Pics from Houston

We were in Houston this weekend for Charles' debut as a delegate to the state Democratic convention. Photos from the convention & his dinner with old classmates are here.
All told the convention was interesting for us both. The caucusing wasn't as organized as he would have liked it, and their district meeting went nearly up to midnight. When I got there around 6pm, he hadn't eaten anything, so I had to run across town to a pub to get a couple of sandwiches for him & I. Had I been thinking I probably could have brought other people some food & auctioned it off: there were a number of people looking at us & licking their chops at the thought of a dinner.
The rest of the weekend was mostly running around Houston. We did get to Spec's and managed to exercise our wine snobbery & taste a few new bottles that we brought back. Our house wine was the Haywood 2000 Merlot, but that wine is on the 2001 or 2002 vintage now, and it doesn't have the same flavor. That stuff was chocolatey & smooth, and was about $6 a bottle at our local HEB.
The lowlight of the weekend was when we came back on Sunday and our next door neighbor let us know that he suspects one of his trees has oak wilt. Its a fungus which is running through our neighborhood & travels about 75 ft in a year. It kills the live oaks by blocking the movement of nutrients from the roots to the leaves. Treatment by fungicide could run around $900/tree. Could be painful - we're going to investigate some options.