Reefmonkey

On 10/18/2017 at 11:14 PM, BillyBreedlove said:

Have any of your opinions about Houston changed in the intervening years? Do you think things have gotten better, worse or stayed the same? I'm moving to Houston in a few weeks (from Dallas!) and have been browsing through topics here.

I think if anything my tongue-in-cheek objective of the article, to keep people from moving to Houston, was not very effective Houston feels like it's gotten a lot more crowded in the last 13 years, the traffic feels like it has gotten worse, and it's not nearly as affordable a place to live as it used to be. The value of my one-story 1965 house off Memorial just outside the tollway has gone up by 60% of what I bought it for eleven years ago. That's 3 times higher than can be accounted for by inflation. I would not have been able to afford this house at its present value converted into 2006 dollars. That's great as an investment, but it sucks for property taxes, and it sucks for young couple who would like to get into this neighborhood. Of course literally half (48%) of my neighborhood flooded two months ago (I was one of the lucky ones), so we'll see what that does to the value 18 months from now.

I don't live in town anymore, and my priorities are different as a husband and father at 41 than they were a single guy at 28, so I'm not hitting those restaurants up before I've booked both a table and a babysitter, which isn't that often. The restaurant scene has gotten so much national coverage in the past 13 years, and again, a lot more people, so I imagine samagon is right about it being a lot harder to get into trendy restaurants in 2017 than it was in 2004.

I don't feel like the summers have gotten any hotter than they did circa 2004, but I do feel like they stick around deep into "Fall" a lot longer than they used to.

The cost of live theatre tickets in this city, especially for the national touring productions, seems to have risen so much as to be out of hand these days, and they sell out fast.

I still love Galveston, still think it is a great place, hasn't changed too much from what it was in 2004, and where it has changed, it's been mostly for the better. Honestly Ike was in retrospect one of the best things that could have happened, put a halt to all the over-the-top speculative development that was trying to turn Galveston into Miami Beach or the Hamptons or something. In the meantime, the food scene has gotten better with places like No 13 and Farley Girls. I probably spend more time there than I used to, now that I own a sailboat.

I think Houston has done a pretty good job in recent years to beautify, have more green spaces, attractive mixed-use development, clean up and beautify esplanades, get rid of blight, etc.

I really have had no personal run-ins with the police the past 13 years, and they seem to have cleaned up their act in a lot of ways, so no complaints there.

Homeless people,  there seem to be more panhandlers, and in areas where they didn't used to be, like out in the suburbs.

Just finished reading this book about the history of the West Houston area, from Old Spring Branch out to Piney Point and all the way to what is now Highway 6. If you live in the area and have wanted to learn more about what was here before it became suburbs and urban sprawl, it is literally the book on the subject. Mostly because I don't know of any other books written about this area. It does get a little tedious from time to time, after about the third or fourth family of German settlers who all die of yellow fever or cholera, they all start to run together.

https://www.pleasantbend.com/about-the-book-1.html

Bump for October.

• The Official Preppy Handbook (published 1980) has a section on "where the preps are" each day of the week in several cities across the country, including Houston, and gives some good insight into Houston's bar scene in the late 70s. I was born in 1976, so I don't remember any of this, but below each entry from OPH I give a "where are they now" update as best as I can:

Monday

Roscoe’s Cafe & Jazzbar. 3230 Chimney Rock. Live Jazz, big name performers, Backgammon tables.

I never went to Roscoe’s and I don’t ever remember hearing about it. Now it’s a digital printing center.

Tuesday

Butera’s. 5019 Montrose. Deli, very casual, with millions of different beers. The place to be seen, but closes early at 8 p.m.

Butera’s had phenomenal sandwiches. My favorite was one with roasted portobella mushroom and red pepper slices. They were still open at least into the early 2000s, but have been closed for several years now.

Wednesday

St. Michel. 2150 Richmond. Jazz, very sophisticated atmosphere.

I never went there, never heard of it. It looks like now there is a fairly new building in that location filled with doctors offices.

Thursday

Kay’s Lounge. 2324 Bissonnet. Neighborhood bar with game room. Relaxed.

