Ramblings of a Non-Native Texan

Kevin Jonas and Danielle Deleasa, from yeeeah.com

I blogged last time about taking my daughter to the Jonas Brothers concert at Cowboys Stadium. This morning, I woke up and saw that Kevin Jonas is engaged to his longtime girlfriend.

He’s the oldest of the Jo Bros, but that’s not saying much, since he’s still just 21. The girlfriend, Danielle Deleasa, was ecstatic, and apparently caught off guard when Kevin showed up on her doorstep with the ring. The family seems to be “filled with joy” at the news. As of yet, no wedding date is set.

I will say that I wish all the best for Kevin and his bride. I hope it’s a long engagement, though. It makes me nervous when kids get married so young. I did that, and I found what a lot of people find: 21 is too young to know your own mind and make lifetime decisions. Heck, your brain isn’t even fully developed until age 25. So I hope Kevin isn’t feeling pressured to do this, or jumping in too quickly for the publicity of it. Kids make rash decisions… If this one turns out to be a misguided one, everyone in the world will belabor the point in the public eye.

I also hope that the stupid purity rings he and the other Jonas Brothers wear don’t mean that he’s so physically frustrated that he feels like he HAS to get married (again, a lot of kids end up doing that… getting married is the only way some conservative types are able to have sanctioned sex, which is a BAD reason to tie the knot). After all, rumor has it he’s a virgin. I get why famous rock stars/boy bands want to set a good example to kids, but the rings do seem to go a bit far. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” seems a better way of dealing with teen idols and their normal human drives, but hey, nobody asked me!

A little research shows I’m not the only one who has these concerns about age and virginity, so I guess I’m not crazy. I just hope it all works out for the best for this talented kid and his family.

The Jonas Brothers, that trio of young, musically-inclined manhood, kicked off their World Tour 2009 with a performance at the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX. Since my 8-year-old daughter is a big Jonas Bros fan, and since we live maybe 30 minutes from the stadium, and since my common sense evidently took a leave of absence, I agreed to take her to the show. We bought tickets weeks ago, and by the time the day arrived, she was almost ricocheting off the walls with glee. I’d never been to the new stadium before, but I was happy to attempt the pilgrimage to what locals affectionately call “the death star” in order to take my daughter to her very first real, live concert.

Drew looks cool while waiting for the stadium doors to open.

We left early, getting to one of the many cash parking lots around 5 pm. The doors to the stadium opened at 5:30, and we were right there in line with the crowds of 14-year-old girls and menopausal mothers pushing to get in. Drew was great, very patient with all the waiting. We got in, found our seats, and surveyed the monstrous building from the inside. And boy, was it VAST. Even with the entire upper level of seats closed off, it looks ginormous. The people down on the floor looked so small; Drew cracked a few jokes about crushing their little heads (trust me, it was funny at the time and not at all sociopathic).

And Jerry Jones looked upon his huge, hulking stadium, and he saw that it was good...

The first act didn’t go on until 7, so we wandered, got food (mmmm, salty pretzels!), and invested $30 in a souvenir program and light stick. I was hoping Drew would kill some time by reading the program, but the program ended up being page after page of slick photos of the Jonas Brothers, with maybe four words to a page, so the “reading” aspect didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Then we started playing with the camera, because few things are as fun to pre-teen girls as taking goofy photos.

Waiting for the Jonas Brothers can make you a little loopy.

The first act, Honor Society, was on schedule, and they weren’t too bad. But they were off the stage by 7:25, which surprised me. Then Jordin Sparks went on, and I was kinda underwhelmed by her. Maybe it was the sound system that wasn’t being all that great, but I could have done without her performance. Drew enjoyed it, though. And by 8 pm, all the opening acts were done, and we were waiting for the Jo Bros to appear.

