I parked myself in the Williams Tower parking garage on the 4th floor, took the stairs down to level 3, walked across the sky bridge, and then took the elevator to level 32. I meandered my way to the space I call my own: approximately 25 square feet of cubicle space. I am on the aisle, so I only have one cube neighbor. I set my bags down and immediately popped open my Diet DP and took a nice long drink and gave out a little sigh. Waylon, who sits in the window cube across from me, looked up and said “Wow, already?!” I responded with, “Yeah, rough drive in.”
Maybe I should preface this story with… oh.. I live 2.9 miles away from my office. And yes, its 2.9 not 3 as for insurance purposes you get a discount if you live LESS than 3 miles to the office, not exactly 3 miles.
I think it may only be in Houston where a 2.9 mile drive to work can be stressful. But I had been pained by the stoplights (must go through 12+ stoplights to get to work), three school zones, and two police officers managing road traffic on the street I’m on. Not to mention being cut-off by two black SUVs. In fact, one of the black SUV’s decided he had to beat me so bad to the red light that we were BOTH making right hand turns at, he zipped past me and cut me off so he could make his right-hand turn first. Buddy, the light was red anyways! Really?! And forget about the police officers directing traffic.. they seem to stop the traffic when it gets a green light and let it go when it gets a red light so that it takes twice as long to get through one green light. So, yes, the first thing I did when I walked into the office that morning was take a nice huge gulp of my Diet DP.
So, that’s how I’m going to begin my list… You know you live in Houston when:
1. You can live 2.9 miles away from the office and it still takes you 30 minutes to get there.
2. When it’s raining outside, you can go the whole day with never getting wet b/c you just drive from parking garage to parking garage.
3. Saying a word of profanity to the person who just cut you off becomes a habit.
4. You drive a quarter of mile just to get to the top of your apartment’s parking garage
5. You drive as though it’s a competition w/ everyone else… me first, me first!!
6. On the weekends you end up doing nothing because there are too many things going on in Houston for you to just decide what to do.
7. The sky lets a little rain down, and it freaking floods. (When this happens, we won’t even talk about the traffic snarl up.. or the time that I called Robert crying b/c water was almost covering all my tires, as well as everyone else's right next to me)
8. Some people willingly spend an hour to an hour and a half sitting in traffic each way. (How do you do it?!?)
9. You hear people ask “What’s a hard freeze? Should I bring my plants inside?” on the radio.
10. You get traffic updates every 15 minutes on the radio and you can download iphone apps and monitor websites that have real-time traffic pictures/updates. You always check the site before you head out.
11. Traffic can still be bad at 6:45 PM. (or even 6:45 AM)
12. You wonder where all those cars park that just drove into downtown over the past hour. (Seriously, where do they go?!)
13. You willingly work an hour or two later just so that you can miss traffic. ("Well, I'm just gonna stay another hour or so b/c it's just not worth it")
14. You own a GPS because no one really knows where they are going.
15. The rodeo lasts for an entire month and concerts are on-going for four days a week every week during that time. (Oh yes, the concerts were just announced this past Monday at 10 AM)
16. You turn your heat on one day and the AC on for the next five.
17. You can head out of town on a Saturday morning and an hour later… you still haven’t left the city limits of Houston (as we noted when driving home for Christmas).
18. You don’t keep grocery bags in your apartment because of roaches (eeewww, I know!)
19. People know what “stickers” are (aka, grass spurs if you didn’t know)
20. You haven’t been to Wal-Mart in over 2 months (hello, Target!)
21. People classify the seasons as: Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer, and Christmas (Yes, I did have a person tell me this… and after my first full year in Houston, I tend to agree)
22. People measure distances in hours/minutes instead of miles (ex: 3 hours to San Antonio/Austin, 4 hours to Dallas, 45 minutes to Katy, etc)
23. San Felipe is not pronounced San Phee-Lipe
24. To do anything in Houston.. you must head to 610 (the inner loop). It all begins with “well, go to 610 and then….
25. You see people have carts they pull out of their car to carry in their groceries b/c their apartment is so far away (no worries, we don’t have one but I’m trying to convince Robert to buy one).
Okay, there are my 25 reasons. Phew!!! I was going to stop at 10, but I seem to have gotten a bit carried away… ooops. Now, don’t get me wrong.. we really do love living in Houston, but there are some days where I just really, really need my Diet DP.
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