Ah Kays, I’ve been there several times, as has my wife, it’s one of many places in Houston we figured we probably just missed meeting each other before we finally met. My wife ended up stuck there during Tropical Storm Allison when her car got flooded in the street, two years before we met. This was also a favorite hangout of longtime Channel 13 ABC affiliate evening anchorman Dave Ward. It only closed last year (2016), and I think the building is still there and nothing has reopened in it yet.

Friday

The Hofbrau. 1803 Shepherd. Texas roadhouse for steaks and heavy imbibation. Fraternity hangout.

The Hofbrau is still there, I went a few times in the late 90s. It lost its cache, though in the mid 90s when Tilman Fertitta of Landry’s Restaurants chain bought it and turned it into a nationwide chain. That man is much despised here in the Houston area.

Saturday

The Cadillac Bar. 1802 Shepherd. Roast quail at this bar /restaurant. Famous for its Ramos Gin Fizzes.

The Cadillac Bar is still there, across the street from the Hofbrau, and it endured the exact same fate, also bought by the Landry’s group and its concept taken nationwide.

Sunday

Cody’s. 3400 Montrose. Top floor (10th) with great view. Key spot. Good jazz, dress code.

When I was young and single in the late 90s, early 00s, this location was called Scott Gertner’s Sky Bar, but other than that it was pretty much as described by the OPH. I took a lot of dates there, because you could step out of the bar and onto a patio on the 10th floor with great views to downtown, the Medical Center, etc. Dates that stopped there always went very well, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, the bar closed maybe 10 years ago, and the building was razed. It’s now a luxury apartment highrise

Also, when I moved back to Houston after college in 1998, I lived in the old Westpoint Apartments on Westheimer and Fondren. My parents laughed that I lived there, because they remembered going to parties there when they first moved to Houston, young and childless, in the early 70s. They talked about there being a nightclub right there at the apartment complex called Barbary Coast.

Sorry, this website is acting really buggy today, I go to post or edit, and it tells me I can't, but then posts anyway, and I then try again before realizing it's now double posted.

The Official Preppy Handbook (published 1980) has a section on "where the preps are" each day of the week in several cities across the country, including Houston, and gives some good insight into Houston's bar scene in the late 70s. I was born in 1976, so I don't remember any of this, but below each entry from OPH I give a "where are they now" update as best as I can:

Monday

Roscoe’s Cafe & Jazzbar. 3230 Chimney Rock. Live Jazz, big name performers, Backgammon tables.

I never went to Roscoe’s and I don’t ever remember hearing about it. Now it’s a digital printing center.

Tuesday

Butera’s. 5019 Montrose. Deli, very casual, with millions of different beers. The place to be seen, but closes early at 8 p.m.

Butera’s had phenomenal sandwiches. My favorite was one with roasted portobella mushroom and red pepper slices. They were still open at least into the early 2000s, but have been closed for several years now.

Wednesday

St. Michel. 2150 Richmond. Jazz, very sophisticated atmosphere.

I never went there, never heard of it. It looks like now there is a fairly new building in that location filled with doctors offices.

Thursday

Kay’s Lounge. 2324 Bissonnet. Neighborhood bar with game room. Relaxed.

Ah Kays, I’ve been there several times, as has my wife, it’s one of many places in Houston we figured we probably just missed meeting each other before we finally met. My wife ended up stuck there during Tropical Storm Allison when her car got flooded in the street, two years before we met. This was also a favorite hangout of longtime Channel 13 ABC affiliate evening anchorman Dave Ward. It only closed last year (2016), and I think the building is still there and nothing has reopened in it yet.

Friday

The Hofbrau. 1803 Shepherd. Texas roadhouse for steaks and heavy imbibation. Fraternity hangout.

The Hofbrau is still there, I went a few times in the late 90s. It lost its cache, though in the mid 90s when Tilman Fertitta of Landry’s Restaurants chain bought it and turned it into a nationwide chain. That man is much despised here in the Houston area.

Saturday

The Cadillac Bar. 1802 Shepherd. Roast quail at this bar /restaurant. Famous for its Ramos Gin Fizzes.

The Cadillac Bar is still there, across the street from the Hofbrau, and it endured the exact same fate, also bought by the Landry’s group and its concept taken nationwide.

Sunday

Cody’s. 3400 Montrose. Top floor (10th) with great view. Key spot. Good jazz, dress code.

