Texas! How is it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter E_7
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Xantippe said:
I haven’t spent a lot of time there, but I believe Houston is particularly bad with regard to drivers. And they often have many, many lanes to be bad drivers in. I feel like Dallas drivers are better, but the physical environment is difficult to deal with–lots of confusing situations–I would compare the Dallas freeway system to a big bowl of spaghetti. My husband likes to avoid Austin driving entirely, just because of the congestion. Any second tier Texas city is probably much easier to deal with, though, than those big cities.

We’ve lived in a number of different areas, and I think our part of Texas has consistently the best Catholic life we have experienced anywhere in the US.

That’s hilarious about how you got here literally as soon as you could–just like the bumper sticker.
Click to expand...
While we were dating, I lived in Dallas and Fort Worth and DH lived in Houston, so we put in a fair amount of time on the roads between the two.

Our highly 😉 scientific conclusion agreed with yours: Houston drivers are worse than Dallas drivers, but whoever designed the Dallas and Fort Worth freeways must have huffed, drunk, or eaten every known 60s-era hallucinogenic substance, and is probably still tripping as a result.
 
UbiCaritas said:
While we were dating, I lived in Dallas and Fort Worth and DH lived in Houston, so we put in a fair amount of time on the roads between the two.

Our highly 😉 scientific conclusion agreed with yours: Houston drivers are worse than Dallas drivers, but whoever designed the Dallas and Fort Worth freeways must have huffed, drunk, or eaten every known 60s-era hallucinogenic substance, and is probably still tripping as a result.
Click to expand...
Also, for whatever reason, any two points in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area are a one hour drive apart. Ever since we realized that, we’ve stopped attempting to do more than one or two things a day in Dallas/Ft. Worth. It also means that there’s very little penalty to living further out or in a completely different city–you have roughly the same degree of access to any particular destination in Dallas/Ft. Worth as if you lived there. DFW is really nebulous–it’s not at all like dealing with MD/DC.

I’ve also heard that any two points in San Antonio are always 20 minutes apart, so similar deal, smaller scale.
 
The traffic in both Houston and DFW is awful. I couldn’t pick which is worse, but traffic jams last longer in Dallas. It really depends on which road you want to compare. I have driven a lot in both. Dallas seems to have more crazy drivers.

There are some scorpions in the hill country and out west, but there aren’t a whole lot here. Arizona has more scorpions. They prefer the desert. Any time you are standing on the ground here you need to check your feet for fire ants. You should treat your yard at least every few months to keep fire ants out. I go to the parks I take my kids to and treat the fire ants there also.
 
One thing that my colleagues from outside the the US always comment on about Houston is the haphazard way in which the city is developed. Houston is the largest city in the US without a formal zoning code so the city has developed 13 or so business districts with large swathes of land in between: Greenspoint/ aka Gunspoint, Downtown, the Medical Center, Energy Corridor, Westchase… ect. Add to that most of the large corporations that have developed in Houston have favored large low-rise campuses over skyscrappers and the city has a very sprawling feel to it. The good side to all that is that housing is cheaper than most other large urban areas. The downside is that there is no good public transit system connecting everything and pedestrian infrastructure is often overlooked. You might go for a walk and then have a sidewalk run out right in front of a major highway leaving you stranded with no possible way of crossing.
 
And of course, you have to get used to the accent. 😛 When we moved to Texas, my husband and I were lost and trying to find our way. I finally entered a gas station to get directions. The lady inside told me to go about a quarter of a mile and turn right on “Ba-yul” St. To clarify, I asked if that was spelled B-A-L-E or B-A-I-L. She laughed and said, “Honey, it is spelled B-E-L-L, Bayul.”
Similarly, when I was in college there, I went to the infirmary with a terrible headache. The infirmary nurse asked if I had taken anything for the pain, and I responded that I had taken a couple of Bayers. She looked at me strictly and said, “You shouldn’t be drinking with that headache.” Took me a minute to realize that she thought I said beers. :rotfl:
Many year later, we remain in Texas and love it. But it was a major adjustment at first!
 
E_7 said:
Hi all,

Whether you live there or just visited or went as tourists, how was Texas?

I’m more interested to know how is Texas about ads and posters on the streets and highways, as well as other kinds of material about sexual immorality visible wherever you go and how people dress. I’m avoiding places like Miami where there are ads of women almost nude, and women on the malls and streets dress with short shorts showing their God-given “mystery” (not to mention the chest area :eek: ). Somewhere I read Austin is most liberal than other areas in TX, but are there immoral things like Miami open to the public to see? I don’t want to live with my husband and son getting used to or exposed to those things and eventually find it normal or worse.

I would like to hear about those major cities like Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Other cities as well.

I might be wrong, but I think the big companies are in Austin like the IBM.

I hear you can get a big house with the same cost as a small house in other States, and that there is a lot of traffic.

