Morning Roundup: What's in a name? edition

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever been driving around in the 'burbs and wondered who names the streets, well, it just might be someone like Susan Vreeland-Wendt, who the Chronicle's Nancy Sarnoff interviewed yesterday. Vreeland-Wendt, marketing director for The Woodlands Operating Co., has come up with more than 1,600 names for roads, parks and neighborhoods in The Woodlands in the last 20 years. Turns out she gets inspiration from all kinds of places: paint charts, wine bottles, songs, poetry — even Star Wars. "Whenever I travel I bring a note pad," she told the Chron. "It's become an obsession. After a while, you never go anywhere without noticing names of things and writing them down." Ms. Vreeland-Wendt, if you're reading, may we humbly suggest a new neighborhood called Houstonist Hills? It does have a certain ring to it ...

>> One dead, dozens hurt in bus crash: A bus en route to Houston from Monterrey, Mexico, overturned on Highway 77 just south of Victoria on Wednesday morning, killing one passenger and injuring nearly four dozen — and KPRC reports that driver fatigue may be to blame for the wreck. "The investigation is centering on driver fatigue," DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said. "It looks like he ran off the road, way overcorrected, then tipped over on the passenger side." Aboard the bus, the scene was as chaotic as you might imagine: "The hardest thing was to see all the other people," 66-year-old passenger Francisco Cardenas told Channel 2. "There was no way out." The driver wasn't seriously injured, Vinger said, and it's not clear yet whether he will face charges.

>> GOP race for DA: Rosenthal out, Leitner in: Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal ended up withdrawing from his re-election campaign Wednesday, ending speculation about whether he'd go or stay. Rosenthal's future has been up in the air since news broke that he sent inappropriate e-mails to his executive secretary; though county Republicans asked him to pull out of the race, Rosenthal had declared that he would stay in and win. For now, it looks like the GOP candidate will be Jim Leitner, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor — but Leitner, who filed candidacy papers yesterday, said he would step aside for another qualified candidate. As for those e-mails, which were sent on county computer equipment and included sentiments like "The very next time I see you I want to kiss you behind your right ear," the DA said they were meant to raise secretary Kerry Stevens' spirits while she dealt with personal problems. (Read the e-mails here and here, courtesy of KHOU.)

>> And, more problems for Rosenthal?: According to KHOU, Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal is facing a federal court hearing for allegedly destroying e-mails subpoenaed in a federal court case. The e-mails in question are the intimate missives between Rosenthal and his executive secretary, Kerry Stevens; according to the contempt motion from attorney Lloyd Kelley, "Chuck Rosenthal has now admitted under oath that [he] sat down at his computer and began deleting the requested e-mails." That could amount to intentional destruction of evidence, Channel 11 reports. The hearing is set to take place the morning of Jan. 31.

>> Today's weather: Just one word: Brr! It's cold this morning, in case you haven't noticed, and it's really not going to get all that much warmer today — expect a lot of sunshine, but an afternoon high barely touching 50 degrees. It'll be a chilly night again, too, though not quite as bad as it has been, with a low around 38. Hot chocolate, anyone?

Speaking of hot chocolate, how about some headlines? (No, we don't know what that means, either.)