They love living where they live, and I'm ok with visiting. lol
Good luck.

Wait for summer when it gets to 100 plus.

This is colder then usual for winter.

wind chill factor in the Summer it is the humidity. Just the weather thins out the immigrants. Weather weenies we call them. And if it is character you are looking for, try our roaches. They are the true democrats-they infest any house equally...rich or poor. The cool breeze from the gentle flapping of the mosquito wings does make it a little more tolerable in the summer.

They climb the walls and fly off the walls.

They have no control over the direction.


The bugs like the ac in the summer to.

When we first moved down to Houston, I was sorting laundry when this big UFO started flying toward my leg. I couldn't make it out until it landed on my leg. It was a huge roach. I freaked out. I couldn't get the hot water out of the faucet fast enough. Scalded my skin but I still didn't think I had gotten all the germs off.

I have tall ceilings.

They climb to the top and launch.

the one consolation about this abnormal cold is the absence of those horrid creatures.

that and they are not fire ants

I hrave enjoyed living here more than I thought I would, despite the Surface of the Sun portion of the summer. We have a nice long spring and a really nice fall season; this is an abnormal winter. I have been through many winters here with only a few really cold days.

One nice thing about the cold, it keeps the mountain cedar pollen from blowing up from the Hill Country into FW/D

Don't know where you are, but go here http://www.traveltex.com/ and order the Texas Travel Guide. Then you can do some cavorting around while you are here.

Don't miss the Dinosaur Footprints @ Dinosaur Valley State Park, in Glen Rose .

Be sure and check the bluebonnet watch in the spring. Here is a link for you
http://gotexas.about.com/od/texastravelfaqs/f/StateFlwr.htm If you are only going to be here a year, you have to see the bluebonnets.

http://www.texasbluebonnetsightings.com/

that's BRUTAL!

meaning you can cook your huevos on the sidewalk.

my daughter actually did that in PHoenix

we lived in Houston and when she retired, she moved back to be with more family.I always tell her she moved from the frying pan into the fire. On my trips to visit her, I often use the dash as a crock pot and cook meals on the road.


For Christmas I got her a pair of matching oven mitts for summer driving. I have a cherished snow globe Phoenix with a snow man in it. I have been there in the summer, but to be honest, I prefer the heat there because it is dry and you wake up so refreshed. If it is bothering you, you just find a shade tree. It doesn't work like this in Houston. But then again, I think our humidity is what keeps us looking so young.

he speaks the truth

Serves as a good reality check for me as I p*ss and moan about the blah weather here in San Diego County.

All of my friends who live in other states tell me how lucky I am to live here. I guess I am -- but I worry about possible future water issues.

Can't wait to visit a cousin I've never met at his place in Idaho, situated near a river. My dear departed Dad raved about the beauty of the state.

And how dare you complain about San Diego weather!

As someone from there, I can tell you, you should appreciate what you've got. Nowhere is better.

Anyway, enjoy DU!

TEXAS isn't the entire state. My city is blue and beautiful, and it's nothing like the TEXAS that gets bashed all the time. There are pockets of beauty and progressive brilliance in this state, just like every other state ruled by Republicans and home to idiots.

Hope things get better for you.

...this is just a mattter of very specific, difficult to explain preferences.

Best way to describe it, I guess, is via the words a friend shared with me when I was on the verge of moving to Pahrump, NV.

"Night time in the desert is a very spiritual place."

When I was on my DJ job I used to walk out of the back door of the club on MANY occcasions to grab a cell phone shot of the sun setting. Whether it was sunrise or sunset, you could frequently stand in one spot, turn in a 360 degree circle, and see several completely different skies. The colors are VIVID...golds and purples and reds and blues and it justt takes your breath away. When I'd finish my shift and pull up to the house around midnight I'd look up at the sky and it would be pitch black with a brilliant blanket of stars, just amazing. The fulll moons were something else.

And here, it just seems one dimensional. The sun comes up, the sun goes down, so what. There is a standard degree of friendliness but I question what lies under the surface...kind of like the "Minnesota Nice" documentary on the "Fargo" DVD.

In many ways, Pahrump is a toilet. BAD economy...really, really bad. No shortage of rudeness or ignorance. But it had CHARACTER.

A lot of this is my attitude mixed with first impressions and the fact that I spent the lion's share of my fiirst two months here sick as a dog and/or snowbound.

But like I said at the beginning of the post, my intention is not to bash Texas in part or in whole...it's just that my heart and my gut and my outlaw spirit is telling me I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time of my life. NEVER thought I'd miss Pahrump. I do. That's Basin & 160...one of the main drags in Pahrump...below.

The sunrises and sunsets are fucking incredible:

https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=945&bih=504&q=west+texas+sunset&oq=west+texas+sun&gs_l=img.1.0.0l4.1089.5953.0.9163.14.12.0.2.2.0.230.2251.0j10j2.12.0....0...1ac.1.34.img..1.13.2036.03DkCH46Y6k

https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&hl=en&biw=945&bih=504&site=imghp&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=west+texas+sunrise&oq=west+texas+sunrise&gs_l=img.3..0.30468.32860.0.34250.7.4.0.3.3.0.331.911.0j3j0j1.4.0....0...1c.1.34.img..1.6.589.iwANow9uzj4

especially in the spring after a rain....

