Inner Loop-ing

We live "outside the loop"... in the burbs.  We like living in the burbs but we also enjoy the city.  We enjoy being close enough to visit the museums, restaurants, and various activities a large city has to offer.  Do we take advantage of it?  Sometimes.... but not often enough.  Today, we did!  We were both on the same page when the post-church question was "what are we going to do today?".  I guess we were both feeling a little culturally deprived.  Museum day it is!

2 Tons of bronze  "Reclining Woman With Fruit"....
There are days I feel about the same size!

Our first stop was the Art of the World Gallery to see the Fernando Botero exhibit of "abstract realism in luminous volume".  Thankfully the signature sculpture was outside or the stop would have been for nought because the museum was closed.  We peered inside the windows and wished we could see more.  I never expected a museum to be closed on Sunday, isn't that museum day?  We moved on to plan B or the continuation of plan A.

There are some things inside the loop that we don't have in the burbs and one of them is Trader Joe's.  We happened to be around the corner from one and just had to stop to see what was in store for the Thanksgiving season.  I could have wandered the aisles for an hour and TJ was equally entertained by the unique wine section.  We are so easily entertained!  We carefully chose our few items, waited in the very long but fast moving check out line and patted ourselves on the back for mixing it up with all the trendy folks.  It took great restraint for me to leave all of their yummy cookies, candies and snacks on the shelf.  I could have set myself up for weeks of weight gain had I caved in to all the temptation.  It's probably a good thing we don't have a Trade Joe's in the burbs!

Temptation alley!

Still feeling culturally deprived we headed to the Museum of Fine Arts for the Degas exhibit.  Unbeknownst to TJ, I had dreamt the night before about going to this exhibit....so we were literally living the dream!  We paid our entry fee and headed up to the exhibit.  TJ noticed that they charged us the "senior" rate for over 65 years old...."Sorry honey", he said.  That's what I get for hanging out with a gray haired guy who was rocking his white crew socks, black sneakers and shorts!  With our egos sufficiently crushed we continued.  We were both blown away at the sheer volume of work in this exhibit.  I don't always read everything in an exhibit but this was so fascinating, I read everything.  Reading the names of the people and places in his life took me back to Paris, which is always a good thing.

A classic

Yes, he was a sculptor too!
This was my favorite.

Museum-ing is hard work, especially if you are a senior citizen, so we needed to rest and refresh after our cultural education.  We consulted our smart phones and found a nice wine bar to explore.  We found a winner!  13 Celsius was a pleasant surprise.  We had a couple of glasses of wine and some delicious cheeses with baguettes and pretended we were tourists.  We discussed art, politics (because you can't get around it this week!), wine, hopes and dreams and it was nice.  By this time it was raining and the late Sunday afternoon crowd was buzzing.  The atmosphere was the perfect end to our cultural day.  We could have stayed much longer than we did but then our car would have needed to get picked up the next day after we took an Uber home.  The down side of inner loop-ing.

Wine and visiting museums makes you see things differently...

Just a couple of old kids enjoying the afternoon.

We called it a day and drove all the way back to the burbs in the rain feeling like we had been on a mini vacation.  We really need to embrace the city we live in/near and explore like we did when we lived in Toronto.  We get very complacent living in our neighborhood doing the same things every week and going to the same places.  We need to remember, sometimes it's good to get out of the cul-de-sac!

Everybody Is Doing The Houston Swat

Today in my LEM class most of my students looked like they were doing some sort of weird pantomime.  They were swatting the air around them, they were swatting themselves and even slapping the people sitting next to them.  Yesterday, when TJ and I took Sadie for a walk TJ was doing the same pantomime and eventually ended up running home, leaving me to fend for myself.  Today on the front page of the newspaper it was confirmed.  We are in the midst of a mosquito epidemic!  Just when it got nice enough to sit outside and enjoy the fall temperatures and maybe have dinner and drinks on the patio....we have been accosted by swarms of mosquitoes who are also enjoying the weather and eating out.   

As you know or may have read here,  we are in a drought.  The good thing about that drought was there was no water for mosquitoes to breed and we have had a relatively bite free summer.    Well....that 4 inches of rain we had (2 weeks ago!) was a good news/bad news situation.  The good news was we needed the rain desperately and every growing thing is doing the happy drinking dance, finally!  The bad news was it was just enough water to breed a wicked batch of swamp mosquitoes, who have been just waiting for that water to come to life and torture everyone in Houston! 

So, to all my northern readers....send cold air!  It is the only thing that will make this epidemic end!  We want to play outside! Smack!  Ouch! How do you like my new cologne?  Deep Woods Off.... don't leave home without it!