THEY'LL BE DANCING IN THE STREETS

After nine or ten years of hearing about it, and selling the t-shirts and advertising for it at the garden shop where I worked, we finally made it to Houston's Lights in the Heights street festival! The Heights is my favorite neighborhood in all of Houston, one of the earliest "master-planned" communities, located off I-10 near downtown. It's full of charming old houses like my grandma's both had, and every year the Woodland Heights section blocks off a few streets, encourages everyone to string up lights, gets people to volunteer their porches and driveways for everything from classic rock bands and jazz trios to a capella carolers, then invites the entire city to come enjoy the sights and sounds - for free!

So what were we waiting for, you ask? An invitation, I suppose, and this year we finally got one. Thanks to Austin's good buddy Carl, Carl's girlfriend, and his housemates, who were hosting one of the bands on their porch, instead of being on the outside looking in, we got to be on the inside this year -- one of the cool people that are seen in houses and yards all along the route, enjoying catered affairs under tents, or just roasting marshmallows around a firepit, and dancing in the street.