When I was young and single in the late 90s, early 00s, this location was called Scott Gertner’s Sky Bar, but other than that it was pretty much as described by the OPH. I took a lot of dates there, because you could step out of the bar and onto a patio on the 10th floor with great views to downtown, the Medical Center, etc. Dates that stopped there always went very well, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, the bar closed maybe 10 years ago, and the building was razed. It’s now a luxury apartment highrise.

Also, when I moved back to Houston after college in 1998, I lived in the old Westpoint Apartments on Westheimer and Fondren. My parents laughed that I lived there, because they remembered going to parties there when they first moved to Houston, young and childless, in the early 70s. They talked about there being a nightclub right there at the apartment complex called Barbary Coast.

Anyone know how a landlocked neighborhood next to the Heights got a moniker with "Beach" in it?

Does it have anything to do with the Heights being dry (liquor-free)? I ask because I went to college at SMU, which is in the dry municipality of University Park. On the other side of Mockingbird Lane is "wet" City of Dallas, and a liquor store right there. There used to be a big grassy field on the SMU side of Mockingbird right across from the liquor store, called "Cockerell Field", but nicknamed "Cockerell Beach" because it was "dry" land right next to "wet".

Anyone know how a landlocked neighborhood next to the Heights got a moniker with "Beach" in it?

Does it have anything to do with the Heights being dry (liquor-free)? I ask because I went to college at SMU, which is in the dry municipality of University Park. On the other side of Mockingbird Lane is "wet" City of Dallas, and a liquor store right there. There used to be a big grassy field on the SMU side of Mockingbird right across from the liquor store, called "Cockerell Field", but nicknamed "Cockerell Beach" because it was "dry" land right next to "wet".

I remember my mother taking me to a large store in the Heights area in the early 80s, the store specialized in decorations, but especially Christmas decorations, and had these huge Christmas-themed displays with animatronic figures and everything, like something out of "It's a Small World" Disney ride. I want to say the store's name was something like "San Lorenz" or "San Lorenzo"? Anyone remember this place?

It's the user name I use for most discussion forums. I'm a scuba diver and fisherman, so I like coral reefs and oyster reefs, and I've always liked monkeys ever since I had a monkey for a stuffed animal as a child, so I combined the two.

I'm not sure which forum this could be a subforum in - maybe Community Announcements, but a place not only to announce volunteering opportunities, but discuss and offer feedback on volunteering experiences, which ones seemed worthwhile and which ones did not seem to appreciate or have a constructive use for people who showed up to volunteer.

Has anyone volunteered at George R Brown Convention Center on Thanksgiving Day and can give feedback?

I know Thanksgiving is a long way off, but I'm asking now for the following reasons:

1. It's a New Years resolution for me to get my (currently) third grade daughter into volunteering, so I want to plan and commit our calender for the year now while the impetus is fresh. We're doing Trash Bash this spring (which I've done before and took her about 2 years ago), but I really want to help focus her away from the holidays being about consumption and more about giving to the needy and I thought the classic volunteering on Thanksgiving would be a good start.

2. I figure the GRB Thanksgiving Dinner being the big one, time slots for the morning through noonish fill up fast, with people wanting to go to their own family dinners after that, so wanted to know how far in advance I would need to sign up to get a spot that works with our usual extended familial obligations.

3. I figure we aren't that far past last year's Thanksgiving so peoples' recollections of their volunteer experiences will still be fresh.

So, the feedback I'd like to know about volunteering for Thanksgiving at the GRB is:

1. Would you recommend it for a 9 year old girl?

2. How far in advance does one need to sign up to get a mid-morning through mid-day slot?

3. Does it feel like you're actually needed/appreciated/doing something worthwhile? While most of my volunteering experiences have been extremely positive, I've had a few that weren't, and some of those were high profile volunteering events where there were more volunteers than the organizers knew what to do with, so a lot of volunteers were given kind of pointless busy work. Other negative experiences seemed to be where there were cliques of people who all knew each other and/or did the event every year and weren't welcoming to newcomers. Any concerns like that to the GRB Thanksgiving event?

