Sometimes it is nice to have a month when nothing happens. With one exception, about which I will not talk about until next time, June turned out to be one of those months. Temperatures finally rose to what they should be in Houston, after six dry weeks we saw some rain and so humidity went up as well. Good for the skin - they say it irons out wrinkles.

We continued our trips south, gradually exploring parts of the coast we have not seen yet. Two weeks ago the American Society of Architects (or something like that) held a sand castle competition on the East Beach of Galveston Island. Apparently this is an annual affair but it was the first time for us. In retrospect, it would have been better to get there by mid-day and see the different teams in action. We timed it so that we saw the finished products.

From what I gather, the day starts in the morning with an identical pile of beach sand for each team. Since the teams are from architectural firms, they are not exactly cash limited and each sand castle team was backed by auxiliary forces, large tents, electrical generators to cool beer and water, water pumps to keep the sand moist and so on.

Those who would expect classical sand castles would be probably disappointed.
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Actually a better term is sand sculptures and the objective is not only good technical execution but something with a clever twist. Many are plays on words, such as "Coney Island", others take inspiration from recent political events "Weapons of Mass Consumption" or business world "Cooking the Books". By the way the three monkeys were called: "Layo, Skilo and Fasto".









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