My weekend wardrobe....a heavy parka and shorts. No, really.

But no snow.  It's like getting a kiss from your sister.  So far this winter we've had a helluva ice storm, but no snow.  If we don't get some in the next 30 days I'm afraid we'll miss out completely.  :(  

Imagine this:  It's 15 degrees today and it's expected to be in the mid-70's for a high on Sunday.  Sheesh!  That's Texas weather for you.  On a more personal level, it takes me longer to get suited up to take the dog out than it takes him to find a spot and take care of his business when he gets there.

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We had a little excitement in the neighborhood last night.  I heard multiple sirens and looked out to see the fire department turn into the Cisco office park right across the street.  When I walked to the window to see what all the commotion was I saw this:

A car in their parking lot caught fire.  I called K to come look, and as we watched it exploded!  The FD had already checked it and then apparently pulled back, just waiting for the KABOOM!  Then they snuffed out what was left and moved on.  Just another day at the office for Frisco's Finest.

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So Super Bowl Sunday is rapidly approaching and now they're saying that if another killer snow storm develops the NFL might move the game to Saturday or even to a weekday the following week.  I'm thinking Green Bay Packer fans are laughing their asses off right now.  :)

What the hell was the NFL thinking when they awarded the Super Bowl to an open stadium in a northern state to be played in the dead of winter?   In this day and age of domed stadiums everywhere....DUH!  

Have a great weekend everyone.

S

I love living here!

Being iced in for most of 3 days means you have waaaay too much free time on your hands to play on the internet.  I spent much of mine on Google Earth, zipping around the globe from the Swiss Alps to the beaches of New Zealand and Oz.

I've commented here before about my neighborhood and our nearby baseball park, our mall, and all the hundred-plus (no joke!) restaurants just a short drive away.  Courtesy of Google Earth, here's what it looks like:

1....This field is where the Dallas Cowboys, the pride of the National Felon Football League, will build their new headquarters and 12,000-seat domed practice field.  It's supposed to open in 2015.

ME....This is our humble abode.  We're on the 3rd floor in a very comfortable apartment with a nice balcony.  I'm looking forward to being out there in the Spring, watching the thunderstorms rolling in from the west.  Just south is a park with a winding (man-made) stream and several ponds that Luke claims as his.  (The ducks dispute that.)

2....This is the Dr. Pepper StarCenter, a public ice rink where the Dallas Stars also practice, and the Frisco Conference Center, a mini-convention venue.

3....This is Dr. Pepper Ballpark where our Texas Ranger's Frisco RoughRiders AA minor league team plays.  I enjoy their first-class fireworks show after every Friday night home game. 

4....This is Stonebriar Mall, one of the largest in the Metroplex.  In addition to the usual better stores they have a 16-screen (?) United Artist theatre.  It also has a huge parking lot where more than a few donuts have been cut during icy weather.  Just sayin'.  ;)

5....Here is the north Texas IKEA.  The first few times I went there I hated it.  Now I've learned my way around and it's actually a fun place to visit.

6....This is where K works.  It's 1.6 miles from home, door to door.

O....These are all mid-rise (4-10 story) office park campuses.  The number of new ones being built right this minute is amazing, but because the highway infrastructure is already in place, traffic is very manageable.

R....retail.  A huge retail district has sprung up for blocks all around the mall.  If you have a tough time controlling your credit card spending, this could be a dangerous place to live.  Ouch!

DNT....the Dallas North Tollway goes north to ? and south straight to downtown Dallas (26 miles +/-).

SRT....the Sam Rayburn Tollway goes northeast to Bonham, TX (home of the legendary former Speaker of the House) and southwest to DFW International Airport (25 miles +/-) and then on to downtown Foat Wuth (50 miles +/-).

All these toll roads take a....umm...."toll" on my wallet.  I probably spend $1,000 a year for the privilege of risking life and limb daily at 80 mph.

PRESTON road....miles and miles of stores and RESTAURANTS!  I once tried to count all the eateries on or within a few blocks of Preston, but gave up at 100.  

The main residential areas of Frisco are a mile or so farther north.  The homes are huge and uber-expensive, and the owners are uber-snooty, too.  By mutual agreement with the residents, we never go there. 

That's home.  All in all it's a pretty great place to live.  :)

S 

Living the good life

This morning it was 65 degrees with a slight breeze and lots of sunshine.  Yesterday's rain cleaned the air and it smells wonderful.  I put on sweats and sat on my 3rd floor terrace and enjoyed my little bottle of Fourbucks frappuccino and watched Luke the Wonderdog watching the other dogs parading by him below.  Life is good.

