Lexi’s Friend

So, I was walking by the front door, when, through the window right beside the door, I saw a dog walking down the street (!) which is very dangerous, because people that drive down my street often think the speed limit is optional.  

I tried to coax her in with a treat.  She was very untrusting of “humans” except for older women, as I discovered when she readily came to a woman by one of the huge gray mailboxes along the row of houses across the street from mine, but almost no other humans.  The woman I met up with confirmed that my neighbour has been taking care of the dog, at least to her knowledge, and we tried to tie the dog up on her leash (by this time, Lexi was with me) and then, take her to Nancy’s (my next door neighbour).  Only, the leash and the collar got pulled off, and so, I spent the next hour and a half, easily, trying to gain the dog’s trust to get her, at the very least, to get her collar on.  I finally “trapped” her inside, and am waiting for my neighbour.  

For identification purposes, can someone tell me what kind of breed this dog is: 

She looks almost like an American Hairless Terrier, because she’s not a Chihuahua.  

She’s incredibly sweet and LOVES other dogs, but not so much people. So, if you are in the Houston area and know someone looking for a dog, I may have an available option for a loving individual/family.  (Or, if you know of a rescue I can take her to, especially if you can tell me what breed she is and if there’s a breed specific rescue group in the area… (not a shelter))

I’d love to keep her, but two dogs is not easy for one person.  

…Also, still waiting to hear back from my (uber-responsible) neighbour.

On Determination….

It’s cold, for Houston.  Cold.  I don’t even know if the temperature will get above 40 degrees today.  It’s raining and looks like it’s raining and cold.  

For Houston.  

Still, on my way back from my meeting, there was a woman walking down the esplanade of a major street.  She was bundled up, but still, I couldn’t let her continue down the path.

I turned around, and pulled alongside her, asking how much further she had to go.  She refused the ride I offered her (honestly, I’d probably do the same thing), which was about a thousand feet down the road, to one of the local community college branches.  

The area I was driving in, is right on the edge of the city limits and in Fort Bend County, as opposed to Harris County and, she was just past the last intersection where public transportation exists.  If you don’t have a car, you’re walking or calling a cab.  

I began really thinking about how the community college branch should be the final stop, and now, writing about it, there’s a Public Work Source branch that is just a mile down the road that should also be on the bus path but isn’t, because the buses don’t go that far.  

In Houston, as with much of the South, if you don’t have a car or a friend with a car, you face a very difficult life.  We should be making these things easier.  Especially on cold days, for proud and determined people, who want to change their lives.   This was the very representative sample of a woman who didn’t want a hand out, but should have had a help up.  Isn’t that what America is supposed to be?  Helping people, as they’re helping themselves?   Why do we make things harder, when we should be doing what we can to make things easier?  

For me, I’m going to look into how difficult it is to change the bus route, and I got that much more determined to getting rid of politicians who listen to TxDoT over METRO and over what the entire community needs.  Public transportation is a necessity in this ever changing world.  We don’t need a twelve-lane highway, we need better approaches for everyone.  (John Culberson?  I’m looking at you.) 

“Politics is (un)civilized warfare.”

That phrase that my father shared with me has stuck with me over the past few months, as I’ve endured being a part of a campaign that I really enjoy.  Today, in the midst of professional campaign high, as far as being associated with the campaign, I got to experience the reality of that statement.  In all honesty, I also got to experience that, at its worse, politics is also uncivilized warfare. 

It seems that as a candidate I support garnered the local major newspaper’s endorsement (the Houston Chronicle, in this example) early this morning, the “uncivilized” portion leapt and researched campaign finance documents.  Oh, to be fair, it was possibly also the announcement that The Honorable Sylvia Garcia, State Representative Jessica Farrar, and HISD Trustee Juliet Stipeche all endorsed Cargas well before this was posted, too, that caused the uncivilized portion to just go overboard.  However, our opponent felt it necessary to take facts and answer them with hate and lies.  

So, what I’m perplexed at, is why both the candidate and her Communications Director blogger think this is going to be a winning strategy.  For one, the opponent has engaged in a strategy from day one in which she makes fun of Cargas supporters, including calling his wife, Dr. Dorina Papageourgiou, an illegal immigrant, because she has an accent.  When called on it, she claims it’s a myth, a lie that the other party is making up to turn people against her.  She said as much to me not five minutes before she turned around and made fun of me directly to my face, nearly four weeks ago, a fact I wasn’t going to bring up unless I had to.  Apparently, I had to.  

After today’s blog dropped, it’s going to be much harder for her to deny that she engages in a campaign of attacks, considering said blogger (*cough* Communications Director*cough*) sent out post cards to voters on her behalf: 

Theorizing that the campaign paid not only for printing of those post cards, but also the labels, and the postage, one wonders yet again, where her Campaign Finance documents are?  Misdirection only works so long.  (I think it’s beginning to wear off now.)  Because, while the Cargas campaign legally participates in full disclosure, something the other candidate continues to say she’s in support of, she fails routinely to participate in the act herself.   I guess she’s above campaign finance laws.   

It should be noted that attacks are where you go when you have no coherent structure on the issues: when you want to paint the other person as horrible as possible, so voters don’t look into you or your sordid background, so they don’t notice the lack of what you’re actually saying about issues that are important to this district, so they don’t notice how little you do actually know or that the source material you get that information from can sometimes be questionable at best.  

Of course I could go on and address rumours, innuendo, and hate.  I could also fight hate with fact, but the truth is: there’s no point.  The other side has shown exactly who and what they are, not just to me, but to this district at large, and this entire city.   They’ve also shown that they don’t care to report the factual corrections that they’ve received in the past.  Also, I’ve heard how horrible it is: I haven’t read it.  Because, truth be told, Perry Dorrell’s opinion doesn’t matter to me.  I wasn’t going to even write this up, but I had to.  

Think I’m overreacting?  Personally, I think I’m not reacting hard enough, but.. what else is there left to say of people like this.  

More importantly, after today’s early morning events, that the blogger and his candidate went with this kind of attack…? Seriously?