Musings from Joel

Dallas, like so many cities, is in crisis over a money shortfall from a drop in tax revenue. At first glance this seems reasonable, given the economic situation the entire country is in. But, the reality is quite different.
Here are the facts:

City’s budget for 2008-2009 $ 2.7B
City’s budget proposal for 2009-2010 $ 2.72B
Budget estimated Shortfall $190M
Jobs cut as a result 900+

If you want to see a pdf by the city here it is. The first thing you notice is that the city’s budget still went up by 20M this year. Which seems odd considering the 900+ layoffs. So the city manager and city council approved a budget increase last year, in what was obvious to everyone else, a major recession. I was aware that we were heading into a recession in 2007. So how is it that city hall did not even think to be conservative in its figures in 2008 when planning for 2009? More interestingly is to look at the city’s budget over time. Looking back at the previous few years:

Year	Budget	Increase over previous year
2002-2003	1.72B	na
2003-2004	1.92B	10%
2004-2005	2.05B	6%
2005-2006	2.22B	8%
2006-2007	2.34B	5%
2007-2008	2.65B	12%
2008-2009	2.7B	2%
Total Difference	$980M	64% Total Increase in 7 years

So the city has increased its’ budget $1B in 7 years, which is a 64% increase. Does that number seem really high to anyone else? But, lets take a look at the population estimates for Dallas. In 2002 the city had a population of 1.19M. The Census Bureau estimates the city had a population of 1.279M in 2008. Now that number really jumps out at you. The city’s population has only increased by roughly a 89K people in the same time frame, which is only a 7% increase. So our city budget went up 64% over the same time period that our population increased 7%. That in my book is out of control spending. That should indicate that the city’s taxes are too high to begin with. So using the Census Bureau’s data I thought I would look at a couple of cities of similar size to Dallas. San Antonio is slightly larger than Dallas at 1.3M and has a 2010 budget of 885M, that is a whopping $1.8B less than our budget.  San Diego, which has essentially the same population as Dallas, ( but a much higher cost of living) has a 2010 budget of $3.01B.  Houston with a population of 2.2M, quite a bit larger than Dallas, only has a budget of $2.3B, $400M less than Dallas.

So our city is laying off people and screaming about a drop in tax revenue, when the reality is it has been over taxing its citizens and spending like mad. Having lived in Houston for 4 years, I can’t say Dallas has any real advantage over that city’s level of service. So why is the discrepancy so large? What is our city wasting our money on? The really profound thing to me is I have noticed no changes with an extra billion in “services” the city is spending. There are still potholes everywhere, crime is out of control and response times suck. My car had both windows smashed out by thieves the other day and the police no longer even come out to take a look at the crime. All these extra cops on the streets and no service. It is a joke and so is the city council.

So Lexus thinks they are geniuses putting these “keyed lugs” on each tire. It keeps your wheels from moving on without the vehicle in tow. I can see their point, but I would have to question why someone driving one of these vehicles new would park it in an area where tires are going to be jacked. Steeling tires takes time. So, unless Tony Stewart’s pit crew turns to crime I don’t see why these things are standard.  The only time I see cars with stolen tires is when they are left on the side of the freeway for several days, usually that is the least of their problems.

I would venture to guess that most Lexus owners are not going to abandon their car in favor of walking somewhere. Then decide to leave it on the freeway for several days until they can convince some unemployed and otherwise bored and wayward friend to get a rope and help them tow it back to their house ( assuming it still has tires). But, I may be wrong. Anyway I digress, these damn keyed lugs are nothing short of a nightmare, if like me, you attempt to take it off and a section of it breaks away. What you are left with is a useless, unremovable, lug and a tire that isn’t going anywhere without dynamite. The ultimate anti-theft and anti-tire maintenance lock in the world.  It’s akin to padlocking your front door and then throwing the key in the lake, except a lot worse.

