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The folks at Exposition Park Cafe are donating 15% of all food and drink sales after 4 p.m. today to the NTAF South-Central Stem Cell Transplant Fund. The nonprofit provides support to uninsured patients who have undergone stem cell transplants or suffered serious injury. Tonight's profits will go to local patient Anita Mester to help her cover medical expenses from a recent stem cell transplant. Tonight's happy hour specials are $3 domestics and $4 you-call-its. If you'd like to help the Mester family, you can come sip some happy hour drinks...seriously now, how's that for philanthropy? Just think of it as goodwill by the glassful.
The Morning News has a great package today, both in print and online, that shows foreclosures through the entire Dallas-Fort Worth area. But the most interesting thing about the package is an interactive map that allows us to type in a zip code and then watch in awe as all of the foreclosures in the immediate area pop up on a map. And then, if you click on each dot on the map, a specific address pops up identifying the foreclosed property. It's a great way to see how your neighborborhood is faring in the "mortgage crisis" we keep hearing so much about, and it's also a great way to start sleuthing for a new home at a potentially reduced price, if you're into that kind of thing.
Texans have voted and a new state license plate has been deemed the winner. There were five candidates in the running, but ultimately the Lone Star Texas design took the cake with more than 455,000 online votes.
These new plates also have a six digit combination on them. That's because our population is growing so rapidly that by the end of this year, the department will be out of the alpha-numeric combos we currently use. This week members of the Texas Transportation Commission will approve the design, but you won't start spotting these new plates on the roadways until January 2009.
I stopped at the intersection of Lovers Lane and Greenville this afternoon, and immediately noticed people standing on each corner (and on a couple of the medians) holding Hillary Clinton signs. Another thing immediately apparent, especially because of the race and gender issues in this presidential election, was that each person holding a sign was black.
I rolled down the window to ask one of the men what group the sign-holders belonged to, and he told me Southern Fried Marketing. I asked if they supported Hillary Clinton for president, and he replied: "Paid for."
It struck me as interesting, and I wondered why the Clinton campaign had chosen that intersection as opposed to others I had driven through (though I guess there could have been Hillary signs all over Dallas today). I don't know how long they were there because a couple of hours later when I drove through again, construction crews were tearing up the left turn lanes from Greenville onto Lovers, with no sign holders in sight. I'll be glad when those new double left turn lanes and right-hand turn lanes are finished.
I've been waiting to see a Smart car on the road since PopSci magazine wrote a piece about the cars last summer. If you haven't seen one or heard of them, here's a synopsis: They make the Mini look like a Hummer (OK, a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea) and their fuel efficiency — at 33-45 mpg — is impressive.
So this morning on my commute in, I saw one driving south on Abrams between Mockingbird and Gaston. It was silver and a very nice looking lady was driving it. I know because I gawked at her and her car. It's hard not to want to check out the Smart. It's not quite nine feet long, five feet tall and five feet wide. I don't know what the dimensions of, say, an Expedition are by comparison, but I bet you could fit at least a couple Smarts inside of one and still have room to spare.
I called the Dallas dealership, smartcenter Dallas, on Lemmon, and talked to Courtney, who let me know they made their first Dallas deliveries in January. Right now the only way to get the wee little car is to make a $99 reservation online. Then, according to the website FAQ, "smart offers future owners the unique experience of reserving and customizing your smart fortwo online. smart then ships your built-to-order vehicle directly to your dealership, ensuring that each smart fortwo is as unique as its owner."
Anyway, I just think they're fun, and I'm always somewhat fascinated by new auto technology (NOTE: the Smart isn't all that new — more than 800,000 have been sold in 36 countries before hitting the States). I also think their presence on the American market is encouraging for obvious reasons. They may not be very practical, but I can't say I find them any less so than a number of other cars on the market.
The French, who once supplied the world with quality cheap wine, have been mostly supplanted by the Australians and the Chileans over the past decade. This has caused not just consternation within the French wine industry, but serious financial difficulty.
Some producers, realizing the crisis, have made significant changes to their products. They use better quality grapes, have upgraded their production techniques, and have adjusted their pricing to compete with $7 bottles of Yellow Tail. They understand that consumers will not pay a 10 or 20 percent premium because the wine label has some French on it.
Case in point is the Les Jamelles, one of the finest $10 sauvignon blancs -- one of the finest sauvignon blancs at any price -- that I have tasted in a long while. This is French sauvignon blanc the way it used to be -- cheap, tasty and complete. There's hardly any citrus, because Les Jamelles understands that French wine is not supposed to taste like New Zealand wine. It does have some tropical flavor, mostly pineapple, as well as the minerality that French sauvignon blancs are supposed to have. A tip of the hat to Glenn Verk at Central Market for telling me about this.
Drink this, chilled, on its own, or with seafood, salads or grilled chicken.
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