Category Archives: Houston

Staycation 2007

January 16, 2015 6:49 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is a reprinted blog from 2007.  Sorry about doing 2 reprints in a row.  I had a late meeting (ironically about blog writing and one of the topics was how to plan my blog more efficiently) and had to scramble for a filler post.]

September

Work piles up. It always does no matter how far ahead you think you are, you’re never really ahead. Clients in Canada, Germany, India. All of them want their products and want them now. The boss wants a proposal ready for one of the companies biggest clients and wants it today so you drop all the other urgent projects and work on that.

22 miles to work and 22 miles back and always traffic, always, no matter if its 4:30 AM in the morning or 4 PM in the afternoon. 240 hours driving per year, which works out to 10 solid days of nothing but driving.

It all boils down to stress and plenty of it. It’s been a rough year. Not financially but physically and mentally. Specially mentally. I’ve gotten to the point that I sometimes try to open the office door with my house keys. A Freudian psychologist would call that a slip and a sign that I have begun thinking about the office as my real home.

Whereas last year I was excited about exploring New England, this year nothing appealed to me. When the word vacation came to mind all I could think about was plane schedules, taxi cabs, hotel checkout times, renting cars, all the garbage that comes with a trip.  Made me exhausted just thinking about it. I put it off and waited till finally I said “Screw it. I’m having my vacation at home.”  A new trend becoming more and more popular.  The staycation.

Houston: The new capital of the southwest

I usually make fun of tourists that come to Houston. It’s not much of a touristy city. Oh sure it’s as modern as any in the US. The hospital system is the best in the world, giant buildings downtown, hundreds of miles of freeways, and it has all the requisite major sports teams. But when you come down to it, that s all it has. There’s no Hollywood hills(there’s no hills period), or Times Square, or Golden gate bridge or anything.  We ourselves don’t have a beach or mountains or hundreds of years of accumulated charm and history. It’s a modern factory town (with office buildings replacing the factories). A nice place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit.

But like any big city dweller there are things out there that you could do but somehow you never end up doing.  I suppose you take them for granted and tell yourself that you will do them another time.  So I had that in mind for my staycation.

My body woke me up at 4 AM Monday morning as it always does. I tossed and turned but it’s no use. So I wandered round the house and finally decided to get breakfast but not in the house somewhere that I would never go on a weekday. I went to the 59 diner on highway 59 and Kirby, about 15 miles from where I lived in the suburbs.

If you ever saw the movie pulp fiction, the diner scene, you got a pretty good idea of what it looked like. Mid century design and lots of memorabilia from that era.  A 50’s menu that hadn’t heard of low-fat diets, and waitresses that were probably here when the diner opened up so long ago.  A large and filling breakfast but nothing special.

Returned home around 8:30, and I saw a pack of teens and pre-teens kids hanging around near my house. At first I thought this was a group of gang kids but then I saw the backpacks and books and it dawned on me they were waiting for the school bus. Then I noticed a lot of people were just taking off for work. How odd I thought. All this stuff happens here while I am at work.  Back at the office I would have been working for over 3 hours by now.

I took the money I was going to spend on the trip and put all of that into my savings account. After that I was out of ideas for the day, so I watched TV and tried to lay around. Suburbs are eerily quiet during the day. I would look out the front door and see nothing going on, and I would listen to the house creak every now and then. Not a healthy situation (from a mental health point of view), so I decided to find something to do.

I took a spin around Loop 610, the main bypass freeway that rings most of inner Houston.  Not just part of it but all of it.  Seeing parts of town I hadn’t seen for ages.  The Astrodome, the east side of Houston, passing by north end and then back by the Galleria.

Wednesday on a whim I went to the Galleria. This was the premier mall of Houston. Other malls were larger but the Galleria was the “it” place to shop in Houston. In the well to do part of town. Back in the oil boom days, the well to do of Houston would come here as they do now and put in a hard days shopping and lunching.

I though it odd since I remembered a story I had heard years back when I was a stock boy in a supermarket. An old Mexican that worked with me told me back when he was a kid in the 40’s that the land where the mall lay was all bayous and forests and his dad used to take him hunting rabbits. Now its all concrete and steel, Jaguars, Beemers, and Mercedes.

Back in my high school days the truant from my school would head here to basically loiter round the mall till the school day was done. I hadn’t been to the Galleria in about 8 years, and I wasn’t prepared for the changes. I always knew it had been a high-end mall but this was pure culture shock. They had expanded the mall, added tons of new shops. It was all gleaming and shiny.

