When I accepted the job in Houston, Annie immediately sent Emmett some very important gear. It came in handy today as we watched the Texans’ first home game of the season.
Settling in, part XIV
Last weekend’s trip home led to a hiatus here at The Accidental Texan. You know how counselors at summer camps & rehab facilities & boarding schools advise families against visiting during the first few weeks or months? Turns out they’re on to something. I had so much fun with friends & family that coming back to Texas was more wrenching than coming here in the first place. Walking into the airport knowing that I was going home rather than coming home was a very disorienting experience. As a consequence, I didn’t have the heart to write about Texas this week.
But now the sun is shining (not a rare occurrence, actually–it might rain a bit on Tuesday, but otherwise it’s all sun, all the time) and a nice breeze is banishing the cobwebs. Could be the weather, could be that Saturday feeling, could be the coffee. I’m just going to go with it.
It’s just about time for the first frost in Minnesota. That realization made me feel sad & a little jealous at first, but then a feeling of relief snuck up on me. It’s 86 degrees here now, low humidity, and generally in the low 60s at night. Sure, I’m cuckoo for Minnesota, but not cuckoo enough to prefer frost over this. not wholeheartedly, anyway. But that feeling of relief is laced with guilt over my disloyalty. It’s like secretly admitting that your stepdad makes better burgers than your dad. (This is just an example. My dad makes the best burgers in the world.)
Let’s see. Texas news. First, I found a very promising-looking book group. Second, most of Ike’s mayhem has been taken care of; 80% of traffic lights are functional now, and almost everyone has power. (What a funny and untrue phrase.) The traffic light situation was probably the worst part of it for me. The lines at gas stations and the food shortages were inconvenient, but waiting 30 minutes just to get through a single intersection was very trying. While I’m not normally prone to fits of road rage, inching along the street during my morning & evening commutes made that vein in my temple start to throb. One funny thing, though: some residents have been asking/complaining about the fact that many traffic lights destroyed by the hurricane have been repaired using black housings instead of the traditional yellow ones. One city official responded to those complaints by pointing out that Houston needed a very large number of them all at once, and it’s not like anyone keeps tons of them on hand. The city had to take what it could get. (After weeks of seeing all the blue tarps covering giant holes in roofs and reading stories about the hundreds of people still missing, I have to wonder why people are getting all riled up over traffic light housings. Different priorities, I guess.)
In a move that may be seen either as appropriate or macabre, I’m reading Isaac’s Storm, a book about the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveston and thus ensured Houston’s primacy in state affairs. It’s fascinating reading, particularly if one has a more than passing interest in meteorology. (Anyone? anyone? okay, maybe that’s just me.) Or history. Or humanity, really. It’s not quite as gripping as Erik Larson’s more recent book, The Devil in the White City, but it’s still very good. And I can hardly expect to find a book like Devil–which vaulted onto my top ten list a mere 50 pages in–more than once every couple of years. In the weeks following Ike, I’ve been even more housebound than usual; the terrain was too treacherous and the traffic too dense to make excursions worthwhile. But the time at home has led me to discover Erik Larson and Michael Chabon, so I’ve been richly rewarded. (I could’ve been so rewarded much earlier if I’d listened to Joe when he praised The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but nooooo.)
Saturday’s a-wastin’, my friends, so an account of the ongoing saga of the new TV will have to wait. If I don’t finish my chores today, I won’t be able to watch the Texas-Colorado game at 6. Heaven forfend! (And when did football become the centerpiece of my weekend? How shocking!)
Fall is here! My favorite season! Hey, wait a minute.
One day last week, on the way to work, I heard the morning guy on KUHF start off the weather forecast with “The fall-like weather continues…”
“Fall-like weather” sent me into a brief, pleasant reverie. I could taste the crisp air & feel the brilliant sunshine. The deep, deep blue of the sky. Everywhere the woodsy smell of newly awakened fireplaces. Damp leaves sticking to shoes & tires. The annual trip to the pumpkin patch to select fat, round jack o’ lanterns-to-be. Picking apples. Hay rides. Tailgating at football games.
But it was just a cruel joke. Turns out “fall-like weather” in Houston is not very different from summer-like weather in Houston. A little less hot and a lot less humid. But still warm and rather hazy. I have trouble with the concept of fall-like weather that involves temperatures over 70 degrees at 8 a.m. and daytime highs over 90. I’m calling seasonal shenanigans!
