The big update with lots of pictures! (And a HURRICANE!!!)

Summer is officially over, at least as far as work goes. Three weeks of teacher workshops over and onde with. Cindy and Andy are married. I made it to the lake for a few days of downtime on the way over to the wedding. Picture highlights are below:











Note especially my date Cara, who is looking lovely during the ride on the school bus that Cindy and Andy arranged. Brilliant idea!
And now for the necessary kitten update. These cats are hilarious. Yesterday Tony spent 20 minutes looking for a June bug that had flown in and dies behind the couch. He missed the death part, so he just kept meowing and looking for the bug...it was hilarious! He took a road trip with me today, all the way to the vet by himself, for his last round of shots. Pictures of his first solo ride in the new car:



He just enjoyed sitting on the back seat, chilling, and does not climb everywhere, unlike his sister. Speaking of Mollie, here are some other pictures of these kittens, in all their glory:







Those last ones they totally got caught in the toilet. They think they are so sneaky, but not so much, especially when one of them falls in. The other cute thing that happens is, Tony likes to sit at the window by the front door when I leave, and waits for me when I return. It is so freakin' adorable!




For those of you who have visited me or knew me in Saccramento, you will remember Alice, my 1996 Silver Volvo. Well, she is no more. I have replaced her with a much faster, much cleaner, much more mechanically sound vehicle, the 2005 Acura TL:



And finally, the biggest news: we are in the midst of a very active hurricane season. I have just become the owner of $300 of plywood board to board up my house. They are cut to the window size, which theoretically is helpful, but would be more helpful if they didn't weigh a ton. Now, I can totally think of a better way to spend that much money, but apparently I would rather have windows without cracks after the storm. Hurricane Ike is three days away, but people are already boarding up and leaving. We are on level 4 security at work, which basically means if you leave, cover your computer with plastic and get it off the ground. My living room is currently housing my patio furniture, so that the chairs do not become bullets traveling 100 MPH into my windows. This, I hear, my neighbors will especially appreciate. I hope they are doing the same with the crap in their yards. However, if some sort of expensive grill comes through one of my windows, I am keeping it. Just so you know. Check out the newest cat jungle gym (or so they think):




At this point, I feel it is only fair to have a day off of work for all this effort. I am hoping for evacuation orders to become mandatory sometime tomorrow (preferably while I am in still in bed and before I get up to actually go to work). However, if you happen to be reading this and get suddenly worried, do not worry about me. I am a strong swimmer, and I have a ton of canned chili and beans in my pantry. I am good to go for at least 2 weeks, and theoretically, I will be in Palm Springs this weekend during landfall. Ike isn't going to screw my plans over...

I recently had a week off of a work. Well, sort of. So, my summer programs began June 15. 24 middle school teacher rolled in on a Sunday afternoon and wanted to learn stuff for a week. Now, Sunday afternoon was never meant to be part of a work week. Never. But, somehow NASA has missed this. So, in roll the teachers, and out goes my sanity. Five days later, they left, and I passed out. And that is pretty much how it will be until the end of July, every other week. One of the weeks between chaos was the fourth of July week. After working 70 hours a week, I decided a week off was in order, or rather, a week out of Houston. So, Jessica and I packed up our laptops, out tanktops and our bathing suits, attached our work phones to our hips, and went to her lake house. We had grand plans of sitting on her boat working, but then we decided if we checked email at the house, we coudl actually just enjoy the boat, minus the work. And there I sat, first for 4 days, and then for 3 more (with a 2 days break to actually go back to the office and to a conference). Beer was consumed, there was Mailbu and Coke, Lemonade and Rum, and some sort of fruit soaked in liquor. In retrospect, it was better that we worked at home. I am now very tan and there was a time when I was actually more relaxed. Actually, RIGHT now I am on a plane to Tahoe for the annual girls weekend. But, the past week was another program, so the relaxation is just a distant memory really. This week the teachers were a little more dry, and my assistant had to leave mid week, so there was some stress, but we did get three astronauts out of it, and the teachers spent a very drunk night with the current Chief of Flight Directors at JSC. He showed up slightly bleary eyed to the luncheon today, looking like the night ended a little later than it should have last night.

Let’s see, other interesting things that are going on...Joy, Lucy and Jeannette came to visit and we had plenty of fun shopping all over the place, eating ice cream and enjoying the sites of Galveston (in the 90 degree heat). They checked out my hot tub, we had a ton of BBQs, and walked the neighborhood. And Lucy totally explored my new house, and her very own room. It was pretty exciting.

I will be making the big trip back to California in August to see everyone, so prepare yourself. I will be in all parts, and probably won’t be back again until Christmas, so I expect to see lots of smiling faces.

In September we are going on a girls cruise. 32 women. One cruise ship. They won’t know what hit them.