The “real” show started at 8:45. Lights, pyrotechnics, drama, and a rotating stage with an elevator in the middle that brought the Jonas Brothers up from the bowels of the floor and into the sights of fifty thousand screaming, hormonal young girls. Drew was completely mesmerized with a big smile on her face. The boys launched right into a performance of “Paranoid,” and they didn’t slow the momentum down until after the first four or five songs. When they did downshift into slower numbers, the crowd still hung on their every note and screamed bloody murder when the songs were done. Drew waved her light stick in the air like the other girls in the crowd and sang along when she knew the words (which was more often than I expected).

Nick Jonas plays the piano while maintaining perfect hair.

The overwhelming awesomeness of a Jo Bro Show.

To their credit, the Jonas Brothers put on a great show… each brother plays several instruments, the back up band included violins, trombones and saxes, and the stage had such extras as a crane to lift the boys over the crowd and a rain machine that somehow created shapes (like hearts) in the rain. Drew gradually wilted as the night wore on; she’s not used to being up that late. And when I could tell the last number was starting up, I got her on her feet and down the stairs to the street level.

“They’re not done yet!” she protested weakly.

“It’s the last song,” I said. “We can stand down here and watch until they finish.”

I did not tell her what an “encore” was or that they would certainly perform one. She was dead on her feet, and I didn’t want to get stuck in the stadium traffic. People have lost their minds in that traffic.

As soon as the Jonas Brothers yelled “goodnight, everyone!” we were out the door and hiking to the car. As tired as Drew was, she still hustled. And then she was in the car and asleep before I’d even found the interstate.

So overall, it was a great show. More than that, it was a great outing with my daughter. You can’t beat bonding like that. She had an awesome time, and I hope she’ll always remember it.

If she forgets, the souvenir program and light stick will remind her!

I’m not much of a gun person. I don’t have a problem with the people who like and own guns, but for myself, I never wanted to own one, I’d only ever shot one at camp, and I definitely didn’t want them around my kids. I still don’t. But my boyfriend recently got his own handgun, a .40 S&W (the kids don’t live with us, so they won’t be crossing paths with it). And like true Texans, we took it to the gun range on Sunday to fire off a few rounds for the fun of it.

We had been to the range once before, and that time, we’d rented a range gun: a very simple Glock 9 mm. We’d grabbed the eye guards and ear coverings, chosen a paper target, and taken our position in one of the many numbered lanes that faced the gaping expanse of the range. The ceiling, floor and walls were all dull gray and battered from stray bullets. The empty shells on the floor were scattered everywhere, some swept into a pile of shiny brass. It was crowded; the sound of shots from a variety of guns reverberated even through the ear guards. I admit to being nervous… This was a GUN, something I pretty much feared, and I was going to hold it and shoot it.

What I remember about that first outing was that 1) I did better on the target shooting than I thought, and 2) that gun jammed after almost every shot for me. It was annoying. But I did have fun, and I felt proud of myself for actually doing well. I could see the appeal of owning a gun for target shooting (although I still don’t see the appeal of hunting… it’s not a “sport” unless you arm the deer, people).

So my boyfriend eventually got his own handgun, a more powerful one than the one we’d used at the range. It was perfect for him. He’s taken it out to a few other ranges in the past couple of months, but I hadn’t gone with him until this past Sunday. Time to try the new gun! I was feeling more Texan by the minute. Not just one outing to the gun range, but TWO visits there now. That makes it a pattern, right?

We got there, did the whole “No, we don’t need to rent a gun, we brought our own” thing, handed over our drivers licenses, and went to work. We chose a target with big numbered spots on it. It was pretty quiet at the range, with only a few other lanes occupied. My boyfriend went first, and he did awesome. Then he smiled and waved me to the line to take some shots of my own. I cradled the gun in two hands, lined up my shot, and squeezed the trigger.

That gun leaped so much that I thought it was trying to escape.

I tried again. Same thing! The size difference between this gun and the rented 9 mm wasn’t much, but the power was a lot different. I couldn’t control this one at all. My arms/wrists/hands weren’t strong enough to lessen the kick of the little monster. I did hit the paper that the targets were printed on, but there was no way I could aim accurately for those numbered dots.

