Since satellite photos were added to Google Maps a few days ago, a lot of bloggers are showing ‘memory maps’: satellite photos of places they’ve lived. Here’s my contribution.
In 1970, when I was eight years old, we moved from Wichita, Kansas, to Spring Branch, Texas, north of San Antonio in the Texas hill country. We moved to Cypress Lake Gardens, a subdivision that had been started in the mid-1960s and was planned as a high-class resort with golf course, airstrip, etc. When we moved in, few houses had been built, the golf course was unfinished, and the streets were all still caliche (dirt). A year or so later, the developer was murdered, so the subdivision went into bankruptcy and receivership. Consequently, it remained in pretty much the same state until I left in 1982.
It was a pretty lonely place to grow up. Since I traveled twenty miles to elementary and middle schools and eleven miles to high school, I saw most of my friends only at school–at least until I got a car and a driver’s license.
On the other hand, my playground consisted of thousands of acres of undeveloped Texas Hill Country. The satellite photo shows a creek running through the area. This is Rebecca Creek, which features clear springs, incredible remote canyons to explore and one of the greatest swimming holes I’ve ever seen.
Differences between then and now: there are about twice as many houses now–though it’s still pretty sparsely developed–and the golf course was finished and opened a few years ago. The side streets of my old subdivision are still caliche. That big road with several cul-de-sac streets coming off of if at the bottom of the image looks like a new subdivision (looks like the streets were still being developed when the satellite photo was taken).
I identified our former house with a star. Click on the image below to see a larger version (Warning: it’s big: 375KB):

I’ve been an avid runner since my teens, and I was active and fit through my twenties. Grad school was good for that: due to my flexible schedule, I could run when I wanted, and my bicycle was my primary transportation around town.
But right after I turned thirty, that all changed: I was no longer a full-time student; I got my first sit-on-my-ass-all-day job in software development; we moved from sunny Austin to New Jersey; and, within a few months, we had our first child. As a result, I struggled with my running, and consequently, my fitness and weight. Moving back to Austin helped a little: I ran the half marathon in 1998 and 2001, but my running routine remained very up and down.
This situation improved somewhat when I took my current job last summer. Our office complex has a small gym with treadmills, so I started coming in early on Tuesdays and Thursdays to beat the traffic and run before work. And now that it’s spring, I’ve run at the Town Lake hike and bike trail a few times instead of on the treadmill.
Last fall, when I saw my family physician for my annual checkup, she noted that I had gained a couple of pounds a year for the past ten years–starting at about age thirty.
In November, Katie and I decided that we would try a low-carb diet and really try to improve our family’s eating habits. We already ate pretty well, but there was still room for improvement, we felt. We did some research and decided on the South Beach diet.
We started our new eating regimen at the first of the year. I weighed 235 pounds at the time. I’m 6 ft, 1/2 inch tall, so that gave me a body mass index of 31, which is technically obese. It was a struggle to run 3-4 miles at a time on the treadmill.
I’ve since lost between 25 and 30 pounds, and my usual treadmill run has increased to five or six miles. This morning, I ran one hour, four minutes on the hike and bike trail, which is between seven and eight miles.
After this morning’s run it hit me: I’m back! I feel like I’m in a good running routine for the first time in years.

Several months ago, we got a digital video recorder from our cable provider, Cox Communications. In general, I’ve been very happy with it (mentioned previously here and here).
But yesterday evening, I noticed that it hadn’t recorded any of the series I had scheduled. I went into the series scheduling and discovered that they were all an hour off! We changed to daylight savings time on Sunday morning, and the time on the cable box updated appropriately, but the recording times didn’t update! I had to re-schedule all my series recordings. I’d hate to be a Cox technical service rep this week.

I’ve started a new blog devoted to issues related to personal credit: credit reports, scores, personal debt, bankruptcy, etc. Check it out: Personal Credit Blog

In this post, Friar Tim expresses thoughts I’ve long had:

I don’t like to fight. I once did, back in college. The fundamentalists who strolled my college campus and confronted us fellow Christian students with concerns about our complacency just infuriated me! They projected all of their personal guilt on the rest of the campus and it drove me nutty-bananas. So I loved messing with their sense of authority in others lives and created a nice batch of enemies.
I’m much more mellow now. I am an adult. I have a mortgage and a small child and think more about what things I have in common with those around me than what divides us. It makes for more peaceful living. If I counted the times in each day when I come to an interpersonal fork in the road, one where I have to make a decision about stating honest thoughts on a given subject or give one of those innocuous answers (Hmm. I see. I’ve heard that.) that leave it open on whether or not I agree, I think I would be shocked at how many times I tuck tail and run.
I’ve always said that every person alive chooses a level of hypocrisy they are willing to live with. There are no exceptions. Even homeless people have a system they must learn to operate within that requires certain compromises on their part and a willingness to play along. Part of growing older is giving little pieces of ourselves away that allow us to be a part of community. It’s only in ideal worlds of fiction and sitcom that diversity gets its full due without the cost that always accompanies it.

