IronTiger

No, they're just the ones that you buy in a store, even the ones packaged with "Louisiana hot sauce", though my cat has a taste for seafood, and she prefers the Hill Country Fare brand "Cat Dinners" cat food over the name brands.

Harrisburg/East End is way too close to refineries, rail yards, the shipyard, and others. The unfortunate thing is, I can't see it any better unless all the old residents get priced out by Inner Loop refugees looking for cheaper housing and rail access, and the old Harrisburg as you and I know it is essentially destroyed either way.

I wouldn't do that to people...one thing for certain is my cat is certainly intrigued by the smell and put her front paws on the counter, something she hasn't done for years (and she's a very old cat at 14)...

We all know that we should eat healthy and good-tasting food: perhaps you can cook really good food or would be a health nut except for that one bit of junk food you shouldn't eat. I consider myself to be a healthy eater (relatively) with a taste for good food and drink (yes, including beer--stay away from the mainstream domestics), but I have a number of weaknesses: - Jack in the Box tacos. A hideous, greasy mess of nearly white lettuce and meat that resembled refried beans, but they are really good. - Zebra Cakes. They're cheap and the fat tends to your stick to your mouth, but since the CVS opened across from campus, they're the best place to get snacks like that. - Sardines. Sardines on crackers sounds disgusting (and it is cheap), but I really do like it and will usually consume an entire can with half a dozen crackers. Part of the common threads up there is that they're all cheap (I'm a college student with not a whole lot of disposable income) but they're all foods that I enjoy (I despise fried pork skins and Hot Pockets) even though I know I really shouldn't be eating them. Have any food-related guilty pleasures you're aware of? McDonald's hamburgers? Pizza with cheddar cheese? Bubble gum-flavored ice cream? I won't laugh, I promise!

In terms of guilty pleasures: movies, both UHF and the Bill & Ted movies were both really dumb, but I really enjoyed them (especially UHF)

I don't know, with trains and cars the problem tends to sort itself out, and as for the rest, a few strategically placed LEOs can help out with that and help reduce the deficit, if you know what I mean.

The other problem with closing Main Street is the light rail. The benefit of pedestrian plazas is able to get across from the street without worrying about being hit with something, light rail kind of defeats the purpose. I would rather have Main Street continue as a two-way road through the entire downtown area, but I can't control opinions.

Well, I did think of that, but there are a few problems, namely that while trenching sounds like a pretty good idea in theory, there's just too many roads underneath. See, one of the things that are legitimate complaints about freeways is that they break the existing grid, but with the Pierce, the grid isn't broken. Every segment is drivable. With a trenching project, you'll end up having way more bridges than 59 (and in a much shorter span) and every one of those (assuming that you have all of them; otherwise, you'll break the grid) will require interruptions. This means that the light rail will have interruptions or some sort of horrifically expensive rerouting scheme. Costs will go up into the billions just for that sort of thing alone (the Klyde Warren Park was also very expensive, but that had the advantage of having the trenching part ready-made). Since 288/59 is also sunken, the ramps will have to rise even more, which means that streets WILL get cut off either way and the blocks immediately west of 59/288 will still suffer from freeways. Finally, if you don't decide to proceed with an even-more-expensive parks scheme, you'll get a wide canyon or a bunch of landscaped but vacant lots, with the net gain being 0.

Didn't Turner try to run back in the early 1990s and lost to Lanier in the run-off? Is that who I'm thinking of? In any case, I sure hope choices will be better than last time around: based on what I've seen, Parker was the better candidate than Brown by a long shot.

I think they should go ahead and complete TX35/Spur 5 in some form, especially since they have the ROW. That will take some pressure off of I-45 as well. But yeah, they do need to add connector ramps.

Full removal I am of course against, not unless you wanted to build new lanes along Interstate 10 and 59, and they don't need new lanes. What I am in favor of is a three pronged approach: - Making the Pierce look better - Reconfiguring/rebuilding exits and on ramps to relieve congestion - Improving pedestrian/bicycle accessibility

The article is from Houston Freeways, which can be downloaded in full, but it is interesting because it highlights the process of 225's stub: it was killed more by budget shortfalls (which put it on the backburner indefinitely) rather than a simple "triumph of the will" type story (though the latter certainly makes for a better story). Even if there was no opposition, the ROW acquisition process would be a rather expensive process either way.

