I Stole All of Matt's Photos so This Post Would Be More Interesting (dot-gov)

Dear, dear, dear Matt Smith,


You are very dear today. I am not sure why. I can only attest to a single "dear," but my fingers seem to have gotten into their little finger-systems to type the three "dears" you see above. Perhaps you are so dear because it has been so long since I have written. Perhaps you are so dear because "the iPhone is better than nature." Perhaps you do not recall either of the previous things and simply put, you're dear because you're dear...

Time will tell.

Matt and I have been exploring our new nation (um... yes... the Great Nation of Texas joke lives ON, much like "your mom" jokes) lately. We take a weekend here or there and drive off into the sunset. Or more than usual, we drive off around 10:30 on a Saturday morning, cursing ourselves for not getting ready sooner so we can make it to McDonald's for a EggaMooby Muffin breakfast. This past weekend we went to Austin (which is only an hour away), and two weekends ago we went to Houston.

Houston is like Rock to Temple's Scissors in the beer department. To the casual viewer, it may have seemed that Matt and I went to Houston simply to find delicious beers. This is not the case, although we came away with more than a case.

We drove to Houston to visit landmarks (Rothko Chapel = most boring artsy-fartsy landmark in Texas, even perhaps, the world) and to visit my friend, Kate (in town from Chicago), who will be designing and putting together my wedding dress. Move over, Hank Azaria. This girl knows what's UP. And now she also knows what's down and around and the length and width of most of my everythings. (Apparently I'm symmetrical. And this is a good thing. I think.)

The best part about Kate is, she's not afraid to be weird. Like so many of the people I love in this world, she sees most things as being possible. For instance, when we had to meet Kate and her husband (also named Matt) at a coffee shop in Houston instead of one of our respective hotels. Kate was not afraid -- nor ashamed -- to break out the measuring tape and run to the ladies room with me. Not weird. Totally normal.

Note: Kate - I'm sorry I didn't ask permission to use your photo up here. I really like the look on your face in the picture... like, "What's it to YOU? I gots some measurin' tape, sucka!" Er... maybe not EXACTLY like that. But you get the idea.


A couple of weeks ago we took another short drive up to Waco, TX. Before I moved to Texas, the only thing I could tell you about Waco was some shoddy information about David Koresh. I probably couldn't have even spelled "Koresh," but I could have sung for you a kitschy little Christmas number about him. I learned it in the third grade. (And who says public education isn't the best?)

It turns out, Waco, TX is the home of Dr Pepper. Matt and I went to the Dr Pepper Museum and that's where I learned that there is no "dot" after Dr in "Dr Pepper." There's a creepy wax man in the museum that talks when you push a button, and Matt took pictures of him. He'll probably write something about it, though, so I'm not about to steal his thunder. I will, however, steal a picture that Matt took of the outside of the museum. It's not much to look
at, but the inside of this place taught me more about soda than I
ever cared to learn.


Also in Waco, we went to the THEE-AY-TER, which is how they say it down here. No lie. I teach THEE-AY-TER ARTS. Drives me nuts. I want to bonk people on the head when they say THEE-AY-TER, almost as much as I want to bonk people on the head when they say "bonk." (Except Emily. She can say "bonk" all she wants.) That was pretty cool, too. Turns out that the lead guy in the show went to school up with us Yankees -- at Boston University.




I think the whole highlight of the past few weeks, though, was realizing that when you live in Texas, gas gets cheaper. We've been having a rather quiet, yet ongoing celebration in our heads every time gas goes down by a few cents. Our largest celebration to date was on the trip to Waco, when gas dropped under $2 a gallon. And who says we're headed for another Great Depression? Don't be fooled by the hat, folks. This is pure happiness.

Those hats really make the recession look attractive.
Until next time...