The Draft

This is the big week. This week is Jon’s company’s version of the draft, and he is a free agent. Today the big wigs at Jon’s company will meet in Seattle to discuss the futures of 400 + employees scheduled for a job change this spring. We could know our fate as early as today or by Wednesday night at the latest.

While I’ve been trying to prepare myself for all of the best and worst case scenarios, there is one location I haven’t really prepared myself for: staying in Houston. When the option got tossed around last week, I was caught a bit off guard. Since I’ve done the appropriate research on our other options, I thought I’d take a minute to reflect on some things I love about this sprawling city.

-Nearness to friends and family. My brother lives exactly 1 mile away and we are only about an hour from my parents Lake House in Montgomery. It’s about a 3 hour drive to Lafayette, 4 to B.R. and 5 to New Orleans.
-Renaissance Festival.
-World Class Shopping- Houston (ranks number one in the USA).
-Mega-International Airport with tons of direct flights.
-Great Museums for Art and Natural History.
-Mouth Watering food: just a few of my favorites are Barnaby’s, Brown Bag Deli, Broken Spoke, and if we’re feeling really fancy, Mark’s.
-Houston Restaurant Week which features great prices for 3 course meals at several of the best spots in town.
-Old Town Spring.
-The Historic Heights including events such as Heights Holiday Home Tour and Lights in the Heights. Other things I love about the Heights specifically: The Heights hike and bike trail, 19th street shopping, St. Arnold’s Pub Crawls.
-The Houston Rodeo.
-Nutcracker Market.
-Astros games (particularly vs. Cardinals).
-River Oaks Theater.
-Amazing groupon deals.
-Feeding the giraffes at the Houston Zoo.
-Memorial Park Aboretum.
-The Woodlands Mall and Pavilion.
-Great health care options which means never waiting more than 2 weeks for a Doctor’s appointment. It’d be a nice place to have a baby.
-Humidity. And for all you humidity haters out there- live in West Texas for a few years and you will never complain about humidity again. It's a blessing.
-Huge LSU fanbase.
-Dog-friendly bars.
-Our church, Ecclesia.
-Pinot’s Pallet art classes.

For this post I actually did a little research on Houston and discovered that the Waugh Street Bridge houses the 2nd largest Bat colony in urban Texas (1st place goes to Austin). This bridge is 3 miles from my house and I never knew that. I'm not sure if it's a negative or positive in the Houston column, but it's good to know regardless.

I also learned that Howard Hughes is buried in Glenwood Cemetery on the Washington Corridor. I’ve been to the Hughes Hanger bar on Washington Avenue but never realized there was a connection.

I could also easily list a lot of things I don’t love about Houston, but today I’m choosing to focus on the positive; the possibility. Stress will undoubtedly come later, but today is a day to celebrate a new chapter in Jonathan’s career, whether that be in Aberdeen or Angola, Texas or Thailand.

Today I wore my “kilt” to work, along with a silver ring from the Scottish Orkney Isles because in my heart, I’m slightly pulling for Scotland. But I’m also wearing my tanzanite earrings which were a souvenir from our trip to South Africa, just to remind myself that a piece of my heart lies there as well. I’ve always been symbolic like that.

The only thing I own from Thailand is an elephant print diaper bag and I didn’t think this was appropriate to bring with me to work today. And as for why I own an elephant print diaper bag from Thailand- I have my parents to thank for that. It was their most recent hint that they expect grandchildren in the near future. It has a bow, which is to let me know that the diaper bag is for a girl. Seriously.

No pressure.