> So how was Texas?
> Howard

How was Texas? Amazing! The South is just so much more... friendlier than up here. New York City is nice, but heck, give me a big sky and a nice wide interstate any day. Houses with actual yards and trees, courteous drivers, $4.75 for a pitcher of beer, and folks that say "Hi" when passing them. Here in the New York Metro area, you've got houses crammed up against each other, idiots on the road, $4.75 for a glass of beer, and no eye contact.

The wife and I realized how much we dislike it up here when telling all our friends in Texas about meeting people. Our closest friends in the NY area live in Queens; we live in Jersey. It's a ninety-minute trek to get to their place. We work with people all the time in the city, but they live all over the place: White Plains, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Ho-ho-kus. And because of the time to commute into and out of work, we don't have that much time in Jersey to meet anyone there. Back in Texas, commutes were about ten to thirty minutes (we lived back in Austin and College Station), towns were small enough that it took maybe twenty minutes to get to a friend's house. Here, my daily commute is an hour and a half.

Sigh.

Anyway, it was for a friend's wedding and also served as a reunion of sorts for all the people who attended Texas A&M, but now have split up and gone all across the country. In a few months, more friends will be moving away from College Station. Some die-hards will be staying in College Station, others will be somewhere in Texas, others, like us, will be across time zones. It's a bit sad knowing that this would probably be the last time the ol' gang got together. Luckily, we used up two and a half rolls of film over those five days.

-Faux "New York City. [Dirty word], I'm still in New York City." Pas