Fishy Fingers

Just back from a run with Amy, today we ran along the lit portion of the bayou - shame I forgot the mozzie repellant as I think I will be feeling the consequences tomorrow. It was quite humid tonight - even I have to admit, although I was trying to convince Stuart it was not too bad!

While Scotland has the snow, we had the rain on Sunday and Monday. On Sunday we went up to Old Town Spring for the Texas Crawfish and Music Festival. It said 'come rain or shine', but it was quite a wash out! Old Town Spring is north of Houston and is an old settlement in Spring. The buildings are all traditional wooden American style with verandas opening on to the narrow streets. Most buildings seemed to be boutique shops with a totally different feel from anything else in Houston. However, with the three weekends of the festival, the place was filled with crawfish stalls and the pavements covered in bits of crawfish and their juices. The actual festival is held in the fairground and costs $10 per person to get in. What we later discovered is there is actually just as much, if not more, going on in the streets where there is no entrance fee! However, inside the fairground there was crawfish to sale as well as Cajun foodstuff, plus alligator, dinosaur turkey legs, crawfish sausages and much more. Stuart and Dave went for the crawfish, but I decided I couldn't be bothered with peeling all those little lobster like things - too messy and too much hard work. Stuart did peel me one and it was nice and spicy, but my Chinese chicken satay stick was better :) Karen and I were disgusted by the boys fishy fingers after completing their tray of crawfish! There was a Zydeco band that started up near to where we were sitting. I was pretty good (better than the country music that was also playing!). Zydeco is a form of folk music from SW Louisiana and is quite upbeat. There was a man strumming his metal vest - a wash board and a squeeze box. Despite of the rain, they had people up dancing. One of the guys dancing, in his late forties and well built, was pretty good at strutting his stuff!

Since the rain just would not give up we left after a couple of hours. I would recommend anyone going to go on a sunny Saturday and then stay for the music later on in the evening especially if it is Zydeco.

When we got home I was going to go for a swim but I suddenly became soooo tired. I lay down on the sofa and passed out for two hours. I was so tired, that I felt like I was hallucinating, my head was just spinning, but when I got up I was feeling so much better. Maybe that bike ride did take it out of me!

I woke up to more rain on Monday and I was due to be playing golf! I set off in the morning up to Deerwood Golf course about an hour north east of Houston. It was peeing it down all the way! And to my horror the temperature was dropping into the 50's and I was wearing shorts! When I drove into the club the rain stopped and even though the clouds were still there and it was a little chilly it was pretty good weather all things considered. A girl in a golf buggy came and collected me from my car and drove me the whole 50 yards to the club house. I was playing in the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) golf tournament. My host met me at the front and there were another two guys in our team. The event is actually run at two club, but Deerwood is the more salubrious one and costs a little extra but means you get a tee time and play as a shambles, rather than a scramble. My practice hits were to die for, but unfortunately on the course I had both good and bad shots. As a shambles, we all teed off, then picked the best ball and moved all our first shots to that location then played your own ball until we sunk it in the hole! I did manage to get a par for the team, but nothing else! They were amazed with my 3 iron drives and told me to learn to hit a driver!! So we didn't win, however, we all got a pair of Oakley sunglasses and I won a wedge in the raffle - all in all not a bad Monday! Oh and I forgot to say it didn't rain all day how amazing.

Last but not least - Happy Birthday Mum!