While most of my contemporaries might look down on the idea of apartment living after decades of home ownership, for me this is bliss.  Not too much, not too little.  Juuuuust right.  And in this price range my neighbors are all mature, quiet, often middle aged or even empty nesters like me.  My to-do list for today reads....not a damn thing.  Same as it was last weekend, and the same as it will be next weekend.

One view of our 21' x 37' Great Room.

We live in Frisco, a far-northern Dallas suburb known for it's citizenry walking around with their noses shoved up into the stratosphere.  The main residential area of town where all the snooties live in their huge mansions is several miles north of where I am.  My neighbors are more down to earth, though, many of them engineers and managers and such working at all the high tech firms surrounding me.

I must give K credit....her insistence on a terrace was spot on.  Ours is just large enough for a couple of nice chairs and 2 small tables, which is perfectly adequate.  There is some traffic noise at certain hours, but from the inside we hear nothing.  I actually like watching the traffic....there are lots of cool cars here.  Our view looking northwest to northeast:

That open field is where Dallas Cowboy's owner Jerry Jones will soon build his tribute to himself.

New office parks are going up everywhere.

AT&T and T-Mobil both have large campuses nearby.

Lots of hotels are nearby, too, I suppose to accommodate all the techies brought in to work on special projects.

Less than a mile east is a HUGE shopping mall, just south are lots more "apartment homes" and condos, and west is a very large high-rise office park.  The Dallas North Tollway one block west connects me straight to the airport (W)  and downtown (S).  Two floors below is a "salon and spa".  And apparently no one ever cooks at home judging by the fact there are literally a hundred nice restaurants within a 2 mile radius.

Now that we're moved in and settled (again), I must say I think I've found where I'm meant to be.*  :)

S

* Unless I win the lottery.  Then you'll find me in Colorado, zip code TBD.

Well, there goes the neighborhood

My city, Frisco-on-the-Plains, TX, not to be confused with 'Frisco-by-the-Bay, CA, convened a City Council meeting last night to put the finishing touches on a deal that will bring the Dallas Cowboys training facility and *drum roll please* "World Headquarters" here.  And by "here" I mean just across the street from me.  

Right behind those trees, just a 5-minute walk from mi casa, is where "America's Felons" (formerly known as "America's Team") will check-in during the season.  

I wonder if they'll call it a "practice field" or an "exercise yard"?

Da 'Boys.

Here they are posing for a recent team picture.

"Stick 'em up!"

As Cowboys owner Jerry Jones never does anything all on his dime, I'm anxious to see how much he extorted from the city to make this deal happen. 

Late EDIT:  It was announced this will be a $115M project, with public money accounting for $85M of it.  The upside....the city will retain ownership of the 12,000-seat domed stadium/practice field, with local schools able to use it on Friday and Saturday nights for high school football games.

I would personally be much more impressed if the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders would move their practice facility here.  ;)

S

The PERFECT Saturday!

Yesterday was the kind of Saturday all Saturday's should be.  Sunny, low 70's, just gorgeous.  (A little windy, but I'll let that slide.)  K and I were up and out of the house at a decent hour and knocked out our to-do list by early afternoon, just in time to go to granddaughter Blakely's 1st birthday party:

With mom, dad, and brother Parker.

Umm....my plate's on fire!

Hey, this birthday thing is fun!  We need to do it more often.

After da party we went to the Frisco StrEATS Food Truck and Music Festival.  I love watching that show on the cooking channel that features all the food trucks and never miss an opportunity to visit one when I can find it.  Yesterday they had about 20 for us to choose from parked nose to tail....

After walking around and seeing what our choices were we decided on ssaham BBQ.  I had gourmet Korean chicken tacos (chicken, sesame soy vinaigrette salad, caramelized kimchee, cilantro and onion, Korean salsa roja, and spicy mayo) and some kimchee fries.  Oh man, were they good!

Later back home we watched the taped game of our adopted English rugby team, the Northampton Saints.  A win would put us in the semifinals of the Premiership championship and we did it, winning convincingly 47-7 over Sale.  

And no, we didn't have to tell everyone we met yesterday to NOT tell us the final score of the game.  There was no need for a "spoiler alert" as we were probably the only 2 people in North Texas who ever even heard of the Northampton Saints.  I guess that makes us "unique"?  No?  OK then, "weird". ;)

Hope you enjoy your Sunday.

S