Kudos to Carolyn Feibel and Matt Stiles at the Houston Chronicle, who not only dug up the records of how our city council members spent their remaining 2008 budget, but also wrangled some dubious excuses out of the more heinous offenders. Among the more comical expenditures was over $1,600 for chairs upholstered in pink fabric for the office of new councilwoman Jolanda Jones, widely known for her love of the pastel shade. Earlier this year,......

Here you go Houston, more food and wine events for you to peruse. We are going to work to get you more than one Culinary Events posting per week, as the holidays can increase the number of events, dinners, fund-raising food and beverage activities and festivals. Also, we strive to give you some advance notice - as you can't always get your reservations or tickets, which ever the case may be, on the day......

Here we go, the big mother of all holidays. Love it, or hate it – it’s nearly December and whether you’re into Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa or whatever else you may be into, December is a really bigass month. If nothing else, the streets are more congested, people drive even crazier than normal and the average Houstonian is pelted with food, drink and festivities. Yeah, we hate drinking and eating, we know how you feel......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • Morning rains have created some road closures in town. • A body has been discovered in a gully near Seabrook • Hit and run accident critically injures pedestrian. • Unmanned drones are being tested by the FAA in Houston. • Could it really be? Lower property taxes for Harris county homeowners. • A plane owned by a Houston area man crashed in......

Good morning, Houston. So this is what it must be like to live in California, huh? We're looking at a string of fantastic days, with highs in the lower to mid 70s and lows around 50 into the weekend. Today, expect a high of 73 with clear skies. You know what that means? We all have to spend as much time as possible outside. Yep, you have our permission to skip school and work......

Did you protest the taxes on your home this past year? If so, we hope you did your research on your neighbors’ appraisals already. If you didn’t, you’re out of luck. Thanks to a new law passed by the state, the Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) was forced to pull their property appraisal database from their website this week. Don't get out your walking shoes yet – the information can't be obtained from the county......

Trips to New York City always entail a few specific requirements for Houstonist, one of which is a visit to Joe’s Shanghai for the mind-blowing soup dumplings. Our last visit to NYC was over a year ago, but the soup dumplings have haunted our dreams ever since. So we set out to find soup dumplings of our very own in the international mecca of Houston. After many disappointing experiences, we finally found a place that......

Wow — it's still six months to Christmas, and yet we're getting gifts already: The AP reports that everyone's favorite golden-haired politico, Shelley Sekula Gibbs, is laying the groundwork for her campaign to return to Congress. Oh, yes. Sekula Gibbs (notice that she's dropped the hyphen, which she worried could be a problem during her write-in campaign for Congress last year) announced that she has some high-profile Republican supporters for her 2008 campaign, including homebuilder......

Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. Can you please explain to me the thinking behind headlights that stay on AFTER you've turned the car off? Unless your car is pointed exactly the direction you’re walking in, the lights don’t do you much good. What’s the deal? Picture this. You’re standing outside at night - perhaps you’ve just finished dinner and are waiting for the valet to retrieve your car......

Good morning, Houston. We hope you got your fill of the Texas Legislature, because the 80th session is officially over. Your Senators and Representatives have been hard at work since January, passing lots of bills and making even more news, and now they'll be taking a break. The Houston contingent did us proud, from strip club taxes to baby-selling to overcoming liver transplants. We hope all the Texas political blogs can survive until 2009.......

Astros fans are used to the "Hey, things could be worse" mentality. When playing .500 ball is about as good as it's gotten all season, it's nice to look at teams who have dug much deeper holes for themselves and say, "Thank God I'm not from Kansas City." Houston's Clear Thinkers had an interesting post this week that, instead of complaining about the Astros, highlighted the consistent failure of the Royals. We're not here to......

The Chronicle has a few more details today about the proposed Houston Dynamo stadium downtown — but not many. What we know: It would be an open-air stadium seating somewhere around 22,000 people, and it would likely be built on Minute Maid Park's parking lot C, the six-square-block lot on the other side of Highway 59 from the baseball stadium. Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns the Dynamo, would pay most of the construction costs, and......

Tomorrow's special election to fill the vacant at-large city council seat has been in the local news often enough lately. But there's something else on the ballot that hasn't been given as much long-term publicity: a proposed Constitutional amendment. In the state of Texas, amendments to the Constitution must be ratified by a majority of voters - even if those voters only make up about eight percent of the total voter pool, which is the......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......

So, we assume you know what today is. And as you run around gathering your 1040s and Schedule Cs, remember that you have until midnight tonight to actually drop your taxes in the mail. The Chronicle reports that mail in boxes at Houston-area post offices will be collected before midnight, and a few stations will be staffed late: Air Mail Center, 19175 Lee Road (until midnight) Albert Thomas Station, 14910 El Camino Real (until 7......

Thanks to Patriot's Day, everyone has a little bit of extra time to get their tax returns in, but you probably already knew that they're still due tomorrow. The conservative media has weighed in, one blogger lets us know about a "tax rap" contest, and CNN even tells you how many days you must work to pay off your taxes - it's 109 in Texas, which isn't too bad compared to the rest of the......

