People are posting “Galveston stories”, so here’s mine. I’m a Southern California girl, born and raised. Beaches, palm trees, green, wet winters, brown gold, dry summers–that’s what I grew up with. Every summer my family would camp in the mountains and body surf down at San Clemente or Laguna. Then, at the tender age of 17, I went off to college in rural Iowa. Not only wasn’t there fast food for fifty miles, they had a one-hundred year winter there my Freshman year. And, it turns out, snow doesn’t just fall magically on December 1st and then disappear New Year’s Eve, the friggin’ stuff stays and storms and piles up until well into April. And sometimes it arrives in October!

That’s just wrong.

Well, anyway, I put up with that and the total lack of KROQ for four years (and by my senior year of college I was walking through the snow in sockless tennis shoes), and then after graduation I headed off to graduate school at Rice University in Houston.

Houston had palm trees. Houston had green, wet winters (sometimes I had to scrape ice off my front windshield), Houston had a gay community and decent college radio.

And then there was Galveston. I didn’t get down there much, but I remember the first time I did. My girlfriend stayed up on the sand while I waded into the water. I stood there, the waves crashing over my knees, and I cried.

It wasn’t home, but it was the next best thing.

Be safe, Texans!

Just got back from Opera in the Park, which was fun. Along with the usual Mozart, Verdi, and et al samplings, the San Francisco Opera were pushing a contemporary opera they’ll be showing this year called Doctor Atomic, which is about Robert Oppenheimer. I, of course, am about three degrees of separation from the ev0l atomic bomb myself. Edward O. Teller is a character in the opera, and how weird is that? I studied under his son Paul. He was my dissertation advisor in grad school.

In sucky news, I got home to find a thick envelope from the I.R. Fucking S. They are auditing me for my 2003 tax return. They claim I owe them over $8,000. There is no way in hell I could owe them that. I don’t even make six times that a year as it is. Gross. I called my friend Gloria to talk to her CPA since I can’t make heads or tails of this. It’s insane.

Way to ruin my weekend, and after I was feeling slightly patriotic this afternoon and all that, too. pffft.