"I love weed" and wooden bridges

Herman Baker Park is one of the few nice, blog-worthy places found in Sherman. On a good day, it is quiet and filled with armadillos rooting around in the trees, while children (and 20-somethings) sled down the hill on cardboard. However, on a bad day (which I usually miss), the rebellious teenagers run rampant through the trails, proclaiming their love for weed in the form of sidewalk chalk, and taking turns on the ever-treacherous tree swing (that has since been cut down, and resides in the lake).

I hadn't made the full 1.5 mile trip around the Pickens Lake until a recent trip with Isaac. To my excitement, we discovered a wooden bridge near the end of the trail. I have an odd affinity to wooden bridges. (And to parentheses, apparently.) Also, the name of the lake reminds me of the Sufjan Stevens song title: Oh God, where are you now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)

All in all, a memorable day, and a little piece of Sherman that I might miss. Emphasis on 'might'.

Beaver Nuggets

Houston, as a metropolis, is an isolated beast, hunkered away from most civilization, aside from Hunstville. You go through Corsicana, then almost nothing, save for a fantastic place to piss and buy jerky, until you reach a town centered around a large prison. 

Corsicana and Ennis are better left for Kristen to write about. I have mostly negative memories associated with the town, and I think she has even more.

These photos, from the Houston trip, are centered around three locations: a sweet corner room, made of glass and windows and overlooking the admittedly cool-looking Houston downtown. Antidote, a very dear to me coffee shop that succeeds by virtue of not trying to be Starbucks. Next door is a book store called Kaboom that is equally worth visiting, if for nothing else than to chat up the shop owner, whose knowledge borders on being frightening. At Antidote: Cajeta lattes. The third location is a coffee shop in Ennis, where we met Savannah. Despite being lodged in a shithole, the place manages to eek out a convincing aura of a decent coffee shop, and seeing Savannah was nice.

Your father made fetuses/with flesh-licking ladies (Houston pt. 1)

Kristen and I planned a trip to Houston, a city founded by oil-money, and steeped in an environmental shit-stew of its making that hangs the air thick as saliva. But that is where I have genetic-familiars, and Phoenix were playing, and where Sherman wasn't, so Houston it was.

This is part 1, focusing on the baby: Branwen, nigh on two, with her puzzle and piano and everything else meant to distract her. There are a few random photos of driving: a photo Kristen took of the Houston skyline in front and in the rearview mirror, and a shot (also by Kristen) of Good Records, a Dallas ritual.