With the death toll in the Pakistan earthquake topping 18,000, I’m not sure how much more bad news we can take in one year. That figure is just mind-boggling. The Metrobloggers in Lahore and Karachi are doing an amazing job with posting information and pointing people where they can help.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected.
If you thought the September 1 effective date of the new smoking ordinance was the last you’d hear of it, think again. 19 owners and bar staff from the effected bars filed a lawsuit September 19th and there was news this past week from Judge Sam Sparks who’ll be hearing the challenge.
I was out Tuesday night when word of his comments reached patrons and owners of one sixth street establishment. The smokers in attendance took his comments to mean that there wouldn’t be any fear of enforcement until his ruling, so they lit up right then and there. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. I must say that I’ve noticed and enjoyed the 5 or 6 times I’ve been out since the ban went into effect.
Update: I forgot to mention that the new ordinance is also under seige from state legislators and lobbyists because Austin Club, a private club, falls under the ban. Kelso wrote about it today in his column in the Statesman.
Hard to believe it’s been a whole year, but it’s true.
We’d like to celebrate our move from infancy to toddlerhood with as many of our friends as possible. We’ve picked Casino El Camino as the scene of the crime this Friday, October 14th at 5:30pm. We’ll stay at least ’til 8pm or later depending on how things go. So come on out and meet some of the metrobloggers in person. We’d love to meet you, otherwise we’ll be stuck drinking and talking to ourselves again and nobody wants that.
This story is disappointing. I dig Southwest. I fly their airline. I watch their reality show on A&E and generally sympathize with them when they have to deal with some real whackos. However, they seem to have a real problem with consistently enforcing their policies. Their Contract Of Carriage clearly states under the first reason for Refusal of Travel that they’ll boot you if you’re wearing offensive clothing. That’s fine. What isn’t fine is that they’ll let you get on a plane, get you part of the way to your destination, and then enforce a policy that could result in you being booted. They did the same thing to me on a trip to NY. We flew with my son, who, at the time, was a year old. Since he was under two, he was a lap child and could fly for free. Since he had just turned a year old, we didn’t bring his birth certificate and we were not challenged on the flight to Islip. On our return trip, I got into a heated debate with the check-in agent because I didn’t have proof of age. Eventually, she capitulated, but she initially intended to charge us full fare for his return trip because we couldn’t prove that a child who was clearly not two and who had flown without incident several days before was, in fact, under two.
I always dig the reports that NPR Legal Affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg, turns in for NPR’s Morning Edition. (Stepan recently pointed out that her last name means “dead mountain” in German. How cool is that?) I just love the explanations of rulings when the Supreme Court adjourns in the summer and the profiles when it returns on the first Monday in October. We’ve been hearing a lot from her with two Supreme Court nominations in the last six months. I particularly liked her piece this past Friday on Justice Breyer. It gave great insight into his viewpoints and how he arrives at a decision. It was really informative and added something to my understanding of how the Supreme Court operates. On the face of the story, I’d have to say he’s now my favorite justice. I’ll be paying particular attention to his opinions over the next Supreme Court session, especially now that we’ll have two new viewpoints to gauge.
I first became acquainted with Marrit Ingman through the AustinBloggers WebRing roughly two years ago. When I added myself to the ring, I browsed through the existing blogs to see what people around Austin were writing about. Hers was one of a handful of blogs which kept my interest and I found myself returning and commenting on some of the posts. Her writing is honest and, at times, screamingly funny. Since then, our families have gotten together a few times and spending time with them has just increased my admiration for her writing and viewpoint. I’ve got a daughter who’s roughly the same age as her son, known to The Internets as “Baldo”, so there’s a lot of common ground.
Marrit and her husband had a tough go for the first couple of years with Baldo. After having him, she found herself in the midst of a major postpartum depression bout and found that poor Baldo came with more than a few health complaints that would tax even the most patient and prepared of parents. Being an amazing writer, Marrit channeled these experiences into a new book, Inconsolable : How I Threw My Mental Health Out With the Diapers
It’s been a while. We weren’t sure you were coming back. Hope you stick around for a while.
Being a native Texan, I’m used to the heat. In fact, I generally like it. I moved to NYC for two years in my early twenties and ended up moving back here mainly because not being able to more than one block away left me with a subtle but perisistent feeling of claustrophobia and the lack of sunlight and cold temperatures really had an effect on my mood.
Especially after this past weekend though, 72 degrees and overcast never felt so good.
As promised, I finally got the photos uploaded. I got some pretty good ones of Bob Mould. I had the closest vantage point for his set.
Oh yeah, one other thing I forgot to mention in the original post, I hope the owners of the two separate blobs of gum that found their way onto my shoes during yesterday’s trudging get some sort of horribly painful and disfiguring jaw ailment. It is too much to ask that you not throw that shit on the ground? Damn.
Last night while trying to unwind from ACL Fest, The Wife stumbled across a re-airing of last week’s series premiere of My Name Is Earl, starring Jason Lee and Rubber Band Man from the Office Max commericals among others. She’d heard from a friend that it was really good, so she stayed when happened to find it on Bravo. We missed the first ten minutes, but what we saw was screamingly funny. It airs Tuesdays at 8pm central on NBC. If the rest of the series is anything like the 20 minutes that we saw, you won’t want to miss it.
I’ll have photos up tonight. I think I got some decent shots at Bob Mould and Rilo Kiley. Until then, check out Ray’s flickr page. He’s got some good stuff. I only attended the last day, which was the hottest, my luck. As reported earlier, yesterday was, in fact, the hottest day of the year. The two locations of record, Camp Mabry and Bergstrom Airport, recorded 107 and 108 respectively. I’m sure there will be more calls to move this festival into October. The organizers shrugged it off last year claiming that the heat was a fluke. Well, guess again, we topped it this year. Global warming or not, I can remember going to UT football games in late September in the late 80’s/early 90’s and having to wear a jacket.
From what I can gather from those who attended all three days, Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, and The Frames were some of the notable performances of the weekend. We only caught the first few songs of Coldplay, but it sounds like they made a good showing. I checked out Rilo Kiley and Bob Mould close-up and watched Wilco and Tortoise from the comfort of my umbrella-shaded chair on the H-E-B Buddy beach. Our kids spent a fair amount of time in Austin Kiddie Limits with Joe McDermott and Biscuit Brothers. We watched some of the festival re-cap on News8Austin when we returned home last night and were surprised to find a crowd shot that included our two kids and a friend.
I’d heard a lot of good things about Rilo Kiley and was suitably impressed. The lead singer is quite the instrumentalist, switching between guitar, keyboards, bass, harmonica and percussion throughout the set. The band apparently spent Saturday tubing down the river in New Braunfels. Their Austin City Limits taping will air on October 8th on your local PBS affiliate if you’d like to check them out for yourself.
Bob Mould’s performance was good. It didn’t quite have the energy of some of the other shows. There were a few miscues as well. He started off the set with a few Sugar tracks, followed by three or four from the new album, including Paralyze, which is one of my favorites, but was played a little too fast. He broke out several H