Clothing boutiques of all sorts, jewelry stores with more gold, silver, and gems than was ever dreamt of by any pirate. All the old stores like Foley’s and Joske’s were gone replaced by Macy’s and Nordstroms. And people, tons and tons of people. What were they doing here? Didn’t they have jobs? It was 11AM, why weren’t these people at work? It was a mixture of culture shock and outrage. Was I really so out of touch?

Dining

My life is fairly regimented.  Go in to work, do your job, go home.  Every week day and then on the weekends you can do something different.  Always the same thing every week.  When you have this siege type mentality about your daily life you dream about simple pleasures.

Going out for a simple steak dinner is one such pleasure. The Outback steakhouse is just a step above Chili’s really. But since I hadn’t been to one in so long it was like an oasis for me. The steak was tough and ridiculously over salted, the baked potato was a cluster bomb of sour cream, bacon, and butter but I didn’t care. Such a long-long time. And that was the problem. A couple of hours passed and my stomach wasn’t doing so well. Maybe its eating the same bland diet month after month or just overdoing it. Close to losing it but I didn’t.

Kaneyama, a wonderful sushi place with Miso soup to die for, colorful and tasty sushi and sashimi, and teriyaki steak that seems to melt in your mouth. Kasra’s Persian grill with light pillow bread and a Persian salad. The Palm Club, another steakhouse with over the top prices but with a classic atmosphere that makes you swear you were in a Fitzgerald novel in the 20’s.  So many good places to eat yet I never go to them.

Liquor. My drinking days are past me. I had some wine during the week but nothing else. Back in my heyday I could down a Long Island Ice tea, a couple of shots of three wise men, and a flaming Dr. pepper (remind me to tell you bout that one day), Nowadays….I had a couple of glasses of wine Wednesday night and had a mild headache on Thursday morning.

People Watching

People watching is a bad habit of mine. Whether it’s at a mall or a park or at the museum like I did this week. Always on the outside looking in. Hordes of school kids at the museum being chaperoned by a frazzled school teacher and a curator who seems like she’s past the point of total boredom.  Cliques of upper class ladies at lunch in some fancy restaurant in the Galleria next to the skating rink, complaining about how rough life was while next door at a pizza parlor there’s a young couple trying to make lunch out of a single slice of pepperoni pizza for them and their 5-year-old kid.  Little vignettes of life.

Epilogue: Thoughts and plans

This type of vacation gives you a lot of time to think. Is this the type of life I want for myself? Am I just going to count down the weeks till next year’s vacation? Why was it that I took things so seriously while others just seem to cruise through life without a care? After seeing all this can I really go back to the 10 to 12 hour work day with nothing waiting for me at home?

Posted in: Houston, thought, vacations

summertime blues

September 10, 2014 7:05 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was coming out of the Alamo Drafthouse one Saturday in mid August.  Some of the movie workers were gathered round in the parking lot talking.  I caught a good deal of the discussion as I wandered past.  Some of them were quitting and headed back to school.  Whether to high school or college I couldn’t make out.

They were glad to be leaving work and to start the new school year but also dreading the monotony of constant schoolwork.

This brought back some memories of working during the summers in college.  Particularly a summer that I worked construction out at NASA.  My then brother-in-law got me a job as a day laborer for the company he was working with.  He was a shift foreman for an electrical contractor and needed some muscle to move parts and supplies for a new office building at the NASA complex in clear lake.

I started out by going to the early 1990s Heights neighborhood, which at the time was much scarier than the now fashionable Heights neighborhood.  I arrived around 6AM and was lost.  I stopped at a convenience store to get directions and a guy in a long green coat sidled up and offered to sell me “new tires” out of the trunk of his car.  I’m surprised he didn’t kosh me over the head with a lead pipe.

Anyways I found the main office which turned out to be a part office and part warehouse where I and 3 others watched a safety video and got a lecture from a middle management type about being very careful since we didn’t have health insurance and that was all there was to it.  I was now a day laborer.

So I spent the Summer driving out before dawn with my brother-in-law and working 14 hour days for 5 days a week and 10 hour Saturdays.  The double pay really added up over the Summer, specially since I was too tired to spend any of it.  On top of everything I signed up for a community college course to finish off an elective course in college.  So between that and work I was pretty much exhausted the entire Summer.