“I don’t like this gun,” I said to my boyfriend, putting it down. And then I thought, wow, I have not only shot guns a few times, but I’ve also developed a preference for one of them over another! I’m definitely Texan now.

My boyfriend took a few more shots, then handed off to me again. I agreed to try a little longer, but still, the kick was too much to handle. My boyfriend admitted that he could see the reaction of my hands every time I fired. He took the gun back and finished off the rounds we had brought.

We both had fun, but that is definitely HIS gun. Which is good, since I still don’t much like guns. But I gotta say, going to the range is a lot of fun, especially if you want something different to do from the usual dinner-and-a-movie date night. I’m looking forward to going back sometime! But next time, I’m renting the 9 mm again. That gun and I get along.

Only in Texas…

Leave work early and go play!

Yep, today is Leave Work Early Day. I swear, I’m not making it up. Not that I’d have to… There are some WEIRD holidays out there.

I used to work in an office to which I’d commute roughly 40 minutes each way. In north Texas, that’s a drop in the bucket. Many people drive much further; it’s not uncommon for commutes to be an hour and a half or more. I’ve never lived anywhere that is so spread out… the idea of abandoning the car for an earth-friendly bike is almost unheard of here. Nothing is walking distance or biking distance. Texans love their space, and they love their vehicles, especially their soccer mom SUVs and their big cowboy trucks. It’s one of the more annoying things about this state.

But I digress. The point I was trying to make was that leaving work early was a BIG deal for me there, because it meant getting a bit ahead of the traffic, getting home while it was still light out, etc. It was nice to have an excuse, ANY excuse, to slip out before 5 and call it a day.

But none of that affects me the way it used to, because I work from home now. Sure, I still have to venture out of the house sometimes, and my family lives on the other side of the metro area (a little more than an hour away in no traffic), but I don’t have to get into the car first thing in the morning and fight my way through the rush hour and toll roads and backed up accident scenes anymore. I get up first thing in the morning and get onto the computer before 7:30 am, but that’s still better than, you know, having to wear high heels, or even be dressed for work at all.

So Leave Work Early Day isn’t quite so significant to me anymore, since “leaving work” now means “turning off the computer and wandering off to do some laundry or make dinner.” But for YOU, dear reader, it could be a chance to celebrate with a little much-needed freedom (and now that you hate me for working at home, you probably need a few minutes to relax and let off a little steam)! Even if “early” means just a few minutes ahead of your usual quittin’ time, try to take advantage of it. And if telling your boss that it’s National Leave Work Early Day isn’t enough to get him or her to let you loose, try a random excuse generator like this one.

Just remember: when you DO leave early, watch out for those SUVs and trucks on the road. They’re brutal.

The Fort Worth Zoo is one of the top zoos in the United States, and last week, I had the chance to visit it with my son and his kindergarten class. Field trips ftw! As bus after bus rolled up to the zoo, coming from as far away as Dallas, I realized that this really MUST be a great zoo (Dallas has its own zoo, but it must be pretty disappointing if the school systems there are bringing kids an hour away to Fort Worth).

Even with every school in the metroplex apparently in attendance, my son and I had a great time and managed to see almost everything before it was time to go. Here are some pics of the animals we got to see… lions and tigers and parakeets!

Lions relax at the Fort Worth Zoo.

Even in Texas, there are penguins.

A couple of tigers play in the water.

My son got to feed a few parakeets!

If you’re ever in North Texas, I highly recommend visiting the Fort Worth Zoo. It’s not quite at the level of San Diego, St. Louis or the National Zoo, but it’s pretty awesome on its own.

Donuts... So very yummy...

I’ve lived in a few places during my life: I grew up in the St. Louis Metro area, went to college in Virginia, had my kids in Florida, and now live in Texas. I also have a wanderlust that pushes me to travel whenever I can, so I’ve seen many corners of the country, and all of them are unique. But I have never been anywhere that has as much of a fascination with donuts as Texas.

