Secrets of the Museum

No, not the TV show. This is about the Museum Towers. Remember the one that was reflecting sunlight onto the sculptures at it's neighbor, The Nasher Sculpture Center in the Arts District from the glass panels on the tower. Yes, that one! Well, it appears that it is the only Penthouse in Dallas that has a full 360 view of downtown. Granted, it is situated  on the 42nd floor with a roof top pool and garden, not high enough to keep the 60 and 70 story office towers from looking down on you as you sip your afternoon cocktail.

The secret is, of course, after being built with the Police and Fire Pension Fund, which was a scandal of sorts and police and fire started pulling their money out of the fund before anymore money was wiped out of retirement accounts.  It is just now selling out the units and the price for the Penthouse is  quoted at the pricey amount of $24million. Don't every one rush all at once to do the deal. After all, while the most pricey zip code for homes in the whole State of Texas is right here in Dallas at 75205. That would be the whole of Highland Park and a very small shadow that falls into University Park, not  the 75201 zip code that covers the Arts District in Downtown. There is still one more thing---at 560 feet in the air  you and Wolfgang Puck can wave at each other across town. He, however, can shoot off fireworks from the top of  his dining room.

The Top at $24Million

Can You See The Penthouse?

Seriously, it is a well appointed pad. And, the Dallas Federal Reserve is just across the Woodall Rodgers

Burr!!! and More Burr!!!!

the coldest days of the season have descended on the North Texas area of Texas which happened to have a birthday, yesterday. The birthday of statehood will quickly sink into memories being replaced by the cold. While I have lived in much colder places during the winter season, medications have thinned out the blood. Having learned to layer clothing makes it a no-brainier for me, but for some, who have just moved here from even warmer climes than we are experiencing, they are having a hard time but even as they adjust, you see people running around in t-shirts and shorts and flip-flops!! Hardy and I don't mean the boys in the novels by the same name.
My coldest winter in the Great Lakes was a minus 17 below zero. And the thermometer never moved above freezing for nearly a month. I did manage to get out today and make it to the lake. I could only find about 20 pelicans so they are getting ready to get out of here for another season. The problem is, the weather were they are going is much worse by far than it is here. So, that could keep them here a bit longer. Some 50 or more have already taken off  on the wing  By Friday, it will be in the mid 70s here with little cold seen in the long-term for the area.

While at the lake, I saw a photographer that I recognized out shooting, and I did see a red shoulder and a Kestler hawk in their regular hang out areas. The seagulls are thinning out already and some of the cormorants have hit the road already. So tides will turn and focus will shift to the hawks that are nesting followed by the mallards raising their broods. I saw a pair of mallards up in the estate sections walking in some flower beds where there is ground cover. It's a great place to nest and I noted where and when they were claiming the area.

Love Is In The Air

A beautiful aqua color collar

With the Space X arriving at the ISS today, seeing these commercial grade hoppers on the road reminded me of the space shuttle at Titusville's Cape Kennedy. Funny how things trigger memories of the past.

I'll watch for them to bring the new brood down the road and cross over the lake level road to introduce the kiddos to the water. That will be about a month away. Nature has a calendar of events just like people, ad cycles and fashion cycles maintain. When you shoot wildlife, you need to know what their time lines are and then think like the birds, the ducks, coyotes, bobcats and a few deer here and there. 

The Pop-Up Store Treasure Truck at Amazon Rolling Through Town

It looked like a carnival in the parking lot of the old Buckingham Mall at N.Plano Road and Belt Line Road. It took going through the light, changing lanes, turning into the strip shopping center, coming out at the light on N. Plano a block farther down, crossing into the parameter road that goes around what is left of the Buckingham Mall, where I could come back into the part of the parking lot where the Treasure Truck was parked. It took a lots of maneuvering to get there, but it was well worth the effort.

Visibility was at 2 miles and the rain had just begun

The setup

The product of the day! Thanks!

The Treasure Truck .  Text "Truck" to 24193 to get offer-Day Notifications. # treasuretruck

Click on anyone of the images to enlarge all three images. Then, chlicking on the image will adance to the next image.  

Balmy, Then A 30 Degree Drop With More Cold On The Way

More Pollen For the Allergiers

The T&P Train Trestle with new Bridge over the historic trestle

The  Katy Trail Extension about to join the White Rock Trail shortly after it crosses W. Lawther in the back ground

After clicking on the seat belt, the next  button was to open the moon roof. It was balmy, and the humidity could be cut with a knife. By three-thirty, the temp had dropped to 48 F and the wind that was driving the cold front had arrived. Luckily, I was just getting ready to pull into the driveway, having worn two coats and was ready to head inside the house. Timing is everything and my timing today was right on target. It's going to be about 5 days before we get the sun back and the temps reach normals for this time of year, which is 63 plus or minus a degree here and there. This past 15-months has been relentless with low hanging clouds, heat lasting longer than normal, short fall, colder than normal for winter and although the flowering trees and tulips are up and blooming, the cold has returned. At this point, I don't even know what to think about the heat for the summer. But, right on target, March 1 and flowering trees are swaying in that cold breeze.

Albert E

Albert Einstein once said that, " Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." Over the years, it comes to me little by little that the mundane and the magical come together blending a mix to bring balance in life. Of course, looking for that balance is an individual experience to some degree. What might be in balance for me may not always be the balance for anyone else. Yet, the law of physics kind of hold the thought on an equal playing field generally.