To begin with these things are made of chrome alloy, so think about something really hard and then beat it to a pulp with these lugs. Women should wear these things on their wedding fingers, they are so hard. My first thought was to drill a hole in the top and then insert a bolt remover which looks like a reverse threaded drill bit with a cone shaped head. 10 minutes of drilling later and a drill that was starting to melt, I had made a scratch on the surface of the lug and nothing more. I would have better luck nailing jello to the wall. So then I thought I would get out a cold chisel and try to beat until it decided to turn and loosen up. My cold chisel lasted all of 3 minutes before it bent out of frustration and decided it would rather be in the garbage can than continue on with the torture I was imbibing on it. So I took a minute to curse the lug, wish it eternal damnation, and then decided to get out the diamond tipped grinder.
Grinders really are the catch all of tools. They can remove just about anything you throw at them and are a favorite on many tv shows for the sparks they throw when grinding metal. They are the Billy Mays’ quick chop of the construction world. So I went to town on this bolt with my grinder. It was a slow process to essentially cut the bolt in half and then break it with a chisel but it did eventually give up and let go. The trick of course is to not destroy your wheel with the grinder while cutting the bolt. It takes a skilled and steady hand. But it can be done.

So after several months of delays I have finally installed my rear struts in my Lexus ES300. What a pain it was. You have to remove the entire back interior to get to the strut top nuts to remove them. It basically works like this:
1) remove the sitting area of the back seat. This is easy just lift up the back seat. There are 2 simple arms that sit in a catch on the floor.
2) Remove the backs of the back seats. There are 2 bolts at each lower corner that hold the seats in place. Once these are removed you simply lift up the seats. You may have to get rough. There are hooks on the back that sit in catches. These have to come out to free the seat back.
3) Take off to interior side panels over the back doors. These are held in place by snap in screws just simply pull off the panels. Start from the top area over the door and work your way back to the area over the back shelf.
4) remove the back 3rd brake light. It is simply held in by some simple hooks. Just grab it and pull it back and disconnect the light.
5) Remove the back shelf with the speakers. This item is cheap and I heard lots of old crappy particle board breaking as I moved it. I think the best advice would be to remove the seat belts at this point but I was too lazy. I just undid 6 black plastic screws that are running along the side of the shelf. 2 are under the seatbelts. Then I slide the shelf down still attached to the seat belts so I could get it out of the way and access the rear strut top screws. This whole process took about 15 minutes.

Now you are outside.  You have to jack up the car in back, but make sure you loosen the lugs first so they are easy to remove once the car is on jacks. Remove the rear tires and there are 4 areas you have to deal with. There are 2 lines that attach to the strut. They must be unscrewed. I believe they use a 10 and 12mm socket. There is also a nut attached to the suspension that has an odd hex head in the base of the nut. You will need to use a crescent wrench and an allen wrench to hold this nut in place while you undo it. It was rusted some in my case and was very  challenging.
The most challenging part is the strut lower bolts. These are 19mm bolts and I highly recommend a 1/2″ socket to remove them. They are very tightly screwed onto the strut. Make sure you attack from the nut side, not the bolt side. Otherwise you won’t be able to loosen then. I blew 2 -3/8″ extensions going for the bolt side before I purchased a 1/2″ extension and went after the nut side. Once the this is done you need to remove the 3- 12mm  nuts inside the car holding the strut in place. These are fairly easy to do. The strut is difficult to wiggle out from under the car, but it will come.

I decided to keep the spring and head. You may want to do that depending on your situation. If you have a completely new strut all you need to do is install it. This part goes fairly quickly. It took me about 2 hours to get out the struts, but less than half that to get them back in. You waste a lot of time breaking rust and finding your sockets. This is definitely a project for someone comfortable working on cars. I don’t recommend it for people who are novices. It is complex.
Make sure you have a good set of metric sockets and a 1/2″ rachett and sockets to undo the struts.

Update: After having driven the car for a few weeks I would recommend changing the entire strut. The springs which don’t particularly look worn, apparently are and are squeaky too. I am not thrilled with the sound the car makes going over potholes. If I had it to do again I would definitely recommend a full replacement.

