cottonmather0

It would be nice to find a map or something definitive about that's happening. I can read the words but I can't realize visualize it all that well. They do have all of the trees fenced off on both sides of the road, so maybe that's a good thing?

I drove down there yesterday and saw what was going on. Surely they're not going to eliminate the canopy of trees? That would be absolutely horrible.

Alright alright not everyone in Katy drives an SUV. You win. I'm not going to belabor this point anymore as it's veering so evermore off topic.

Oh, I love the freeway. It's great. But an ad hominem argument isn't the point. Link Link Truth be told, I would vote for Culberson if I lived out there, but not because he wanted the freeway widened. Nonetheless, lots of people did vote for him on that issue, so I think the point is made. I can't remember who the congressman was in northern Fort Bend back then. It's Ron Paul now, but I think that's recent and that it used to be Tom DeLay, who also is on record in support of widening the freeway. Truth be told, I would vote for all of these guys if I lived in their districts (I am in Queen Sheila's district right now and I drive a big pickup truck, fwiw), so I'm not trying to be critical of them, but to say that the people who lived out there aren't the ones who wanted the freeway widened into Houston is just wrongheaded.

I haven't tried it on the new sections inside the beltway, but it works outbound, particularly at Dairy Ashford where there is usually some backup. My inlaws live at Eldridge and quite often it's easier to exit at Dairy Ashford and stay on the access road, then reenter and stay in the "exit only" lane to Eldridge.

Hey, they got the Katy Freeway widened for their SUV's rather than implementing some sort of mass transit solution, so don't act so surprised. The government can prohibit particular types of traffic on any road. In general, bikes aren't allowed freeways and expressways like the Loop or Memorial because people are supposed to drive fast and unobstructed. The problem with many Houston (and Katy) drivers is that they drive like that on every road and get mad when something gets in their way. I live just off of W TC Jester here in Timbergrove and the speed limit between I-10 and 610 is 35 miles per hour. At all hours of the day 1 driver in every 5 goes down that road at 50 or above and I would say up at least half of all drivers crest the railroad bridge going 50. There are lots of bikers going over that bridge, too, going to and from the bayou trail, and most drivers get mad at the bikers because the bikers cause them to slow down. If they were actually going the speed limit, they wouldn't have to slow down as much in the first place, and I suspect the complaints on this other road are similar. People are wanting to drive too fast in the first place. Referring back to the Heights Robber thread, I happen to like it when the cops park at the bottom of the bridge. Don't speed and you won't have to worry about it. Not to mention that speedtraps also catch lots of offenders for other crimes, too. Works for me.

I have never been on the same side of an argument with Red. This is sweet! Two points here: 1.) Pedestrians deserve to be protected, too, and bikers coming speeding up behind someone walking slowly on a sidewalk is very very dangerous to the pedestrian. I don't see what's so antiquated about that. 2.) If you ride on the sidewalk, then those "2 tons of steel" are less likely to see you and more likely to just turn in front of you. It's happened to me on a bike before and it's not fun. This, however, is correct. (link here) Amen to that. A few summers ago when I still lived in Bellaire I rode my bike to work 2-3 times a week to work downtown. It was absolutely exhilarating riding in heavy traffic every day and was some of the best exercise I have ever had. Of course, I stayed off of the busy roads as much as I could, but in some places, particularly in the afternoon coming out of downtown, I couldn't avoid traffic (West Gray and Dunlavy were the worst parts) and I just put my head down and rode. One thing that I learned as that if I always obeyed stop signs and traffic lights (on the busy streets) and signaled my intentions and rode like I was driving, it wasn't that bad at all and I got pretty comfortable with it. It seemed scarier than it really was before I actually did it.

The safest place a cyclist can be is in the middle of the lane of traffic. If it's safe for him to let cars pass, then he should, but he's not obligated to if there isn't sufficient room (look it up) and he has as much right to use the road as do the drivers and if cars behind him think that he's going too slow, then boo hoo. It chaps my hide to see helmetless jackasses riding their bikes on the sidewalk and just ceding the road to the cars. A sidewalk is a terrible place to ride a bike - it's dangerous to pedestrians and to the cyclists - and if more bike riders rode responsibly, they wouldn't need bike lanes in the first place. As it is, most cyclists are afraid to get on busy roads and most drivers think they're not supposed to be there and aren't used to interacting with them. Similarly, the idiot bike messengers downtown who run stoplights and go the wrong way down one way streets also give cyclists a bad image and makes drivers predisposed to disrespect everyone on a bike. I'll give the benefit of the doubt that the OP is worried for the safety of the cyclists and not just complaining that they shouldn't be there in the first place. If there are bad drivers and it's an unsafe stretch of toad, the cyclist is responsible for his own safety, but he has as much right to be there as the cars. If there's not much of shoulder or room to let cars pass, then the cars shouldn't be passing in the first place. The speed LIMIT is not the speed MANDATE. I realize that this is a fantasy and most idiot drivers will then do their best to pass anyway, but if just one or two drivers got thrown in jail for killing a cyclist or two through reckless driving that kind of behavior would likely stop.

Yes.

One thing I remember about my last trip to Europe was all of the ads on Sky News and the BBC for Qatar Air. I haven't seen one yet on Houston TV but there have been quite a few print ads in the Chron and the HBJ. I don't think I would ever have a reason to go to either Doha or Dubai, but I'd love to check out one of those flights someday.

