Hey, @humanearl.

Well, both Tillamook and Umpqua are tribal names, or at least the English version of them. So, Umpqua is pretty much pronounced like that. Ump, and then 'quah' at the end.

I was in Brenham because there were several different land lots I was looking at in the area. My wife and I have been talking for several years now about moving from Oregon to somewhere warmer and sunnier. Wasn't the best of first impressions to get 20 degree weather and a trace of snowfall. :)

Still, my wife went with me three other times, and we ended up in the San Antonio area (New Braunfels and out to Canyon Lake), where she actually liked a few places, Dallas, which was just too big for either of us, (though McKinney looked promising), and the Woodlands, which I liked quite a bit, but were also a little spendier than we were looking for.

It's hard to get pine trees and green grass without rain, which means less sunshine, so I'm not sure what we're going to do, since we're used to the green. We need to do something, though, because as we're aging, the cold is getting to us, and so is the gloom for at least six months out of the year.