Work itself was tedious.  The electricians were all journeymen and were a motley crew of individualists here for the duration of the contract.  Once it finished they would all go their separate ways and get whatever jobs they could.  Union seniority was really the only distinction.  The shop steward made sure that we didn’t work a second after quitting time and reminded me often and loudly that as a non-union day laborer that I wasn’t covered by the Union in case of accident so I should join up and pay dues.  I explained to him several times that Summer that I wasn’t interested in making construction my life and that I was in fact in school.  Didn’t seem to matter to him.

I expected to be ostracized due to the fact that I was in school but the opposite seemed to take place.  Most of the electricians were interested and asked questions about modern college life.

I can’t say that I made the best laborer.  Most of these guys had been working hard since high school and were fairly muscular and large.  By comparison I was small but apparently they appreciated that I tried to do my job as best as possible.  Apparently day laborer isn’t a very well thought of position.  They apparently are often late to work or don’t show up at all and spend an inordinate amount of time hiding in the supply shed trying to avoid working.  Being naive as I was I didn’t know enough to hide from work and as a result I was being requested by various teams of electricians on different floors for whatever they needed.

Eventually this got me in trouble.  One of the older electricians had a son who was a day laborer.  This laborer was a snappy dresser and was not fond of getting his clothes dirty.  He was as lazy as some of the other laborers.  The older electrician took me aside one day and threatened me.  He said “Do you want to live longer?  Then stop working so hard!”  At least I think it was a threat.  Hard to tell.

The threat didn’t matter to me.  It was mid August and my time was coming to an end.  Community College was long over and I needed to get back to school and get my stuff out of storage and move back to College Station.  I walked up to the foreman’s trailer and gave my week’s notice to the site foreman.  All of the foremen there got really quiet.

“Can’t you wait for one more month, we’re almost done”  I couldn’t and truthfully I didn’t want to either.  Construction was a good experience for me but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for my life.

My last Friday came and I checked out.  The site foreman announced it on the walkie-talkie and all the electricians wished me good luck at school.  It was oddly touching.  As I was leaving one of the junior electricians came up and took me into the supply shed.  He looked left and right and behind him and handed me a scrap of paper.  “Just in case you’re interested”  Then he was off again.

It was a notice to some Christian revival meeting out in some small town I had never heard of.  Unexpected but very kind of him and I could see why he would be nervous.  The company would probably frown on this sort of thing.

I drove home that night and by Monday I was back in College Station setting up my apartment.  I had my working summer and was glad to be out of the hard world of construction work but I was also dreading the monotony of school life once again.

Posted in: Houston, memories, school, work

HMNS. my home away from home

August 27, 2014 6:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is an edited reprint of an article from 2008]

 

They brought a special display to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in August and the display was ending next week.  I realized this was one of those once in a lifetime deals you can’t pass up

For the first time ever the remains of Lucy, the first step in human evolution, were displayed outside of Ethiopia.  Australopithecus Afarensis was the first step on the long road to humans.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is located near downtown in the museum district.  If Houston had a cosmopolitan center then this would be it.  Wide boulevards, parks, a trolley, it might remind you of Central Park in downtown New York City.  The museum itself is somewhat small for a major city but its a favorite for school kids.  I certainly adored coming here even as a kid back in the 1980s.

 

I bought a ticket for the display carrying my camera and cell phone.  I expected they wouldn’t let me take pictures.  The flash can damage old relics, so I had my cell phone camera too, but to my surprise they made me turn that off too.  So I couldn’t get any pictures.

But pictures don’t do justice to this.  Tiny little bones, just fragments really.  You could see the relationship, the long path to our skeleton, but just barely.  They made up a model of what she would have looked like.  Just barely 3 foot tall.  There was a 7-year-old girl with her parents.  They were looking at the model and I couldn’t help but look back and forth and compare them to each other.

I wandered out of the display and went to look at some of the permanent exhibits.

I mentioned diamonds didn’t I?  The museum does have one of the best jewel displays around

A pirates hoard of gems of all types.  Glittering in their cases.  If you stood in the right spot you would be blinded by the gleam

Being Houston, it had to have a display on the oil industry.  Sponsored by who else but Exxon.  The one thing i didn’t like is that since kids are the prime target for the museum most of those displays are geared for kids with lots of buttons and Disney like videos for them.  Kind of dumbs it down for the rest of us.

