This morning the wind really kicked up. I thought at first this was a good reason to eschew the planned fishing trip, and instead go to an art museum. In the long run, though, my friend and I decided to go fishing after all.
Rods in hand, we rode the Red Line train down to Mockingbird Station in Dallas, and then switched to the blue line train for the short ride to White Rock station. A nice man on the blue line talked to us about the fun of fishing.
White Rock Station is literally across the street from White Rock Lake, Dallas' large urban lake. Some "urban lakes", including those in our little suburb and the neighboring suburbs, are not "real" lakes, but are little ponds. White Rock Lake, though, is a large urban lake with "real" fishing and "real" sailing and a lot of great walking and people-watching opportunities.
The train let us out just across a busy street from the park, so that we could cross that street with a walk/don't walk light and be right in the park. It was so easy to go to the lake by train that I'm sure I'll do that again. We walked the roughly twenty minutes from the station to the lake, through a nice little paved walkway through a wetlands. Then we croseed a pedestrian bridge over water to arrive by the lake.
One disadvantage of my weight loss is a bit silly, as with something in a cartoon. Although I am not remarkably temperature-sensitive, I now get cold far more easily than when I was heavier. The combination of a very brisk breeze and high 50s weather made the fishing portion of our day very chilly for me. Today we focused on casting artificial lures in search of bass--and caught nothing at all. I should amend that: we caught tree branches in the water, freshwater "seaweed", and underwater rocks of all shapes and sizes.
We did not catch any fish, though, and only got a little nibble action on some catfish/carp bait to which we switched.
We did stop by the White Rock Festival, a very small community festival sponsored to benefit homeless animals. This festival did not capture my imagination, except in one respect. Several animal rescue places had the cutest adoptable dogs there. I love that these places do the work they do. I had a great muffin from Highland Park Cafeteria.
Recently, I listened to a radio broadcast from the Dallas City Council, in which a new spaying and animal protection ordinance is very controversial. I heard casual breeders and other folks make "commuinty comments" in opposition to the measure. Their comments were in many cases reasonable points (disadvantages of early rather than later spaying and other debatable points), but at least one speaker spoke of the issue as "those people" who "don't spay their mongrels", as if the shelters are only filled with the dog-fight hybrids abandoned by the poor. Anyone who visited the White Rock Festival would have seen beautiful pure-bred and pure-bred-mix pals waiting for adoption, a succinct rebuttal of "those people" thinking. I get so bored of people who speak in code about people of other ethnic groups or socio-economic levels.
I notice that my mood has become less strained since I began to listen to WRR 101.1, the local classical music FM station. I think that classical pleases me because it rewards patient listening, in the same way that more modern electronic genres I enjoy do. I was a bit disappointed with the band that played the White Rock Festival billed as "acoustic jazz", because their myspace sounded so cool, and their festival sound was just the same-old same-old about loud, distorted sound and a faux blues take on things.
We walked a bit around the lake, and had really amazing hot dogs on bakery hot dog buns at the festival for lunch. We had great conversation, talking about everything from "Pirates of the Carribean" to the TAKS test for school, and made plans to attend a Big Brothers annual picnic in a couple of weeks.
When I arrived home at 3, I noticed in the mail that the "Share Singers" is having a reunion. The Share Singers was the church choir in which I sang in high school. I like my voice, but I do not recall being very good when I sang in Share Singers. I could never hit the tenor notes, and yet my baritone had not filled out enough to sing as a bass. There was a questionaire which asked if people were still into music. I will write an amusing paragraph to explain that it is among my hobbies. The reunion is the first weekend in June, which is a good time to go see my father as well. My mother's side of the family is having a family reunion two weeks later in Texarkana, so my dance card is gaining a few waltzes for the Summer.
I was really pleased with how easy it was today to ride the train to and from the lake. At one stop on the way back, an Asian festival was in session. That, too, would have been fun. I liked a lot that the train ridership has been way up the past few weeks. The price of gas may finally drive people to conserve. It's odd to think that the market will do what common sense told everyone should have been done yars ago. Milton Friedman would be proud.
Although monetarism appeals to me, I still think we are having the wrong debates in this country. This is a good time to get mass transit publicly funded, as the ridership is soon going to be there. The politicians are tied up with other priorities. It's easier to promise the "bread and circuses" of a gas tax holiday, rather than taking steps to get people to drive less. It's hard to imagine that we need to encourage people to buy more gas.
My wife was out getting a really cool and different cut and color this afternoon when I came home. I fell asleep soon after getting the mail, and slept for four and a half hours. It was great--I needed the sleep.
We went to Applebee's, which has this very Weight Watchers friendly menu. I had steak with portobellow mushrooms, roasted potatoes and broccoli, along with chocolate raspberry cake. It was heavenly. Then we flipped on one channel to see Vincent D'Onofrio as an odd bug-alien in Men in Black, followed by seeing him as an odd detective in Law and Order: Criminal Intent. It was a varied array of odd.
I am glad I have yet another day tomorrow to rest and relax, before work resumes on Monday.