and runs all the way to midnight.

The first three hours are being billed as the “Family Festival” which includes a grand procession that appears to begin at the Austin Museum of Art’s Community Room, where you can make your own art flag for the parade, and ends at City Hall.

There’s too many things going on to list them all here. You can check out all the details by section, discipline or timeline. A map is available as well. Some of the highlights include a glowing dragon on Town Lake, fireworks over Town Lake at midnight, fire dancing by five different area troupes, a Segway Ballet, music from many different local drum acts of varying cultures, a film montage projected to the side of the Radission Hotel complete with building climbers(?), and a performance piece from Salvage Vanguard Theater called ReVERBerations.

Sounds like it’s going to be pretty crazy. Lots going on. At first glance, it looks like they may have overreached on the sheer number of things going on. It’ll be interesting to see if they can pull all of this off. I’m definitely going to check it out.

This was “The Bike Christmas” for my nearly 7-year-old son. We picked up a Haro Z20 a couple of weeks ago at Ozone and stashed it at a friend’s house until Saturday night. It was waiting for him when he came down the stairs Sunday morning. He went out for the inaugural ride later that morning with my father and his two dachshunds. One of the training wheels came off before they got halfway around the block. This particular model of training wheel uses a semi-circular clip to hold on the wheel. Somehow, the clip popped off, never to be seen again.

We brought the bike back to Ozone around noon yesterday to plead our case. John, one of the owners, helped us out. He was apologetic for the failure of the training wheels and clearly felt bad that the Christmas morning surprise had been tainted. He didn’t have any of the training wheel sets that he wanted to use as a replacement in stock, so he told us it’d be at least a day, possibly more before we’d have the bike back. To make up for the wait, he offered The Boy some stickers and gave us a discount on the helmet that we picked out while waiting. We headed home satisfied, but a little disappointed.

John called us back at home around 4pm to tell us that the bike was ready. Apparently, he’d tracked down the training wheels at another local bike store, gotten them and installed them. Ozone went above and beyond to make an unfortunate situation right and they did it without much squawking from me. I highly recommend using Ozone for all of your bike needs. Go give them your money. You’re not going to find that kind of service very many places. They rock.