An email I just read on the local neighborhood mailing list suggests today is not the day to go out for a walk slathered in honey.

Hi all... A bee keeper just came by to transport a bee hive being built inside my house. It turns out the hive was much larger than he originally thought. While the bulk of the bees are packed up and on their way to their new home, there are several thousand bees around that are really upset.

If the $1,895,000 price is comfortable for you, trust your impulse to say "yes".

The house across the street, aka the Matthews House, of which I have written often, has just gone up for sale after months of speculation, abandoned work, death, city citations for violating various codes and the appearance of these folk -- and the entire population of Austin has been stopping by over the weekend to pick up a sales brochure from the box outside. None of them looked like $1,895,000 would be at all comfortable, but you can never tell. (Maybe one of them just invented the next FaceSpace or MyBook or whatever the next way to exaggerate your sexiness online is going to be called.)

You, however, can see the brochure here.

It's quite a work of the imagination seeing how the job of converting a historic wreck into a serious McMansion hasn't kicked in yet. The guy who started replacing the window frames two years ago still seems to be pottering around and he's the only person I've seen adding to the place rather than knocking bits off. I do like that a good part of its projected appeal is its location. Have you fantasized about living in the "charm" district of Austin? it starts. Gosh, do rich people fantasize about living right opposite our house? That's something to give me a warm, tingly feeling when I'm digging a giant slimy ball of lint of off the washing machine filter at one in the morning.

Currently listening to a mixture of Magma (1001 Degres Centigrades, Köhntarkösz, BBC 1974 London and Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh - do I need any more, kids?) and British light music, much of it from the Naxos label which seems to be specializing in this niche market with their Best of British Light Music Volumes 1 - 5 and English String Miniatures 1 - 6 plus collections of individual composers like Robert Docker, Eric Coates, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, etc. I love this subdued, pastoral stuff, music that conjures up late afternoons in autumn in a slightly reimagined England, a hint of chill and melancholia in the air, with a version of me that's carefree and a whole lot younger. I'm sure a this music was played between schools programs on the radio when I was a kid*, those interludes between long-forgotten programs a platform for music that must have infiltrated my subconscious more than I ever suspected, almost as much as Robert Mellin and Gian-Piero Reverberi's soundtrack for Robinson Crusoe did during lazy summer holidays in the 60s.

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In the here and now: after nine hours the SWAT team went in and there was no one there.

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* Although this is still the THING that send me shivering back to classrooms forty years....

This was happening at the other end of the street this morning when I left for work. I didn't hear or see a thing and didn't know about it until I just took a look at the Statesman's webpage, my 956th port of call of the morning.

SWAT standoff in Central Austin gun shop: "The Austin police SWAT team is surrounding McBride's gun shop this morning because a burglar might still be inside the store. The situation has several nearby schools on lock-down as a precautionary measure, including St. Andrews Episcopal School. Parents at Kirby Hall School were told not to bring their children to school this morning. Lamar Boulevard between 29th and 31st Streets blocked off to motorists."

It's still ongoing...

I hope they're playing soothing music at Classical 89.5 KMFA across the street.

What's your Walk Score? How "walkable" is your home? We score 80, which is how it should be for a family with a non-driver (me). Although the data it pulls from Google is somewhat loose. Milto's Pub might call itself a Pub but it's a pizza joint. It 's nice to have a bookshop 0.26 miles away, but Lobo is a gay bookshop and the convenient and previously unsuspected Stitt Library at 0.55 miles turns out to be the library of a presbyterian theological seminary -- so between the two they probably have all the books I don't have an urgent need for right now. But we do have two real bookshops (ie  crap fantasy novels, remaindered Ann Coulter and Who Moved My Chicken Soup for Dummies) within a mile. And it doesn't take into consideration the gunshop, toyshop, pornshop, zen center and childcare center all within quarter of a mile. What more do you need?

[Via springheel_jack.]

1.71 inches of rain so far this morning. 8.96 this month. And a snake slithered across my path on the way into the office....

Here's a fun way to pass a few minutes: who in your zip code has made a contribution to a 2008 presidential candidate so far? Who's the local favorite? It's nothing but Edwards and Obama round our neighborhood. Not a red cent to any Republican -- or Hilary Clinton.