Yes; the fans are still in the windows, and the transoms remain open. But the oxblood lilies have come and gone, and leaves of anemones are beginning to make their appearance. It’s cool enough for the lantanas and the milkweed and the chiles to bloom again profusely.

Arising early or retiring very late in order to comply with the watering restrictions is no fun at all, so the downpours have been more welcome than it’s possible to say. Even with the best of efforts, the pleasure grounds have lost two old rose of Sharon shrubs and a good part of a mature redbud tree as a consequence of the summer’s stresses.

The City does appear to have spent some effort in enforcing the watering restrictions. Our one watering day under the new regimen has been Saturday, and on one of them, between 6 and 7 am, I observed a City vehicle just creeping along the curb and shining a police-type spotlight over lawns, seeking the telltale glisten of the Secret Soak.

There’ve been enough breaks in the heat that we’ve actually fired up the oven. No pizza or loaves of bread or popovers have yet emerged from it, but meatloaf has. We’ve brought out the deep cast-iron pot with the wire basket and enjoyed French fries at breakfast. We used a little of nearly every vegetable to enrich the first Sonoran pork stew of the season, and brought out the comal to heat up Margarita’s tortillas.

At this point, I don’t care if I never see a salad again. Food that’s been roasted, fried, baked, boiled, steamed, sauteed, stewed, simmered, broiled, and treated to every sort of application of heat is what I long for. I welcome every harbinger of fall!

until the well runs dry, or the aquifer does. It turns out that there is an application into the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District for a private owner to drill a well into the Trinity aquifer and extract 1-million gallons of water per year for “domestic irrigation needs”.

Err, run that by me again. Yes, a property owner in Rollingwood, 8 Sugar Creek Austin, Texas 78746 to be precise, and if Google Streetview is accurate, the property seen in the picture, wants to drill right through the Edwards Aquifer into the underlying one, and pump out 23x per month than I use, and use it for irrigation.

Now, I guess you might argue that for a farm this would be a small quantity. But this isn’t a farm, it’s a house+land situated between Bee Caves Rd and Lake Austin. While I’m sure the owners may feel they are putting the water to good use, at a time when we are all being asked to cut back and save on water consumption, this is the equivalent of 3x the water consumption that Lance Armstrong used and caused him such embarressment(thanks to Steve for his comment correcting my understanding and math) This request is approximately half the annual amount that embarrassed Lance Armstrong, and for which he took immediate steps to rectify.

Let’s remember, there is a water shortage. Water isn’t man made, it’s part of the commons. It “belongs” to all of us. It’s unclear to me that this won’t affect the Edwards Aquifer, as we all know that water finds it’s own level. There is apparently a chance that the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District will approve this free extraction and use of OUR water.

Now, remember this isn’t about cost, it’s about supply. Seems to me that if this passes, now might be a good idea for us all to start plans to build our own wells to water our own lawns, after all we can all be selfish.

Alternatively, if you feel that the commons right to water is the responsibility of all of us, you might want to call BSEACD on (512) 282-8441 in the next 3-days and tell them, and indirectly tell James David and Gary Peese, the property owners, that you do not feel this is an appropriate action, period, and especially in the current drought conditions.

Forbes has ranked the stress level of the 40 largest metropolitan areas and decided that Austin is the least stressful. Chicago was ranked as the most stressful. Here’s their methodology:

To find the most stressful cities we examined quality of life factors in the country’s 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or metros — geographic entities defined by the (OMB) for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics. We looked at June 2009 unemployment figures provided by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and cost of living figures from the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER). We examined median home price drops from Q1 2008 to Q1 2009 that were provided by the National Association of Realtors. Population density based on 2008 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and ESRI also factored. Last, we examined the number of sunny and partly sunny days per year, based on 2007 data from the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, as well as air quality figures, based on 2007 data from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Feel free to begin the debate of whether or not any of these measures is a good predictor of stress level for an entire city.

For well over a year work has been going on at the site of the former San José Catholic Church and more recently, Greek Orthodox “Holy Name of Mary” church and St. Hilarion Monastery in the Bouldin Neighborhood on the corner of W Mary and S 3rd St. At least according to this listing on homeaway.com, it’s finally finished.

The owner, and architects Urban Nature Inc. have taken some bold steps in turning the old single story church, into a “castle”. The materials used are complimentary to the original church, which dates back to the 1930’s. Bouldin neighborhood is home to some of Austins oldest residential homes, and also some of the most ecclectic and unusual properties in town, and this further diversifies the local building styles.

