The visit of Caitlin

So last weekend I had my frist official visitor to my new home in Houston. Caitlin made the trek all the way from LAX during an evacuation of Terminal 1 (a daily occurence) and after dealing with a particualry wonderful long term parking fiasco. I had my own fun "circling" the Houston Intercontinental Airport, aptly names the George Bush Airport. The feelings I have for the man and his son closely resemble the feelings I have for the airport. You can't really circle the airport, you have to basically go to your loading area, and then exit the airport if you want to go around. So, if your passenger isn't there, you are leaving and coming back again. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to pull up to the curb and then park and wait, while pissing off the people behind you who now have to "circle." Anyway, not my favorite place, and just not worth the chepaer airfare. I am already dreading my next trip to London out of that airport. Really, the return is the worst part, it takes hours to get through security...but that is another story. And just out of pure boredom, let me just point out I am in the Anchorage Airport right now, and they are playing the piano medley of "Heaven is a Place on Earth"...so classy.

Anyway, enough tangents. So, Caitlin arrives, and we head directly to food. I wasn't feeling particularly adventurous after a week of not really eating (see previous post), so we hit up BJS for my turkey sandwich and then some pizookie (I was feeling somewhat better by this point). We then headed back to my place for the usual first night catch up talking session, which was cut off as I remembered I had to work the next morning. I left Caitlin with my DVR and her cell phone and crashed for the night.

Friday morning I had the lovely duty of meeting the buses for the arriving schools. Basically, the same production we used to have at camp, only sixty times more frustrating and 20 times the number of kids (and half the age). Three hours of that is enough to leave anyone hoarse. Caitlin strolled over about 11:30, and I walked her right through security and into the throngs of children awaiting at the play area on the other side. I know she was secretly impressed by the power I had in getting her in for free. Yea, I am that cool. We ate some lunch at the fancy diner in the center and then I left her to her own devices while I did some real work. Met some cool guys from ASP (Astronomical Society of the Pacific) who somewhat offered me a job (yea, that would have gone over well, seeing as they were in SCH's meeting space...). Got ready for my big Alaskan adventure (coming in the next blog) and cleaned out the office. Caitlin took the great tram tour to JSC and listened to her free audio guide I had checked out for her. Yup, even more connections. After a quick check of the gift store and realizing she didn't need any more space crap, we left work. This is when the fun really began. We proceeded to have a photo shoot of the moon boots (from an earlier post than now live in my apartment):






I do not pretend to be proud of those pictures, but they do crack me up.

Friday night we made my first trip down to Galveston. Now, when we first arrived, I was psyched, I was seeing the ocean for the first time in two months (albeit the gross part of the Gulf fo Mexico, but still, a large area of water, with sand even...). I was picturing me bringing every visitor that came to visit down to Galveston. We found this cute street to walk up and down with lots of touristy shops. Too bad that street was only three blocks long. Then we found the ocean front seafood restaurants. All two of them. Backing onto a gross port. We decided to do a little more exploring, despite Irwin's warning of not straying from this main street. We drove to the other side of the island, and there we found a much better selection of places to eat. There wasn't much else, but at least there was food (an important component of any Deb-Caitlin time).

Here are the highlights of Friday evening:

We ate dinner at Casey's, a seafood place across from the beach. Here is me in my first picture of the Gulf since moving to Houston:


Here is the large crustacean above the restaurant, incase you weren't sure what type of food was served there (possibly like the man behind me, who was allergic to shell fish...):


And this is where Caitin completely gave up on trying to take a picture of me eating the animal, and just took a really strange picture instead:

Yea, lovely, I know.

And, then, the parking sitation. Oh the parking. The parking lot was a one way, and you had to back into slanted slots. There were all sorts of issues, and while this picture doesn't really do it justice, it is still a necessary component of the evening:


Last but not least, as you might know, I will talk to anyone, and so of course, the picture WITH our waiter for the night, Chris, who suggested that for our evening activity we play putt-putt. Right. I hate putt-putt. Anyway, Chris was quite friendly and I think excited that he got us as a table (as every waiter should be):

Thanks for the great seafood, Chris.

Ok, so that was Friday night. Saturday we were way lazy. I think it was 2pm before we left the house. It was definitely needed though, as it usually is after a long week. We actually had tickets to a concert, but skipped it for the much needed experience of visiting the Galleria, te fifth largest mall in the nation (ahh, Texans, so proud of EVERYTHING). Before we made it the mall, though, we made a few stops. First, and most importantly, was this place:


Yup, The Chocolate Bar. The best ice cream I have EVER had. EVER. Seriously. And I KNOW ice cream. Everything was chocolate, and the flavors were out of this world. I think I had some sort of chocolate truffle mixed with something mocha. Amazing. Caitlin was also in heaven, and thus, we captured our bliss with some pictures:



So, then we made some nice stops at Old Navy and Target (of course), and then got to the mall at around 5pm. Yup, we were on it. So, we wandered for a while, bought some stuff, and then wandered some more. We eventually decided to head back to Clear Lake (my town) to eat dinner. We chose this nice Mexican place I like. Half way through our meal, the host guy comes over and brings us mints, asking us if we have any questions (we have not ordered yet). He then proceeeds to know nothing about the menu. OUr waiter came over to see if we were ok, and then explained that this guy knows very little, and sometimes harasses the customers. Lovely. It made for a nice laught. So, we had some amazing Mexican food and then rented a really bad movie. So bad I am not even going to include the title for fear people might not remember that i said it was bad and then rent it. Bad. We watched it on my laptop, so there was a lot of leaning and straining during the moments when the A/C would kick on in the house. the evening was relaxing though, and we of course entertained ourselves with TV and discussions of the world's problems throughout the night. Oh yea, here is a picture of Caitlin trying to take a picture of the moon and Saturn as they were right next to each other.


Yup, we are nerds.

Sunday was another slow day, we went to lunch at Pei Wei, the faster food version on PF Changs, and then went to see the movie Georgia Rule, which was much better than the movie we shall not mention from the night before. We then drove down to Kemah in search of dinner, and found a lot of very expensive tourist trap places. We gave up, returned to the Mexican from the night before (I might mention, this place has the best steak ever!), and ate another Mexican meal. We missed out crazy friend from the night before, but still enjoyed ourselves.

I packed my Anchorage bag, Caitlin packed all the free t-shirts I had gotten for her (you too could have free shirts if you visit me), and we watched several hours of weird family TV (actually, this was a continuation of some random show I watched in Boulder about families with way too many kids...). Anyway, it was random. MOnday morning we got up at the crack of dawn (or before, as it was 4:30 and pitch black outside), and drove back to the airport so we could both fly out. I flew to Seattle and then Anchorage, and Caitlin back to the land of smog (Los Angeles).

So yea, that was my big shout out blog to Caitlin, my first visitor. I know she loved Houston so much she is thinking of moving there, so I encourage you all to come and enoy the heat and humidity that is Houston. I know you will love it as much as we both do.

NBL pictures

Well, I made it back from Louisville. I didn't take any pictures, due to the fact that I spent most of my free time in my fancy hotel bed, trying to fight off food poisoning. Stay away from the Louisville Hard Rock Cafe. The trip went well otherwise, and then I spent the weekend recovering in Boulder, as Joe watched me turn green and then walk slowly around town, eating nothing more than soup and crackers for two days. Lovely. I did manage to pull my camera out on Pearl Street to snap some shots of the amazing tulips that were in bloom:


Also, just as a reminder of how cool my job is, some pictures of astronaut James Reilly setting up for his pool training:




Next week, off to Anchorage, where I swear I will take more pictures. I promise.