I particularly like the line: “every person alive chooses a level of hypocrisy they are willing to live with.”

The April issue of National Geographic magazine arrived today. At bedtime, Katie took it with her upstairs, intending to read it in bed before going to sleep. Samuel followed her into the bedroom and saw the cover for the first time. The photo on the cover frightened him terribly: he burst into tears and was inconsolable for a good five minutes. I then tore off the cover and threw it away in hopes of appeasing him.
A little later, Katie tried to show the cover article to Samuel in an attempt to show him that it was nothing to be afraid of. She turned a page, he saw another illustration that frightened him, and we went through the whole thing again!

This morning I went running on the Town Lake hike and bike trail. As usual, there were a lot of people out running, some of whom had their dogs. I always feel sorry for the dogs, especially the water breeds like Labs. I can just hear them saying to their people (not literally hear, as in Eddie-Murphy-as-Dr.-Doolittle hear): You mean we just came down here to run? Excuse me, I’m a water dog and that’s a lake. Lab! Lake! Dog! Water! Ducks in Lake! Must chase ducks!
There was one lucky dog at Auditorium Shores whose person was throwing sticks into the lake and letting the dog retrieve them. The others could only watch and wish.

As a dog person, I can relate to Heather Armstrong’s comment:

I just spent $20 to have my dog’s anal sacs squeezed because he�s been greasing the couch lately. That may seem a bit exorbitant for a little gland squeezing, but it will definitely go down as the best $20 I ever spent: I DON’T HAVE TO SQUEEZE THEM MYSELF.

Unfortunately, cheap trumps disgusting for me.

With the help of my geeky co-workers (and Carolyn, who’s not a geek), I made this valentine for Katie yesterday.
The guy on the end is our graphic designer and a known trickster. He copied my photos, replaced ‘Katie” on the last photo with his wife’s name (and he has the graphics skills to make it look good), and made a valentine for her. He did the same for another coworker (I guess ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’ should apply).

A recent thread on Ask Metafilter asked members about experiences that changed them. It’s a long, and truly amazing, set of stories. But as a parent, the ones that struck me the most were about children whose lives had been changed by rather mundane careless words and acts by parents and other adults. Here are some of those stories:

12 years old, just beginning to take those “career aptitude inventory” tests they give you, I share with my father my interest in one day becoming a computer engineer. His response, “How the hell are you ever gonna help anybody doing that!?” leads me to completely devalue my own interests and goals for the next four years or so in favor of what I think other people think I should be doing. Later I get my head on straight and realize he was being a complete jerk, but the damage is still done. I still base my feelings of self-worth on the opinions of others (even though I know that’s what I’m doing).

The Bad – I was overweight in middle school and junior high and was teased mercilessly by several other students. I suffered in silence for a year and a half before finally breaking down and telling my parents that I couldn’t take it anymrore. Their response? Ignore it and it will go away. It was bullshit. I knew it. They knew it. I realized then that they weren’t going to help me and I was going to have to deal with it on my own. Which I couldn’t. I became shy and bitter and distrustful. I needed my parents to help me and they refused. It took me a long time to get over that. I’m not really sure I am completely over it, to be frank.

One time when I was 7 or 8 my dad was supposed to pick me up after school. I waited until dark and he never showed up. I knew that he and my mother had forgotten about me. I started walking home when it got dark. While waiting for somebody to come get me I decided that I was alone in the world and couldn’t even trust my parents. I’ve been basically distrustful of people and an introverted loner ever since.

During the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I gained some weight sitting around and making my first webpage (another formative experience!). My mom approached me about the issue, made it feel less like something I should be ashamed of and more like a health issue, and I started exercising and losing the weight. A year or so later, I had returned to a more healthy size. One day, walking through the kitchen, my dad looked me up and down and said “Wow, Bridget, beneath all that weight there’s a pretty girl!” and in one moment destroyed the healthy attitude my mom had tried to give me. My little mind swum with all the implications of what he had said – My mom hadn’t mentioned anything at all about my not being pretty! I didn’t know I had to be pretty for my dad to show me a moment’s worth of genuine affection! Maybe that’s how it is with all men!

These stories make me realize that everything I do as a parent can have profound effects on my children. Sobering.