One thing that actually is continuing here: the fallout from Ike. At least 860,000 people are still without electricity in Houston alone. Elevator rides have become lively games of “Who’s Got Power?”. I learned a new phrase today: power guilt. That’s when you have electricity & the people across the street don’t. And they can see you slinking around in your brightly lit house. No matter how many times you empty your icemaker into a bucket & bring it to them, you’ll still feel their accusing glares following you around as you cook (using perishable foods, no less), watch tv, do laundry, and dance around blithely in the air-conditioned comfort of your living room.
WARNING: ANIMAL LOVERS SHOULD NOT, REPEAT NOT, READ THE REST OF THIS POST.
Okay. You’ve been warned.
After Ike swept through Galveston, rescue workers went around freeing farm animals trapped in barns, fenced-off pastures, etc. Of course they couldn’t direct the animals anywhere or transport them to safety (how many cows will fit in an 8-foot fishing boat? Not very many); all they could do was give the animals a fighting chance. Some of the liberated animals haven’t been rounded up yet. There’s a particular problem with wandering cows drinking salt water & dying. This has led to an influx of alligators, particularly on the west side of Galveston, as the gators come to feast on all the dead cows. And alligators are not the kinds of neighbors the beleagured Galvestonians need right now. What those Galvestonians might be doing to deal with the alligator problem is best not thought of.
I don’t really have anything to add to this, aside from the obvious fact that it’s very sad. I suppose we could have a conversation about the rescue workers’ tort liability as it relates to the foreseeability of the alligator invasion.
Which got me to thinking about law school. Because… you know.
What I don’t miss:
16-hour workdays
Headaches
Stupefaction
Terror/nausea
The CPDC
The dark, dank subplaza
The dark, drab law library
EXAMS
Poverty
That scary, swooping representation of Death in the hallway at Concordia; actually
Anything to do with the bar exam, including and especially Stompy.
What I do miss:
Seeing people I love every day.
This list is incomplete, isn’t it? Additions are most welcome.
Apocalypse NOW!
Okay, it’s not quite that bad. But–not having personally witnessed this hurricane or any other–I’m amazed by the still-unspooling impact of Ike.
Yesterday’s trip to the grocery store was largely fruitless (ha!). At least sixty percent of the shelves were barren, and an equal number of coolers were empty and dark. Staples like bread, milk, produce, meat, etc. were not to be found. And we’re talking about a major grocery store chain. I settled for what I could get, feeling humbled by the experience.
Mail service is in chaos. The little old lady who lives downstairs with her correspondingly elderly husband was dismayed when her weekly check failed to arrive. Netflix apologized to me via email for any shipping delays I might experience; this is akin to receiving a letter of capitulation from an all-powerful agent, like Santa Claus. When I went to the mall today in search of athletic shoes, some of the major stores were closed. Work lost water pressure again today, causing many of us to decamp. Working in a huge building with no running water is an appealing option only to people with no electricity, no internet, and a strong constitution.
Planes, rains, and automobiles
Two extra days in the Bay Area, courtesy of the Company and Hurricane Ike, sounds like a great deal. Normally I’d be all over it. But being swept up in a relatively intense natural disaster has a way of tempering one’s enjoyment of almost everything. I lost track of amount of time spent on the phone with the travel service trying to get a flight after mine was canceled yet again. The weather patterns and, later, the damage reports were changing hourly. All of this made for a very nerve-wracking situation for those of us trying to get to Houston from Santa Clara. (I did, however, get to spend a delightful day in San Jose. I went with a new friend to the Winchester Mystery House, thereby fulfilling a long-held dream, & we capped off the afternoon with some fantastic Mexican food.)
Finally, well after midnight on Saturday, a small group of us were able to get seats on a flight to Austin at noon on Sunday. Family members were contacted. Rides were arranged. The latest reports indicated that the Sunday flight could very well be the last chance to get back to Texas before Thursday; flying to Austin & making our way back to Houston was the best option available. Those who had family in the area were able to get a sense of what conditions were like in their neighborhoods, but I had no idea what I’d find upon my return. You can imagine how welcoming an apartment would be if said apartment had been without power for several days (hint: hot, stuffy, and, thanks to fridge failure, ripe-smelling) or if a tree had found its way into the living room.