Anything else you can add about TX, please do so.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I like the people. They have a certain quality that’s hard to put your finger on but which distinguishes them from everyone else. A bit on the ‘larger than life’ side.
 
tomarin said:
How many hours?
Click to expand...
I don’t know about the IAH to SYD route but DFW to SYD is 17 hours of flying time. I took that flight once and then put in another 10 hours going to Karratha via Perth. I earned my paycheck that week. 🙂
 
A while back, there was a billboard proudly announcing that DFW airport is as big as the island of Manhattan…as if that was a good thing. Even just getting from one of the outer parking lots to your gate can be a real ordeal.

Pro tip: I’ve never done it, but it’s apparently much more enjoyable to fly out of Austin.

On the other hand, there’s a Great Wolf Lodge near DFW, and the kids LOVE it.
 
One thing that I have heard (but that may not be true of other parts of Texas) is that you’re pretty much guaranteed to get seasonal allergies if you move here. I was talking to a pediatrician recently and he said that our ragweed season can extend to DECEMBER. :eek:

On the other hand, one can get used to 70 degree sunny January days. I think that if E_7 moves south, she will find that the number of usable days per year greatly increases. When we lived in DC, it sometimes felt that the only tolerable months to be outside were April and October (not April thru October, April AND October). Whereas in our area, even the most heat sensitive person will usually be comfy outside from October through April (and if you’re a little more heat tolerant, September through May are nice).
 
Dallas and Houston both have smaller airports also, Love and Hobby. Both of which are a breeze. The bigger ones have trains that run between the terminals so it isn’t just terrible.

I have been outside of Texas very little, thankfully. My sil went up to Yankee land and visited Chicago and New York selling insurance and she said that people up there were just mad all the time. One feller even said “I’m angry, that’s just how I am, I’m angry all the time”, and he was.
 
Xantippe said:
One thing that I have heard (but that may not be true of other parts of Texas) is that you’re pretty much guaranteed to get seasonal allergies if you move here. I was talking to a pediatrician recently and he said that our ragweed season can extend to DECEMBER. :eek:

On the other hand, one can get used to 70 degree sunny January days. I think that if E_7 moves south, she will find that the number of usable days per year greatly increases. When we lived in DC, it sometimes felt that the only tolerable months to be outside were April and October (not April thru October, April AND October). Whereas in our area, even the most heat sensitive person will usually be comfy outside from October through April (and if you’re a little more heat tolerant, September through May are nice).
Click to expand...
Or, again, move a little further north from DC, and only January and February are bad (even then lots of days over freezing, and more snow to play in), and unless you’re pregnant the whole summer is tolerable - summer stays mostly in the 80s.

No poisonous bugs or snakes, friendly people, low cost of living (if you get away from the coastal areas). Top notch schools. Low chance of major natural disasters. I’m telling you, Pennsylvania is nice. 😛

(And yes, I’m a little partial.) 😉 I don’t get the push to move south (except for a job). But apparently I’m a weirdo in that regard. I’ve never lived in Texas but I have lived in pretty much every region of the US, and it would be really hard for me to leave the Mid-Atlantic.
 
Also, Texas professional sports teams are lame. Especially for hockey. 😉

(That’s right. I said it. :D)
 
We lived in PA as newlyweds and loved it, but even then, the icy sidewalks were often a pain.

Also, no real conditioning in our old apartment! We had a window unit of our very own, and it used to suck up so much electricity that you couldn’t run any other major appliance at the same time, even though it didn’t work that well.
pensmama87 said:
Or, again, move a little further north from DC, and only January and February are bad (even then lots of days over freezing, and more snow to play in), and unless you’re pregnant the whole summer is tolerable - summer stays mostly in the 80s.

No poisonous bugs or snakes, friendly people, low cost of living (if you get away from the coastal areas). Top notch schools. Low chance of major natural disasters. I’m telling you, Pennsylvania is nice. 😛

(And yes, I’m a little partial.) 😉 I don’t get the push to move south (except for a job). But apparently I’m a weirdo in that regard. I’ve never lived in Texas but I have lived in pretty much every region of the US, and it would be really hard for me to leave the Mid-Atlantic.
Click to expand...
 
Texas is really too big and varied to talk about as a whole. If you have a preference for the beach, prairie, mountains, lakes, desert, or whatever else, Texas pretty much has it. There are good people, bad people, cities, towns, rural areas. There are nearly as many options in Texas as the continental US, so it really helps to narrow it down to a specific area. We lived at both Ft. Hood and Ft. Bliss. I did not enjoy Ft. Hood area nearly as much as I did Ft. Bliss. They are very different from one another. Both had their good and bad, but if given the choice to move back to either, I would choose Ft. Bliss. Overall I like Texas, but it’s not someplace I dream of at night. I do understand why many people do, though. I definitely find Texas a better place to raise children than the DC area. Actually most places are better to raise a family than the DC area.
 
UbiCaritas said:
… whoever designed the Dallas and Fort Worth freeways must have huffed, drunk, or eaten every known 60s-era hallucinogenic substance, and is probably still tripping as a result.
Click to expand...
I believe UbiCaritas is referring to the “Mixmaster” interchanges, like this one:

 
After reading about Texas and the snakes, bugs, humidity and allergies I just feel the need to give Utah a shout out to anyone looking for a new place to live.

Besides, we really need more Catholics to join us! 🙂 😛
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top