My son has been taking the Actor’s Studio class at the DCT for 2 weeks this Summer. He is finishing up his second week this week and came home with some disturbing news. Apparently a “Teacher” named Anthony ( who is apparently the owner’s son)  blew his top over my son’s tennis shoes and his lack of interest in putting them on, as well as his smart remarks ( something about shoes being a conspiracy). My son is hard headed, no doubt, and you have to hold a line with him, but a teacher screaming “put on your shoes, now” at the top of his lungs is way over the top.  This so called “Teacher” yelled so loud that Teachers from other rooms came rushing in to see what had happened. Anthony was pulled out into the hall and then came back in to apologize for yelling at my son. My son apologized to him for being a smart aleck.

I, of all people know how difficult my son is, but losing your top over bare feet is ridiculous. To make matters more disconcerting, Anthony apparently teaches the younger kids. I can only imagine what he must do when they won’t sit down or any other misbehavior. My son appears to be fine about the issue. Which is good, but I am concerned for other kids who next get this small, angry man’s rants directed at them for little more than not reacting quick enough.

I was at the FOE Eagle Yesterday and got into a heated conversation with a guy about the bogusness of global warming. I have had this conversation three times in the past month. My republican friends are wearing blinders and love to spew “factual” data about how global warming is not happening and the earth is just going through a phase that is perfectly normal. They seem to all get their data from Rush because I keep hearing the same bullshit. Yesterday I heard that while the Northern hemisphere is losing ice, the Antartic is gaining some. I thought that was not accurate so I decided to dig. According to NASA, which tracks this stuff with a satellite, the Antartic has lost .68 meters of ice thickness over 4 years. More significantly the older ice that usually does not melt has dropped 42% over the same 4 years. Between Greenland and the Antartic 77% of the Earth’s fresh water are frozen around them. If they continue to melt at this rate we will have some sigmnificant problems in the next 50 years. So either I can’t read or someone tried to snow job me with BS. What I don’t understand is why everyone thinks this is a party line issue. If I’m wrong then nothing happens and I eat crow, which is fine. But if I’m right then we are in for some major problems, and everyone eats well done crow.

In my pursuit of some truly useful yoga clothing I now have 3 pairs of men’s yoga pants. I have a pair of Pranas that I really like but they are a little slow to dry out. I do however really like the way they fit. I had them taken in a couple of inches to get them just the way I wanted them. My yoga studio Uptown Yoga here in Dallas stocks Be Present men’s pants. These are also great pants to practice in. I bought them in size large which fits fine but they are getting a little short at the ankles. I’m 6’1″ and fit fine in the large size. It is a catch 22 I guess. I bought the pranas big and had to get them taken in to fit right then I bought these large and they are shrinking a bit. Is the American male getting so fat that any thin  man 6′ or taller has get an XL to get his length and then wear a belt to keep his pants from his ankles?

Anyway I digress, the performance of my be present pants are great. I rarely have to adjust them, even when going into deep lunges.  They also dry really quickly. I have been very impressed with them being dry in a 15-20 minutes after practice, which if you know me you know just how much I sweat in yoga. I’m like a shaggy dog shaking off after a dive in the lake.

As my practice continues to evolve and my athleticism increases on the mat I am once again on the hunt for a satisfactory yoga mat. I, like so many other started with the store bought $20 varity and used those for years. Which was fine when I was doing yoga once a week and usually not in a warm room. The sweat wasn’t much of a factor nor was the mat slipping. But as I stepped up to a daily practice this past year I quickly reached the limit of the cheap latex mats that are sold all over the place. As I started practicing in a heated studio I would drench my mat and half way through class I would slip and slide all over the mat. I decided to invest $60 in a yogitoes mat towel, which are great at absorbing sweat, I highly recommend these if you sweat a lot. But the mat still gave me issues, as it quickly started to break down and blister on the surface.

