Dallas suburbia

I am back from a week in the Texas sun. Or should that say "Texas air condition"? The flight to Dallas took 12 hours (for the record: I watched 4 movies - Shrek the Third, Oceans 13, Miss Potter and Fracture), the flight back 10 hours (no movies; read Queen Camilla by Sue Townsend, author of the Adrian Mole diaries; not particularly good, slightly amusing).

We did not actually stay in Dallas itself, but some rich suburbia. (They even have a polo court there. You should see the homes! What do people do with 20 bedrooms if they are only parents with two children?)

Our hotel was... functional.

Every morning R., who had come from Toronto, and myself waited on the bench at the entrance to be picked up by J. The only thing missing was a box of chocolates and we could have renamed ourselves Mr and Mrs Forest Gump. J. said, we looked cute on the bench.

This is the bench, R., his laptop and my handbag:

I promised you pictures of offices. Here is one:

We didn't do much apart from working. In the evening, R. and myself went for walks to nearby restaurants. We were the only people walking. Nobody seems to walk anywhere. For a distance of 500m they take the car. We got some dirty looks from drivers, who had to stop because we used the traffic lights.




Now I am back home, but I did not run the half-marathon this morning. My brother was taken very ill last week and I visited him in hospital today. He is much better already, but still needs total parenteral nutrition. I was very worried, but he looked good today and even asked for some of his working papers to be brought in. So he is definitely recovering.