More on yesterday's news that Metro is now in the business of land investing: According to county tax officials, the transit agency could end up having to pay taxes on two blocks of Midtown property it's holding for a private developer for several months. Metro's board approved the purchase of the property in question, a two-block, $7.2 million parcel bordered by Main, Holman, Travis and Winbern, on March 22. The seller is developer Robert H.......

The Chronicle reports today on an interesting land deal going down in Midtown: Metro is buying two blocks of Main Street property from a developer with plans to sell it back to the developer after a few months so the developer can build a transit-oriented development there. For developer Robert H. Schultz of RHS Interests, it's a pretty sweet deal: He gets cash in hand for the property now, a year-long guarantee that he can......

Well hello, Houston! It's the greatest day in America: Opening Day 2007! Spring Training is over, the roster is set and now it's time to play ball. The Astros' main concern last year was hitting. Heck, it was pathetic, but Uncle Drayton broke out the checkbook, signed power hitter Carlos Lee for a cool $100 million and added utility player and 2006 All-Star Mark Loretta. Also new to the team are a pair of native......

As expected, Halliburton's announcement Sunday that it'll establish a corporate headquarters in Dubai and move its CEO there sparked some criticism in Congress yesterday from legislators who claim the company is making the change so it can increase business with Iran and take tax benefits in the U.S. "I think Congress ought to hold hearings to try to determine why one of this country's major defense contractors has decided to move its principal offices offshore,"......

A Katy middle school teacher is scheduled to appear in court today after she was found her engaging in a little extracurricular activity with a student in a parked car early Saturday morning. It happened near Greenhouse and West Little York in west Harris County, where sheriff's deputies got a call about a suspicious vehicle parked alongside the road. When a deputy arrived at about 2 a.m., he found 28-year-old McDonald Junior High math teacher......

A new incentive is in the works for owners of designated historic landmark buildings - a permanent 100% exemption from city property taxes. The city will also seek county exemptions, which would probably be limited since much of the county's revenue comes from property taxes. Another possible proposal would make it easier for property owners to create a new historic district. Currently, 67% of homeowners who make up 51% of the land area have......

Let's think back a few years to the late 1990s, when Houston's downtown revitalization was beginning in earnest and a variety of bars, restaurants, clubs and entertainment venues were opening in the area that once was a virtual no-man's-land after business hours. Everything seemed like it was going well for a while — Bayou Place was developed, the baseball stadium opened, old buildings were being restored, some great businesses popped up — and then, over......

Good morning, Houston! There's some good news: If you graduated from high school, you're already ahead of a third of Texas students. Of course, that means there's also some bad news — namely, that a third of Texas students don't finish high school. And according to statistics, the situation is even worse in the state's big cities: There, more students drop out than finish high school. Elleen Coppola, a Rice University researcher, said dropouts......

Bistro Toulouse, located at 5750 Woodway, will be hosting a St. Arnold's Beer Dinner on Tuesday, January 23rd. The dinner/beer costs $65/per person plus gratuity and taxes. The meal will consist of five courses, paired with a seasonal beer, which is used in the preparation of the course (beer with dessert - fabulous - and it's Winter Stout!). This is a first for Bistro Toulouse - we hope it's not the last! If you are......

If you've driven by the former AstroWorld site lately and wondered what was going on with that big, bare patch of ground, here's the answer:Planning is under way to turn it into a massive, high-density transit-oriented development. Conroe-based Angel/McIver Interests, which bought the land for $77 million last year, has asked for the creation of a municipal management district for the site, which would help fund infrastructure improvements including roads, parking facilities, drainage and landscaping.......

To Samuel White, it must have seemed like the perfect setup: Deface your house with racial slurs, burn it down and claim you had been the victim of a hate crime — then collect the insurance money and live happily ever after. And sure, it might have worked if White had just been a little more sneaky. As it was, though, he made just about every mistake you can imagine in carrying out the crime,......

The Houck house was built in 1947 and originally inhabited by the founder of the Braes Heights subdivision (now part of the larger Braeswood Place), Harvey Houck, and is located at 3780 Gramercy St. According to the Houston Architectural Guide,* it was a "late but spirited modern house, incorporating such contemporary details as the solarium's canted green glass windows." The house was included in Houston Mod's endangered list around the time it was put up......

While Houstonist took a post-holiday trip to a local warehouse retail outlet, we noticed several shoppers with carts filled to the rim with cartons of cigarettes. Then, we remembered why: As of yesterday, it will now cost smokers an extra dollar to buy a pack of cigarettes. That’s due to a new law that went in effect state-wide, raising the price of cigarette taxes from 41 cents a pack to $1.41. The American Cancer Society......

Looking for something different to do on New Year's Eve? Houstonist will bring you some ideas over the next couple of days - starting with Keith & Margo's Murder Mystery - New Year's Eve Celebration - at the Doubletree Hotel Downtown. There are two packages available for the evening - the Basic and the Deluxe. The Basic Package - priced at $279/couple includes an Hors D'Oeuvres Reception, one glas of wine, two glasses of champagne......