I tend to like apartment complexes that aren’t exactly new. Preferably built after sheetrock was discovered but before the three-prong plug was introduced is ideal. A little bit of character, not one of these acres-long mega-complexes that populate former farm fields on the outskirts of our cities, like some kind of mutant crop.

The Lorrain (sadly not spelled like the song) is such a place. A bit of character, stuck on a hill above Lamar, where, if you crane your head just right, you can see the capitol dome. Unfortunately, the management that owns the Lorraine has been making some improvements to the facilities lately. Did they fix the water pressure? As anyone who’s ever bathed at my apartment knows, when the water pressure drops in shower, it’s best to quickly move out of the stream of water to avoid second degree burn from the liquid magma now issuing forth from the shower head. No, they’ve done nothing about the water pressure problems, but they did pressure wash the walkways (except they stopped  ten feet before they got to my door for some reason).Did they paint the raw plywood that makes up the cladding outside my front door? No it’s still plywood colored, but they did stain the floor in the laundry room with a lovely color of concrete stain. Well, how about the staircase that’s so unstable, I’m pretty sure I”m going to be thundering down it one day with a bike and have it collapse into a pile of splinters, my broken bones and SRAM component. Nope, no word on the stairs – we did however get a letter phrased in questionable grammar asking that we please remove all our grills from the courtyard, as they are making the place look junky. Any grill left in the courtyard would be tossed in the dumpster. Not donated to Habitat for Humanity or Goodwill, no fines or penalites, we’re just going to junk them. In response to this I filed a maintence request asking them to please remove the dumbasses from their office, perhaps placing them in the dumpster with all the BBQ grills. Last i checked it was still pending, but I bet they get to it before they fix my stairs.

Exactly 48 hours ago, I was screaming down the South Boundry Trail on my bike, making my way from Angel Fire to Taos through pristine stands of Aspen, with Elk running through the valley below me. The bike was running flawlessly, the air was cool, the views spectacular.

Now I’m at work, sitting at my desk, going through the 500 emails I got last week. Oh, and it’s going to hit at least 100 degrees today.

Dammit.

With gas price quickly reaching new leves of absurdity, Amtrak ridership is rapidly growing.

Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month.

But the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand. – NYT

Apparently, if you don’t invest in a prticular national infrastructure for, say, thirty years or so, at some point on down the line, you’re goign to run into some capacity issues. Case-in-point: it only costs $46 for a round-trip ticket from houston to austin, but it would take about 8 hours of travel time (ususally a 3.5 hour drive).  Sadly, not very pratical.  (via kottke)

You know Monday’s going to suck, but Tuesday is pretty much always the surprise-bastard-child of the week. Deservedly vilified, usually overlooked, kind of sneaky, and pretty much guaranteed to steal money out of your wallet when your not looking.