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Favorite things about Texas
...because sometimes it's good to remind myself.
1. Half my friends are here.
2. It doesn't get very cold.
3. There are wildflowers everywhere.
4. Tex-Mex food. So many kinds.
5. Barbecue.
6. Real access roads to freeways and U-turn lanes where you don't have to wait at a light.
7. The library system at the University of Texas at Austin, once the second largest library in the country (after Harvard). [Hmm, surely the Library of Congress was also bigger back in the 1980s when I heard that.] Not as amazing for items published after 1988 as for those published before, but still #11 overall.
I don't want to list my least favorite things about Texas because it's too depressing. Basically it can be summarized as all the ways it's too much like a corrupt and/or discriminatory third-world country.
But I will list favorite things about other places that I wish we had here, too.
1. Good mass transit (like much of Europe and even Boston)
2. Good walkability (for example, much of Spain has little grocery stores every two blocks)
3. Good bike lanes (like Amsterdam)
4. Better internet (like almost everywhere but island nations)
5. More fabulous fast food (like gas station food and train station Liege waffles in Belgium, like the sandwiches at Pret a Manger in England, like the food in 7-Elevens in Norway, and like all kinds of street food everywhere)
6. Amazing breakfast buffets, even in hotels (all over Norway)
7. Bakeries where they know how much chocolate should be in a chocolate croissant (like in Brussels).
Okay, I mostly made this post for the links.
Blog post of the day - Grumpy Rumblings' How To Run a Meeting - 'If you don’t know what the meeting is going to be about, just don’t. Don’t have a meeting.'
Also: 'At the end of the meeting, go through every single person and ask what their action items are and what the timeline is. This is great because a lot of the time everyone will assume someone agreed to do something, and they may have even agreed to do it… but without this last step, they will simply forget. Or they will mean to do it and just keep putting it off until they forget. And then you will discuss it again at the next meeting, wasting time. Again. The other nice thing about going through everybody is that if someone doesn’t have an action item and another person has a ton of action items, the overloaded person will feel ok about giving some up and the underloaded person often feels guilty and will volunteer. This doesn’t always happen, but for your people who don’t want to be perceived as bad people but also don’t generally volunteer, it’s nice.'
Web Page of the Day - Hampton's Hybrid Calisthenics Routine - '1. Pick 5 Exercises that work the entire body: Pushups Pullups Leg Lifts Squats Bridges
2. Find a version of this exercise that you can do safely and pain-free. Move to harder variations as you master them.'
And then there is a huge list of variations for each of those exercises.
(Thanks to Grumpy Rumblings for showing me this, too.)
1. Half my friends are here.
2. It doesn't get very cold.
3. There are wildflowers everywhere.
4. Tex-Mex food. So many kinds.
5. Barbecue.
6. Real access roads to freeways and U-turn lanes where you don't have to wait at a light.
7. The library system at the University of Texas at Austin, once the second largest library in the country (after Harvard). [Hmm, surely the Library of Congress was also bigger back in the 1980s when I heard that.] Not as amazing for items published after 1988 as for those published before, but still #11 overall.
I don't want to list my least favorite things about Texas because it's too depressing. Basically it can be summarized as all the ways it's too much like a corrupt and/or discriminatory third-world country.
But I will list favorite things about other places that I wish we had here, too.
1. Good mass transit (like much of Europe and even Boston)
2. Good walkability (for example, much of Spain has little grocery stores every two blocks)
3. Good bike lanes (like Amsterdam)
4. Better internet (like almost everywhere but island nations)
5. More fabulous fast food (like gas station food and train station Liege waffles in Belgium, like the sandwiches at Pret a Manger in England, like the food in 7-Elevens in Norway, and like all kinds of street food everywhere)
6. Amazing breakfast buffets, even in hotels (all over Norway)
7. Bakeries where they know how much chocolate should be in a chocolate croissant (like in Brussels).
Okay, I mostly made this post for the links.
Blog post of the day - Grumpy Rumblings' How To Run a Meeting - 'If you don’t know what the meeting is going to be about, just don’t. Don’t have a meeting.'
Also: 'At the end of the meeting, go through every single person and ask what their action items are and what the timeline is. This is great because a lot of the time everyone will assume someone agreed to do something, and they may have even agreed to do it… but without this last step, they will simply forget. Or they will mean to do it and just keep putting it off until they forget. And then you will discuss it again at the next meeting, wasting time. Again. The other nice thing about going through everybody is that if someone doesn’t have an action item and another person has a ton of action items, the overloaded person will feel ok about giving some up and the underloaded person often feels guilty and will volunteer. This doesn’t always happen, but for your people who don’t want to be perceived as bad people but also don’t generally volunteer, it’s nice.'
Web Page of the Day - Hampton's Hybrid Calisthenics Routine - '1. Pick 5 Exercises that work the entire body: Pushups Pullups Leg Lifts Squats Bridges
2. Find a version of this exercise that you can do safely and pain-free. Move to harder variations as you master them.'
And then there is a huge list of variations for each of those exercises.
(Thanks to Grumpy Rumblings for showing me this, too.)