california dreamin'

Today I was discussing Christmas plans with my mom and I realized it's been a year since I was last in California. My mom and I flew out so she could help my grandmother get ready for and then recover from her surgery and I flew out just as a surprise. We whisked Grandmommie off to San Francisco for the day and it was just all a really great trip.

When the semester was about to start, I realized that I had never been to college not in Riverside and it made me miss the landmarks I know there. I miss my friends, but over the years I have come to realize long distance friendships work as long as you keep in touch. It was more the donut place open 24 hours and the perfect spot to get hot and sour soup. The drive I could take up Central that would make me feel better because it was all wind-y and had lots of palm trees and I could take Victoria back to my apartment with the window down and inhale all the blossom scented air.

Next month marks my second year of living in San Antonio and I'm mildly surprised (although pleasantly) that it feels so thoroughly like home. I know short cuts to places and have even introduced others to cool restaurants. My family is here and that's why I came in the first place, but I've somehow managed to put roots down in a place I swore I'd never live and am enjoying my attachment. Part of it is K, but that's not all of it. I like the place I work and I think my apartment is fantastic.

Sometimes I am very frustrated about college and finishing my degree and finding money and time for it and wish I had just been able to motor through and finish my degree when I first started it. But the journey has been good despite all the roadblocks I basically set up for myself. It's led me to San Antonio and things are pretty good here.

Who would've thunk it?

i only kind of have road rage

I drive the same way to work every day, like I'm sure most everyone does. I try to leave at a certain point to beat traffic and to also get through one particular light because when it's red it feels like you're sitting there for ten minutes. That is a very long time to wait for a light. Beating the traffic though, the reason for that is because I tend to think a lot of Texans cannot drive.

In Southern California, pretty much everyone drives like they're not afraid to die. It's reckless and fast and ridiculous, but it's also possible to anticipate what people around you are going to do because everyone has the same style. In Northern California, drivers typically like more space between themselves and the car in front of them and things move a little more slowly (which honestly isn't saying much since my own experience is that a 65 mph speed limit on the freeway in Riverside means people are going about 80 mph). In Texas, all bets are off.

You can be driving on the freeway and a car in the fast lane will suddenly slow down to almost stopping to check their map and then suddenly veer in a horizontal motion to exit. The slow lane can be going at about 40 mph even if the speed limit is 70 mph. Driving on streets is different too. When it rains in California, everyone slows down because they're so confused about the sudden appearance of water. In San Antonio, everyone speeds up. Why? Don't know. Maybe everyone is trying to beat the possibility of flash floods home or something.

Turns are different. The lines on the road in San Antonio make for much sharper turns than I am used to from driving in California. But there's also this weird phenomenon that I just mentioned to K the other day about what happens when there are two turn lanes.

Say there are two turn lanes that lead to a road where there are three lanes. Everyone makes wide turns so they cross over the lanes, especially if you are turning right. THIS DRIVES ME CRAZY. When I want to end up in a certain lane, I choose my turn lane accordingly and stay in the lane. More often than not, I am almost hit as the car on my right is trying to turn and merge into me at the same time. What the hell? I think if you want to be in the outside turn lane then that's the lane you get in. So whatever, it's annoying, I try to be aware and accomdating because apparently that's how you do things in Texas. But it still grinds my gears.

But today? TODAY I GOT HONKED AT by someone trying to make a wide turn. UNACCEPTABLE.

Someday I am going to really get hit because I am not entirely awake and I am taking for granted that the lane I am in is the one I am driving in and the car next to me is only driving in the lane they are in and I just hope that the insurance companies don't ask me what I was doing turning while staying in the same line I started in because I don't know what I will do.

Maybe I need to leave a little bit earlier so there are even LESS cars on the road on the way to work.

big open skies

Yesterday, there was a small buzz about what the weather was bringing in. I've lived here for over a year now and am only vaguely used to how things ebb and flow. I grew up with earthquakes, but little to no humidity and basically two seasons. I never had problems with allergies and I didn't have to use nearly as many hair products to make it look good when I actually style it. San Antonio has brought a great many changes into my life.

I looked at www.weather.com because you can get an hour by hour forecast. This crazy storm was supposed to roll in at night, unleash it's fury on the area, and be gone by the morning. In California, this kind of thing was very atypical, as far as my experience goes. There's something about Texas and the big open skies that makes it feel like you can literally watch weather systems move in and out. It honestly may just be that in Riverside, the smog and haze that hangs over everything dillutes the possibility of this experience. Storms are definitely different here though. Thunder and lightening are a rare occurence and certainly never appear the same way they do here. Even just plain rain is different. The skies can open up and flood the streets in twenty minutes and then dissipate back into hot sunshine.

Anyway, this storm was supposed to come in about 9 pm and be gone by the time I was leaving for work, which incidently, is pretty freaking early to me sometimes. I was at Starbucks at 4 pm and saw the sky get grayer and grayer, but it wasn't overwhelmingly storm like. It was still about 80 degrees and not even misty much less rainy.

When I was leaving my store at a little after 9 pm, the lightening had started. As I drove home, the wind picked up. You know those news stories with the reporters standing in the rain and the wind is blowing so hard they can barely stand still? That's what came in by 10 pm. And then at midnight, I woke up because of the lightnening and thunder, even though I have literal blackout drapes in my room. I stood at the window and watched the lightening light up the sky to brighter than daylight because there was so much. It was pouring down rain, and the wind was making it flow sideways from the sky. It. Was. Crazy.

This morning, I went outside to go to work and I wasn't sure what to expect. The sky was beautiful with the broken clouds and the sun just starting to rise making it all different shades of blue. The ground is saturated, but the air is calm.

And that is the difference in weather between Riverside and San Antonio.

texas vs. california

I've only lived here a year so I still occassionally think about the vast differences between Texas and California. I actually am a fan of living here and amazingly glad I moved, but I had never realized how thoroughly to the core I am Californian until I moved to another state.

Here's some food you can get in Texas that I'd never encountered in California:

-frozen pizza from the grocery store topped with pepperoni and jalapenos
-fried pickles at a restaurant
-corn fritters (fried nuggets of cream of corn)
-sweet tea as almost always an option if not just the default
-sushi that has roast beef in it
-barbacoa
-candied jalapenos