Bellaire

Joy accompanied us as we drove out to visit Janet and Clifford to pick up a box of things (puzzles, books, and pictures), then it was off to Bellaire to visit Amanda's cousin Rachel and Nithin for lunch. We arrived a half hour early, so we stopped at the local park to waste some time. The playground was filled with young Hispanic women (nannies) watching small children. Bellaire is a rich neighborhood.

Rachel's house is a fancy three-story thing with a pool in the back. Nithin ordered pizza, and we chatted by the pool out back about their upcoming trip to Norway. They had a black lab named Duke who although not super drooly and licky, was still wet enough to avoid.

Then it was off to the arboretum which seemed more like a wild park than an exhibition for rare plants. As we walked the grounds I collected blackberries and mulberries. We went out onto a skywalk to watch the river and see lizards.

The mosquitos were bad in the shaded areas, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it was on the coast. We met Joy at the visitor center and I took a bunch of pictures of this sexy lizard.

After collecting blackberries and mulberries on the walk through the arboretum, I decided to create an ordered list of my preferred nuts and berries.

Nuts:

almonds
pistachios
cashews
brazil nuts
peanuts
pine nuts
sunflower seeds
pecans

Berries:

mulberry
blackberries
raspberries
blueberries
strawberries
boysenberries
gooseberries
salmonberries
elderberries

Fruit:

watermelon
peach
cherry
apricot
orange
quince
apple

After a while I realized I was mixing up stone fruit with berries, seeds, and nuts and I tried to go to wikipedia to sort things out, but it only left me more confused.

Driving back through the giant strip mall that is Houston, I had more opportunities to take pictures of the billboards and I tried to capture examples of a common Texas architectural theme. We saw many examples of houses with tall peaked rooflines and eaves near the wooden slat fence. We drove through whole neighborhoods done in this style and some of the peaked roofs looked ridiculous, like a massive waste of space.

We met Dave driving out when we got to the house. After pretending he was going to ram us with his car, he stopped and made a joke about watching too many British crime shows and how it made him want to drive on the wrong side of the road. He asked if Amanda had gotten their message because the dogs had broken into our room and tore open Amanda's packet of drugs. Fortunately she'd used the last of her expensive humera that morning, and they didn't find her bottle of lorazapam (anti-anxiety medication).

I have some lines in my notes I can no longer place in context, so I'm including them here with little comment:

On a discussion of some deaths by crushing at a concert held at the astropark, someone said, "It's not diddy-daddy or anything."
The local news framed protests in Arizona over strict new anti-abortion rules as "Harris attacks Trump".
We heard many people warn us that Houston was a polluted cesspool and Pasadena, a city just southeast of Houston, was colloquially known as 'Stink-a-dena' because of the oil industry.

That evening Mary made taco salad for dinner and Dave went out to buy some wine. He pointed out that WWE smackdown was on the TV and Amanda and I turned the couch around to watch. After watching two different college basketball games at Mike and Joann's, Amanda was now watching WWE. She was getting southern experience.

WWE was fun. Dave fast forwarded through the boring parts where men strutted and shouted at each other (for an hour!) and I took several videos of the action with commentary from both sides and tears of laughter streaming down my face.