Happy Birthday, David!

My nephew David Lafuente is 50 today. Wow! Happy Birthday, David! Too bad we won’t be going to an ALDS, ALCS, or World Series game this month. That’s David and me at The Yard in the featured photo. I will see David at dinner this evening!

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My mail ballot has been received by HarrisVotes.com. Good.

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Sidewalks are a mess in some parts of H-Town. Some parts of H-Town are without sidewalks. Here is from ABC Channel 13 News:

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — In the El Dorado/Prairie Oaks community, no sidewalks mean great-grandmothers like Geneva Smith worry about children trying to cross the street to see friends.

“You wonder, ‘Are they going to fall down in front of a car? Are the cars going to hit them,'” Smith said.

It means a brand new mother, Mariah, worries about pushing her newborn in a stroller.

“It is important because when you are walking down the sidewalk, you want to look at something, not something horrible,” Mariah said.

It means bus commuter Patrice Howard worries about getting to the bus stop alive.

“The 18-wheelers and the regular trucks and cars come through here, and anything could possibly happen,” Howard said.

Matt Zdun, a data reporter with ABC13’s news partners at the Houston Chronicle, dove into city records and learned these concerns are founded.

“Houstonians are very familiar with sidewalks, the bad, the good, even the ugly of sidewalks,” Zdun said.

Zdun found that the last major survey of the city’s nearly 6,000 miles of Houston sidewalks was done back in 2022, and nearly 40% of sidewalks across the city are said to be in poor or fair condition. The El Dorado/Oats Prairie neighborhood was found to be in the worst shape, with around 21% of sidewalks in poor or fair condition.

“Because there is such a wide variety of different kinds of sidewalks, we see that some neighborhoods have really good ones and some neighborhoods have really bad ones, and that affects how you feel about your community,” Zdun said.

Here is the entire read: El Dorado/Prairie Oaks community expresses safety concerns after data shows only 61% of Houston sidewalks are in good condition – ABC13 Houston.

Here is what I saw on Next Door this morning:

I’ve lived in Rice Military, the Heights and now Montrose. Houston is by far the worst place I’ve lived for handicapped accessibility/pedestrians in our neighborhoods. A typical walk involves sidewalk…no sidewalk…broken sidewalk…tree in the middle of the sidewalk…cars blocking the sidewalk…another sidewalk, but 6’ further in and not connected. It’s sidewalk roulette.

I don’t understand why folks block sidewalks with their rides. Probably the same folks who walk their dog in the middle of the night and let their dog do their business in someone else’s yard and not pick up the mess.

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My Beatles wall calendar for the month of October is a 1967 black and white photo of the four in their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band gear.

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A very disappointing 2024 Astros season ended abruptly yesterday afternoon. The last time we went winless in the MLB playoffs was in 2001 when we lost all three games against The ATL in the NLDS. We won’t be making an eighth consecutive trip to the ALCS. Kyle Tucker missing three months of the season, injuries to our starting pitchers, and a glaring hole at first base hurt us throughout the year. Yesterday’s bullpen letdown pretty much defined our season.

The off-season question is Alex Bregman. Will we sign him or let him go by way of free agency. We know what happened to George Springer and Carlos Correa. Stay tuned for sure.

We will host the Mets at The Yard on Thursday, March 27 for Opening Day 2025.

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Oh, well, the Christmas flicks season on the Hallmark Channels gets going two weeks from tomorrow.

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