Notes from Texas
As Richard E. Frye, M.D., Ph. D., once said, "Houston is dangerous because the food is so good." I'm in Houston on business, and he's right. But that's not all Texas has. Among some of the other things:
Everything is big in Texas. This includes cars, restaurants, food portions, hospitals, average waistlines, churches, etc. Oh, and stores and malls. It's ridiculous, but I'm starting to like it.
- Houses on stilts: Example 1, Example 2. Floods here aren't any nicer than in New Orleans.
- The Gulf of Mexico. This would make for prime swimming in the summer if not for the clay (big picture, close-up), which gives the water a brownish color. It has nothing to do with oil--oil is much too precious to be spilt into the ecosystem--but you can't explain that to people.
- All over the gulf coast, the birds are amazing. In a day, you can see hundreds of egrets, shrikes, roseate spoonbills, herons, skimmers, osprey, various falcons and hawks, etc. Today we spotted a peregrine falcon (before it took a crap, after it took a crap). It's almost a shame we're here to work and can't just go bird watching.
- There are various other gulf coast animals, but most of the time, you only spot tracks (e.g. an otter track). I think I spotted an armadillo by the side of the road today, but by the time we'd have stopped, it would have been far behind us and probably in the brush.
- Decent sunsets, but hard to photograph ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
Everything is big in Texas. This includes cars, restaurants, food portions, hospitals, average waistlines, churches, etc. Oh, and stores and malls. It's ridiculous, but I'm starting to like it.