So, we were down in Clear Lake salvaging some sinks, toilets, mirrors, handycap rails, et al to use in the new bar (next to the Continental).  Pete knows the guy that owns this place.  It was the old giant Fiesta that went up at I-45 & NASA 1 a little over a decade ago.   It was subdivided into smaller shops, and we went into a large area that I think was at one time the Burlington Coats place, or perhaps it hasn’t been used at all.  It was an amazing space, but it’s not being used.

As I recall, and it looks worse now, the access to this piece of property is a royal pain in the rear, and the more people that go there, the worse it is.  We drove to the other side of the property from where we were working (which took very long because of road humps) and there were a lot of second-rate stores there, run-down mall type stores.

If you had ever been to the Fiesta when it was open, it was the grandest Fiesta of them all, sporting even its own hydroponic garden (behind glass for you to view).  Also (I didn’t know) there is a quite large room upstairs with LOTS of grow lights in it, likely for starting up things that would get placed into the viewable garden.   There was also an insane amount (300 tons) of cooling capacity to deal with the output of the plants and the lights.  And it’s all still there.  It was pretty cool.

We sweated away, doing our labor, but was what really annoying is the radio saying “we’re under a heat advisory, so… er… be advised that it’s hot.”  We’re in Houston in August, where the hell do they think we are?  It hasn’t even got above 100 this whole summer.  And the “heat index” is a bunch of crap.  Yes it feels hotter.  And, yes your ability to evaporatively cool yourself by sweating is diminished in high humidity.  So TURN ON A FAN.

Next they’ll be reporting that the sky is blue and the grass grows more when it rains.

-b