Back Talk Lake Highlands

Adopt a cat today

Hopefully by now you've read about all the fantastic goings on at East Lake Veterinary Hospital, 10101 E. Northwest Highway in your August Advocate magazine. For the folks at the pet orphanage July is "cat month" and they are cutting the fee for cat adoptions in half. Normally it costs $135, but today — the last day of the deal—you can adopt a kitty for $67.50. Adoptions are subject to approval by an adoption counselor. Check out pictures and details here. While you're at it, browse the veterinary hospital web site. They have so much going on around that place that I couldn't possibly fit it all in the printed story.

Wine review: Times Ten Cellars Carignane 2007

Carignane is an odd little red grape. It’s used mostly for blending -- in California to produce jug and inexpensive red blends, and in the Rhone region of France, where it’s the poor cousin of syrah, grenache and mouvedre.

This single-varietal carignane, from Dallas' Time Ten Cellars ($15), shows the grape off to nice advantage. It has a funky, Rhone-like aroma (wine types call it bacon fat), but plenty of New World style fruitiness, including a big dose of cranberry (something to keep in mind come Thanksgiving). It’s not especially tannic, and the alcohol is a well-done 13.8 percent. This makes it an ideal red wine for hot summer days and good barbecue, be it pork or smoked chicken.

YMCA will shut down pools temporarily

More neighborhood pools will close tomorrow night and Friday for treatment to prevent the parasite, crypto. Your area YMCA, for example, will shut down temporarily ... from what I can tell, they'll be open during the day tomorrow (though I'd probably wait until after the treatment ... you know, just as a precautionary measure).

It's Time to Get Really Randy About Life in LH!

   I bet you came here because you thought this post was just another rant about something gone wrong with stuff-'n'-such in Lake Highlands, right?  Well, I'm sorry to disappoint. This is about a great ABC Primetime episode last night, about the celebration of life that Randy Pausch lived after he was diagnosed with metastatic (stage IV) pancreatic cancer.  In case you have not heard of him before, he was a Carnegie Mellon U. professor in IT and virtual reality. He became famous for his "The Last lecture" video and book. You can, and should, watch it on YouTube here. It's a very moving presentation about life, that the audience thinks is directed towards them.  Except, at the very end, he tells them it's not for them. It's for his kids because, barring miracles, he won't be around to see them grow up.

Diane Sawyer took that speech and did her first PrimeTime show with Randy this past April.  Last night's show reprises some of that and then reflects on what Randy lived since then, up until his death last Friday morning. His take on life was that you can be a Tigger or an Eeyore.  Life is what you make and you better damn well look at it from the bright, positive side because that's all you have. Thankfully play the cards you have been dealt and don't sweat the small stuff, because it changes nothing to mope around or complain.

Cancer patients have that instantaneous car wreck we all dread -- WHAM! -- and then walk away physically. However, studies show how emotionally and mentally devastating it can be to you, your family and friends. How you handle it is all about how you will continue to live and become a cancer survivor. Whether that's the less than 20% of pancreatic cancer survivors 6 months after diagnosis, or longer term, because you are not a bell curve statistic, you are you. They are encouraged to throw off beliefs they thought were sacrosanct. Whether that's voting for the same party "because my parents did, and besides, talk radio says it's OK" or getting that vanilla latte each morning "because I deserve it so what if I weigh 20 pounds too much" or being grumpy with your spouse or kids this evening because "I had a frustrating day at the office and I'll apologize in the morning" or... insert self-excuse here: ____________.

Once you throw off those beliefs, you can start living your convictions, which you soon realize are usually very different from those "beliefs." And you know what? It really works! How do I know? Because May 27th I was diagnosed with stage IV, non-operable, pancreatic cancer. My chemo is working great and I feel better than I have since January. I have no outward physical side effects whatsoever. My CA-19-9 tumor marker has gone from 1200+ to 400 to 104 in only 5 weeks! It's our own private miracle. So, I am surely getting (in addition to weekly gemcitabine infusions) the clinical study drug rather than a placebo (I'm in a 50-50 blind, phase 3, controlled trial at UT Southwestern).