When I first moved here, I remember thinking, “Aw, how cute, the local strip mall has a little donut shop!” And then I noticed that the next strip mall down the road also had a donut shop. And then the next one. Donut shops here, as it turns out, are as plentiful as dry cleaners and nail salons. I was floored by the sheer number of shops where anyone can buy fried, sugary dough.

And these aren’t chains we’re talking about… There are very few Dunkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kremes here. Most of these shops are little mom-and-pop places where the locals come for their pastry fix. And come they do, in droves. Most mornings, there’s a line at the counter in every shop I pass.

The shops all open early (around 5 or 6 am) and close by noon every day. If you want a donut at 3 pm, forget about it. But if you come when they’re open, you can get everything from kolaches and sausage rolls to eclairs and glazed donut holes. Near my house, there’s a Starbucks and a donut shop a few doors down from each other, coexisting in harmony. It makes for some amazingly tempting smells when I walk past them on Sunday mornings.

It really seemed to me when I moved here that the donut shops were taking over, but I had only my perception to go on. A few days ago, I decided to test that perception. First, I went to Wikipedia and looked up the population of Dallas and that of St. Louis, Missouri. Sticking with just the cities and not their greater metro areas, I found a population of 1.3 million in Dallas and 360,000 in St. Louis. Fair enough. Then I went to yellowpages.com and did a search for “donuts” in both cities. Using just the raw search results, I came up with this:

Number of donut shops in St. Louis: 33.

Number of donut shops in Dallas: 435.

If you account for the differences in population by taking a per-capita measure, the comparison works out like this:

St. Louis has one donut shop for every 10,900 people.

Dallas has one donut shop for every 2,988 people.

Now, I’m not saying that St. Louis is a mecca of healthy eating. Far from it! The city that brings you toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, frozen custard, barbecued ribs and its own style of pizza cannot be considered a nutritionist’s delight. But clearly, the fascination with donut shops is unique to Texas, or at least the corner of Texas that I’m in.

So if you want toasted ravioli, head to St. Louis. But if you want a white paper box full of greasy, sugary, fried goodness, Texas is the place to be. You can’t miss the nearest donut shop… It’s as close as the nearest strip mall.

Before I lived in Texas, I’d never been to Galveston. Now, my boyfriend and I try to get down there at least once a year. It’s about a four-hour drive from here (which is nothing at all in a state this big), and we get a nice taste of the coast without having to fly anywhere. I love taking my kids down there, too, as they get bored with the space center after half a day, but they NEVER get bored with the beach!

Galveston Beach

Last year, Hurricane Ike came through and caused some major damage. It didn’t get as much press as it probably should have, but the mess was widespread, and the locals are still rebuilding. Now that it’s been almost a year since then, it sounds like a lot of the area has been rebuilt (where it could be, at least), and we’re eager to go back down there again. I hope we take a weekend in June or July to traipse down there and soak up the culture. And the kids are eager for another trip, too (but they say they’d rather fly to Houston this time, as the four-hour drive is still too long to their young selves).

More fun pics of Galveston trips in years past…

The garden at the B&B we love

beautiful colors on the rooftops of the Strand

The very historic, slightly creepy cemetery

If you ever get a chance to go to Galveston, I recommend it. It’s not Florida or California (if it’s just beaches you’re after), but it’s got a charm and history all its own!

The Biggest Loser on NBC

The seventh season of the NBC show “The Biggest Loser” just ended. In case you live in a bomb shelter in rural Iowa and haven’t seen TV (or anything else) in a while, the point of the show is helping obese people lose weight and develop healthy habits for diet and exercise. It tends to be drama-filled, emotional television… Parts of it feature intense workouts and physical challenges for the cast members, but other parts depict heavy conversations and “who doesn’t get along with whom” hysterics. And each show has at least one significant product placement, like Multigrain Cheerios, in a Truman Story-esque sponsorship that encourages the show’s cast members to incorporate the product into their now-healthy lifestyles. Someone is kicked off the show each week, and in the end, whoever loses the highest percentage of their body weight wins a big cash prize and the title of “The Biggest Loser.” As you no doubt know (except for you, Mr. Bomb Shelter Guy), it’s a wildly popular bit of entertainment.