Although we had record-breaking cold in 1983 and 89, winter 78 is the only other time I can remember it being so cold for so long. The real challenge is surviving a Texas summer. Since you've lived in Nevada, it might not be so tough for you, but summer is the most brutal season in TX. Next winter will almost certainly be better than this one, but every summer is hotter than Hades.

I am a 5th generation native Texan. I live on the Gulf Coast and I love it here. Of course, summer lasts 6 months and it's so humid it's like living in a sauna, but we survive.

I want no part of it. Last year's summer in Nevada was ATYPICALLY humid...folks like to say "Yeah, it's triple digits but it's a DRY heat," and it WASN'T...but I endured 12 degree days there that had NO WHERE NEAR the wind chill factor of this place. 12 felt like 12. Here, 20 feels like 0. And it's the damned back and forth. 20 degrees yesterday, 52 today, 51 tomorrow and 35 on Monday with rain, sleet and/or snow.. No thanks.

I have visited Colorado in the winter--10 degrees there felt like 40 in TX. You're right about the back and forth, too. We joke about experiencing all 4 seasons in 24 hrs. I hope you're able to move back to a climate that you like. I moved from North TX to the Gulf Coast in 1979 and I love the mild winters here. I don't even like to visit N TX in the winter. Summer up there sucks, too (although my relatives swear the humidity here is so oppressive they can hardly breathe.) Hopefully, you can get back to a climate you enjoy.

that was the year the Ohio river froze so thick people were driving cars across it in Louisville; The Cumberland froze in Nashville and animals were walking out on the river It did not get abovefreezing for about 2 weeks in Nashville and stayed in single digits for about 8 days.

to Las Vegas, Nv. I've lived all over Texas. I was born in that state. Now that i live in Nevada, I'm never going back. When i went back to that state for the holidays, it just made my skin crawl. Usual racist bullshit, nobody giving a rat's ass about the environment, it goes on and on....


On edit: Vegas summers are child's play compared to Texas summers

At that time, scorpions infested every place you could go to. They were in the house (my parents would leave the house and burn insecticide candles while they were gone and it didn't stop them). The family dog was covered with them when it went outside in the back yard. My dad's pants cuffs would collect dozens of them every time he cut the grass in summer. You could hear them crawling around in the walls of the house. My mother said she barely slept in that year and she would put the legs of the beds in bowls of water to try to keep them from coming into the beds.

Years later, when I was a musician in my 20s, our band's agent booked us in a Dallas club for the summer. I found the people really, really nice, all except for the club owner who screwed us out of our last two weeks of pay. Also, that club owner hired college kids to wait on and bus the tables. I was shocked to learn that the young people didn't get any pay from the club but worked entirely for tips. When I asked the club owner about it he said Texas had some kind of blah, blah, blah right to work laws blah, blah, blah. The giant dance club/restaurant was called Daddy's Money.

A checker at the Kroger the other day said she was from Montana and we didn't know what real cold was down here.

I looked her in the eye and replied, "Rick Perry's heart."

end of discussion.

as well as Greg Abbot's

I don't go outside city limits.

I'm an inner looper too. I gotta work outside the loop, but anything past Beltway 8, I start looking for my passport (save the occasional run with friends down to the Island).

Willowbend - the best kept secret in Houston. I used to live in Third Ward, near the Children's Museum. Then it became the Museum District and I couldn't afford the property taxes.

I came from Boston where I couldn't find a job and couldn't afford to live. In Houston, I got a great job and own my own home. Life is easy here and the people are wonderful. When I'm in Boston, I like to say hi to people on the sidewalk just to horrify them.

Move to Cleveland, OH.

40 degree temperature differential from one day to the next. In fact, it was that way at the end of December last, before the Arctic Vortex pitched in.

There's an old British joke about that sort of thing: "I hate this sort of weather. One day hot, the next day cold. You never know what to pawn!"

-- Mal

Driving from Ft. Benning to Ft. Hood in the mid 70s, I got stopped in Kendelton. The sheriff seemed to think I was some kind of North Vietnamese agent, because i "didn't look American enough to wear the uniform of this great country". I languished 5 days in the Kendelton jail, until the US Attorney in Houston, and the JAG from Ft. Hood got me out.

I will never again willingly set foot in Texas as long as I live.

And until you can escape, think about Molly Ivins.

a bad experience in Texas. It truly is a GREAT place to live.IMO

...but I have to say that I have no interest in the summers based on what I've heard. I spoke with the next door neighbor yesterday, who once again told me that this winter was "abrnormal." I asked him when he felt the summers became intolerable and he said "Around August, but who knows...that could change too." If I can earn the amount of money I need, I'm looking at potentially heading bback to Nevada on July 1st.

It was too good an opportunity to ignore, and I looked into the Houston area and I was actually pleasantly surprised. It's a fairly progressive city and has a good arts scene, and there are some nice suburban/residential areas within Houston and just outside of the city. OK, it's too hot & humid for me there (I'm in Connecticut) and there is a gun shop on every corner it seems, but I definitely would not rule it out as a place to live.

(I think the headhunter that got me the interview dropped the ball in conveying my salary requirements, etc, but that's another story...)