HometownGeorgetown.com

Main Street Manager Shelly Hargrove announced today that Austin Avenue will be blocked off on Sunday, and will remain that way possibly until Thursday to accommodate construction on the new Monument Cafe and Tamiro Plaza. Check back here for updates. As soon as I know more, I’ll edit this post.

UPDATE 10/17/08: I spoke with Ms. Hargrove earlier today, and she gave me a few more details to share with you. From Sunday evening through Thursday morning, northbound traffic on Austin Avenue will be detoured between 6th and 4th Streets. Southbound traffic will be detoured between 3rd and 6th Streets. All lanes will be blocked so that street improvements and construction of crosswalks can be completed near Tamiro Plaza and the new Monument Cafe. If you have any questions or concerns, you can call the Georgetown Utility System’s 24-hour line at 930-3555.

On October 18, the city of Georgetown will auction off all their surplus materials and equipment at 1107 N. College Street, the Parks Administration building. Sounds like they have a lot of interesting things to sell. My interest was piqued by the commercial blender. I’ve been making margaritas using the crushed ice from my refrigerator, and it’s just not right. The preview starts at 8 a.m., and the auction starts at 9. They will accept checks as long as they’re accompanied by a letter from your bank, but it might be simpler to pay with credit cards or cash. For more information on what’s being sold, click here.

That’s not the only auction on October 18. That’s also the date of the Bar-Bid-Cue auction from the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, a terrific event that’s celebrating its 27th anniversary this year. There are both a silent auction portion and a live auction portion, bidding on donations from local businesses. Last year, there were about 150 items up for bid in the silent auction alone. Barbecue dinner will be provided by Duke’s Smokehouse. Doors open to the Chamber auction at 5 p.m., so don’t feel you need to go to either one or the other auction. Make a day of it!

I’m showing my age with that article title (39, for those of you who are wondering). I grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin, Hayward, population about 2,000. We were the Hayward Hurricanes, which always struck me as somewhat humorous since Wisconsin is about as landlocked as a state can get, unless the Great Lakes count. No one in our area worried about hurricanes. Here in Texas, though, Ike is threatening. City of Georgetown and Williamson County officials got together last night to prepare for possible high winds, floods, and evacuees coming to our area. Ike seems to have turned a bit, so we may not get the downpours that were being talked about just a day or two ago. However, we are still under a wind advisory by the National Weather Service. Just to be safe, batten down the hatches. Rent a couple of movies for the weekend and plan on staying home with your family. Sounds kind of nice, anyway, doesn’t it?

Austin Community College already offers some evening continuing education classes in Georgetown, at the high school, but our local education options are soon going to expand enormously. According to the Austin Business Journal, groundbreaking will begin in early 2009 for a 60-acre campus in Round Rock. Initially, the campus will serve 5,000 students with 250,000 square feet of buildings on campus. Read more about the Round Rock campus here. If I won the lottery, I would just keep taking classes the rest of my life, so all the education opportunities coming to the Georgetown area make our town even more wonderful to my mind.

Earlier this week, while working a shift at the Visitors’ Center on the Square here in Georgetown, TX, I flipped through the new Fall brochure from the Parks and Recreation Department. The fitness offerings are fantastic, with everything from aerobics to Laughter Yoga. There are soccer leagues and kickball leagues and tennis lessons, and Georgetown even has a Skate Park now. Oh, and did you know we have two Disc Golf Courses?

But the Rec Center also offers a whole lot more than fitness. Some of the class offerings that surprised me:

Canine Good Citizenship Training Class How to Use Oil Pastels Kids in the Kitchen…Foreign Food Beginner Argentine Tango

Registration is available online, although you will pay a small fee for this convenience. (Sorry, but that always boggles my mind. I would think that it would be more convenient for them, too, to have as many people as possible register online. I think the people who take up their time in person should have to pay a small inconvenience fee. But then, I’m an online kind of girl.)

Check out everything the Rec Center has to offer, and next time you run into someone from the Parks and Recreation Department, thank them for enriching the lives of the people in this town. Anyone who claims there’s nothing to do hasn’t looked very hard.