Stay in Texas

Stay in Texas

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In Mike's apartment in Oak Cliff, I noticed a particularly dramatic sunset. As I was taking pictures of the sunset and then sunrise, I noticed the Dallas skyline at night and then at daybreak. Both looked very nice in their own way and I couldn't choose which one to include. So you get them both. Which do you prefer?
Here is the sunset that got my attention from the seventh floor of the Wedgwood Apartments. I tried to find a more complete view from the public areas on the 11th floor, but couldn't find the one on the correct side. The next morning I took these pictures of the sunrise from the common area I found.
A few seconds later I zoomed in on the interesting section and took this picture of the sunrise. It looks so much different, but also very pretty. Later that morning I visited Greiner Junior High School (or middle school in many areas) where I went from the 7th to 9th grades. This is all that is left of the building, the gym.
Where the building itself was, there is now a small parking lot and whole field of portables. The block over from it on Edgefield Street used to be houses, but now is now the new building shown on the right. Across the street from the new building is what used to be the very first Seven Eleven in the world. It is appears that that store was not profitable enough to meet the standards of the Seven Eleven corporation (Southland Ice Company of Oak Cliff was the original parent company though the have probably taken on a more representative name now).
They had no sentimental value for the original Seven Eleven (shown here). After that, I visited Sunset High School (it was nearby) where I went for the 10th to 12th grade. Greiner and Sunset buildings were built at about the same time (as far as I could tell) but they chose to replace Greiner while upgrading Sunset with central air conditioning.
In high school I took R.O.T.C. instead of Physical Education. I was on the drill team where we practiced marching and such in the parking lot to the left and beyond the 'annex' and across the street (shown on left). Further around and on the left behind Sunset there is the now ubiquitist field of portables where there had been pecan trees and the official 'smoking' area under the trees (now gone).
Then I went on to the Tibetan Buddhist Center (KTC) for the Sunday morning meditation, talk by Lama La (a monthly bonus), and dharma discussion group. It is located in a more typical Oak Cliff neighborhood in the largest house in the immediate area. Here is the front entrance (pretty normal) and the back entrance (with a very non-residential parking lot instead of back yard). For New Year's eve I went to a chant, pot luck dinner, and then video movies. I left early so that I could be in bed and asleep by midnight.
My usual tradition is to spend New Year's Eve at the ashram chanting until midnight and then driving one of the buses to take people back to their rooms. If I can't do that I instead go to bed early and dream of happy chanters. There is a separate web page (click here) telling about how I started that tradition. At 9AM on January 1, 2002 I went to the Syda Yoga group at Scott's house (shown here with the view of White Rock Lake from his front yard). They had an audio broadcast of the New Year's message from the ashram in New York.