I know there are sites that list these places with WiFi spots, but I thought I would list them on my site. I’ll try to keep this list current. This is for me too. I have satellite (WildBlue) at my house and so I come into town to upload and download large files (I’m a graphic designer, you know). The lame thing about this is that whenever I go online at free WiFi spots in town, they’ve opened up the broadband to allow for multiple users and it ruins me to go back home to my slow-ish laggy internet.

I haven’t personally checked all of these places. so you might want to call ahead on some of them. I will put a * next to the spots I’ve actually used.

Hotel / Motel / Resort
Courtyard Marriott Bryan College Station
Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites – Aggieland
Hyatt Place-College Station – College Station, TX
Homewood Suites College Station
Hilton College Station & Conference Center
College Station Hawthorn Hotel Suites
Ramada
Residence Inn
Townplace Inn

Store
Office Depot
Copy Corner *
Barnes & Noble
Airport

Coffeeshop / Cafe
It’s A Grind *
Hastings on Texas and Holleman *

I’ll add some more when I find them or hear of them.

Anyone see the headline today? The red light cameras are gone. http://www.theeagle.com/local/CS-shuts-off-cameras

The city’s nine cameras were turned off Tuesday. City Manager Glenn Brown said photo enforcement of red light violations at the intersections ended at midnight Monday after the City Council unanimously voted to end the contract with the cameras’ Arizona-based operator.

What does this mean for me? Well, for me it means not freaking out and having to decide whether to slam on the brakes or keep driving through the yellow light.

So, there you have it.

Santa’s Wonderland is opening for the season tonight (November 20th, 2009). If you’ve been before, there are many exciting additions for your return visit. If you’ve never been, it’s worth a trip.

The park opens daily at 6pm from November 20th until December 31st.

Check the website at www.santas-wonderland.com for live music schedule, food menu, prices and advanced tickets.

New Visitors:
Advanced tickets: With a discount if you buy online at Santas-Wonderland.com

2.5 Million Lights: Yeah, a bunch of lights. Nothing like you’ll see strung on anyone’s house. There’s a river of lights, a couple of tunnels of lights, some animations created with lights, houses covered with lights. Lots of “OOH’s” and “AAH’s”.

Hayrides: A trailer with hay on it driving through the park. Really nice view of everything.

Horse and Carriage Ride: This is what I think is the Crowning Jewel. The ride is so romantic and nostalgic and cool. Don’t miss this. It’s really nice. Two huge black horses lead a large carriage that fits up to 9 people.

Food: Loads of food…from nachos to kettle corn to hot chocolate.

Live Music: From Country to Elvis to a full choir. Live music every night.

Petting Zoo: Yes, there’s even a petting zoo.

Mechanical Bull: And a mechanical bull. I wonder what Santa’s record is.

Christmas Stores: Everything from ornaments to stocking stuffers.

Fun: Something to remember and make a tradition to come back every year.

Returning Visitors:
Advanced tickets: With a discount if you buy online at Santas-Wonderland.com

More parking: In fact, parking across the HWY and a shuttle to get you to the park.

Horse and Carriage option: They have added a Horse and Carriage ride, and let me tell you, I’ve been on the Hayride and on the Horse and Carriage, and hands down, the Horse and Carriage ride is the best. Really captures the feel of the season and the park. I just loved it. You won’t regret it.

More Lights: More lights are up this year, and a few new “scenes” to enjoy.

Funnel Cakes: Yeah, and they are really tasty.

More Food: Check the website for the new menu.

Go check it out.

OK, so this really has nothing to do with Bryan/College Station…except that you can buy TV dinners at stores in town. OK, so they aren’t called TV dinners anymore…they were when I was growing up.

So, I thought it would be fun to have a night where each person in my family chose a TV dinner…just for fun. My wife thought it would be interesting, so we went for it. (I have 4 kids just so you know).

First of all, my wife went to the grocery store and picked them all out, letting each child pick theirs too. The kids were excited…they looked so yummy and fun. My wife picked a couple of “Hungry Man” ones and I asked her to get a “Classic Swanson’s Salisbury Steak” because that’s what I remember liking.

NOTE: it’s called Salisbury Steak after it’s inventor Dr. James Salisbury, who was one of the earliest health food faddists and taught that diet was the main determinant of health. He believed vegetables and starchy foods produced poisonous substances in the digestive system which were responsible for heart disease, tumors, mental illness and tuberculosis. He believed that human dentition demonstrated that humans were meant to eat meat, and sought to limit vegetables, fruit, starches, and fats to one-third of the diet.

