Just over 70% of the state's precincts have reported, and all of the constitutional amendments appear headed for passage. The strongest winner is Prop. 9, which would exempt totally disabled veterans from ad valorem taxation — it's getting 86% percent approval. The least popular is Prop. 4, the scattershot amendment that would approve up to $1 billion in bonds for a variety of construction projects (some good, some bad), but it's still winning at 58%.

Up in Fort Worth, with 41 of 45 precincts counted, Democrat Dan Barrett is headed for a runoff in the special election to replace retiring Anna Mowery in state House District 97. Barrett is leading at 32%. As for the six Republicans, it's been back and forth, but Mark M. Shelton has passed Bob Leonard; Shelton now has 23% to Leonard's 19%.

Shockingly, here in Travis County, the Lance Armstrong-supported Prop. 15 is barely getting majority support at 50.47% with 96% of precincts reporting.

The polls are closed, early voting numbers are in, and you can already stick a fork in this election: Everything is passing handily. The least popular so far is Proposition 16, and that's passing with 71.87% voting "In Favor." Those results aren't likely to change.

But WOW, this is interesting: While all the props are also passing in Travis County, the "in favor" numbers are lower, significantly in some cases. Most notable: Prop. 15, for the creation of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas – which was pushed heavily by local sports idol and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong – only has 51.27% of the early Travis vote! Hmm, is Austin's hero-worship of Armstrong not as great as we thought?

There is an actual candidate election to watch tonight: a special election for House District 97, which covers the southwestern corner of Tarrant County. The seat came open when Republican Anna Mowery decided to retire early. The Democrats would certainly love for this seat to edge them ever closer to the majority in the Texas House – they are currently six seats away – and tonight's election pits Dem Dan Barrett against six Republicans. After the early vote numbers, Barrett appears headed for a runoff – he currently has 32%; the leading Republican thus far is Bob Leonard at 22%.

Meaning, 7pm. If you haven't voted yet, get on down to your local precinct.

Then come back here for the results.

P.S. My wife just called to tell me that there was actually a line, if you can believe it, to vote at our neighborhood polling place (possibly because some polling places were consolidated, presumably due to a lack of poll workers). Given the apparent low interest in this constitutional amendment election, that's good news. Get on down there. Hurry!

The turning point was when Mack Brown got red-faced raving mad. His cheeks puffed up as Mr. Nice Guy let loose with a spew of bile that had his players’ eyes wide and their cleats trembling. It was about time. His Longhorns were pathetic. Oklahoma State bitch-slapped them up and down the field and crazy Mike Gundy was trying to hide the smirk nesting somewhere beneath his winter tan. Mack the back-slapper, the pal, the go-with-the-flow soft-salesman blew a gasket. And his team responded for an improbable 38-35 comeback win that may say as much about Gundy’s ability to lose as Brown’s need to win.

This one was necessary. In College Station the Dennis Franchione death watch is counting down the days, the minutes. Two games to go. Same for Bill Callahan at the University of Nebraska. Win or die. Be cut free to hang in the breeze and rot. No, this wasn’t an essential win for Mack Brown. This was the game instead that said it wasn’t a fluke two years ago. That the string of 10-win seasons didn’t just happen to a nice guy. Brown was frothing at the mouth because his players were embarrassing him with a string of missed tackles and piss-poor pass defense. They were playing like chumps, and this time it didn’t look like they’d wake up. But they did, and Daddy was smiling as the final seconds ticked off.

Yesterday, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson basically said that, unless a state agency could sprout wings and fly a better deal to his door, the Christmas Mountains were going to be sold to private bidders. Most observers had expected the School Land Board to simply accept Patterson's plan (and the public opposition and possible litigation that came with it.) But in closed executive session, Patterson's privatization fell off the rails somewhat.

Superficially, what was adopted was the same as the Patterson proposal: the National Park Service has 90 days to come up with a rival plan to the private bids received. But that was actually the only point of similarity. No bid has been accepted, with both remaining sealed for the 90 days. More importantly, there were no preconditions. This meant the "poison pill" clause, that NPS would have to allow public hunting, was gone.

That complete removal of the preconditions was very important. As Dr. Ken Kramer, chapter director of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, noted many of the terms Patterson was demanding were the same things a rancher would do to propagate game species (even though, as Patterson kept saying, hunting wasn't the real issue because the area is not currently good terrain for game species.)

