Home sweet home

Now that I've recovered from my business trips, and the sun has reappeared, I can resume blogging.

Up until Monday, the last shred of sunlight that I saw was in DC, a week earlier on Sunday (unless you count being above the clouds in an airplane). The remainder of my time in DC and then in Dallas was cloudy, dreary, rainy, and cold. Houston greeted me on Friday with several more days of rain. But the good news is that the rain brings spectacular weather behind it. We have been enjoying buckets of sunlight and perfect temps this week. And that makes me happy :)
On Friday evening we ventured out in the cold and wetness to the Rodeo. Despite the chill, we had a great time. Since our tickets were donated to us, we didn't have much of a choice in the concert performer that evening, who happened to be Clint Black. I wasn't expecting much out of his performance but I was pleasantly surprised. He is a great entertainer and I couldn't help but be reminded of high school days, as most of his songs he performed were popular at that time. Ain't it funny how a melody can bring back the memories? Clint is great on the harmonica and even the drums, and his saxophone player knows how to sing. A fun mixup for one of the tunes.

Aside from the concert performance are all of the rodeo events. Nate likes to watch the steer wrestling. "Big boys," he always says. From my viewpoint, you have this large cowboy on a horse, chasing after a calf-- and then he jumps down from the horse and tackles the calf and ties him up. To me it's a little distressing to watch even though I know no harm is being done. I think the calf scramble is the most entertaining. Take about 40 kids and 20 calves and let everyone run loose in the arena, and the kids who can drag a calf into the middle get a certificate to own and raise a calf to be shown at the next year's rodeo. It's amusing, for instance, to see kids being dragged around by calves while holding tightly to their tails. What a fun show!

Did you know that brown chickens lay brown eggs and white chickens lay white eggs, and that there is no nutritional difference between the two kinds of eggs? The only reason why brown eggs are more expensive is because it costs more to feed the heavier brown chickens! It is always fun to watch chicks hatching from their eggs. If you have enough patience, you can actually stick around to see a chick create a hole and break out of its shell, and then emerge in a suit of slime. So amazing!