Local neigthborhood activist and Austin Neighborhoods Council President, Cory Walton has been keen on establishing Bouldin as a local historic district, while at the same time being home to some of the cities most innovative. Take a tour care of the homeaway website, or drive down and have a look, make up your own mind, Castle or monster??

Got friends visiting from out of town for ACL, I have. I don’t think mine could afford the $1500/ night 4 night minimum, but it’s still available!

The rules for Town Lake trail are few and far between, and quite rightly so. Don’t drop litter; clean up after your dog; keep to the trail; don’t take samples from the plants; women wear a sports bra while jogging, men make sure you shorts don’t let the mouse out of the house while jogging; dogs on a leash except at auditorium shores; cyclists, no speed in excess of 15MPH.

None of these are formal, they are just good. So, today my thought was, no blocking. Walking three abreast on the trail just doesn’t work. It really doesn’t work when you are all wearing mp3 players and not talking to each other, let alone listening out to what’s going on around you.

Three going clockwise can’t pass three going anti-clockwise; three on one side, two on the other, pretty much blocks one passing in the middle. So I propose that where there are three people blocking one side, now the football season is with us, it becomes an automatic right to be able to execute a tackle from behind on one of the three if you need to pass.

No need for those slightly embarrassing calls, on y’alls right/on y’alls left, instead just shout no blocking and run or bike right through… (more…)

I took this during an evening shower (a rare evening shower this summer as we’re about to beat the record of number of days over 100 degrees) heading east on 45th street near Burnet Rd. I was at a full stop at a light. I’m guessing that if the new “texting while driving” ban that the Austin City Council approved this week eventually gets passed, I could get ticketed for doing this. They’re going to have a difficult time enforcing that one fairly.

I got my latest bill from Austin Energy the other day, and read the enclosed newsletter, PowerPlus(TM) as normal.

I was amused to see the heading “Levelized Billing” – Now, I know that readers here will sort of understand what this means. If you don’t I’d suggest googling it, there is just one dictionary that defines it, The Business Dictionary, and the second result is, surprise, surprise Austin Energy.

Companies mostly make up works to obfuscate, to hide something. They rarely make up words to make things clearer and more obvious.

Just for clarity, what it really mean is that you are depositing money in Austin Energy’s account, in advance. They provide you with an estimate of what it’s going to cost you for energy for the next year, based on any projected price hikes and they then divide the total by 12-months and you pay that much each month.

So, you’ll be giving them an interest free loan every month, they’ll have the money in the bank before you use the energy and at the end of the year, if they’ve screwed up on the estimate, the price hike or otherwise, they’ll pay the surplus back to you without interest, or you owe them the difference. It’s a power industry-wide scam.

This is a standard (bad) practice in the UK, especially with companies like British Gas. What they do is over estimate your usage, which puts your monthly upfront payments up. They over estimate their price hikes, whichl puts your upfront payment up even more; and then at the end of the year, they suggest that your balance really isn’t significant and it will be consumed by next years estimate, so you should leave it with them to offset your year+1 costs.

Multiply that by 20,000, 50,000 customers and bingo, the residents of Austin become one of the largest loan companies to Austin Energy on the basis you are giving money for energy you have not yet used.

Now, since Austin Energy is community owned, that may not be a bad thing. Afterall, one assumes with all these upfront loans from residents they should be able to reduce they amount they borrow at commercial banking rates and pass this cost saving onto its customers.

Just so you understand what Levelized means of course.

Boggy Creek Farm is featured in today’s WSJ and described more as a prime historic property of substantial size than as a working organic farm: “Where Whole Foods Shops: A historic house on Boggy Creek Farm grows organically in Austin” (byline Katy McLaughlin).

[Before going on to say more about Boggy Creek, since Whole Foods is mentioned in the Boggy Creek subtitle, I'd like to be clear that IMHO it's no accident that most Austinites have not bothered to comment or blog generally about the recent John Mackey opinion piece on health care, also in the WSJ. Enough of us know people associated with WhoFoo or even Mr. Mackey himself to have formed opinions about this piece. It is of some interest that there are those around the U.S. generally who have not taken kindly to what Mr. M wrote and who state that, as a consequence, they intend to take their business elsewhere (see Facebook page, e.g.).]

