Ruth's Life is Good: 7-15 Small Town Excitement

People of Belton are excited

Three years ago we moved from Austin to Belton. The main issue that drove us away from Austin was the horrendous traffic. Belton feels its biggest traffic headache is congestion on Main Street through downtown, we have never seen it to be a problem but the city has been working with Texas Department Of Transportation (TXDOT) for 36 years to try to solve the problem. The first proposal was to make Main and Penelope one-way streets but the citizens of Belton hated the idea so the city went back to the drawing board. The city worked with TXDOT and decided to extend Martin Luther King Jr to Loop 121. They figured this was the most efficient way to help relieve traffic congestion from Main. The idea was proposed in 1980 and they finally completed it this week. It cost $6 million and was the most expensive municipal road project in the history of Belton. The vast majority of the money was spent to build a bridge on MLK over Nolan Creek. The opening of the bridge Tuesday was a huge event, the entire City Council and the Mayor attended, even warranted a color picture on the front page of the paper. That's what all the excitement was about, after 36 years the bridge finally opened. Love small town living.

Driving towards the new bridge

The new bridge from it's parking lot

A flock of geese walking behind a mom and son fishing

Flo chilling out in Nolan Creek

This morning on our way to take Flo swimming at Nolan Creek we checked out the new bridge. It was very nice but we thought it was at a weird location. The road goes through the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor campus. It is only two lanes and in the future if they want to expand they will certainly have a problem getting the property from the university.

We continued to our normal spot on Nolan Creek so Flo could swim. As Flo and I walked around we saw a lady and her son fishing and a flock of geese swimming across the creek. During our walk we saw that one of the ducks was laying by the creek and not moving much, Flo decided to check it out. We found out that it was hurt and Flo was making it nervous. When Flo touched it with her nose it tried to move away. I went to Flo and got her collar and directed her away from it. While we walked Larry read the paper. When we got back to the car we went to the Temple Library. Larry had finished reading a novel by Stephen Harrigan and wanted to get another novel by him. He got on Paperback Swap and found that there was a waiting list for it, he put his name on the list. Then he got on the Temple Library website and found they had the book. This morning we swung by the library and picked it up. While there we checked out another author (Taylor Stevens) that he likes. He has had one of her books on his Paperback Swap wait list for over three years. He found that the library has this book, maybe next time we'll check it out. After checking out the book we went home.

Drinking Gatorade instead of soda

During the afternoon I worked on my puzzle, vacuumed the house and did laundry. Larry started reading the book we checked out, which was A Friend of Mr. Lincoln. I worked out with Just Dance for a half hour. Yesterday, when we went shopping we picked up a couple of bottles of Gatorade (Lemon-Lime and Glacier Cherry). Larry is trying to get me to drink more water or something better for me than Diet Coke or Diet Mountain Dew. I'm still trying to resist him but today I did drink some of the cherry Gatorade and more water then usual. In the evening we went to Killeen to dance with the Killeen Kickers. Due to remodeling of the Killeen Community Center they have been dancing in the Gilmore Senior Center for the last three years. Killeen finally finished the remodeling so now the club is back in the Community Center. The club was told on occasion they may have to go to The Lions Club Center if the community center is rented out. Tonight the dance was at the community center. There were enough people for four squares. The room was great. There was lots of room and it was cooler. Dan did the calling and in between the square dancing tips Christina did line dancing. Dan called seven tips. Christina did six line dancing sets. The first two had two songs and the other ones had one song. We had a nice time dancing with the Killeen Kickers.