By the time we landed in Austin at 6 pm, we were all tired & cranky & worried; we longed for clean clothes, hot showers, and our own beds. One co-worker arranged for a family member to collect three of us (plus luggage) and drive us all to Brenham, Texas. Other members of our group opted to meet their families in Austin & stay there until some of the craziness had subsided. Rental cars & hotel rooms were in very short supply. The closer we got to Houston, the more desperate-looking our surroundings became. Long lines circled every gas station. Ice was impossible to get. Just about every restaurant was closed; the places that still had electricity had long since run out of food. Fortunately, one of my co-workers lives relatively close by, so I rode into Cypress with that generous soul and her equally generous husband. The Brenham contingent was having some kind of hurricane party; family had come in from all over the area, and they’d filled my co-worker’s house, grilling out in the dark & drinking beer. Coming from a big family myself, and having lucked into meeting great friends, I’m not used to relying on the kindness of strangers, but it all worked out beautifully. We got back to Cypress just before ten pm (breaking the 9 pm curfew!), and they offered to pick me up the next morning & drive me to the airport to retrieve my car. Many cell towers are down, so connecting with them this morning was a real challenge, but as of this writing I’m sitting very comfortably in my undamaged apartment. My undamaged car is in the garage. Emmett is none the worse for wear; the wonderful people at the boarding place patiently returned my daily phone calls–right up until the phone lines went down & the power went out–so I knew Emmett was safe. He was very popular at the kennel, which is always a nice thing for a parent to hear.
Getting the car and the dog took hours. Traffic is moderate, but at least two-thirds of the traffic lights are still out, and not everyone waits politely for his or her turn. Add to that ambulances & looky-loos & you have a pretty sticky traffic situation all over the metro area. Phone service is hit or miss. Usually miss. We’re not to drink the water without boiling it first, and the curfew is still in place.
That all sounds serious, but in truth the damage isn’t too severe up here. I saw smashed signs, toppled fences, scabby patches on the sides of buildings where stucco had been torn away, many uprooted or shredded trees, windows blown out of the sides of office complexes, and gaping holes in roofs. But by today those holes have mostly been covered with tarps or plastic sheeting, and felled trees have been removed from roadways. The airport, closed for several days, is now open again (though actually getting a plane ticket in or out of the city is still very difficult). Conditions in Houston proper are still reportedly quite awful. Much as I want to be able to show examples, I don’t want to be an obnoxious disaster tourist, so I’ll leave y’all to view images of the destruction on CNN.
On the plus side, the weather today is very pleasant–mid-70s and not very humid at all.
California love
Santa Clara is really lovely, not least because it’s cool, breezy, and dry. After nearly a month in Houston, the climate here feels like heaven.
Today was day two (of four) of meetings, team-building events, workshops, and presentations. One of the sessions involved taking a personality test designed to identify our strengths. A visual representation of my test results would look like this:
Apparently, my top five strengths (out of 33 possibilities) are Input, Learner, Intellection, Analytical, and Deliberative. I’m outraged. First of all, what happened to parallel structure?! Second, “intellection” sounds like a made-up word. Third, I’m still reeling from last year’s revelation that I, a lifelong INTP, am now an INTJ. The blame for all of this can be placed squarely on law school.
Fortunately, commiserators abound and I get to hear a lot of entertaining horror stories. Yesterday, one of my colleagues reported that, when she was taking the bar exam, the table broke; my colleague & the other nine people at the long, narrow table–mindful of the fact that the bar never, ever, ever gives anyone extra time for any reason–barely missed a beat. They held the table wedged between their elbows and knees and continued to write frantically for the 30 minutes remaining in the exam period. Hard to imagine another situation in which ten strangers would make an instant, unspoken, collective decision to put up with such a ridiculous situation.
In other news, I’ve discovered that Houston doesn’t seem to have any libraries. No libraries, no recycling, and just one NPR station. These living conditions border on extreme. To add injury to insult, another hurricane is gathering strength over the Gulf. Those of us who came to California from Houston are scrambling to change our travel plans so we can fly home before the airport shuts down. Fortunately, I stocked up on bottled water and batteries in anticipation of Gustav. Now all I have to do is get to Houston before Ike does.
