Blonde,
Did you used to have the nick BottledBlondeGenie? If so, salutations again, and I openly invite you to send me an e-mail, as well. We’ve talked about stuff in the past that caught my attention and would love to chat w/you.
If, on the other hand, I’ve mis-identified you, well, welcome anyway!!
Houston here.
I’m an exploration geophysicist.
You are kidding, right?
I love the whole damn state. So much to do and see. From the triple point of the Big Thicket, meeting point for three biospheres, the coastal swamps of southern Louisiana, the piney woods of East Texas and North Louisiana and the coastal plains, down the Gulf Coast and take a right through the Valley. Catch a lift over the Balcones Escarpment and check out the Davis Mountains. Soon enough you can taste the West Texas/Panhandle part of the Great Plains and then plunge back toward the middle and kick back in the Hill Country.
We’ve got 3 of the 10 biggest cities in the country, and Austin’s liable to bust those ranks pretty damn soon.
While much can be said about Dallas and San Antone, Houston, after a lifetime, remains a wonderland to me. I love this city.
I understand that the urban experience can be trite for many people, in almost any city. Sure, there are parts of Houston that could be any collection of national/international brand names plastered along any strip in any city anywhere.
But I’ve lived in the Montrose almost all of my adult life, adjacent to the Museum District. I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather live.
René Magritte’s Rape is 28.8 miles away from the grain elevator that dominates Katy, Texas, but it is also, in the Menil Collection, hanging a mere 80 yards away from me right now.
Location: Small town northwest of Houston.
Employment: Owner/director childcare facility.
Hate: The heat and humidity.
Like: The diversity. I like living near Houston where I can find just about anything I want but still be in a rural area.
When I was a teenager my father worked in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He hired a young man (19 IIRC) as an apprentice. This young man thought nearly all Texans rode horses everywhere instead of driving cars, huge herds of longhorns roamed about freely and would attack the few cars around and that Houston was a small rural town.
My dad, prankster that he is, encouraged these misconceptions with wild tales of fighting off longhorns every morning when he left for work and told the young man that nearly half the state didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing. He eventually told the young man the truth but he and my brothers had fun with it first. 
just a bit north of Austin.
tech support, storage.
I love the heat, especially when I can get out to Alpine in July or August.
I hate Tom Delay, George Bush, David Dewhurst, Rick Perry, Tom Craddick.
Currently, I like George W. and Rick Perry.
Now, if I had a dime for every time I’ve been asked that - nope, she and I are not the same Blonde. We do both have great Texas blonde characteristics, though. Throw a stick and you’ll hit a blonde in Dallas, as they say!
I live in Longview, although I’m not from Texas (Lyle Lovett assures me I’m wanted anyway). I work at a copy center until I can get my degree and work in a newspaper.
What I like about Texas: The climate. Believe it or not, I LIKE those 110-degree summer days. I also like the diversity - although I’ve not travelled within the state much (never further south than Nacogdoches, further west than Tyler or more than 30 or 40 miles north of Longview), I know that Texas has enough completely different regions in it to really be its own country. I like the entire Texas phenomenon - it’s the only state I can think of that really has its own personality, and every single preconception an outsider has of Texas is both true and false depending on where you’re standing when you consider it.
What I dislike can be figured out by viewing the Pit.
Next time Charlie Robison is playing at Greuene Hall (did I spell that right?), Gunslinger and I are going to take a trip down to Austin and catch the show, and stay a while to do some visiting of photography museums and shopping of antiques and vintage clothing stores and so forth.
Not yet there, but sometime soon!
Currently Burnaby, BC. Soon, DFW.
What I love: Zyada!
What I hate: It isn’t the Vancouver area.
What I do: Helpdesk, documentation, training, whatever computer support. (Anybody down there want to hire me?)
Interesting stuff: Nothing particularly unusual, but I’m told I can be charming.
Longview, newspaper photographer, nothing in particular.
It’s all the sunshine and our diverse cultures, I’m telling ya!)[sub]I work in a tourist bar, so I talk to a lot of visitors from out of state…and while most of them love Texas, there are quite a few who feel the need to talk about all the things that are wrong with Texas. And I just think it’s incredibly rude; I’ve been to a dozen other states, and I’ve been overseas, and while I didn’t always like what I found, it never once crossed my mind to criticize the state/country to its residents. That, IMO, would reflect more badly on me than it does on the place I am visiting, or the “problems” I had with it.[/sub]
This thread is too big for us east-coasters… 
I’m hurt that ** Ringo ** didn’t mention me as os one of the things he loves about Texas ! 