This is a well log.  When I first started out I had to read these everyday.  Shudder.

 

Last but not least a model of an armadillo from long ago,

Overall it was worth it to see Lucy, something I may never see again in my lifetime and something that most people wont ever see.

But mostly I just enjoy wandering the cool darkened halls of the museum.  There’s something soothing about being in this building with all the knowledge and study that it represents.  I feel rejuvenated just coming here.

 

Posted in: activities, Houston, museum

Sunday driver

May 17, 2014 7:08 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note.  This is an edited reprint from an April 2007 post]

I went to Best buy looking for a DVD.  Nothing looked particularly appealing so I walked out into the parking lot and looked around.  The day was still young, it was early afternoon and I had no plans.  As I found myself on Highway-6 and Westheimer, for no particular reason I went West.

It was 2 PM, it was a Sunday, the sun was shining, Westheimer was practically empty of traffic and I was in a Dodge Charger.  Out past Highway-6 Westheimer is all fields and new subdivisions.

It’s the outskirts of Houston, but the housing developers are working hard to change that.  It has changed so much since I got to Houston back in ’76.

It was once all cattle and oil wells, the stereotypical view that non-natives hold of Texas.  Now its $300,000 houses, SAAB dealerships, TGI Fridays, and Best Buys.

If you follow Westheimer long enough it curves past the grand parkway.  The future third beltway around Houston.  Out here 25 miles from downtown Houston, a gleaming 6 lane highway that will push the boundaries of the suburbs out even farther.

I keep going farther not really knowing where I was going, just going.

45 MPH reads the speed limit sign.  Well Westheimer IS technically an FM (a farm to market road).  I take the speed limit sign as a general suggestion, not a requirement and press down on the accelerator.

Fulshear, a sleepy little town that refused to grow up.  Two old men sitting under the front porch of the Fulshear market talking about whatever it is old men talk about on Sunday afternoons.

Even out here there’s development.  Early development that is.  Tractors and back hoes out leveling the rolling hills.  Making everything flat as possible for the builders to lay out yet another cookie cutter subdivision.  The drainage ditches full of muddy water as another field full of topsoil washes away.

A pest.  Some yuppy in a GMC Suburban, one of those turbo Suburbans that GM built for those that really want to waste gasoline.  I’m doing 60, he wants to do 65 so he’s right on my tail.  I look in the passenger seat and I see why.  His wife (or girlfriend, but I rather think a wife since you don’t impress a girlfriend with a turbo Suburban), blonde about 30ish, him about mid to late 40s.

I could be nice and get on the shoulder and let him pass…

Screw it.  He’s obviously got money and he’s got a wife younger than I am.  No need to be nice here.  I lightly press the pedal and the Charger lives up to its name and bolts ahead leaving that plodding hippo in the dust.

Brookshire, the real outskirts of Houston.  I’m on I-10 and the sign says 37 miles to Houston.

The developers are just getting here, eyeballing it seeing if its worth developing yet.  The open pastures are still mainly untouched.

Next to the road is a field that rises at least 6 feet over the road.  Someone has cut into the side of the bank of earth and exposed it.  Deep dark soils, Mainly Clays with just enough sand to allow adequate drainage.  You gotta remember that I’m an Aggie, and all Aggies regardless of what they majored in or what they do in life still have a little bit of farmer in them.  I wince thinking about all this lost farm land.

I start back into town.  Everyone must have had driving on their mind today.  There’s a Pontiac Solstice, a Mazda Miata, a Corvette, and of course the nemesis of the Charger, the Mustang.

The speed limit is long forgotten.  Some guy towing a trailer full of lawn mowers is doing 75 for Pete’s sake!  Anyone with a decent vehicle is doing at least 85.

The Charger is happy.  I can tell.  Driving in stop and go traffic every day is death to it, and going all out with nothing but highway is a dream.  It needed this even more as I did

The journey back is too short and soon we’re back in town.  Back where I started.  The car’s hungry for more but its time to get home.  Maybe next weekend.

Posted in: Automobiles, driving, Houston

pulling out all the stops

April 9, 2014 7:04 AM , Leave a Comment ,

“it’s not a race.  Just keep going at a nice steady pace.”

That was my mantra when I began running and I wanted to encourage myself.  I knew that I couldn’t keep up with more experienced runners or college kids so I had to motivate myself to keep trying even if it seemed like I wasn’t making progress.  Heck, it’s still my mantra on bad days when I have “the lazies“.

