I talked to a few Houston friends today. One lost a 110-ft section of fence, but had no other damage. He said the noise from the storm was “awesome, just awesome”, that the rain was horizontal, and that small trees in his yard were bent so that their tops touched the ground. I talked to another friend in the wee hours of the morning when the storm was directly overhead. He also commented on the noise, which went on for hours, and the fierce red sunset the night before. Both talked about a creepy noise that sounded like a harmonica coming from their doors all night.

A third friend lives in Kemah, a tourist town near Galveston which has been on the news a lot because of the massive flooding and damage near its boardwalk. He evacuated before the storm, but is very anxious to get back see his first floor apartment.

In our old neighborhood, we have learned that the tree that shaded our porch blew over into the street. There are other big trees down on that street as well.

Hardest to see is the damage to Galveston. All of the piers are gone, the western part of the island is still flooded, and the Strand (the historic downtown district where the restaurants and shops are) flooded badly. While most of the old Victorian houses are still standing, they flooded and some even burned. I have not heard anything about the tall ship Elissa; hopefully that is a good thing.

I must admit that I am disappointed having missed the hurricane. When Rita skirted by us three years ago, most people who stayed in Houston felt let down, especially after all the hard preparation work. One of my friends admitted on Friday that he was excited to finally get a direct hit, and I completely understand that feeling. There was a “wow” in the voices of the people that I talked to today that I am envious of.

That said, I am glad I don’t have to deal with that tree.

Sunday I used my free ticket. I enjoyed seeing the big mansions on Swiss Avenue, as well as an old house on our street that was saved from demolition last year and is being restored by Preservation Dallas. The weekend also included parties on Swiss, carriage rides, bands, art booths, etc.

As much as I liked having an event like this in the neighborhood, I was still sad to be missing the Art Car Parade in Houston on Saturday. So far I haven’t found anything in Dallas like the Art Car Parade / Museum, the Orange Show, the Beer Can House, Project Row Houses, etc.

And a sad note from Houston: Saturday night after the parade, the curator of the Art Car Museum was killed by a drunk driver while sitting on the curb in front of the museum on Heights Boulevard. He had driven one of the art cars in the parade that afternoon.  I’ve met him before, and it’s a shame.

• 10. Skiing at Winter Park in Colorado It had been years since Ed and I had been skiing, so this partially work-funded trip was a real treat. It didn’t take long to get the legs back, and we really enjoyed this resort for the sheer size of it, and the fact that many of the slopes were groomed on one side only, leaving the other side to develop excellent mogul fields. This allowed us to ski together more (me on the mogul side, Ed on the smooth). A bonus event was when Ed put a pizza, still in box, in the oven of our condo and started a kitchen fire, then ran outside while I put the fire out.
• 9. Getting my road bike Ed has been riding roadies for years, but I had turned more toward mountain biking. I finally got a good bike, my first since my heavy Schwinn bought in about 1979. We started riding regularly in the countryside near Houston, and had an especially nice ride on rented bikes in the Santa Ynez valley while visiting Steeles. We also did our first race ride, a 55-miler called the Tour de Donut.
• 8. Riding Segways My first time on a Segway made my “Best of” list for 2003, but that was really just a short ride in a mall store. During our summer 2006 trip to Santa Barbara, Ed and I took the Old Santa Barbara Segway tour. I will just say here that riding Segways is really, really fun. We enjoyed it so much that the other day when Linda mentioned that this Segway dealership is for sale, Ed actually read through the details of the offer and was thinking about where he would work while I ran it, and where we would live.
• 7. Ed’s transfer to Dallas While the actual move didn’t take place until 2007, the event was set into motion in 2006 and occupied much of our mental and physical energy for the second half of the year.
• 6. Car chases At Caprock, one of our lunchtime haunts was a Tex-Mex dive which always seemed to be showing car chases on its big screen TV. I think it was Fox News; I don’t usually watch that channel, but they seem to have the car chase thing covered. One Friday afternoon back at the office, my friend John Robert IM’ed me from New York City that he was watching a car chase in Pearland (where our office was) on the screen in Times Square. I found a local news station covering the chase, and before long the entire office (plus John Robert in New York) was watching as a driver in a white pickup pulled stuntman moves past many familiar landmarks (including the aforementioned Tex-Mex dive) with dozens of helicopters and squad cars in tow. He drove through the golf course by the Vietnamese restaurant and headed to the intersection with the tollway that would take him past our building. We all crossed our fingers, but no, he passed through the intersection and headed toward downtown Houston. Somehow sensing his mistake, he drove through the massive median and U-turned back toward Pearland and … would he? would he? YES! he turned east on the tollway right toward Caprock. And the entire workforce ran to the front of the building to watch. Helicopters, motorcycles, cars, all chasing a lone Ford F150. After the show passed, we all went back to our desks and watched as spikes were thrown in the highway and the now tireless truck rode through several more towns, sometimes hopping curbs ON ITS RIMS, near-miss after near-miss, finally plopping into a bayou and sinking. The driver was rescued and miraculously no one was hurt in the whole 2-hour chase. Apparently the reason behind the whole thing was the guy had stopped taking his depression medication and held up a dry cleaner for a pittance. Now, you might think that was the end of the car chase entry for 2006, but no. This car chase ended on our block later in the year.
• 5. Dynamo soccer Houston got a major league soccer team in 2006, and it was wildly successful. Both the fan participation and the team’s performance were stellar. The games were the most fun professional sports games I’ve ever been to, due in part to the insane soccer fans with their drums, streamers, wigs, flags, brass instruments, cowbells and smoke bombs. The team made it to the MLS championship game in Dallas. Ed and I drove up to watch the Houston Dynamo beat the New England Revolution in overtime. And the 2007 update is that this year, the Dynamo beat the Revolution for the championship AGAIN, this time in Washington D.C. Attendance at the games in Houston remains strong and loud. Let’s Go Dynamo!
• 4. Meeting Kyle Chandler I met Ed’s cousin Kyle for the first time when he drove to Houston from Austin, where he was filming a TV show, to join his brothers and cousins for a Buffalo Bills game. What a nice guy! He climbed a grapefruit tree in his brother’s backyard in his socks to make me juice for a cocktail.
• 3. Getting a high-tech crown I did write about this when it happened, but here it is on my top 10 list; it was just that cool. On a sad note, my dentist of seven years who did the crown committed suicide a few months ago.
• 2. Jury Duty Well this is an odd choice for a top 10 list (not that the crown isn’t), and at number 2 no less! But serving on this jury is still one of the most fascinating things I’ve done. The dynamics of deliberations (including watching one woman have a meltdown under the pressure to come to a verdict), the interaction between the jurors (two of whom discovered that they had lived in the same house in different decades) and the case itself were all interesting. Best of all was having the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney visit the jury following the trial to answer questions and discuss evidence and testimony which was not admitted for the trial itself. I hope to get the chance to do this again (but not for traffic court, that is boring).
• 1. Two Gallants show at Walter’s on Washington Being a first-hand witness at the concert in Houston where an HPD officer stormed to the stage and knocked down the guitarist of a band while he was playing tops out my list. First of all, it was national news (well, national music news). I’ve talked to people here in Dallas who know all about it. Second, it definitely changed how I think about law enforcement. I still respect the police, but from the reading I’ve done since and the anecdotal evidence I’ve gathered from friends who are outside of my (somewhat privileged) demographic, I now realize how many problem officers there are. Third, it was a lesson in how the power of the internet. If not for the YouTube videos and the forums and the online coverage, the charges against the band members would not have been dropped. Fourth, I was able to contribute to the effort to see justice done by giving a statement to HPD Internal Affairs and by giving a statement to the bands’ defense lawyers. And finally fifth, because I was interviewed by the local alternative weekly, so I got to show my friends, but they spelled my name wrong, so future employers can’t Google it.

