This is the sixteenth in a series of columns about the travels of Aaron and his family in his quest to move from the suburbs to Mueller.
The ducks have appeared.
I don’t know if they were introduced by the Mueller creators or if some duck flock (duck flock sounds so strangely like curse words) in the sky was flying around looking to migrate and saw Lake Pond as the ideal place to call home. I’ve named the two ponds Lake Pond and South Pond, Lake Pond because it’s the pond in Lake Park and South Pond because it’s the pond on the south side and I can pronounce both of those names, unlike some of the street names. It’s nice to see
Lake Park 
coming together with the mature trees and the amphitheater walkway taking shape. I can’t wait for some cool 4th of July spectacle where I can sit on the block steps on the side of Lake Pond whilst listening to some overture and seeing the Mueller mass firework show. Before I get my rockets red glare, it will be great to picnic at Lake Pond and feed the ducks all the soon to be moldy bread I can get my hands on. I’m glad they didn’t get swans as those things are mean. Ducks are quite friendly, unless it’s
mongoose season .
Our house is progressing nicely. 10 of the 12 garden court lots have at least had some framing started. Our house currently has most of the siding up as well as, windows, overhangs and trusses. We don’t however have a roof, unless it’s just one big sunroof. One nice surprise to me is the amount of sunlight the downstairs is getting with houses up on both sides. I figured with seven feet of space between houses and overhangs on the front and back, that darkness would rule the downstairs, but the Muskin Company has done a fantastic job in opening up what they could in allowing sunshine to permeate into our abode. The courtyard itself is full of building supplies and an endless amount of wayward nails. We have to go over the rules when we visit the house with genetic carrier number 1 as this “playground” will surely get us to take an impromptu tour visit to the Dell Children’s hospital one day. A couple new things I learned about the garden court are that the court itself will be gated and fenced. The gate will be unlocked so people can visit, which is good, but should keep the youths from bounding into traffic which is better. The other thing I learned is that they put a metal drain gate square in the middle towards one end of the courtyard. I suppose it’s necessary for codes and to keep the grass nice, but this will surely interfere with my planned “mud derby” as well as put a few band-aides and/or stitches into some skins. I would have rather preferred a
French drain with a gravel system .
The Mueller block party was a huge success I thought. The builders that were required to be there looked bored as the future Muellopians were busy meeting and greeting their future neighbors. Tate-Austin, Catellus’ Mueller marketing arm, did a fantastic job of setting up the tables in the form of streets and plots and getting photos of us to place on the “plots”. The interns were great in entertaining the little tikes so the parentals could go socialize a bit. Unfortunately, the interns drew the line at changing diapers. I got to meet my 7th out of 12 member of the garden court and somehow missed an 8th. Not only that, but I met several internet board posters and now am able to put faces onto some login monikers. So far, I like everyone. Of course, I’m sure the fuddy-duddies didn’t show up, so my sample population might somewhat be a skewed, but honestly, everyone seems extremely nice, extremely excited, and extremely ready to move in. I heard the first move in date for the first folks is November 28th. I guess we’ll all have to cram over Emma Long street for Thanksgiving weekend.
Now bear with me here as I completely change the subject that will hopefully make this blog post come together. Back in the day, the Aztecs had a serpent – bird deity called Quetzalcoatl. On the other side of the world, the Chinese had, Huang Long, a dragon that gave an emperor the knowledge of writing. The early Slavs had Zmey Gorynych. Buddha converted Apalala, a water dragon, into Buddhism. Even Beowulf met his demise to an unnamed dragon. (
list of dragons here ). All these civilizations had in some form, a dragon, despite the fact that most of them never knew that the other civilizations existed. You can easily surmise that, gee, maybe dragons really did exist. Or maybe the obvious answer is that despite that the first dinosaur bones being “discovered” happened in 1677 (Megalosaurus, Oxford, England) and the second in 1822 (Iguanodon, Sussex, England), that maybe all these old civilizations saw the result of 160 million years of dinosaur remains and that the best they could come up with was dragons, which was truly amazing that the old Aztecs could correctly place the bird-dinosaur link well ahead of the recently accepted theory that predicates amongst today’s scientists. The early mammal Muelleriopans probably built the first Mueller house out of triceratops beak and tyrannosaurus tail on the corner of Emma Og and Oo Mmmr street because I suppose the earth was littered with dinosaur remains.
Let’s tie this together now. With the people I’ve already met and the people I met at the Mueller block party, I was impressed with how everyone gets along. Now, the easy answer might be that we are just lucky that only great people applied and bought into Mueller, but with the amount of type “A” people who are making the beginning stages of Mueller an awesome place, I can’t help but think that maybe the people who got into phase 1 were the people who have been waiting years for this community to appear and are putting in extra effort rather than just a normal subdivision. I have the feeling that even though we all didn’t know each other existed, we’re gathering and are going to turn phase 1 into a blueprint that other phases and in fact, our own will be a successful model of new urbanism.
I’m feeling a bit mathy-sciency, so I think it’s time for roof project next time. Maybe my idea for a
retractable roof might not make it through the advisory commission.