The Allen Parkway ramp needs to be closed, first and foremost. I can't emphasize this enough. It does far from fixing the congestion and the other old ramps, but it will be a good start.

While poking around on Google Maps Street View, looking at the Mobil (now Exxon) on the corner and trying to figure out when it had a KFC, I noticed that the Pierce Elevated on-ramps (to 288) were of now-rather-dated steel structures which haven't been used for building ramps and highways in decades. I know the Pierce starts backing up every day, but where do the bottlenecks tend to start?

The new Kyle Field redevelopment certainly is cool, but it's causing a shortage in workers and construction projects elsewhere in town. As a result, even a simple gas station project will drag its feet for literally months, and hope is rapidly dimming that the Torchy's will open before school starts.

Unfortunately, this seems like one of those roadside attractions built in the 1940s-1960s that lost many hand over fist and was closed and demolished within a few years.

I think it would be nice if they finished out the ROW with a boulevard. The problem with demolishing the overpass is that the east end is still a freeway and will still have ramps connecting as such.

I remember that on road trips, when we approaching places like Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio (or other cities), my parents would refer to new, suburban-style houses made of "ticky-tacky". They finally explained why they called it as such a few years ago.

Try this? (I'm not going to put in a LMGTFY link because that's just mean)

Yeah, that's not what I would name anyone. I would stay away from the following categories: - Anything with a non-alphabetical character - Anything that has to do with nerd/movie/video game culture - Certain city names (including Houston) - Anything that's a different spelling than something found more commonly (VERY common today, sadly) - Anything that is hard to pronounce (I feel for the sorry for the kids that are plagued with this problem in attendance calling, especially the ones that AREN'T immigrants) - Something you found funny at the time ("Wouldn't be cool if we named our baby Artaxerxes?") - Anything that's just a letter That still leaves a lot to use, though

Oh yes, and 8394 Bellaire (former DQ) is still very much standing: it's now a Loanstar, and it made pretty much zero renovations to the facade. See here. [Yes, a major update to the list is still undergoing]

I would avoid names associated with pop cultural characters or one-of-a-kind names that are only used with celebrities, like in editor's case (hint: NHL). That's why I would avoid names like Mickey, Mario (unless you're actually Italian), and the like. The only way I could realistically see you naming your kid Houston is if you planned to do it as part of some sort of American city names theme, and even then, I would still think of that as being kind of strange, and would still be reminded of that bit from Forrest Gump: "There was Dallas, from Phoenix; Cleveland - he was from Detroit; and Tex... well, I don't remember where Tex come from." Furthermore, Houston is one of those baby boy names that just aren't good for actual city names: GOOD: Denver Austin Allen Tomball BAD: Houston Detroit Syracuse Truth or Consequences

Well, if I recall correctly, it's HCTRA, not METRO, that does the HOV/HOT lanes. All I know that it took several years for the Hardy Toll Road to start paying for itself.

Forgot to copy-check that paragraph (so much for my city neutrality plan), but if you followed any of what I wrote regarding the exits, you deserve a prize if you weren't looking at a map to get what I was talking about. I would hope that with the Hardy Toll Road extension and replacement of the Elysian Street Viaduct, some other ramp re-dos may be warranted. But seriously--the whole 59/45/288 interchange needs to be rebuilt.

Where was the Burger King at Veterans Memorial and Spears? It doesn't seem to be easily identifiable. To the northeast is nothing, northwest is a strip center with a gas station canopy, southwest is a gas station, and southeast is more stores, all in a strip mall configuration. I have, however, figured out the Burger King at Town & Country Village: it was in a strip center at the northeast corner of West Belt Road/Sam Houston Tollway and Queensbury Lane. It shared the space with a Bonanza. This building was extant until around the time the rest of Town & Country Mall was demolished. Just south of it was another building of a much newer vintage that appeared to be a chain restaurant of some sort.