Orientation

One of the disadvantages of working at a public university (like University of Houston) rather than a private one (say, Northwestern) is that they have to satisfy Federal requirements, such as making all their new employees sit through many hours of boring lectures on sexual harassment and the like. So this was how I spent my day on Monday... my favourite speaker was the Police officer telling us how to secure our vehicles.

The one piece of information I seem to have taken away regards the "90 day wait" all Texas state employees have to endure before they are eligible for employer health insurance. Apparently, several years ago, the state of Texas had some massive deficit, and they had two choices - increase taxes, or cut spending. Of course, increasing taxes is completely against the Texan mentality (there is no state income tax), so they decided the best way to save money was to stop paying for so much health insurance for Texas state employees. Nice one.

Sunday

So my furniture arrived on Friday, and I've now mostly unpacked and can finally relax a little. Here is a photo of the courtyard in my apartment "community", as they call it here. Looks rather tropical, doesn't it?



Today was the day of the Houston Marathon, the course of which happened to be very close by, so here is the excitement of mile 23:



I guess I expected to be writing more about the craziness of Texas, but so far, it hasn't been all that crazy. Maybe in time...

Arrival in Houston

Well hello again. I'm now back online, after a lovely Christmas and New Year break, and after having to wait all day yesterday for AT&T to figure out why my phone line wasn't getting any signal and how to connect my internet. But the very friendly Fred and Meddie worked it out in the end, and here I am, sitting in an empty apartment in Houston, waiting for the arrival of all my furniture and other stuff tomorrow.

All I'm going to say for now is that the weather is so far very nice, and so long as you avoid the interstate, the Houston traffic isn't as bad as it was made out to be. And no sign of a cowboy hat. For now.