It's why my posting has been sparse for the past couple of months, and will continue to be moving forward. Because I'm much too busy living my Tigger convictions. Let me encourage you to reflect and then try it, too, before you get a WHAM!

Pete Sessions cuts loose

U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions is taking a lot of flack from his conservative brethren for holding a fund-raiser in a Las Vegas nightclub last year. The congressman, whose district includes parts of East Dallas, Lake Highlands, Preston Hollow and North Dallas, used the Forty Deuce at the Mandalay Bay, and it does seem a bit risque for someone who sponsored legislation to require that the Treasury mint commemorative coins to honor the Boy Scouts.

But what struck me -– and I’m really surprised that Sessions’ colleagues at the Texas Eagle Forum didn’t catch this –- is that the 2008 fundraiser was held at a Vegas sports bar owned by rapper Jay Z. I’m assuming that Sessions and his friends don’t know who Jay Z is, because his bar seems an even more unlikely venue for a Sessions event than the Forty Deuce.

$1.50 Cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory

Your dentist and personal trainer don’t want you to know, but today, July 30, is National Cheesecake Day.

Thinking we might need more incentive to eat dessert, the Cheesecake Factory is offering $1.50 slices of each of its varieties.

Here's the skinny, according to the restaurant's website:

Another restaurant bites the dust

This time a big chain restaurant, Bennigan's, gets it (our East Dallas neighbors were hit hard today by the loss of Kitchen 1924)— Bennigan's. The chain declared bankruptcy today, according to a spokesperson —an employee told the Morning News he'd been instructed not to speak to the media. (What are they going to do, fire him?) While I never really enjoyed the food at Bennigans, I hold a special spot in my heart for the Northwest Highway location. The restaurant provided me with my first ever job— as a hostess then as a waitress. And I think I may have learned more about life and people from waiting tables than I did in college.

White Rock Marathon chosen for Texas Championship Race

For the first time in its 38-year history, the Dallas White Rock Marathon has been selected as the Road Runners Club of America Texas State Marathon Championship. This is a big deal for The Rock. Read more.

Layoffs at The Morning News, Part II

This morning’s News story details the cuts: 40 of the 390 newsroom staffers will go. All things considered, 40 isn’t too bad when 14 percent are supposed to be cut company-wide. Many people I talked to expected more, which means the cuts at the three other papers will be awful. Quick, The News’ entertainment-oriented sibling, will become a weekly, apparently to compete with the Observer. This raises one of those fine metaphysical newspaper questions. If you can’t sell any ads as a daily, can you sell any ads as a weekly?

Wall Street has been unimpressed. A.H. Belo stock, The News’ parent, is down 17 percent this morning. Oops – just lost another half percentage point. More ominously, Goldman Sachs cut its rating on Belo from hold to sell, based on the company's "unprecedented revenue declines."

Meanwhile:

Prescott takes on another development project

The developer doing the town center is about to start work at Greenville just north of Mockingbird, site of the old Shamburger building center, on another mixed use residential project. It’s Prescott's fifth project in this area, including an expansion to Mockingbird Station. That’s an ambitious agenda for a company its size.

Frankly, I have lost count of all of the proposed, under construction, renovating, pre-leasing and planned mixed use retail centers around here. We’ve written about a similar project on lower Greenville, the Timbercreek redevelopment, the Casa Linda renovation, the town center at Walnut Hill and Central, and at least three or four more –- to say nothing of the Lake Highlands Town Center. In fact, I'm supposed to do a post, complete with spiffy pop-up map, with each of these proposals outlined.

It’s amazing, considering how little retail we had here 10 years ago, that everyone has decided to throw all these new shops at us now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all the reasons, but even so, that’s a lot of space to rent. It’s even more space to rent given the economy and the credit crunch.

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