Well, forget all that.  Today IS a race!

April 5th at Memorial Park and I’m here at “4 for the park”.  Not a huge race but I’ve been looking forward to this for a while.  I usually avoid crowds when running but sometimes you need to test yourself out against others.  Today I did have to do my best and not just in the sense of just showing up and finishing but really pushing myself hard.

Besides the need to finish the race at the best pace possible, I’ve got another appointment practically right after the race so the quicker I finish the better.

On Saturday morning Memorial Park swarms with runners.  So many times I’ve driven past and seen them and here I was among them.

The local runners are used to these events and pay it little mind.  Since it’s a shorter course some people have already run the trail and are just coming back in.  I don’t do much in the way of stretching.  Four miles isn’t a big deal for me so I really don’t need all that much prep.  I just walk back and forth till it’s almost time and spend my time looking at all the runners in all sorts of shapes and sizes and age ranges.  Some even too young to run but that participate anyways;  kids in “running” strollers being pushed by their parents.  No doubt getting a sneak preview of the trails that they will one day run.

Nearly time and people gather behind a giant inflatable start line.  I look at the mob of people trying to decide where I will line up.  Obviously not the front.  I will just get in the way of all the fast runners.  The tail end has all the beginners and walkers.  I would forever be dodging and going around them.  I find a spot somewhere near the middle with a large empty space.

The start line

The start line

The announcer counts down the last few seconds.  I cross myself and the mob surges forward at a slow pace at first; walking as the first rows get going.  I finally get to the front and start at a slow jog.  Dodging people left and right, looking round for ways around them, trying not to crash into people coming up behind me.

That first mile is always ridiculously long.  You figure you’ve run a long way already and then that 1-mile sign comes up and you realize it’s just beginning but you keep going.  I make the second turn on the course.  Coming in the opposite direction are the race leaders.  Some cheers from the runners around me.   I make the next turn and approach the 2-mile mark.  Gatorade and water ahead.  Some people don’t even try to aim for the waste bins.  I pass it by.

I run over the pedestrian bridge over Memorial Drive.  It suddenly hits me that here is yet another landmark that I had passed so many times by car on my way to downtown or some other location in the loop and here I was on foot.  This is now part of my personal map of places I’ve been.

3-mile mark.  Keep going strong.  I’ve been steadily passing more and more runners and not giving ground but some people suddenly catch and pass me by.  I pick up the pace determined to keep up with them and not fall behind.

Up ahead is an inflatable thing that looks like the finish line.  Is that it?  I speed up, burning hard for the finish.  Someone yells “false alarm!”  It’s not part of the course.  I groan internally and slow my pace and continue to run steadily.

Finally some well-wisher on the sidelines yells “just two more turns and you’re done”.  I look expectantly as the road unwinds and sure enough there it is.

Now, do it now! 

My last burst of speed to finish strong.  I half expect myself to be out of energy after that false alarm but nobody is more surprised than me when I kick it into high gear and practically peel out catching up and passing not just the guy in front of me but several others.  I zip past the finish line and have to brake hard not to run into a crowd of people.

No time to celebrate.  I look for the parking shuttles to get back to the parking lot.

Later I look online for my time. 39 minutes, 6 seconds.  About 9 minute, 45 second per mile.  Not bad but I can do better and next time I will.

Posted in: Houston, running

Houston and charity

November 28, 2013 9:04 PM , Leave a Comment ,
My racing bib and timing chip

My racing bib and timing chip

It’s 7AM.  the temperature is just above freezing.  I’m wearing shorts, t-shirts, and gloves and I’m cold.  At 8:45, it’s warmer, I’m soaked in sweat and tired.  A 10k fun run has just finished and I’ve run my first race in decades.

But something else has happened behind the scenes.  Something that I and the other 15000 participants are barely cognizant of.  Two Houston charities have just raised several thousand dollars to support their community efforts.  The process has been fun for the participants and the city’s people will benefit without having to get government involved.

But it’s always this way in Houston.  This city has made it a habit to mix charity fund-raising and fun events for decades.

We seem to love our soirees, our garden parties, our fun runs, our cotillions and it seems that any big event in the city has to have a charity event as a reason for existing.  It is almost mandatory.

What is amazing to me is that once a charity event is established that it seems to grow and grow.  In fact it seems like events without a charity aspect don’t grow as much or as quickly as those that do.

