Houston, you have some problems.

Happy President's Day, and today I am celebrating the great Jimmy Carter for being a nice honest man. Thanks, Jimmy!

We had a fun trip to Houston. We headed out on Saturday morning. You know the drive. HWY 45. Depressing little town, Dairy Queen, field of hay, field of cows, depressing town, field of cows, field of horses, funny billboard, field, field, (I get bored, I do get boooored...), and finally trees, trees, trees, giant Sam Houston, trees, prison, trees,and then you're almost there. When we were about 30 miles from Houston, the traffic became stop-and-go for the rest of the trip. On a Saturday afternoon! Then we finally got to Houston and tried to cut west on 59. Stop and go traffic on Saturday afternoon. I can not imagine what rush hour is like. But without passing GO or collecting $200, we finally exited on Kirby and made our way to the place I had been thinking about all day: the great Goode Co. barbeque restaurant! And the stress from the long boring drive and ridiculous traffic melted away as I enjoyed my smoked turkey sandwich with a side of Texas jambalaya and a bottle of St. Arnold's Root Beer whilst listening to country music on the patio. This place has one of the best bbq sauces I've ever had. Sadly, the shop next door that sells bottles of the sauce was closed so they could remodel the inside and erect a giant armadillo outside.
We had 4 hours to kill before the party, so we headed down to Clear Lake, where Kev used to live. He showed me his apartment, literally across the street from NASA, and across another street from the Gulf of Mexico. Then he took me to a bird area where there were ducks, geese, gulls, pelicans, and some kind of plover or sandpiper (I failed to bring my bird book). The we went to a place called Kemah, which is on the coast and has a boardwalk with shops and restaurants and amusement rides. I was happy to see the "ocean" but a little sad that it was very brown and murky. Still, it made me wish to be at sea again. It was a lot of fun. Anyway, by then, with all the humidity and ocean breeze, my hair had become about 3 times its normal size, and my good mood turned to dread because I had a party to go to. Our plan was to stay at the people's house who were hosting the party. I had never been there, and thus had no idea what to expect, but luckily, we had our own room, and even better, our own bathroom, downstairs, so I was able to shower and get my hair back down to a somewhat less ridiculous volume. The party was fun. There was a lot of engineer talk, but that was OK. There was also some really good soup, cooked by Troy, our host. I stayed up until after 1 am, which is almost unheard of. We went to a good breakfast place on Washington the next morning called the Daily Grind filled with hippies and good food. On the way out of town, we stopped in Kingwood to see Kev's great uncle and aunt, Vinnie and Sophie. Since they are old skool Italian, they insisted on feeding us, even though we had just eaten a big breakfast. But that was OK. These were some of the nicest people I have ever met, and I was happy to have a meal with them. Kingwood, which describes itself as "liveable," is liveable indeed. Big tall trees everywhere. It hardly seemed like Texas.
So, Houston has some really good fun stuff, but you have to be willing to put up with bad traffic and poor drivers and humidity to do any of it. My hair and my nerves could never live in Houston.
The drive home was uneventful. Lots of roadkill, therefor lots of black vultures and turkey vultures. Also, lots of hawks, which I couldn't ID from the car. Overall a great trip, but it was good to see the Dallas Skyline and get home again.
Hope you all had a nice weekend.