I’m writing this from Diane’s apartment loft with a great view of downtown. I initialy stayed w/my cousin Raul and Kris, but the last time I was in Houston I felt bad not seeing Diane more, so I promised to stay w/her as well. We were originally going to go back on the 1st, but we just ran out of time to get everything done, so we stayed an extra day and are going back tomorrow.
It has an interesting trip emotionally in many different ways. When we drove in from Guadalajara two weeks ago to my parents’ house (10 miles from the border), I was surprised at how not excited I was to be home. I chalked it up to being on the end of a 12.5 hour trip and a stressful set of weeks dealing with finals, moving, etc. But as the days progressed, I found myself driving around feeling that being home was like an old shoe: not the prettiest or exciting, but comfortable, familiar. It was as I drove into Houston the other day that I felt my first rush of excitement to be back “home.” Houston is where I spent most of my adult life, and whether or not I live here again, it clearly will always be special. Driving around Houston–a very large city geographically–seeing all our old haunts and what has changed was also like an old shoe in a way, but a cool, kick-ass shoe. 
In addition to the emotions of being back in a city I truly enjoy in a way reminds me of what I no longer have: a good, steady job providing disposal income to enjoy the things the 4th largest city in the US has to offer, freedom of schedule to enjoy those things, and a variety of cultures to experience (not just Mexican). I feel the financial pinch of being on 100% of student loans, supporting my wife also with that money, and it’s hard. In fact, one of the reasons we came here was to go shopping for our house, clothes and other important things, and in that, I am happy to say we made a killing on lots of sales. I have reached my shopping quota for the year it seems, between Christmas shopping and this trip. You just can’t beat deals in a big city, though, and I always feel good knowing we came out ahead.
Finally we come to my true “foodie” experience I’ve been waiting for. Unlike the fast-food junk that I was predominantly eating back in my home town (family home cooking being an exception, but it’s hard when you don’t really have control of the kitchen), here we finally got most of the food we really wanted and missed more than all. We ate at my favorite Greek restaurant, the hip Niko Niko’s. New Years Eve, Diane treated us to Maggiano’s; we accepted the idea heartily in spite of having Fred’s Italian Corner two nights earlier. Claudia was a good sport in tolerating Indian food for my benefit as we met my friend Bill and his wife at Shiva, also meeting for the first time their beautiful 6-month-old daugher. I would have liked to have gone to Fung’s Kitchen but there was no time. You can’t do it at once. I include all the links here and sharing in this detail for the sole reason that these are some of my favorite places in Houston and I want to make sure people go there so that they thrive and stay in business so I they’ll keep being there whenever I come back!
Anyway, here’s wishing everyone a healthy and happy new year. 2005 was a very bittersweet year for me but it also had the promise of being the start of good things to come…in that sense, I have hope for 2006. I hope this new year brings good things to all of us.
January 7, 2006 2:44 am | 