Austin took a step closer to developing a second downtown last Thursday when council adopted the North Burnet/Gateway Area Master Plan. The proposal gives the city the zoning tools to encourage the development of 2,300 acres around Burnet and Braker as a mixed-use residential and commercial area, intended to deal with some of the projected doubling of the city population over the next 20 years.

The plan was originally going to be adopted on Oct. 19, but that was delayed to allow staff to amend the plans for the "west tract," the area west of Mopac owned by the University of Texas. The original plan had designated the area as neighborhood mixed use, with a maximum building height of 10 stories, but UT wanted that changed to commercial mixed use, pushing that to 15 stories. In a concession decision, the city made the change, but with the codicil that it would not become a destination shopping center, to ensure a real mix over the area and prevent too much competition for the Domain and Gateway shopping complexes.

Next, city staff will develop phase two regulations, turning the rough plan into code and developing a "density bonus" system, under which developers could exchange development scale for building extra public amenities.

It seemed that yesterday's announcement of a concession deal over the sale of the Christmas Mountains by the General Land Office was going to allow land commissioner Jerry Patterson to put his case to the media. But it can't be described as a good press conference when the speaker has to apologize to the press for being "testy" with them.

In a brittle and fractious press conference Monday afternoon, Patterson announced that the sale of the 9,000 acre abandoned former ranch to private owners will go ahead today as proposed. However, he was going to suggest giving the National Park Service and Texas Parks and Wildlife 90 days to come up with a rival bid. Yet his continued stance that, unless NPS allowed public hunting on the land (which does not occur at the moment) he would not consider their bid, brought tough questioning – especially when he said that he doubted they could come up with a better bid anyway. He then told the assembled media that if they can't come up with a plan in 90 days, "they aren't very interested," without noting the complex legal and administrative issues that bind any land acquisition by either agency.

However, Luke Metzger of Environment Texas called the hunting component of the concession offer "a poison pill" intended to scupper any possibility of NPS ownership.

If you'd like a preview of what's coming up in this week's Chronicle, head down to Scholz Garten Wednesday night (Nov. 7) at 6:30pm for a candidates forum of the Congressional District 10 and Travis County Democratic Party Chair contenders. The forum is part of the regular first-Wednesday meetings of Democracy for Texas. In Dist. 10, Austinites Larry Joe Doherty and Dan Grant are squaring off for the right to bring Republican Michael McCaul home from Washington; in the TCDP Chair race, Fidel Acevedo and Andy Brown both hope to succeed outgoing chair Chris Elliot.

If you're not sure whether you live in District 10 (thanks a lot, Tom DeLay, you JERK), you can find out by typing your address in here.

The New York City Marathon was on Sunday and there was some discussion on whether the runners would be allowed to listen to their iPods during the run. Apparently, when information needs to be relayed to the runners, the runners may not get that info because they are jammin’ to some tunes. When I exercise alone, I NEED music. That’s the only thing that keeps me going sometimes. I have a playlist on my iPod that I call my Booty Music, which includes Beyonce, Kanye West, Chris Brown, Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake...basically anything with a fast beat that I can run (or strut) to.

I missed Saturday’s training because I was in a wedding and I had wedding things to take care of. The plan was to wake up early and go running, but that just didn’t happen. I rarely sleep in late, but Saturday I slept until 8:30am (which is very late for me). I figured my body needed the sleep, so why fight it. And all of last week, I think I only got out once to exercise because I had things I needed to do, and after getting home around 8pm, I didn’t want to exercise, I just wanted to sleep...and eat candy.

Sunday I got back on the exercise wagon and tried to do a small jog, but my ankle was bothering me (could it have been the 3 inch heels I was wearing for 7 hours the night before?? Maybe.). So instead I walked to a small trail that’s near my house and did about 45 minutes worth of laps. Yesterday my ankle wasn’t bothering me as much, so I was able to do a jog/walk mix. I really worked hard because I was sweating, and I’m not a big sweater (as in a person that perspires, not something made of wool that you wear in the winter).

Now that the Trail of Lights 5k is within a realistic timeframe, I feel like I need to get back into the game and get serious again. It was easy to slack off when it was a few months away, but now it's just a few flips of the calendar pages. I need a mantra to get me through the next few weeks (since it's the shopping season for me). More jogging, less shopping. More jogging, less shopping. More shopping, less jogging. Jog while shopping. Just shop, screw jogging.

Guess that mantra thing doesn't always work.