Wow, holy cow, it's been a while since I've jotted anything down here. I guess it's cause not much has happned to me lately.
Except...
...I took a trip to Texas over this new year's weekend, nominally to visit my sister, but mainly over the insistence of my family.
Now, before I tell more of this sordid trip, let me say I have nothing against the fine people of Texas personally. Almost all I have met who live there are perfectly fine individuals, and I can't say enough nice things about them. It's just...I can't stand being in the state. Primarily this is because I am a cold-weather boy; the warm climes of Texas are too much for me. I'm sorry, but as soon as the temperature is above 60 or so, I turn crabby. I know, it's a fault of mine, but it ends up clouding all my experiences of the state because I'm already in a a bad mood because of the heat.
The first time I was there was three years ago when my sister moved down there, and it was in May, and it was already incredibly hot (for me). The only relief I finally got was every evening my sister and I would take a two-hour car ride around Houston with the Air Conditioning jacked all the way up until we both cooled off enough to go to sleep.
Anyway, this trip was marked by just the adventure of getting there. I had to switch planes in Dallas, and what should have been a 45-min layover tunred into 8 hours. It seems a thunderstorm hit the area shortly after I landed in the city; the airport grounded all flights until it passed. OK, fine. Then there were reports of tornadoes in the area. At one point, the airline employee with the button on the speaker shouts at everyone, "We've just got a report of a tornado heading right for this airport, everyone needs to get away from the windows, NOW!" and made us evacuate the area. Not much fun, but nothing happened to me, and I never even saw a tornado. Drat.
So, I got to H-town, and I'd like to say I did some cool stuff there, but I really didn't. I'm still not a fan of Houston, and the town hasn't impressed me much. It just seems like everything we wanted to do required an hour car-ride just to get there, and I felt like I spent a good portion of my time there riding in the car to get somewhere. I have to say, it was the oddest sensation, to be riding in my brother-in-law's convertable, with the top down, IN DECEMBER! And there was no snow! (duh) It almost seemed fundamentally wrong, to be so warm at the end of the year. I don't know. Even new years day, I didn't do a whole lot, we had a big fancy dinner at my sister's, and I stayed up until about 11, but that was it.
Oh well. Next year I'm staying in Minnesota for the holidays.
