So we are back to a skeleton crew, Alice went back to Calgary the day after Labor Day. Must have been a bit of a shock, on Sunday we were lying on the beach in incredibly warm (basically bathtub) waters of the Gulf of Mexico and two days later she was in a considerably crisper mountain air of Calgary. Since that time it snowed up there at least once.

In the meantime things have started to cool off here a little bit as well, but still not cool enough for tomatoes to start to set fruit. That is my biological thermometer. I bought a few seedlings, late September is the fall garden planting time in Houston. This is our chance to grow "cold weather" vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and so on. We are still harvesting okra but at a lesser rate than in the middle of the summer when we filled a basket every day and if we forgot to cut one day the okras reached silly sizes: 15 cm instead of the more normal 5 -6 cm.

As I mentioned previously I have changed groups at work and I after 8 years of working in remote sensing and trying to disentangle the geology of Azerbaijan (clastics) I am once again working my beloved carbonates. My new project is located in western Kazakhstan in the northeastern part of the Caspian Sea where ExxonMobil (as a part of a 9 member international consortium) discovered a new oil field called Kashagan. It is BIG. Very, very big. How big is big? I cannot tell you but if you are interested check out the consortium page by clicking your mouse here .

Before Alice went back to Canada we took a little poll evaluating our move to Houston. Here are the results:

Things we miss most:
Friends
White Rock Lake

Things we like in Houston:
Japanese bookstore
Japanese foodstore (Daido)
Big pine trees
La Madeleine bakery just around the corner
Short commute to work (15 minutes)

Things that surprised us most:
Big mosquitoes
Size of the city
Lack of rain (so far)

3 September 2000

After playing with the first web page on and off for about 6 months I think I now have a better idea about what works and what does not. I have re-designed it and will be able to maintain it in a more regular fashion. Both Alice and Monica now have their own pages and so I limit myself to providing links to their sites.

Alice

Monica

I will, of course, continue to keep reporting on them on these pages.

First of all Houston. I have been here since the start of February, that is 7 months, the rest of the family since the start of June, that gives us three months. Now, given that June to August are probably the toughest months in Houston (high temperature and humidity) I think we are almost in a position to make a statement about how we like it here. The general consensus so far is that it is not bad, I actually like it. It is a little bit more humid than Dallas, but you notice it only if you try to engage in some sort of a physical activity outside. You sweat. Big time. Dallas was hotter but drier. I am sure I sweated but it all evaporated instantly. The net result in Dallas was that one did not feel all that unconfortable outside - the sun just sucked all the energy right out of you.

This is our house. It is in an older subdivision, and so it is - older. Unless you have unlimited funds (which we do not) there is a trade off. Large, gleaming new house on a small lot or an older house surrounded by big trees so far from the neighbours that you could throw a rock across the street without breaking a window. I like that better.

The other nice thing about Houston is that you can grow just about anything. We started late (June is almost the end of the first growing season) and yet we managed a fairly decent harvest so far. (Click on the small photo to see the full size picture.) Lots of okra; pepers and eggplants also do well

and even had a fair number of cucumbers already. Next year I will know what to plant, start a little earlier and so it should be even better.

Monica finished her year in Dallas in style, the Lake Highlands Marching Band went on a cruise to the Bahamas. Little bit more upscale than the end of the year trips we used to take! She also gave her last piano performance.




The idea was to relax a bit the first year in Houston and after she gets used to the new school decide whether to continue or not.

She is not, however, giving up on music - she is again in the marching band and practices flute every night. Her flute teacher made a little demonstration for me, trying to illustrate that we need to buy a better flute - and she is probably right. However, to my totally unmusical ears both instruments (Monica's and a really expensive flute the teacher had) sounded just about the same.

Alice spent the summer with us, fist in Dallas and then in Houston. In Dallas she worked as a book seller at Barns and Noble (the picture was taken in front of the store). In Houston it was initially a little difficult to get a job because by June most places have already done their hiring. But at the end she managed to get two jobs. First in the Barns and Noble coffee shop and then in a rather expensive but very good Chinese restaurant. Nice thing is that both places were only a mile from the house. Very comfortable commute.

And now for something completely different. If William Tell had lived in Houston, this could have happened.
Can I explain?

It is the heat! Gets to everyone, eventually.