Back In the Land of Flatness

I’m back in Houston for awhile. Don’t get the wrong impression by the title above. I don’t mind flat terrain. Hell, I grew up on Padre Island and Houston is close enough to the Gulf that it’s also flat as a board. I’m just glad to finally be home.

I love the hills and mountains of California. This was my forth time out there and I have to say that I think it is one of the most beautiful places in the country.

I was out there to help the L.A. guys install a ridiculous number of water treatment devices. 35 in all. It was work hell. I pretty much just worked, ate and slept the whole two weeks I was out there.

However, we did get Sunday off. I thought that was odd because of the cost of having me out there. By then I was so tired and pissed off at everyone out there that I didn’t care. I was staying in Simi Valley so that Sunday I actually took a cab to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Here are some photos of that.

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Go ahead and laugh at the picture of the missile. I did.
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My work out there was in some really bad neighborhoods. One was near the intersection of Crenshaw and Slausen. Anyone who listens to rap knows what that means. Another job was in Ingelwood. I think we all know what that means. Below are some photos of my last day out there.

The ghetto bird starts circling above us.

Despite having to work in this environment the two weeks I was there, I did get to drive through my favorite part of L.A. on the way to the airport. I got to revisit Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice. As much as I love it out there I still have to say God bless the state of Texas. I am so happy to be back.

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Checklist

Pay rent
Do laundry
Find some half-assed decent clothes
Pack
Do an OCD walk through the apartment
Sleep

I’m flying out of Houston tomorrow at 7:05 AM. I hope and I mean hope I can get up at 4:00 am. I’m going to Los Angeles for a long stretch of work related hell. I don’t even know when I’m coming back.

The Embassy Suites in Jacksonville, Florida is in distress

“To the gregmobile!”

A few years ago I installed a water treatment system at an Embassy Suites hotel in Jacksonville, Florida. Thanks to the city of Jacksonville the damned thing clogged up. Now I have to go back over there and unclog our equipment.

I have to fly out of Houston at 9:55 AM tomorrow which means I have to leave home at 7:00 AM. Not a good Monday morning. Not the way I want to start the week.

When I get there I have to take all of this completely apart, fix it and put it all back together again. Those tanks are 7 feet tall and that piping is all 4 inch.

Better luck this time?

I’m off to San Antonio again. Hopefully I’ll have better luck than last time.

My life in four paragraphs

This is a re-run of a June 2007 post. According to my stats this is the second most viewed post on this blog. I’m surprised by the number of views and how much they increase. When I first posted this I was most likely in “one of those” moods. I just started typing and then hit the publish button. After seeing it after all this time I decided to clean it up a bit and add a glossary at the end. Other than that, nothing has been changed.

I was born and raised in Suntan, Texas. My first two years of school were at a private school with a name so silly you might think I was making it up. I attended Pachuco Elementary in the second grade. That summer we moved to Frostbite, Wyoming. There, I attended third grade at Space Alien Elementary for the Foul-Mouthed. We managed to leave that state before we wrinkled up and aged beyond our years like the natives. We could have kissed the ground when we returned to Suntan, Texas. Instead, we peeled our clothes off and ran straight into the surf.

I then attended Karl Marx Elementary for half a year. Mid school year, we moved across the bay to the insignificant town of Paranoia, Texas. I finished the last half of that year as the new kid and continued through to the sixth grade at Nosebleed Elementary. I then went to Unmercifully Cruel Junior High and then graduated from Clique High.

After high school I half-assed attended classes at Equally Unmercifully Cruel Community College (EUCCC) while still living in Paranoia. After that, I managed to escape and return to Suntan to shack up with my girlfriend. After that didn’t work out I moved to Anarchy, Texas; The fourth largest city in America. Here, I worked as a bartender and musician at places called Human Trash Zoo, Tab Walkers, Inevitable 1:00 AM Brawl, etc.

When this healthy lifestyle ended I went to stay with my parents in Misery, Louisiana, in Boredom Parish. I was penniless and instrumentless. After about three months when I got my head screwed all the way back in and nourished back to health I hitched a ride back to Anarchy and met up with my former boss who put me to work in his brand new club called Must Wear Tux Shirt Behind Bar. During that time I married The Shrew and delighted in the birth of our daughter Wednesday. I ditched the bar business, cut my hair off and got a good paying job with regular hours with Beat Our Service Tech To Death Co., Inc. I divorced the Shrew and moved out of my beautiful house and into Zero Privacy Apartment Homes where now I live with my daughter.

Glossary
Suntan, Texas: Corpus Christi, Texas
Pachuco Elementary: Kostoryz Elementary
Frostbite, Wyoming: Casper, Wyoming
Space Alien Elementary for the Foul-Mouthed: Fairdale Elementary
Karl Marx Elementary: Sanders Elementary
The bay: Corpus Christi Bay
Paranoia, Texas: Portland, Texas
Nosebleed Elementary: T.M. Clark Elementary
Unmercifully Cruel Junior High: Gregory-Portland Junior High
Clique High: Gregory-Portland High School
Equally Unmercifully Cruel Community College (EUCCC): Del Mar College
Anarchy, Texas: Houston, Texas
Misery, Louisiana: Lake Charles, Louisiana
Must wear tux shirt behind bar: Tic Toc
Shrew: Bernadette
Wednesday: Gabby

A few hours is better than nothing

It’s nice to visit my hometown even if it’s only for about two or three hours. That’s what I did today. I had to drive from Houston to Corpus Christi and back. I had to deliver some work related stuff which was all I had time for (had to get back to pick up Gabby). If not for that I would have probably stayed the night so I could cruise my old haunts, see a couple of friends and maybe fish off the docks I used to work on (when we were docked).

It’s not that I can’t handle it but that’s a lot of butt time for one day. Not to mention leg and foot because someone didn’t bother ordering cruise control on this truck. Maybe it’s just because I’ve made this drive what seems like hundreds of times that I find it so boring. Or maybe it could be the fact that there is nothing to look at between Houston and Corpus other than brush, cows, horses and ranch or farm houses. I’ve said this before and I wasn’t kidding: The roadkill and highway searches by the state troopers are the only thing that breaks the monotony. I see a lot of highway searches where the occupants are sitting in the grass while the troopers are removing the entire contents of the vehicle including the backseats and who knows what else.

I don’t mean to sound like I dislike Houston because I really don’t. I like this city. I consider it my second hometown but I was born and raised at Padre Island and on Corpus Christi bay. It’s something I can’t get out of my blood which in my case is probably pure saltwater. You can take the boy off the beach . . .

The weather was so perfect there today. It was so, so beautiful. Driving over the harbor bridge and looking down at the museums, the Lex and the replicas of Columbus’ ships (on loan from Spain) is spectacular to me. Driving across the causeway over the bay reminds me how I spent my entire teenage years and early twenties either on or in that bay. Sometimes it’s hard to look at when I’m just passing through but I still like getting back home to my apartment here in Houston after a long day like this.