as we may blog

Apologies for the absence. My sister was in town last weekend and as a result I’ll be in detox for, oh, the rest of my life. Which should be about five years shorter now, thanks Kate. The good news is that I now know Cricket Taylor has stickers and plays Wednesdays at Elbow Room, the greatest Elbow Room outside of Ypsilanti.

We went out to the new IKEA in Frisco yesterday–neither of us had been to one and we both enjoy cheap furniture. Big mistake. I was trying to capture a funny angle to the whole situation as we shuffled through the rain in a 20 minute line to get in, shuffled through packed showroom after packed showroom, shuffled through sweaty Texans and some guy writing "turn on the AC" on a chalkboard and people spending thousands of dollars they didn’t have while enjoying 50 cent hot dogs and Swedish meatballs. On the bright side, I’m more committed than ever to getting rid of all my shit when I get back to Michigan. I didn’t need it this summer and apart from some sweaters I won’t need it next year either.

Maybe you can sense that the novelty of living in Dallas has worn off a bit. A few days back while running after work, I joked that I hadn’t had a breath of fresh air all summer. You know when you say something to be flip and then immediately realize that there’s something to it? It was like that. The choices in Dallas in the summer are recycled air indoors or an ozone-rich 100 degree mess outdoors. And, at least on one Sunday in Frisco, I would’ve sooner hung out in the Port-O-John’s in the parking lot than chosen either of those options. You get what you get.

That said, there’s a ton I’ll miss about Texas:

• An Angry Dog burger, medium, with mayo and mustard. The best ever. Don’t even try to argue this in the comments, either.
• Real salsa
• Dallas farmers’ market, even those bucktoothed hucksters who claim their watermelon is sweeter than "shuhgrr"
• Fort Worth
• Galloway and Company
• Fajitas at Mia’s, the rueben and mussels at The Old Monk, St. Arnold Summer Pilsners at Gingerman
• Baseball on demand
• The Nasher Sculpture Garden
• Giant unexpected thunderstorms from nowhere that never stop
• Warm weather

And just like that, it’s time to pack again.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 8th, 2005 at 11:15 pm and is filed under (That's Right, You're Not From) Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.