So I did my homework and decided on a Jade mat after talking to several people that liked them. I think my mistake was in talking to women who don’t sweat like a man does. I bought this mat back in Dec. and enjoyed it for several months. But the mat apparently is somehow impacted by the humidity. I’m no chemist but my mat seems to have become a lot more elastic. It could be months of sweat seeping through my yogitoes towel and it is simply moist or it could be the humidity. I started to notice this past month that my mat was moving forward in my poses. It literally was stretching  out underneath me while I was in downdog. The result is a mat that seems to bend and curl at the most inoportune moments and I am constantly having to adjust it and pull it back 3-4 times in class. I joke with my instructers that I should place my mat at the back of the room and by the end of class I would be at the front.

One of my instructors, Katherine, let me use her Manduka for a class. I noticed a remarkable difference in the mat versus mine. No movement or bunching up. The mat stayed put and I didn’t have to mess with it. I was sold and ordered one at Amazon immediately. I am now waiting for it to come in. I am thinking I will bring the Jade home and set it out to air out for a long time then put it in my trunk when I am at other studios.

It took a lot of digging and research to decide on what pair of mens yoga pants I wanted to buy. I decided on Prana Sutra pants. They cost about $70 at Amazon and are made from hemp, PET and Lycra. I am a size 36 and had read somewhere that they shrink so I got the XL. Small mistake. The XL are more like size 38 and look a little ridiculous on me. I am going to have to have them tailored in a couple of inches to fit right. But since they tie up I was able to wear them to yoga 4 times in the past week.

The first thing I noticed is that they don’t constrict my movements. I do some deep warriors and running mans and expected to have to adjust these pants every 2 seconds. The only time I had to adjust them was while we were doing a low resting lunge. The pants do breathe and I sweat through them completely everytime I wear them. But I don’t get hot in them or itchy. The most important piece for me is in my arm exercises like bakasana ( crow pose) or running man. I usually have to stop my flow and dry off my arms and legs then place 2 small tows on my knees to try to get some friction. With these pants that is no longer a problem. I just go into the pose and I’m done. In our level 2/3 class we jump from Adho Mukha Svanasana ( down dog) to Bakasana ( crow) 3 times. This is impossible to do with sweaty arms but a breeze with pants on.
I highly recommend these pants, just make sure they fit right.

As I progress through my yoga practice I am oddly finding it to be more challenging. What I mean to say is this, I have been actively practicing yoga daily for almost a year where I do vinyasa yoga, which is a power yoga, in a moderately heated room with some of the best instructors in Dallas.  Logic would say that after a year of daily routine you would get quite comfortable with the routine of the yoga class.   Of course that may be where my logic is flawed.  My instructors are good and really do vary the classes a lot. We may do the standard Namaskara A or B warm up series, but outside of that it can be anyone’s guess as to what is next. That is one of the things I really enjoy about taking yoga at this dallas yoga studio.

Unlike all the other studios I have been to, this studio actually does unusual things such as handstands, headstands, arm stands and many other difficult poses that many studios steer clear of. The challenge of course is mastering these poses. I have found that my strong suit is strength,  so to speak, not so much flexibility. While my flexibility has dramatically improved and I can now put my hands under my feet while standing as well as do a full lotus pose I still have hip, back, and shoulder tightness. At the rate these are loosening up it will be a few more years before I am where I want to be. There is no doubt it is a journey and a difficult one at that.

I am looking into becoming a yoga trainer. I am not sure at this point if I want to teach, but I want to move my practice to another level and getting certified in it seems like a natural progression to me.  Finding the time commitment is another matter all together.

My son found this dog yesterday and I am not sure what to do with it. It is a sweet Rat Terrier but has no tags and we had the Vet check to see if it was chipped but it was not. We already have an Australian Shepherd puppy and that is enough work for me for now so I am not looking to take on any more animals. I have emailed this flyer to several Vets near the school and I am hoping they will recognize the dog and contact me or the owner will contact them looking for the dog. It is approximatley 5-8 years old, male, and seems to be well taken care of.