I’m sure that these things take place in other cities but I think it’s a specialty of our city.  We may not be the biggest or most sophisticated but we are the kindest.

Posted in: Houston

despising the old

November 6, 2013 7:52 PM , Leave a Comment ,

Houston is a city that is supposedly over 175 years old but that’s not really the truth.  For a long time it lingered stuck as a small town.  The humidity, the heat, the mosquitoes didn’t encourage people to come and settle here.  That is until the advent of the air conditioner, the interstate highway system and the space program.  All these gave Houston the impetus to grow.

Consequently we don’t really have the layers upon layers of history and old architecture that most cities do.  Take Chicago for example.  Founded only 4 years earlier than Houston but it grew at a steady pace since its start.  Building up layers and layers of history and memorable architecture.  It now boasts great architecture and a larger population than Houston.

We have little history to spare.  So you’ll pardon me when I get a little hot under the collar when some people decide not to save one of the few landmarks that this town has to offer.

Of course I’m talking about the Astrodome.  The so-called 8th wonder of the world.  Not the prettiest of buildings, specially now that it’s been allowed to decay, but certainly iconic of the city.  The first of the domed stadiums, it was copied and recopied around the world.

I remember for a long time that Houstonians have complained that they aren’t taken seriously as a big city.  We have a slight inferiority complex sometimes when compared to our more suave neighbors like LA. or Chicago, or New York.  We have none of the memorable landmarks that these cities have.  All we have are strip malls, parking lots, and miles and miles of cookie cutter suburbs.

The thing is that you don’t build up a reputation by bulldozing the old.  You care for the old, the damaged, you celebrate it.  I remember last year that opponents of the Dome pointed out how even the New York Yankees stadium had been bulldozed.  The thing is though that New York still has literally dozens of other landmarks to brag about.  We don’t.

So now the Dome will be bulldozed and in its place will probably be added more parking for the stadium next door.  Perhaps this then is our legacy to the future.  The city of parking lots, strip malls, and nondescript prefab housing.  We will be the model for the future cities of the world.  Bland, dull, interchangeable.

Posted in: Astrodome, Houston

Houstocanes

September 5, 2013 6:41 PM , Leave a Comment ,

Houstonians are generally laid back about weather events.  Perhaps it’s something to do with the inevitability of the humidity.  No matter how many Summers you’ve spent here you know that first blast of 100% humidity in the Spring will knock you flat and that it won’t let up till mid to late November.

But some time in late August Houstonians get a queer expression on their faces.  Nothing that you can pin down during conversations but a certain something.  They begin to linger a little longer over the weather page in the paper.  Stay up a little later for the 10 o’clock news to catch the weatherman.  Their eyes focused on some spot in the Caribbean.  Looking searchingly at a fuzzy satellite picture for the slightest sign of a hurricane.

Having weathered so many you’d think that you would become accustomed to it and in some sense I suppose this does happen.  As I’m sure that southern Californians don’t even notice small tremors and that Midwesterners accept the coming of tornado season.

But even the most die-hard gulf coaster gets to look round at this time of year.  Is that tree going to withstand a Cat 2 storm?  Are the storm drains going to overflow and fill up my first floor?  How old is that can of Spam in the cupboard?  We nonchalantly prepare for it on the weekends.  An extra couple gallon bottles of water, some cans of soup here and there.  Maybe some late spring trimming of branches.  Nothing to get excited about.  Nobody admits to being nervous about hurricanes.  Admitting that would be a gross breach of decorum.

They get ready as best they can for the big event without really trying.  They leave the panic for when the weatherman officially gives them leave to panic.  Then they take it in stride like any other American to panic.

It’s only in the waning days of September that they begin to relax slightly.  The high hurricane season unofficially ends and they begin to relax a bit more and become a little more complacent.  Life can return to normalcy for another ten months.

Houstonians will return to their normal pastimes and once more forget about the possible monsters of the Gulf.

 

 

Posted in: Houston, weather , Tagged: ,

Spacecitycon 2013

August 3, 2013 10:18 PM , Leave a Comment ,

I have looked forward to this for the last couple of months.  I had four major events this planned for this Summer.  Since the trip to the San Diego Comicon fell through this became the highlight of the season.

By far not the biggest convention out there.  Even our own local Comicpalooza convention in March is bigger but I was shocked by the growth this year.  They hired out the Westchade Marriott hotel in west Houston as the venue and already it is overflowing.