Thanks for any feedback

It's definitely Northline. The stores visible in the picture match the layout on this map:

 

http://blog.chron.com/bayoucityhistory/files/legacy/northline.pdf

Man, the list of stores remind me of how things have changed in terms of what stores you expect to see in a Houston mall. Now it's all Teavana, Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister, etc. But back when I was a kid (born in 1976), it wasn't a shopping mall if it didn't have:

A Walgreens

Hickory Farms

B Dalton's or Waldenbooks

A cafeteria (usually Piccadilly or Wyatt's)

A pet store

A Florsheim shoes (that's all my dad used to wear back in the day)

A piano store

A Sticks n Wicks

Orange Julius

An arcade

And an in-mall movie theater

Also, I was tickled to see a "One's a Meal".

Here's a couple of Class Photos from 1964 and 1966, respectively.

Rummel Creek Elementary School.

 

Our Culture was pervasive. We were all so the same!

I don't know if you still live in the area and know this, but they tore Rummel Creek Elementary completely down and are in the process of rebuilding it on the same location. The elementary school is temporarily being run at a "transition campus" (basically a bunch of temporary buildings) in the parking lot of the old Westchester High School (now Westchester Academy for International Studies) but will be moving into the new RCE building later this school year.

The only one I remember from my childhood was the one at the southeast corner of Kuykendahl and Louetta in the early 80s. I loved the steak and cheese burrito, it was like slices of Steakums and hot cheese whizz, with sauteed onions. When they opened the one at Westheimer and Fondren a few years ago, I raced over there and was really disappointed not to find it. I tried their fish tacos, a beef burrito, and a bean burrito, but there are SO many better options in Houston for good, fast, cheap tacos and burritos, it's no wonder they didn't last.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of any good articles on the history of Vaudeville in Houston? I'd love to know where some of the theaters were, and if any of them are still standing. I remember in about 2000 going to a bar in downtown that looked like it had been an old theater, and am racking my brain for the name, that was theater-oriented. I know a lot of vaudeville houses got converted to movie theaters in the 30s, I wonder if any of the old theaters tha are still standing were once vaudeville houses?

I don't know about other systems, but with ADT if an alarm is sounded, they first call you up to see what is going on, and with a code word you can tell them it was false. Otherwise they will call the po-po and try to get patrol to go by. I suspect this protocol has caused a big drop in non-productive patrol dispatches over time.

 

Every household has to decide for itself whether it is comfortable with being monitored 24/7, taking into account children, pets (with motion sensors), etc. During the holidays ADT sends out a letter telling you to instruct your guests not to play with the alarm buttons. I guess they generate a certain amount of spurious calls for service. 

 

Say what you will about nuisance alarms, but the centrally-monitored residential burglar alarm has made the resettlement of the American inner city a workable project. Before the monitored alarm, only homes with dogs and high fences stood a decent chance of resisting invasion.

Yeah, our system works like that, with the call from the company first. That's what was really troubling about the incident we had, the company had called to ask if everything was alright, my wife said she didn't know, and she was scared someone might be breaking in, the company alerted police dispatch and let them know it was a genuine alarm, and still no one came, so it's tough for me to have any sympathy for the city alarm division.

I"ll apologize up front for being snarky and critical. If it were up to me, HPD would never respond to an alarm of any type. The vast majority, over 99+% are false alarms, which waste police resources, and my tax dollars. I recommend dropping the alarm, but keep the sign. If you want an immediate response from HPD, call 911.

You know, I have considered dropping the alarm. It came with the house and my wife just keeps paying the bill, but sometimes I wonder if it isn't more trouble than it's worth. I'm not sure my wife even sets it anymore when I am out of town, after that incident. I think what may have happened is when she armed it she didn't turn off the interior motion sensors (it's an older system and doesn't have the straightforward "stay" and "away" settings almost all newer systems have) and the cats probably set it off. And she and my stepson have always been bad about forgetting to turn it off before opening a door, and then he whined about how "traumatizing" it was for it to go off (that's another story), so it doesn't get used much and I have suggested dropping it but my wife insists on keeping it for when we go out of town (we have a house in Galveston so we are gone a decent number of weekends).

COH has a good site for managing your account. I don't know why they miss your first billing. For all recurring annual bills, I maintain a little calendar that shows me that something is getting stale. I get billed by them around Dec 11 for a Jan 25 expiry, and so far I have not lapsed in 9 years.

 

They allow you to print out your invoice and pay it online even.