Included in the article on Boggy Creek Farm are detailed physical descriptions of the old farmhouse, plus the price originally paid for the farm, what it might have brought at the height of the boom, and speculation about what might be a probable sale price at this time. There’s some discussion of agricultural productivity, coupled with a passing mention of what the per-hour return on the owners’ labor has in the past been calculated to be.

The article in print form is accompanied by three black-and-white photographs; the on-line version shares with us a nifty little color slideshow. Let us hope that the appearance of this article is not a consequence of our drought.

If you drive north on Mopac daily from downtown in the morning, you’ll have no doubt noticed the Starship troopers hiding out on your journey. Recently they’ve been spotted in numerous places, more often up under the Parmer Lane Bridge, Monday there were three clustered together, their broad shouldered appearance in the shadows, standing next to their Star Wars like speeder bikes; Full facemask on, sometimes reflecting the sun and glinting in your eyes as you speed past. Only at the last minute do you spot them holding their radar speed guns rather than litesabers. Sometimes though they are easier to spot, they sit in Texas DPS Cars and are dressed like regular cops

It’s the reality of the daily north bound commute on Mopac, north of the 183 section, up onto the toll road section. Yes, while all you out of towners are sitting in slow moving traffic heading south, it’s perfectly possible to travel at, or greater than the speed limit going north. Now, I’m not for a minute suggesting that you should exceed the speed limit on any road in Austin or elsewhere. For the sake of transparency, I’ve been stopped and ticketed twice this year and realise I’m in the wrong. While I’ve breezed past the speed cops recently, with the cruise control set to 60MPH to accomodate the sometimes confusing, variable speed limit on sections of Mopac, many others have not been so lucky. The question is though, is this really the best use of the cops time ?

I’m not trying to get them off my back so I can speed and break the law with impunity, it just occurs to me that following another death in an Austin neighborhood, sitting on Mopac and picking off north bound drivers really does little good, except raise revenue. It’s an alternative, progressive form of tax, levied and paid unevenly, and avoided by most. If you really wanted to tax speeding drivers on the toll roads, just charge based on the time taken to pass through/between toll booths and be done with it. At least that’s open and transparent. The current system is akin to using the cops as tax/toll collectors.

While from time to time I assume there must be crashes on that section of Mopac, I’d guess they involve few cars, when speeding is possible. Maybe, more when the roads are busy like the evenings heading North on Mopac, but then speeding isn’t so much an issue, just dangerous and careless driving that causes accidents.

So, assuming we are not about to see a big influx of new law enforcement officers and enough to patrol everywhere, then perhaps the cops could be put to use patrolling those neighborhood roads where cars still speed, often with impunity, and when there is an accident with serious and deadly consequences. [Like this one from earlier this month]. To my memory, speed has been cited in at least 5 neighborhood deaths where pedestrians have been killed by motorists this year, have there been any on that section of Mopac in the morning commute?

I assume cops themselves are the only ones at risk of being hit on Mopac, rather than pedestrians, and sadly, it does happen, so another reason not to put them at risk just to raise revenue.  What should we expect from our law officers, to protect and serve, or to raise revenue? Isn’t that a reasonable question ?

Before you vent, again, I’m not saying cops are bad, I’m not saying that speeding is justifiable, or that I or any others breaking the law are in any way safe drivers. The question I’m asking, is, given the choice should the cops be sitting on Mopac and picking off easy hits on variously empty roadway, or actually patrolling and stopping drivers in the neighborhood arterial roads and shortcuts where speeding is just as common but more dangerous?

Don’t hold your breath though for changes, a recent study from researchers at the University of North Carolina suggests that a weak economy will mean more traffic tickets. Net, net: every one percent (1%) loss of local government revenue leads to a .32 percent increase in the number of traffic tickets.

Some speculated that it was machinery of some sort; others, toads; still others, a bird. Thanks to diligent research and consultation with experts, the producer of the very loud sound that’s new to most of us this summer has been identified as a giant cicada. Here’s a link to some recordings. Warmer weather has apparently encouraged these insects to extend their range northward. Here’s what the San Antonio Express-News reported recently: “Giant cicadas making quite a racket,” byline Anton Caputo. This article has been syndicated by AP but has not appeared in our local daily. We have been seeing the sheddings from the usual cicacadas, not all that large, but have not yet seen any signs of these quite cacophonous creatures, only heard them.