Houston Hello!

I took a job at St. John's, a prep school in Houston......Texas, not Minnesota. Houston is in Houston County, which sits just to the northeast of Winneshiek County where I grew up. St. John's has two claims to fame. First, they denied George W. Bush acceptance, unlike Andover, Yale, and Harvard. Second, it is the setting for the movie "Rushmore," made by St. John's alum Wes Anderson and one of my favorite movies since I saw it in the theatre with my friends Lucas and Mustang in Chicago in 1999.

I'll be teaching three sections of AP US History and one section of TBA (to be announced). Anna is already scouting real estate. We won't buy anything for a while, but house prices in Texas are surprisingly cheap.

I'm ready to become a Rockets fan. Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon was the best center of my lifetime. I remember watching Game 5 of the Rockets-Knicks NBA Finals as NBC cut in to show the OJ case. I remember that first the chase was the small box of a picture in picture, then the game was the small box of the p-i-p, then the game went away and it was just the chase. I really enjoyed those Rockets teams. My favorite bench player was Carlos Huerra. Robert Horry was their clutch shooter (Mustang's favorite).

I have no thoughts on the Texans. They are a generic team.

As for baseball, we remain in the NL Central. I have lived my whole life in what is now the NL Central. In KS, the closest NL team was the Cards, in Iowa it was the Cubs then Brewers, in MN it was the Brewers, in OH it was the Reds with the Pirates not much farther away. I can't wait to get orange Astros gear and take Anders to games at Enron Field.

Anders says "Kroger" now. He knows what it means and he loves to go there. They often have food for him, especially at the deli. Anders likes Kroger even more than before.

Anders is currently teething. He is also facing the teeth of allergy season. His medication is helping, but he is sleeping lightly. I'm waiting for the day when everything is covered in a light green film. Once that day happens, then it's all down hill. We need to have a sunny day for that to happen and we've had about one day without rain in the last week. On that day, Thursday, we took Anders to the Columbus Zoo.

Anders was particularly taken with the bears, turtles, monkeys, flamingos, and a wallaby. The wallaby was wallowing and kicking dirt on Anders, which he loved. The flamingos were fighting. The monkeys were also fighting and preening for the camera. Anders got a lot more out of the zoo this time than last August. Thursday was a lot of fun. After the zoo, Anders threw up his fries and spilled water on himself at Culver's. He wasn't phased by the mishaps and wandered all around the restaurant.

We have had a wonderful and eventful week. I have been looking for a job for eighteen months and we have been trying to sell this house for fourteen months, then in less than two days these two enormous tasks have been completed.

We have less than five weeks in our house left. Then we will summer in the Upper Midwest and in August we will move to Houston. I'm looking forward to returning to a sunny climate after 24 years away in predominantly cloudy climates.