After getting home last night, I stopped to pick up mail. And as coincidence would have it, I recieve an advertisement for a Firestone special in the mail. So, I head over there Sunday morning and see if they can set me up. I learn that they don’t carry them in stock. I then drive over to NTB and learn the same thing. Defeated, I drive back home.

The next step is to plug my tire. But when I walk back into the garage I notice another flat tire! Gah!!! I was able to plug the first tire. So I install it and then remove the 2nd tire. But when I plugged that one, it would not hold air. Sigh. So now I am forced to use the spare.

I need new tires anyways. I am running low on tread. So I will call a tire place and have them order the tires for me. And have the tires aligned as well. Since I notice an abnormal wear pattern on the second tire.

Well, I wasn’t about to let a little thing like a flat tire prevent me from going downtown and photographing the UT tower at night. It was a little interesting driving my truck. I kept the speed at 55 MPH the whole way up and down the interstate roads. And I was passed by everyone! I think that was the first time I had driven so slow…

I was a little worried leaving my flat tire in the bed of the pickup truck at night in the UT area. But I hoped for the best and went off into the night. It was pretty crowded there! I think every Austinite felt the need to take pictures tonight. I went tonight because there was going to be a celebration tomorrow night and I thought that it was going to be a freaking mad house.

Most of the people were by the fountain facing north towards the tower. So I wandered off to see what the west facing view would be like. And there were only a handfull of people around taking pictures. Much more reasonable.

I was able to get some pictures of two sides of the tower. And then I wandered back to the fountain. Where I waited paitently to get set up for a photo. I met a nice guy called Rod and we chatted about Canon equipment and taking pictures. I also found out that he was an IBMer and lived in Round Rock as well! Its a small world sometimes…

I should buy photoshop sometime and work with the RAW files a bit. See if I can tweak them and improve them a bit. Anyways, here are the results. The tripod was not set up perfectly plumb. But live and learn…

Afterwards, I went to a good vegetarian restaurant called Veggie Heaven. I would recommend it to anyone and I am not a vegetarian…

Thanks for the cookies, Mom! They made me happy…

I went to an African restaurant in Pflugerville today. It was quite dead with only one other customer during the time I was eating lunch. And the African food was a minor part of the menu. But it was interesting. It would have been better with more veggies. I am not a fan of a meal that consists of a lot of two foods (like chicken and rice). Variety is a good thing.

What was interesting was this thing that was setup on a table. A game perhaps? Mancala?

And here I am complaining about how freakin hot it has been. So Nature whacks me across the head and shows me how freakin cold it can be. Yesterday, I left work early to work at home. I did not want to be stuck in Austin during another ice storm like the last time. I did venture out to Yoga at 7pm. When I got back into my truck at 8:30pm, I had to wait for the ice to defrost on my windows since I had forgotten to bring an ice scrapper with me.

Well, there was not enough precipitation like there was last year. However, it was still pretty bad traffic wise. There were 150+ wrecks. And businesses were shut down. I did not leave my house at all. No way in hell am I going to drive around these idiots. Although I am tempted to see how my truck handles icy weather. Probably not too bad if I were to stick a couple of hundred pounds of kitty litter or sand in the back.

It is supposed to get even colder overnight due to evaporative cooling. It was 22 degrees Fahrenheit this morning.

For lunch, I decided to stop at the new grocery store. It is a 190,000 square foot monstrosity. This has been the second time that I have gone to it and, during both times, it has been freakin packed! Since it is new, people move very slowly. This makes it incredibly hard to navigate quickly. I just want to get in and get out. I don’t want to turn it into an expedition.

There are expanded food choices for me now. The cheese selection is much better than the store at 620 (although it is still less than Central Market). They sell some things that I don’t think should be sold at grocery stores. After all, the store should be about turn over and they should sell things that people need on a weekly basis. Do people need CDs and DVDs every week? Books with strategically placed stars on the covers? How about furniture? I don’t think so!

They do sell Jalapeno Cheese Bread! O.M.F.G.! I have been seriously Jonesing for this bread! This alone is worth the hassle of shopping here!

Here is another example of waste in packaging. Shiner is selling a limited edition case of beer called 96 that is enclosed in a wooden box. Now what am I going to do with the box afterwards? And they don’t even use six pack containers within the box. So much for transportation afterwards.

John and I went to an Ice Bats game tonight. They played the Corpus Christi Rayz. It was fun. There were two fights that I had no clue why they were started. All of a sudden, I see two players throw their helmets and gloves off and start circling around each other with their fists up. And at some point one person grabs the other and then they start trading punches. And once they fall, the referees pull them apart. So it seems to me that it is a bit of showmanship kind of like pro wrestling.

We sat a couple of rows behind the opposing’s team bench. And every time the Ice Bats scored, the fans would start chanting “You Suck!” Which is kinda mean if you ask me.

And after the game, we stayed for some songs in the Vallejo concert. All in all, there was cold beer, hockey fighting, and a rock concert. Which, in my mind, is a good night, indeed!

It seems like it was a month ago when we were having 100+ degree temperatures. And now, for tomorrow morning, we have freeze warnings for western counties. I don’t know how plants can handle these radical swings. I just wish we had a reasonable fall…

Why must, in this day and age, there continue to be discrimination of people? Get out there and stop this!