I arrived at 2 P.M. just after work and thought parking would be a breeze since most folk would be at work.  Ha!  I spent forty minutes driving round and round looking for parking till I finally had to park far out in the street.  Inside it was worse.  A long circuitous line wrapped round the lobby to get tickets.  Took me another forty-five minutes for a simple 3 day pass.  Walking was almost impossible and this was only day one.  Who knows how it will be during the main day!

Once past these onerous tasks I settled into my convention tasks.  I took a couple of loops round the artist alley and the dealer’s room.  Saw some old friends and acquaintances that I see all the time at these events.  They mostly travel the local convention circuit but some go around the nation doing these things.

I skimmed all the dealer booths to see what would be worth a return visit or three.  I never buy the first day of the convention.  Hate carrying stuff around and you never know what you might see that you like later.

I had some time to kill and took in the autograph booths.  Mostly minor celebrities.  Some recent and some from my childhood.  They had varying expressions on their faces ranging from being bored at sitting around for the locals to gawk at, to nervous excitement at meeting people.  Some chatted amicably with their fans for a good long time, others just scrawled a name on a picture or memento and sent the fan on after receiving the money.

I took in a sing along performance at the end of the first day.  You truly get a sense of camaraderie when you sit in a room packed with strangers and do silly things and sing silly songs.

I spent most of the second day at the convention.  Began with Tracy and Laura Hickman’s killer breakfast.  Essentially an en masse Dungeons and dragons game where the Hickmans invent the most amusing way to kill you and humiliate you in front of everyone assembled.

After that something a bit more serious.  Some writer’s workshops reflecting on building the backdrop to stories and how to edit and proofread your works.  Some really good ideas there.  More importantly for me some things to reflect on as I go through my pieces.

A book reading by a few authors there.  Very compelling writing,

The final event was a fan made star wars movie.  Stood in line for 45 minutes but it was so worth it.

Took my final turn round the dealer’s room and bought a couple minor items and took a last look round.  All the people in costumes, the kids running round, the adults acting like kids, people really get into these things.  And then there’s me.  As always I feel slightly apart from it all.  I still do yet here I feel more comfortable, I enjoy all the silly events, the costumes, the throngs of people, all the confusion.

I know that it’s all just pop culture nonsense and it’s not educational or improving me in any way but there’s more to life than those things.  Stop some time, look around and you may notice that life is happening and passing you by.

 

 

 

Posted in: conventions, Houston, life in general, pop culture

ITL

June 30, 2013 8:11 AM , 2 Comments ,

I miss many things by not living inside the city.  Let’s face it, it’s an exciting time in the city’s history.  Who could have predicted the rise of Houston’s urban landscape back in the 90s?  I certainly didn’t.

It’s not just the paid venues like restaurants and clubs that are making the inner loop better, though they are getting more numerous and more impressive.  What is really making the difference is the rise of Houston’s artistic community.  We have more and more art galleries opening up, art festivals, and more artists coming over and saying “you know, it’s not so bad here after all”

So why don’t I take the plunge and make the move into the city?  Complicated.  Part of the answer is that not too long ago I did not expect to be here that long.  About five years ago my mid range plans were to leave Houston.  Living out in the ‘burbs I did not see anything that would cause me to stay here.  I mean there is nothing special about strip malls, freeways, and cookie cutter houses for miles and miles.  I wanted something special, mountains, oceans, interesting things to look at or see.  I was already making lists of possible places to move to like the Pacific Northwest or one of the cities of the Northeast or possibly even out of the country altogether.

Another part of the answer is family.  I have two elderly parents that need care.  They have to be part of any decision that I make for the moment.  I began to make this realization about eight years ago and began to plan for this.

My parents may think that they can be as independent as they used to be but based on recent history I don’t think that’s possible.  I need to be nearby.  They would be happy to live out in some small town in the middle of nowhere or even living back in Chile over 4000 miles away.  They see the city as noisy, congested, and crime ridden.  No amount of persuasion, or brochures, or websites will change their minds  The suburbs where they used to live was the best compromise I could come up with.  They know the area and are comfortable with it and I am close enough to the city that it’s not an hour long drive just to get into the loop.

But when it’s just me?  What will I want for myself?  I haven’t had much time to ponder that lately.  But certainly life inside the loop will come back into my considerations.  I don’t need to go to far off exotic places to find a happy life.  Maybe it’s just half an hour away

Posted in: Houston, life in general