The USDA standards for Salisbury steak require a minimum content of 65% meat, of which up to 25% can be pork; the remainder must be beef (can include beef heart meat), unless the meat content is labelled specifically. Cereal (bread crumbs, flour, oat flakes, etc.) content is limited to 12%, except isolated soy protein at 6.8% is considered equivalent to 12%. The remainder consists of seasonings, vegetables (onion, bell pepper, mushroom or the like), binders (can include egg) and liquids (such as water, milk, cream, skim milk, etc.). (from Wiki)

We homeschool, so any opportunity is a teaching opportunity.

My wife told me it was really awkward to have them in the cart. She hid them under the produce and rice milk in the cart. She felt like a bad wife/mom for buying these things. See, we cook almost every night and we make really good meals. We also eat pretty healthy, and these were not the “lean” or “healthy” ones. These were full of sodium, high fructose corn syrup and white flour.

So, she fought past the urge to put them back and bought them and brought them home.

Yeah, they were pretty, but wow, do they take a lot of room in the freezer. We had to move everything just to fit the boxes of dinners. I can’t imagine where we’d put them if this was something we did regularly.

OK, so the day comes when we were going to eat them and we realize that only about three at a time fit in the oven…and it was going to take 25 minutes to cook them. How are we going to do this? I have 6 people to feed (plus one of our friends who wanted to experience the meal with us).

So my wife decided to go against her instincts and cook a few of them in the microwave…which got me researching how microwaves work just to ease her that she wasn’t feeding our kids radioactive food…turns out microwaves cook with radio frequencies…really high pitched ones that we can’t hear, that make the water in the food vibrate, which heats up the water, thus getting the food hot. No radiation.

So, there’s my wife reading the directions on each package…Cut the film off everything except for the corn, then cook the brownie by itself, then the next one…take bread out and cook with film over food, then halfway though, poke holes in the film and put bread…argh. She was getting frustrated. She was kinda laughing…but I know that laugh. It was not an “I am loving not having to cook tonight” kind of laugh.

So I open up the Salisbury steak, expecting…well, expecting something bigger that what was actually in there. It was tiny. I looked at the package to make sure this wasn’t the “kid’s” version. It wasn’t. Maybe I was taller and it just looked smaller than I remember.

“How much did this cost?” I asked.

The kid ones were about $2.50, the Hungry Man’s were about $4.00. What? This meal was expensive! I had just fed my whole family at Freebirds the other night for about $15. My wife cooked a huge Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada thing that probably cost about $10 total and we had already eaten from it for at least 3 meals…and even froze some for later.

I started realizing that first, there wasn’t much food, second, the quality of the food was not “healthy” by a long shot.

I decided that I needed to make a green smoothie. Blender…frozen fresh spinach, frozen mixed fruit, plain organic yogurt, frozen blueberries, frozen bananas, spoonful of 100% juice concentrate, reverse osmosis water, reverse osmosis ice. OK, they’ve got some good stuff in them.

OK, so, 20 minutes later, the kids are eating their “fake” meals. They were enjoying it…I think. My oldest was first to finish and asking to eat something else. Organic Fuji apples and roasted almonds.

The adult food was almost done. The timer goes off and two of the three that we fit in the oven were still cold on the inside…microwave.

OK, so the taste was good. Everyone enjoyed their meal. Even the Salisbury Steak was good…small…but I cut it into little tiny bites so it would last longer. I could have eaten that whole thing in one bite…maybe two.

Then I picked up all the plastic trays they came in, and the boxes, and the film, and stuffed them in the trashcan. Wow, that’s a lot of trash. We don’t make this much trash on a regular day. See, we take our trash to a dump and pay $.60 per large black plastic bag. So this is costing us some pennies.

Well, we cleared the table and went on with our evening…oh, my youngest doesn’t like corn, but our rule is you have to eat everything on the plate before you can get down from the table, and sadly for her, every kid’s meal she had to choose from at the store had corn in it…we found her about an hour later sleeping at the table with her blue TV dinner tray pushed away from her, with the corn still in it’s little place.

We decided it was OK this time that she didn’t eat the corn, so we cleared her tray and arranged about 20 or 30 stuffed animals around her. She was surprised when she woke up. We all shared her brownie that she was only allowed to eat if she ate all her corn.

I am pretty sure I won’t ever suggest that again. I remember it being a lot more fun growing up. I think it was because we only had TV dinners when my mom was out for the evening and my dad didn’t feel like cooking…and those were the only times we could eat actually sitting in front of the TV. TV dinners…what a concept.

We don’t even watch TV at our house.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to what’s for dinner tonight. (Smells like Black Bean Soup…yum!)