Where to go for gun stuff–and shaved ice
Thank you, Keith Knight, for your ongoing series on life’s little victories. You’ve led me to pay more attention to the little victories in my own life. One good thing about transplanting oneself to an utterly alien place: the excitement/amusement threshhold becomes very, very low. At the close of my third week of work, I can celebrate some small but–to me–significant milestones: I found a decent grocery store & a nearby bank branch, and figured out a way home from work that will take me past both. My car is now safely stowed in its own garage stall. Football season starts this weekend. I get to spend much of next week in San Jose–& I’ve never been there, which automatically adds a lot of allure to the place. And I didn’t get lost on the way from the parking ramp to the office at all this week.
My alternate route also takes me past a preschool called Little Promise Keepers Christian Academy and, right down the road, a strip mall with an interesting collection of tenants.
Arr–it’s drivin’ me nuts.
Minnesotans don’t claim to be good drivers. In point of fact, Minnesotans do not typically claim to be good at anything. Heaven forbid we should get above ourselves. When truly riled, a Minnesotan might go so far as to say that at least we don’t drive like we’re from Iowa.
Maybe Minnesotans aren’t really bad drivers, but are instead victims of 1960s-era optimism. The zipper merge is predicated on the idea that people behave rationally even when they’re in a hurry or have had a bad day. That sort of idealism–the belief in a more ordered future–led to other innovations, like Esperanto, geodesic domes, and Xanadu, the Foam House of Tomorrow. Unfortunately, the zipper merge survives.
Texans probably wouldn’t admit they’re not the best drivers in the world, but I am here to tell you they’re not. Most people drive competently, more or less, obeying traffic signals & using lanes when it’s convenient to do so. But there are two groups that fall outside that majority. Let’s call them A and B.
Type A drivers always drive like there is a woman somewhere in the vehicle–possibly even the driver–who is about to give birth RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE. Type A motorists drive very fast but also (generally) deftly. They won’t hit you or probably even clip you as long as you’re on the alert & prepared to drive off the road to avoid a collision. Most of the time, all they do is come out of nowhere & scare the bejeezus out of you.
Type B drivers drive very, very slowly… as if to say “we’ll get there… eventually… where’s the dadgum fire.” If a person is trying to make a left turn out of a parking lot & cannot tell whether an oncoming car going ridiculously fast or just meandering along at 15 mph, a person might sit there with her blinker on for a very long time. While it’s true that driving in a series of ever-larger concentric circles would eliminate the need to turn left, I’m not willing to go that far. Perhaps that means I’ll forever be an irrational, non-zipper-merging, ramp-meter-hating Minnesota driver. Sadly, I’m not doing anything to improve the image of Minnesota drivers. So far, I’ve broken approximately 400 Texas traffic laws; I hope my Minnesota plates & painfully obvious cluelessness excuse or at least explain my driving. In my own defense, I’ll point out that it could be worse–I could drive like an Iowan.
The Texas DOT deserves credit for at least two cool things: raised bumps in the road & dedicated U-turn lanes. On many roads, the painted lines that mark lane boundaries are either supplemented or replaced by rounded (plastic? reflective? we’re waiting on the test results) domes that rise an inch or so above the pavement. If you are changing lanes–voluntarily or involuntarily–you definitely know it. Driving over one of these little safety sentinels isn’t like driving over a curb or a rumble strip, but you’ll feel it all the same.
My brother, having spent the summer in Dallas, tried to describe U-turn lanes to me before I moved down here. I had to use them, though, before I really understood this simple & beautiful concept: Highways are paralleled by access roads–not just in some places, but in most places. Those access roads will nearly always save the far-left lane as the U-turn lane. Let’s say you want to get to something on the other side of the highway & just a little ways back. Or you want to get on the highway going in the opposite direction. Or you’re me & probably lost. That far-left lane will scoot you into an uninterrupted U-turn; you might see a yield sign before you rejoin traffic on the other side of the highway, but in all other respects it’s painless. [The amount of attention I'm giving to this relatively minor roadway feature might seem odd unless you know about my fascination with parking ramp design.]
Speaking of vehicles, there were a bunch of them parked at the Masonic lodge across the street last night. All but two were all SUVs or pickup trucks. The two outliers: a Cadillac sedan & a Honda Fit. It was a great visual joke.
(The title of this post is the punchline to a joke that begins, “A sailor walks into a bar, and he has a steering wheel in his pants.”)