 

https://www.houstonburglaralarmpermits.org/Citizen/City/Houston/ATB_Login.aspx

 

The alarm itself is not much use for the immediate threat presented by the invader(s). For that, feel free to call on Mr. Glock, Mr. Colt, or Mr. Remington. 

Yeah, I found that website. I tried it a couple of years ago when my first notice was a phone call telling me I was overdue, but could not complete it because I didn't have anything telling me what my permit number was, and Brinks was no help giving me that. Now I have saved a copy of the duplicate invoice I made them send me this year, and I'm putting it in my outlook calendar to remind me to check this at the end of December, so I can do their billing job for them.

The last suggestion isn't workable for me, beyond the usual statistics on that, I have small children in the house, and my wife hates guns anyway, so they would do her no good when I am out of town, which is when I worry most.

Every year I have the same problem - I don't receive an invoice from the ARA Alarm Administration for renewal of my burglar alarm. I don't find out it is overdue until I get a nasty red overdue statement or automated phone call, both of which threaten me with misdemeanor fines and saying they will be directing emergency services not to respond to my house. I don't get it, they know where to send the red "overdue" notices, so obviously they have my address right, why can't they get the initial invoices there on time? With all the other crap - property taxes, car registration, dog license, monthly bills, etc, I don't think it's reasonable that they should expect me to clairvoyantly say "oh, it feels like my burglar alarm permit bill may be due" when they don't send me a bill.

It pisses me off, because it's obviously another revenue-grasping BS tax, that they would threaten not to provide services to my house. I pay $7,000 in property taxes every year in addition to the thousands I pay in sales tax that goes towards emergency services which they should thus be obligated to provide no matter how I call for them. But despite all that money I provide, they are going to let me be robbed, murdered, or burned up over a measley $50 that they can't seem to figure out how to bill me for in a timely manner?

What really pisses me off is that several years ago when my alarm went off twice in the span of an hour when I was completely paid up on my permit and my wife and toddler daughter were alone in the house and thought someone was breaking in, NO ONE RESPONDED! I had to call Houston Police from my business trip in Ohio and tell them that the last thing I heard from my wife was a bloodcurdling scream as the alarm went off again and cut the phone off, and still the response time was abysmal. So what exactly is this "Alarm permit fee" buying me that they think I shouldn't get emergency services if I don't pay it?

It's a BS fee, but whatever, I'm used to being nickeled and dimed by government agencies, so bill me for it and I'll pay it. Or better yet, why can't it be tacked onto my burglar alarm bill just like cities and counties automatically tack on taxes and fees every time I rent a car or pay a hotel bill?

Has anyone else had a problem with getting their alarm permit invoice in a timely manner, or am I just unlucky?

I was born in '76, lived out in the suburbs, but remember almost any time my mother had an excuse to take us into town for a doctor's appointment, or was planning a big party, she would stop at Jamail's on Kirby. Long before Central Market, Trader Joe's, or even Rice Epicurean, Jamail's was pretty much the only high end grocery store with specialty items in Houston. I remember first getting Jelly Belly jelly beans there in the early 80s, when they became a fad because then newly elected President Reagan was partial to them. I also remember it being a real treat to get a coke from the coke machine while my mom shopped. They came in the little 8 oz glass bottles, and cost no more than 15 cents, may have been as low as 5 cents, and you returned the bottle before you left the store. I just remember at a time when a can of coke cost 50 cents from a machine, marveling at how cheap the coke bottles were there.

Anyone else have any specific memories of the place, or some photos of the interior?

I was reading through Houston Press's series of blogs on the histories of different Houston neighborhoods ("The Changing Face of Houston") and in the entry on Oak Forest, I stumbled upon a surprising claim:

Longtime resident Elizabeth Mendez remembers how Oak Forest was 50 years ago,"My family bought our house in the early 1960s. At that point Antoine was a bayou and beyond that it was just pasture land. The bayou was filled in and became Antoine, one of the major streets in the area."

I don't know a lot about road building, I do know a bit more about stormwater management, but it seems like it would be a bad idea structurally as well as in terms of flood control, as well as prohibitively expensive to fill in a bayou and turn it into a road, so it is something that would not have been done even in the 1960s. Plus, Antoine runs pretty far west of what I think of as Oak Forest's western boundary. I know that White Oak Bayou runs through that area, and that East and West TC Jester Rds follow White Oak's course closely on either bank, so I wonder if that is what this woman is thinking of?