Holy Crap! I'm going to make sure I'm locked and loaded for the next few days until this guy is caught. How awful.

We did have those signs a few years back and then they got changed to "left lane is for passing only." I have never seen them anywhere but on rural interstates, though. The only problem with either solution being that people all have their own definition of both "slow" (ie it's all relative) and "passing" ("I will be passing that car a mile ahead of me soon enough, so why not just stay in this lane until I do?") People who don't know how to properly drive on a freeway are a major cause of accidents. I'm not talking about speeders or weavers or aggressive drivers, I'm talking about the people who can't be bothered to get out of the way of everyone else and thus become a hazard in their own right.

We have one. It was already here four years ago when we moved in and the next door neighbor says it dates from the mid 80's. They installed the metal shakes directly over the cedar shakes, which you can see up in the attic. Aside from being dirty and needing to be painted these days, it still works just fine and our air conditioning bills in the summer are really low, anecdotally I would say 20-30% lower in the summertime compared to what my friends with similar sized houses says theirs is. Niche is right about the rain noise, it can be pretty loud, but it's also kind of cool. The downside is that you can't go up there and fart around like you can with a shingle roof for fear of damaging it when you walk around. Similarly, if you do any work that needs a hole cut through the roof (like a new water heater or stove vent), you have to find someone who knows how to do it properly as most repairmen and contractors don't. I also had to put my satellite dish on a pole in the backyard because it couldn't be mounted on the roof. No idea on the expense of the install, since we didn't pay for it in the first place.

The key plot point is that a "normal" dude from the present goes to sleep for 500 years and when he wakes up he is the smartest guy in the nation of idiots. A lot of it is kind of goofy, but the underlying premise is so close to fact that it's scary.

If you're in Montrose, I would recommend Harmony Electric on Yale. The owner's name is Dennis and he is very easy to work with. http://www.harmonyelectric.com/

I am talking about the iron work circled in the photo below. I need to replace mine - I pulled them off when I replaced the soffit and the porch ceiling last month. The ones in the picture were rusted at the bottom and broken in a few places on top. I thought they were structural, but they were already loose and didn't seem to be supporting any weight (they were essentially hanging from the top), so I haven't been in a hurry. I just think the porch looks better with them there. I took the old ones to the scrap metal yard and the guy there called them "pig iron" and said he didn't have any use for them so I left them out for heavy trash. Where do I buy these things and what are they called, officially?

I concur and I have never even heard of putting anything but greenboard on the ceiling over the shower. Putting concrete board up there would be really hard to do, I think. BTW - you shouldn't use greenboard for the walls of the shower, but it sounds like you already know that. And normal sheetrock is fine for the rest of the ceiling away from the shower.

I will concur that she does a competent job reading the news, but "beautiful" she ain't. She looks like a blowup doll.

I think his point is that the quiet zone movement is a relatively recent phenomenon. Sure, there have been people there for a long time, but I would bet that while the old timers support the idea it wasn't one of them that initiated the effort. Bellaire and West U (and River Oaks) have been built out since the 40's and before and they didn't get a quiet zone there until the whole teardown movement started 10 years ago and wealthier new residents moved in. I know because I used to live in Southdale - the old timers in the bungalows just considered the trains another part of life - it was the new people who were complaining. Not that any of that matters as I still think it's a good idea.

I think this is kind of goofy. One the one hand, yeah it's cool that I might be able to find a parking place near the courthouse, but on the other, if someone is paying to be there and is willing to walk back and forth, why shouldn't they be able to do that?

No kidding. I understand their concerns and a quiet zone isn't at all the same thing as wanting the tracks removed, but many many people in this town have no idea just how long the train tracks have been here. Those in particular - the BNSF line to Corsicana - have been there since 1901. The tracks in Sugar Land that people down there like to complain about are more than 150 years old! BTW - I support the quiet zone here. We are about equidistant between the UP line down south along Washington and the BNSF line in Garden Oaks and we can hear both pretty clearly on most nights. The Eureka Yard is also pretty loud, too, but I keep hearing rumors that it is indeed about to go away.

I was at the Bunker Hill HEB tonight and the girl bagging my groceries - in paper - asked the checker if there was any more meat to go into the meat bag! I have been driving out of my way to shop there for a while now and after tonight I am done with Kroger on 11th.

Maybe they have a mortgage on all of the plastic surgery and can't afford to walk away from it.

I just saw this, too, and am confused why they wouldn't get rid of the pompous overbloviated (I made that word up) deadweight instead. Geez. Wendy at least smiled more than once a day But Lauren is still staying!

Anyone here have an opinion? This is a federal law that was passed last year as a reaction to cheap Chinese toys but was written so poorly and broadly (and interpreted by the CPSC as such) that it's going to drive many domestic manufacturers of high-quality children's products - products that have never had a problem with hazardous materials in the first place - out of business and leave the companies that can afford to import cheap chinese crap as the only companies that can also afford to comply with the law. Talk about irony! Here is a summary of what the problem is: And one more. My wife and I are having to shut down one of our businesses (that sells handmade swaddling blankets) because we cannot afford to comply with the law as written - our suppliers already test and certify that the fabric that they ship to us is lead and phthalate free, but this law won't let us rely on their tests and would require us to retest our products all over again after manufacture. Don't get me wrong, I think keeping children's products free of hazardous materials is good and necessary, and I would be very happy to do a bit more paperwork to keep track of my suppliers' safety documentation and the like, but this law is a stinker.