Okay, so the 40 days and 40 nights of rain have ended… that means it’s time for the Mother of All Heat Waves! As we roll into the hottest month of the year, what are you guys doing to “beat the heat?” The obvious answer is “stay indoors,” but sometimes you just have to get out there. I’ve got something I do that helps me get through my days in the hot box:

Enjoy copious amounts of iced-beverages. Ice simply has to be the greatest thing ever to hit Texas. It can bring your once-sweltering sun-tea to a chill suitable for lowering your core temperature with your very first drink. If you are not into brewing your own… there are some excellent tea houses in town:

After Five
9888 Bellaire Blvd., Houston, TX 77036
(713) 777-5599

Garden Tea Room
16646 Champions Forest Drive, Spring, TX 77379
(281) 251-1151

Idyl Hours Tea Room
12639 Kluge Road, Cypress, TX 77429
(281) 370-2626

Rose Garden Tea Room and Gifts
10750 Grant Road, Houston, TX 77070
(281) 469-2603

Roseanne’s Garden Tea Room
501 E. Main St., League City, TX 77573
(281) 557-4433

Ten Ren Tea Co.
10804 Bellaire Blvd., Houston, TX 77092
(281) 495-2833

Victoria’s Tea Room
118 S. Walnut Drive, Webster, TX 77598
(281) 316-4232

Of course you can get all manner of drink at these places included hot (uggh) teas. In addition, there are thousands of great places to get that southern standard… good old fashioned ICED-TEA!

photo by inkyfingerz via Flickr

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME & HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY TO EVERYONE!!!

I hope everyone enjoys their time off and takes advantage of their liberty and freedom while we’ve still got it!

Woe to the city of Houston, the land without 7-Elevens. If you’re headed up to Dallas, however, make sure to stop by to get your Squishees and Buzz Cola.

From the Chronicle:

Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of “The Simpsons” fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.

Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO’s cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.

This weekend the Houston Metbloggers will be:

* Doing taxes
* Going to Millie Bush Bark Park
* Mowing the yard
* Creating the PMC Top 10 podcast
* Planning a European trip
* Editing video footage
* Submitting application to join the Houston Texans cheerleaders (ahem)
* Going to Japan Fest (Nihon Bunka Center will be demonstrating Aikido)
* Going to Hard Candy Saturday night at the Mink Room (3718 Main St)
* Marveling at Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo
* Snoozing
* Playing a mean bowling game (pitchers of beer included)

What are you up to this weekend?

I have programming on the brain after last night’s awesome Refresh Houston Meetup with WordPress‘ Matt Mullenweg – so these salary figures for software programmers city-by-city were particularly interesting to me (click image for full view, yeah I’m too lazy to re-type right now) :

The salary figures were adjusted to reflect the cost of living in the different cities and MAN what a crazy difference it makes! Houston programmers have twice the buying power that San Francisco developers do! Insane…

Thanks to Marc Nathan for the heads up (via Twitter, wyrd). Photo thanks to our very own Adrian!!

NYC Pillow Fight 023 Originally uploaded by Miss Aleneous.

San Francisco has had a public pillow fight two years in a row. New York just did a pillow fight. Denver had a downtown-wide Capture-The-Flag game. When are we gonna get off our butts and having some fun?

Yeah, I’ve said this before. But come on! Lets do it!

If you’re an NPR junkie, you are probably already familiar with StoryCorps – a group dedicated to capturing regular average Joe stories and memories through public-conducted interviews with friends and family. They make a professional recording, give participants a CD of their interview and archive the interview in the Library of Congress. Good stuff.

StoryCorps is setting up a temporary Houston story recording booth (in a funky old-skool trailer) in front of the Houston Museum of Natural Science from January 11th to February 3rd.

You have to make a reservation to get in, but frustratingly enough their online reservation calendar has shown up booked from the very minute it was available. If you’re interested, you might try calling their reservation line (800) 850-4406 for help or consider sponsoring a StoryBooth recording space for fellow Houstonians to share their stories.

Here are a couple of random Houstonian tips of the day for you audio lovers:

I love music and I love people who make me feel aurally inadequate with their vast encyclopedic vats of miscellaneous musical know-how implanted in their brains. That’s why I like JMac, a transplanted Canadian music junkie making good in Houston. Be sure to check out his Low End Theory podcast for some really exceptional music selections and a lesson or two in beat-driven coolness.

The Metblog’s very own Chris Doelle has several very good Podcasts for you to keep up-to-date on Texas high school football (Lone Star Grid Iron) and Houston-area citizen journalism (This Week in Houston).

What are your favorite Houston podcasts?

It’s that time of year when you get to drive slowly through the streets at night and not get the Neighborhood Watch calling the cops on you. Christmas lights are awesome!

Do you know of a house that is particularly glorious in its tacky lawn decor and brilliant light arrangements? Check out the Bonner’s My Christmas Wonderland site to submit your photos and vote on favorite Houston-area holiday spectacles.

Don’t be shy – add your own house… and be sure to add some photos to the Houston Metblog Flickr group. We are so all about your Christmas light geekiness.

Photo thanks to Flickr user selro4me
Thanks to Aaron of the mighty LongStation for the heads up!

If you feel like you haven’t gotten enough of Joel Osteen (on television, the radio, in the bookstore or hey, maybe even at church), now you get to bring him home to your living room with his Your Best Life Now board game.

Read a play-by-play of the game on www.challies.com.

I’ve never read his book(s) or really listened to any of his sermons, but I continue to be amazed at his Lakewood Church team’s marketing and merchandising skills. Yay for gigantor mega-churches! They must be like super freeways to heaven, right? *ahem*

(Found via Mike McGuff’s blog)