I'm going to put this question in the comments section of the Houston Press blog, but wondered if anyone here had any thoughts?

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack/2014/09/the_changing_face_of_houston_-_oak_forest.php?page=2

Huh. I know this is an old thread to be resurrecting, but I've seen far older threads get resurrected here, anyway, I stumbled across this thread while looking for something, and it brought on some nostalgia. I'm the person who originally wrote this article on the now-defunct Epinions back in 2004, and had no idea it was being talked about here in 2010. It's gratifying to see that Howard Huge, Fringe, et all liked it. Seems not everyone liked it though:

I read that whole OLD, LAME article AGAIN for the umpteenth time before I posted my original comment. And I seem to remember there being a long boring thread about it a long time ago. - maybe it was at HAIF, maybe not. So I was hoping this thread would be closed before all the uglyness began. But here we go. AGAIN.

I get it Mr. Huge, (actually I got it a decade ago when I read it the first time) the opinion in the article is that Houston really doesn't suck -especially when compared to other cities.
WOW. What an ingenious article. Oh, the irony.

Maybe if Mr. Coaster had known the context for my writing the article, he would have been more forgiving of its "LAME"ness and lack of "ingen(uity)." One of the administrators in the Travel section on Epinions had an ongoing "contest" for people to write a review of their hometown. No one had entered an essay on Houston, and I looked at the reviews for Houston and most of them were screeds on how much it sucked, so I thought it would be funny to write a review that at first appeared to "agree" with all the negative ones,  but was only doing so to keep people away. For the record, I got high marks from a lot of people, including the administrator who started the "contest", for my original and tongue-in-cheek approach. Anyway, fun to read something I had long forgotten I had written.
 

That's how all these suburbs develop--they'll tend to latch onto an existing town and essentially transform it into a suburb.

I was shocked about a year ago to see that this had happened to Fulshear. I started going out there to Dozier's Grocery for barbecue in about 2000, usually via Westheimer/FM 1093, and pretty fast after you got past Highway 6, it seemed like you were out in the country all the way. Seemed to be that way well into the late 00s at least. But then when I went out there last year it seemed that Fulshear had become surrounded by Katy suburbs, and the old town had been made-over into a faux-folksy strip mall. It seemed like it happened overnight and is so disheartening.

nm

I found it! It was the TinselTown 24 at Westpark and Beltway 8, opening in 1997 and closing in 2008 (January of both years, I believe). Looking back at old HAIF posts, the theater was physically run-down and very "ghetto" by the the late 2000s. And I now how quickly these sorts of entertainment venues can get run down.

Whoa! I had no idea that theatre had closed down and been demolished, and I live in the general area (I'm at Dairy-Ashford and Memorial since 2006), and I also worked at Westheimer and the Tollway and then Richmond and the Tollway from 2002 through 2011.

I lived at Westheimer and Fondren from August 1998-January 2000 (my first apartment after moving back to Houston after college), and used to go to movies there a lot during that time. I remember being excited that there was a Tinseltown so close to me, since I had gotten attached to one in Dallas in college (my first experience with stadium seating and plush, comfortable theatre seats). That theatre was nice and new when I first went. Thinking it got old and then was demolished makes me feel old.

I think the last movie I saw there was one of the Matrix sequels, so that would be 2003? My boss and several of us sneaked out of work to go see it (by then I had long been living inside the Loop and the Edwards at 59 and Weslayan was my usual theatre).

Speaking of skanky theatres reminds me of the last time I was in Sharpstown Mall. I went there because the theatre there was the last  in the city that was still showing "Team America: World Police", and I went in the middle of the day because my wife didn't want to see it and she was off doing something else that Saturday. The theatre was practically empty, I may have been the only person in it, or there may have been like two other people. I'm watching the movie, when this furtive movement on the floor keeps catching my eye and distracting me. So I start paying attention, seeing little blurrs, until finally one comes to a stop in the middle of the center aisle and starts munching on some spilled popcorn. It was a freakin' rat. I start looking around me and see other little bodies scurrying between rows of seats, the entire theatre was infested with rats. I kept my feet up in my seat and finished watching the movie, waited until they turned on the house lights before putting them back down and got out of there as fast as I could.