The Deal with Texas

I had a nice time in Houston and continued to enjoy all the city has to offer, including my husband. Mike was correct when he proclaimed Houston the hottest place on earth. It is hot. I reverted to my Bahamian shower schedule of four quickie showers a day to keep from feeling like slimy ball of sweat disguised a woman. I had big plans to travel to the gulf and check out Galveston but after all my recent travels I decided to hang in the city.

As an added perk to my trip my brother in law took off a week from work and teamed up with me as a workout buddy. We traded our favorite exercise experiences. I almost killed him during a hot yoga power session in the studio by my house, and he treated to me a body pump session at the YMCA. I had never been to a group weightlifting class before and I really enjoyed it. Hopefully I didn't embarrass him too much with my lack of coordination. There was a giant mirror at the front of the class and I would catch my completely out of sync moments with all the other body pumpers perfectly coordinated ones.

It looked a lot like these except our weights were cool pastel purples, blues, and I think pink.

One of my overall impressions of Texans is that Texans are nice but quick in contrast to the saccharine, slow as molasses vibe of the southerners I know from Tennessee and Kentucky. In fact, as a Tennesseean I caught myself feeling like a bit of a country bumpkin at times. My assessment of the difference between Texas and Tennessee was confirmed by a local Texan who is a native Dallasian but now lives in Houston. Her husband works for Joseph and we went on a little double date. I found out from this Texan that Houston is much hipper than Dallas and Dallas is super snooty. She said that in some stores in Dallas people will ask you for your zip code and then treat you like shit if your zip code is sub par. This seemed far fetched to me but I talked to her for several hours and she wasn't much of an exaggerator. I also found out that the Houston rodeo is a three week long event which occurs in spring and is very important. Noted.

Watermelon pride. They are quite delicious.

Another Texan observation I made is the wealth of Texan pride. Signs about the awesomeness of Texas are everywhere.

I spent a few hours working in Joseph's factory and one of the workers brought in a stray kitten!

There are lots of old beautiful trees in Houston. I saw tons of live oaks and overall Houston is an incredibly green city. However, it also holds some desert vibes. There are cute little lizards everywhere. Every time I would come outside lizards would scatter to get out of my path. We even caught one stuck to our condo window stalking a fly approximately a third of its size.

Check out that tree canopy

The Texan pride I spoke of manifests in many ways. As a consumer it's quite nice because I got the impression that things are done well. For example, in the picture above the beverages could have been manually shaken. Instead they were inserted into a savage shaking machine to achieve an even distribution of cold molecules. 

A typical Houston road: six lanes.

Associating bigness with Texas is fairly commonplace in American culture. I can vouch for the authenticity of this association. I felt the bigness most while driving on the road. The photo above is on medium sized Houston road. On most American roads there are three options, straight left, and right. In Houston we have an additional option: get to the other side and turn around kind of u-turn ish. This option is so popular there are two lanes dedicated to it. As a newcomer it's confusing because the arrow seems to indicate "left" but this just isn't the whole story as I quickly found out.

Ichabod sunning himself

I don't know about you but we make up stories about our animals. Part of Ichabod's story is that he is a little Italian meatball from New Haven, Connecticut. Another story is that he is a hot little Mexican chihuahua. Both of these stories converged in the above scene. My little man discovered the glories of sunning himself in the hot nearly-Mexican sun on some fake old man Bocce ball grass.

And last but not least, I have not yet seen a giant roach.

Up next: the journey from Houston to New Orleans to Tennessee.