I am thinking about taking my family to this event in December…maybe. It’s about a 3.5 hour drive, but it sure sounds cool. Here’s driving directions to Burnet, Texas

Main Street Bethlehem

Here’s the story from KBTX:

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson’s life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure.

“I just thought I can’t do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that’s it,” said Johnson.

She handed in her resignation October 6. Johnson worked as the Bryan Planned Parenthood Director for two years.

According to Johnson, the non-profit was struggling under the weight of a tough economy, and changing it’s business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.

“It seemed like maybe that’s not what a lot of people were believing any more because that’s not where the money was. The money wasn’t in family planning, the money wasn’t in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that,” said Johnson.

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about.

“I feel so pure in heart (since leaving). I don’t have this guilt, I don’t have this burden on me anymore that’s how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion.”

Johnson now supports the Coalition For Life, the pro-life group with a building down the street from Planned Parenthood. Coalition volunteers can regularly be seen praying on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. Johnson has been meeting with the coalition’s executive director, Shawn Carney, and has prayed with volunteers outside Planned Parenthood.

On Friday both Johnson and the Coalition For Life were issued temporary restraining orders filed by Planned Parenthood.

Rochelle Tafolla, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson issued the following statement: “We regret being forced to turn to the courts to protect the safety and confidentiality of our clients and staff, however, in this instance it is absolutely necessary.”

The temporary restraining order contends that Planned Parenthood would be irreparably harmed by the disclosure of certain information, but does not bar Johnson or Coalition For Life volunteers from the premises.

LifeChurch is having an open mic and worship night tonight (Friday 16th, 1009)

Open mic will be from 7pm to 8pm and worship will start at 8pm.

Childcare, coffee and some snacks will be provided.

LifeChurch is behind the JoAnn fabrics in the Tejas Center on Texas Ave. and Villa Maria. Next to the Theater Company.

This weekend is shaping up to be quite a weekend full of events.

Starting on Friday, Obama is in town. (which for me and my family means we’re staying home…we don’t like traffic in town)

The Presidential Forum on Service will be broadcast live on KAMU-TV on channel 12.1, Suddenlink cable channel 700 and channel 4, and on campus cable channel 82. It will also be streamed live on the web at http://kamu.tamu.edu “Watch Now” and at www.georgebushfoundation.org.

More info here

Also Friday and through Saturday – Madisonville Mushroom Festival

Wine tasting, dancing, arts, crafts, food, kids zone, 5k run/walk, auto showcase, auction…fun.

[more info here]

Saturday – Grapeland Peanut Festival

The festival is held every year on the second Saturday in October.  The festivities include a parade held on Main Street in historic downtown Grapeland as well as food, arts & crafts booths, live entertainment and more at the Grapeland City Park. The festivities are topped off with the Peanut Queen’s Coronation Saturday evening.

Grapeland is NorthEast on 21 to Crockett, then North on 19 to Grapeland.

Saturday – Coulter Field Air Show

Featuring performances by an acrobatic pilot and formation flights from modern and World War II aircraft.

The event will be held Oct. 17 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free, but parking is $5.
There will be food vendors and activities for children.
For more information, call Carl Preston at 412-1611.

not including tax or gratuity

I know it’s not the Christmas season yet, but I wanted to write abouta new website just launched by a local attraction that’s been here for over 12 years. It’s pretty much a landmark…especially if you drive by at night during the season.

Santa’sWonderland is that place on HWY 6 on the way to Navasota with all the lights and the Old West looking town. You’re sure to have seen it if you drive by during the Christmas Season. It’s a beautiful site. It’s the most lights I’ve ever seen in one place. They actually made “walls” of lights. Pretty cool. Well, if you haven’t been, you should check it out this year. It’s not open yet, but they will be selling advance tickets pretty soon. They are opening on November 20th.

They asked me to help them work on their website…both the Santa’s Wonderland and the Santa’s Town website. The artwork was created by a Santa’s Wonderland family memeber. It’s really a beautiful site. There’s snow falling, flickering lanterns, photos and all the information you need to learn about Santa’s Wonderland.

They’re scheduling live music, they have a mechanical bull, a petting zoo, and of course, hayrides and vehicle tours through the lights.

They told me they added a bunch more lights this year, and have added some LED lights and worked out some of the parking issues as well.

They have shops, a cafe and so much for the whole family. They even play various Christmas Movies at Santa’s Town. Check out the Santa’s Wonderland website for more information.

We’re still updating some of the pages on the site, so check back for more information. I’ll be writing another post once they schedule the live music events for the season, so stay tuned.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!