I guess you can count this as two more since that ** LIONsob ** is my husband.
We were both born in Texas, me in Killeen, him in Houston.
What I hate most is the heat and the bugs!
What I love just about everything but the heat and the bugs.
** LIONsob ** runs a printing press, I am a housewife.
Audrey, you raise an interesting point. I’m always going to be a Yankee no matter what, and so I’m never going to be allowed to say anything bad about Texas without getting told to go back where I came from, even if I spend the rest of my life here (which I very well may). Even if I say something as relatively innocuous as “Wow, it’s hot out there today - is it going to get cooler some time this fall?” I get a certain fraction jumping down my throat to tell me that if I don’t like the weather here I should go back to the tundra whence I came. I like the pride Texans take in Texas, but it kinda makes me sad to know I’ll never have the right to share in it.
Weslaco checking in.
'Sokay, nobody’s ever heard of it. It rhymes with Mexico, which I could probably touch if I opened a window, stuck my arm out and leaned over a bit. I haven’t had to wait for a bus in knee-deep snow for eight years now.
But I’m really staying around here for the Tejanitas…
** racinchikki **
Just get a bumper sticker, cap or t shirt that says I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as soon as I could. And learn how to give a good rebel yell, say y’all , dance in tight jeans and cowboy boots (I recommend the ones with a walking heel, not the higher riding heel) it may help.
Not all of us hate yankees, my first husband was one.
Austin.
Studio/Audio/Tape Op for a local news station (the #1 News Station, mind you)
I love pretty much everything about Austin, with the exception of one thing…the goddamned highways! They’re pretty damn shitty, and it seems whenever something big is going on and the population of the city is increased by nearly 50,000 people, the city decides to start doing construction. The legislature’s sure been a batch of right stupid assholes lately, too, but I guess that’s not really limited to Texas. This whole redistricting ordeal is rather embarrasing.
Where I’m from: Houston area, originally, but I left that as soon as I could. Austin’s where I’m from, now.
What I do: Artist for computer games. There aren’t too many cities with so many game companies, so Austin’s good for that.
What I love: The thunderstorms we get so often, tubing down the Guadalupe, Comal, and San Marcos rivers, the people (generally), the food, Big Bend, the amazing ecological diversity across the state.
What I hate: The heat, and the fact that we’ve only got two seasons here- the ‘hot’ season and the ‘not-so-hot’ season. If Austin’s average temperature dropped ten degrees, it’d be the most perfect place on Earth. Oh, and the fireants suck, too.
Despite my current location, I am still a Texas Poster, and I’ll kick the ass of anyone who says otherwise!
Where I’m from: Palacios (born), Richardson, Garland (where to date I’ve still spent most of my life), Rockwall, Dallas, Waco, and Alpine (where I spent the last 10 years I had to move out of state!)
What I do for a living: Asst. Professor of Geology (if you chose to go into academia, you don’t get to chose where you live!)
What I love about where I live (Kentucky Bluegrass): It reminds me a lot of the Central Texas Hill Country (especially the people and terrain), but the weather is nicer.
What I hate about where I live: No Dallas Cowboys games, No Shiner Bock, No Wolf Brand Chili. The Bourbon makes up for a lot of it, though.
Something Interesting? I’m a 6th Generation Texan and a great-great-great-great grand nephew of Erasmus “Deaf” Smith! (Note that the number of “greats” is just an estimate.)
Despite my current location, I am still a Texas Poster, and I’ll kick the ass of anyone who says otherwise!
Where I’m from: Palacios (born), Richardson, Garland (where to date I’ve still spent most of my life), Rockwall, Dallas, Waco, and Alpine (where I spent the last 10 years until I had to move out of state!)
What I do for a living: Asst. Professor of Geology (if you chose to go into academia, you don’t get to chose where you live!)
What I love about where I live (Kentucky Bluegrass): It reminds me a lot of the Central Texas Hill Country (especially the people and terrain), but the weather is nicer.
What I hate about where I live: No Dallas Cowboys games, No Shiner Bock, No Wolf Brand Chili. The Bourbon makes up for a lot of it, though.
Something Interesting? I’m a 6th Generation Texan and a great-great-great-great grand nephew of Erasmus “Deaf” Smith! (Note that the number of “greats” is just an estimate.)