The American Coot in a rare display of their water dance of mating feather displays.

One of the more unusual use of textures to make a new home really become an eye catcher.

Beauty in a single flower.

Before I retired, I was fully aware of the power of imagination. After retirement, I began to see more examples of it every day. The more that I recognized it, the more that I came to see that Albert was correct. "Imagination is everything." I'm in my second reading of the book, Einstein. It is a rather slow read and a big book, but that is part of the experience of the read. It gives that imagination a chance to brew while in the read. In other words, it gives you practice if you don't have a strong imagination to begin with but if you have a vivid imagination already, it's like a hundred experiments all going off at the same time. Practice makes perfect my piano teacher would tell me at the conclusion of every weekly lesson. That creative imagination was born and I use it every single day as it flows over into photography.  

It's Been An Uneasy Stay For The Visiting Waterfowl.

We had record rains for three months this past year. This year started out with two floods at the lake that displaced the logs that the pelicans like to hang out upon. The high water levels have also brought in shifting sandbars that split Sunset Bay into another world for the Coots and Ducks, Cormorants and seagulls. It became readily visible to those of us that visit the lake almost on a daily schedule that the pelicans were uneasy and were seen in areas of the lake where they normally do not go. Pelicans up White Rock Creek beyond Flag Pole Hill on Goforth is not a good place for them. Especially if they roost that far up. The Cormorants are up in the trees there because their big log was dislodged by the high water levels and floated down  the lake shore several hundred feet.  But pelicans roost on the ground and bob cats and coyotes do feast upon waterfowl as we all know.

And, if that is not enough, there are more kayaks on the lake. More fishing boats. More motor boats for the sailing clubs and the rowing clubs. Even beyond that, there have been drownings there this year and just today, a father and son participating in a sailing event capsized and needed a high water rescue because of the thermal factors with colder than normal water. And some humans just can't get it into their heads that the birds notice things like that more than we give them credit..

Last year the number of mallards that were seen with their young broods was down to only a couple of pairs of mallards. Even the old gal on the east side of the lake that usually raises 8-10 ducklings, when seen, only had 5. It's almost a give me that the happy balance will always be in favor of people before it is wildlife in a dense urban setting. I know this. I  can accept this with reservations, but that is why there are state wild life preserves where the game wardens protect wildlife more than in city parks.  It isn't something that I enjoy agreeing with, of course, but the realization is that we are lucky to have such a vast diversity of wildlife so close to the heart of the city. Still, it behooves all of us to keep an eye more in tune to the nature that is around us and to have parks and lakes like White Rock where we can come and enjoy the wild as it was once upon a time. 

A little treasure for the  birders at the lake.

This old guy has one of the big old style bands on his leg. There were some with the newer wing bangs this year but they have already taken flight back north for breeding season. The big snow storms that are still coming down up there will not last long now.

Here is one of the washed up sandbars that runs for many, many yards in an arch around Sunset Bay

British Airways Flight 192 is called by ATC Speedbird.

Watching  a cam a  DFW last night, I saw the British Airways flight 192 on a taxiway using a Boeing 777 rather than the B-747 they usually use. This got me to thinking that with the bigger twin-engine plane and the overhead jet stream still running at  130-150 Miles Per Hour, I logged on to see what the flight had filed as a flight plan for speed and altitude. Every thing checked out as a normal flight---except for the factor of the overhead jet stream's tail wind.

Just as I had expected, the flight was into the tail wind almost before it had reached half of it's flight altitude. Quickly, the flight had reached it's planned speed of 555 mph and the speed just kept climbing. When it hit 700 MPH, it was pretty close to Mach .9 plus.. Of course, the speed of sound has no set number because of temperature, pressure and basic weather conditions like humidity and dew point---kind of like the basic when we check our blood pressure. Never-the-less, the excitement began to build as the plane hit its cruising altitude of 37,000 and the speed kept inching up beyond 700 to 710;715;720. Then, the altitude changed to 36,500. Finally, the speed slowly hit 721.Then 722,then 723,724 and 725 balanced it off. Ironically, the ATC(air traffic control) nickname for BAC192 is 'speedbird'.

Here is a flight headed for London from Dallas and before it is out of Texas into Arkansas, the flight is booking at 725 MPH (living up to it's name of speedbird, for sure.). That caused me to look at the estimated arrival time. It had already picked up 23 minutes early status. Before the flight made it into Illinois it had settled down to just under 700 mph but continued to book toward Maine, staying inside USA air space until it left Maine's borders.

I went to bed thinking that the jet stream was more close to 155 mph at the altitude and that the flight would most likely land in London early rather than late. I have never seen a commercial flight hit 725 mph, but in the 50s I can remember that boom caused my breaking the sound barrier. There were thunderstorms under the flight as it moved across Arkansas, into Missouri and across southern Illinois, Indiana and into Cleveland Center Airspace. It might have hit the sound barrier and the thunderstorms would have been a pretty good cover.  The flight had made that 887 miles in a little over an hour from Dallas departure.

While drinking my coffee this morning, I checked to see just how early it did land in London. 8 hours, 43 minutes with 10 minutes early. The graphs did show the drop in altitue and an increase in the air speed to match that 725 mph speed.  Who said that a jet stream tail wind isn't that much of a factor for travel? It was fun to just watch that flight slicing through the air at 725 mph. Sheer excitement.

Winds at the surface were 40 mph today with higher gust. They blew in dust from west Texas and DFW had a ground stop for a bit.