Before this year, I had never watched this show. I don’t know why… I was out of the loop on most TV shows for a while after moving to Texas a few years ago (I’ve still never seen an episode of Lost), and maybe that’s why I never picked up on the “Biggest Loser” craze. But this year, I caught a few episodes, and then a few more. I could do without the drama, tears and “I just don’t know why so-and-so doesn’t LIKE me!” speeches, but the parts about exercising, overcoming obstacles and eating right were enough to keep me tuned to the channel. It was fascinating, watching these unhealthy, dangerously-overweight people lose half of themselves (and gain a lot of self-esteem) over the course of a few months. Lest the change be too gradual to really notice, the show’s producers included first-week footage of each contestant every time they weighed in, showing the dramatic difference between “then” and “now.” According to the San Francisco Examiner, this season featured the oldest, youngest, heaviest and sickest contestants to date, which made for pretty extreme improvements for those who stuck with the program. 

Helen wins The Biggest Loser, from realitytvworld.com

The woman who won last night, 48-year-old Helen, was not the person I expected to win. I thought the much younger, slightly sneaky former model, Tara, would take the crown. But Helen persevered, and in the end, she had dropped 140 pounds, or 55% of her starting body weight. For all you English Lit majors who suck at math, that’s MORE THAN HALF of her body that she lost on the show. She got $250,000 for her efforts, but even better than that, she got health, a longer life, and a much better outlook. Things like that are priceless. If you want to read more about Helen, her bio is at Huliq.

Most of last night’s episode was about weighing in the contestants who had gotten kicked off earlier to see how well they did at home. I think that’s where the charm of this show lies: These are just regular people, people with weight issues who are used to feeling bad about themselves and who manage to turn it around and get healthier and happier. It’s a very simple message to those watching the show. If these people can do it, anyone can, and the info you need to get started is part of the show itself. Here’s what you eat, here’s how you exercise, here’s how you change your way of thinking and living so that you can actually LIVE. It’s inspirational, and with the growing (no pun intended) obesity epidemic in this country, it’s timely.

I’m not overweight, but I’m not as healthy as I’d like to be. I don’t eat much junk food, but I do have a sweet tooth, and I’m not a big fan of exercise. I keep telling myself I’ll start an exercise program and stick to it eventually, and I’ll go a few weeks at a time of keeping up the jogging and weight lifting, but something always comes up that diverts me from making a true lifestyle change. It’s easy to put off getting healthier when you’re generally pretty healthy… you can convince yourself that you’re “good enough.” Living in Texas doesn’t help, since there seem to be a lot of people here who can’t or won’t maintain a healthy weight. And since no major health issues run in my family, I don’t even have the motivation of risk factors to get me off my butt. But “The Biggest Loser” actually does motivate me. The contestants sweat, strain and suffer through really tough workouts, but they survive and come out healthier and better off. It makes me want to do that, too. They make me think that it’s worth it. Because, after all, it is.

The next season of “The Biggest Loser” starts this fall, and they’re already casting for the season after that. Potential cast members must have at least 100 pounds to lose, but even those who don’t fall into that category (or who don’t make the show’s cut) can benefit from tuning in. I think I’ll add this show to my fall TV rotation. And maybe I’ll watch it from the treadmill, where I’m making my own lifestyle change.

If you don’t live in Texas, you probably know many of the same stereotypes about Texans that I used to know. I NEVER thought I’d live here. And now I do.

Some of the stereotypes are rooted in truth… others were surprisingly false. I’ll use this space to talk about my experiences as a Northerner living in this pretty fascinating state. I’ll also babble about anything that catches my fancy, from my dogs and my chocolate fetish to current events and news. Enjoy!