Brandon Kraft

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Here and No Further

February 9, 2012 in Austin with 5 Comments

Yesterday, the Board of Regent for The University of Texas System authorized UT-Austin to purchase Players, the beloved burger joint.

photocredit: Austin Chronicle

In 2005, the University attempted to acquire Players too. At the time, the price offered by UT was too low for the owners of Players and UT was authorized to use eminent domain to seize the property. The rub: UT was planning on seizing it for a parking garage for a hotel. A petition drive started with some virtual signatures and mostly physical signatures (remember, this was Facebook wasn’t facebook.com, it was thefacebook.com and looked like this. Long ago!)

The media loved the story. I was on the Bobby Bones Show. The Statesman ran a story about the effort. TV news outlets reported it. We made noise. There was support in the Texas House and a bill won overwhelming support against the University using eminent domain.

I haven’t spoke with the owners since news broke yesterday. If they don’t want to sell, we’re going to help them. Save Players is back.

[ Website ] [ Facebook ] [ Twitter ]

“But Kraft, it’s just a burger place. There’s nothing particularly unique about it.” True, absolutely true. However, it’s that third space. For most of us, we have a first space (home) and a second space (work/school). We need our place to go to where we can relax and socialize. Players is that place for many folks in Central Austin. Virtually on campus (or else UT wouldn’t want it), it is easily accessible to the southern half of campus. From living in Jester to working at the University Catholic Center, Players was the place to hang out, meet with friends, watch the game and get a bite to eat. Picture “Cheers” but on a college level. Continue Reading…

When UT tries to take away my Players’ combo with cheese, no tomato with a strawberry shake, they have gone too far.

saveplayers.com, original mission statement, Summer 2005

New “California Stop” Signage

July 18, 2011 in Austin, Transportation with 0 Comments

The City of Austin is apparently testing out a new form of intersection signage to indicate that a “California Stop”, also known as a rolling stop, is allowed at an intersection. The test has not resulted in any accidents and may lead the way for future intersection signage.

An intersection with both a Stop sign and a Yield Sign

Stop? Yield? Whatever. (Photocredit: Me and my phone's camera)

In reality, a developer installed these signs in part of the Mueller neighborhood. The street is slowly being expanded to include a median and this is one of the crossovers, currently the end of the divided section. One of the two signs will be removed at some point, but why install two in the first place? Why leave them both up for weeks (at this point)?

The Weird Fish Fry

April 1, 2011 in Austin, Church with 1 Comment

Image by joseph a via Flickr

Whenever you do something on a regular basis, there’s always one time that everything is just “off”. It’s not that it is bad, but just different enough for you to think back on it later that day and take particular note of it.

Tonight, the four of us went to St. Ignatius for the Knights of Columbus fish fry. We’ve really enjoyed these throughout Lent, but we did fall into a good timing cycle to make it work for us. When that falters….

First, we left the house late. That may not sound like that big of a deal, but when you live north of the river and you want to go south of the river during the Friday evening commute, it can make a big difference. Since we have two ticking time bombs, named Olivia and Catalina, we can’t “waste” time. Leaving 15 minutes late added 20 minutes to the drive. Strike 1.

Since we were running late, we didn’t feed Catalina before leaving, even though we knew we should. Add in the extra 20 minutes and she became a hungry baby by the time we got to the church. V had to feed her before anything else. Strike 2.

I should have bought the dinners and picked them up while waiting for V and Catalina, but I didn’t. V had the cash. Or so we thought. After waiting for her, she gets inside and we realize we’re moneyless. I head, thankfully, across the street to the ATM. Strike 3.

In all of this time, Stations of the Cross finished. At St. Ignatius, there is both an English and Spanish celebration of the Stations. The Knights serve the dinner timed so you can either pray first, then eat or eat first, then pray. In our case, with the little ones, our praying is done differently. Normally, we get there in plenty of time to get our food, get seated and settled before the crazy, mad, incredibly large crowd enters. The best we could do was the end of the line…the end of a very long line. Strike 4.

Well, I fed Olivia her dinner at a table during all of this waiting. So when it comes time to get in line, V goes with Olivia running around in the other half of the gym we’re in and I take Catalina in the stroller. The table is empty, except with some of our stuff. It’s the only completely empty table, so we ended up losing it. I didn’t mark which chairs we needed… yeah, you follow me. Strike 5.

We were able to get home perfectly timed to take O upstairs to get her ready for bed without having to be rushed while doing it or without it being too much time.

All in all, this was a case of us not sticking to our routine and having a routine event go off-script. So yes, next week, we’re going to leave on time.

Saturday Project: “Kill The Bastards”

March 28, 2011 in Austin, Daddy's Corner with 0 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

I’m generally pretty environmentally-friendly. All of God’s creatures work together to make our little world harmonious. If there’s a pest that I don’t want in my home/yard, push them away. They’re good to someone somewhere, right?

I say this to preface my latest “Saturday Project” that I’m entitling ”Kill The Bastards”.

Yesterday, O and I went outside for three objectives in mind: 1. Take pictures of our yard; 2. Take pictures of O in her dress; 3. Get some additional outside time. On Saturday, our yard was “spring-cleaned”, so it was looking better than it has since we moved in. O was wearing a new dress for church on Sunday and O can’t get enough time outside. The perfect plan.

After we took the pictures, O was running around in the backyard as I began to fiddle with some outside lighting, trying to get the timer to work correctly. As I was going back and forth between the lights and the control panel, I noticed she was playing a bit closer to the AC unit than I think is good. I get closer and I see a number of fire ants running around.

Shit.

There’s no other word to use. She’s too little to have any idea what she’s standing on or what they’ll do.

Yes. She’s standing on top of a huge ant pile. To be honest, I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before, but it was hiding by the AC unit. We had a couple of mounds before, but I thought I spot-resolved them all. I run and scoop her up. Get to the back porch where I’m trying to get her shoes off and brush all of them off of her. Thankfully, it was cooler yesterday than it had been, so she was wearing pants under her dress. With her socks and all, it meant ants had to get all the way to her waste to get to her skin.

I was able to get the vast majority of the ants off of her while getting V to come out. V took her to the bathroom, took off all of her clothes and stuck her in the bathtub to make sure none were on her. My hands were eaten a bit by them, but O, from what we can tell, avoided being bitten.

I used to play SimAnt in 4th grade all of the time. I loved the game. Really bad at it, but I loved it. My education kicked in. Black ants are the good guys. The red ants are to be avoided at all costs. The major difference now is I’m not a simulated ant that need to avoid the reds. I am in the position to be a major player in these ants’ universe and they went after my little girl.

Game on.

Last night, I researched the City’s IPM program and A&M’s Fireant website. Yes, A&M has a whole site dedicated to management of fire ants. I’m a Longhorn, but this is where I trust Aggies. I’m developing a game plan to eliminate these little devils.

I’ll let y’all know how it goes.