Squirrel!!

We made a discovery a couple weeks ago.  Perhaps this is common knowledge to some people, but it seems more like something we could all care less about.  Except me.

I've been baffled by those little blue reflective markers in the middle of the street.  Near Trisha's parents' house they seem to be thrown randomly across the road: not in the center, not at regular intervals.

I started noticing them here in Austin too.  Austin reflective markers are actually quite cool.  Naturally they're yellow at night like anywhere else, except when you're driving down the wrong side of the road.  Austin has set up reflectors to glow red if you're going towards oncoming traffic and yellow if you're where you're supposed to be.  But as for the blue ones, like elsewhere they seemed to be at strange intervals.  At least here they come pretty close to the center of the road.

Then it dawned on me.  Blue.  Blue is like water.  At first I hypothesized that this might mean there's a snow cone shop out there for every blue reflector.  Sadly my field research disproved this.  But I did find out that for every blue reflector, there's a fire hydrant.  But the fire hydrants are NOT blue.  This is the sneaky part of what they do here.  In fact, fire hydrants can be painted silver OR red, but never blue.

Since then I point out every fire hydrant I spot after I've seen the associated reflector.  Trisha enjoys this immensely and has rarely been annoyed at my interrupting our discussions about job offers and family every 50 feet.

I suppose a quick internet search would have solved all our problems, but it's sure fun to figure things out on your own sometimes.