Anyway, my plan was to take the car in this morning to my new favorite mechanic. I found this shop this winter when my headlights had a peculiar problem. They were dim, even with two new bulbs. I hit upon a great resource to find new mechanics: the Car Talk website. Plug in location and car make, and find a shop recommended by yuppies like you. I found a place with glowing reviews over a long period of time and took the car there. The problem turned out to be a very strange (but cheap) cross circuit caused by a broken filament that was sending current across the front of my car. The guy was really tickled about the puzzle, and asked me if I’d like to keep the culprit bulb (but secretly looked like he hoped I’d say no). I let him keep the bulb, and talked to him for awhile. He services the cars of a lot of the Houston Symphony musicians, and had interesting stories about cellos and the London Symphony and such. I liked him a lot.

Anyway, I called him this morning and was crestfallen to hear a message saying he was on vacation for a week. Obviously, I can’t wait a week, so I searched again and surprisingly came up with a place right around the corner that, while they didn’t specialize in Hondas, had at least been there awhile and had two people loyal enough to give them positive reviews. So I took the car there.

It was while I was walking back that I realized “hmmm…I have just dropped my car off with a 40-year-old pregnant Romanian with a shop named *Fixers*, I don’t want to seem prejudiced against gypsies, but I am stupid about cars and so am easily duped.”

Since then, I have verified everything she has told me (ordering parts from the Honda dealer, etc.), and she gave me a really cool loaner car, a 1989 Volvo with a surfboard salt stain and over 208,000 miles on the odometer, so anyway, so far so good about “Krina” the gypsy mechanic. I stand behind my advice (two for two!) to look for mechanics on the Car Talk site.

Once again, it turned into a neighborhood social event with everyone speculating about the incident, talking about their holiday plans, and eventually, yes, heading in to watch TV.

Which, by the way, is my third car chase this year; I’ll write about the others another time.

Our painting is now delayed until tomorrow, and since Ed has insisted that the painters caulk before they paint, there is little chance that the house will be painted before Christmas. I have therefore begun to surreptitiously put Christmas lights out. Today I hung stars in the big tree. If they don’t come this week, I will do the full icicle light treatment.

Our neighbor Kathryn’s parents are interested in buying our house. Kathryn just had a baby, their first grandchild (she is close to my age), so they would like to move in from the suburbs. I would like that, her mother is a Master Gardener. They came over tonight to look around. They’ve been looking at houses in the Heights since their daughter moved in, but haven’t found anything comparable in quality to Kathryn and Jerome’s house. Ours is the same builder (and nearly the same house). We’ll see, home prices here have actually risen quite a bit over the last two years, contrary to the rest of the country, so we don’t want to sell low.