Lots of big plans and fun trips coming up, and some much needed down time as well. To spend with my cats, which I now I have 2 of. Tony and Mollie. Mollie is the black and white one from my previous post, and Tony is her new brother, who is just a ball of energy, but loves to be held and will sit very contently under my neck and watch me type, as long as I keep petting him. He can’t quite jump up on the couch yet, but he gives it a nice try. I think it is his belly. I call him pudge because he is just a brick, and has such a round midsection it is not even funny. He has already come home with ear mites and an upper respiratory infection, so I have a medicine cabinet full of kitty meds at home. And he does not like the ear drops, but alas, he and his sister and so cute when their ears go flat after the drops, it is almost funny. And necessary, I do not want ear mites in my house. My three interns are enough to deal with.

And speaking of the interns, they are all moved in, and have taken over my BBQ. They keep saying they are going to clean, and I see some effort every once in a while, but it is interesting how much cleaner things become right after their mothers have visited. I am never home so as long as they wash their dishes eventually, I am not bothered. I do have one intern who is a little over the top, but I simply pay Susie to keep him busy at work when I need a break. It works out well for all involved.

Anyway, perhaps in the next blog I will tell you all about the girls weekend. For now. I leave you with some of the cutest fur around.

The little princess has arrived...

Well, her she is. The newest addition to life in Texas. the new kitten, all 1.5 lbs of her:

She is a total princess, and a little drama queen, she wanders around meowing and loves to chase toes. She also really likes the balls with bells in them, and the catnip sock (she fell asleep playing with it here:


And of course, she eats with her paw in the bowl, which means the bowl has to be held down to keep it from hitting her in the head when she steps in it.


Notice her size compared to the little bowl of water next to her. SHE IS TINY! I am loving her to pieces, and cannot stop playing with her. I set her up in the laundry room with a basket and a blanket and a box. Jessica and I set up the box for her to sleep in, and tried to get her in, and then left her alone to figure it out. I come back to check on her and she is sitting on top of the box. So much for kittens liking small spaces...

My new roommates

So I have taken the big step of becoming a landlord for the summer. That's right, I am renting out rooms. 2 rooms to be exact. 2 rooms to 3 boys, all 17-18. Yup, I have been in constant email contact with 3 high school boys and their over protective mothers. It is like talking to parents as a tourguide all over again. All they want to tell me about is how great their boys are. Apparently I have a 5 star chef and an amazing horn player staying with me. And he has to practice the horn everyday. Cool. Luckily I will work long hours this summer, so I won't be around for the practicing. 2 boys sharing one room and the third in my current guest room. Cara, I have moved you to the front room on my new futon. Yea, you took a step down, but I think it will be well worth it, as these boys will be paying my mortgage this summer.

In other news, the hot tub is no longer foggy and the BBQ is working great. We test it out often, and I have found that the BBQ is too close to my back door, thus setting off my fire alarm on a daily basis. This makes for great comments from others about my cooking. I am sure you can all imagine. I finally bought a new hot tub cover to protect my clean water from all the pollen and rain. Of course, it is not here yet, so the rain today did not help the water chemicals, I am sure. Oh well, such is life, the thing heats up, it bubbles, and it has working jets. What more could you want?

The Volvo is about to be retired, in exchange for a new car. Well, maybe not totally new, but new as in different, and not as in 15 years old on its last leg. Something maybe 2 or 3 years old, with not six figures on the mileage and something that will not make weird noises when I make right turns. Or left turns. Or when I am idle at stop signs. You know, the norm.

Well, I am off to bed, I just finished fast forwarding through American Idol to find out who got kicked off (1 hour show in 5 minutes) and can now relax knowing that show really as predictable as I thought it was. Damn good TV though, especially the look on Simon's face when he doesn't know he is being filmed. I even hit rewind to see that again. the Bachelorette starts next Monday, we are planning a large viewing party. You are all welcome, but you will have to fly here. Trust me, it is worth it. =)

I am pretty random these days

Isn't the house lovely? I have just figured out how to put pictures up, and while I have this sneaking suspicion that the picture already exists on this site, now it is front and center.

I have returned home from a co-op party that I inadvertently ended up at tonight. A co-op is a college intern who works at NASA. When I was invited to attend this birthday party, none of us realized how many 21 year olds would be in attendance. Sort of felt like I was hosting a party for the underage drinkers. Fun, but weird. I am old.

Caitlin was here last weekend, we did some serious wedding planning for her wedding next April, including picking colors and songs to dance to. Yea, can you picture us? On the couch, both with laptops, playing songs on youtube over each other. Lovely.

I am also buying a car, so if you know anyone who will give me a good deal, or some direction on what to buy, let me know =)

My programs are over for the spring and we are heading into 80 hour work weeks for the summer. Should be interesting, and I am already looking forward to the week off in August for Cindy and Andy's wedding. And some time at the lake. And some time in Sacramento and at home. Prepare yourselves, here I come!

Success!

Two weeks ago, I hit the one year mark here in Houston. Who would have thought? I have been in the house for a month now, although this week, I think all I did at the house was sleep. My neighbors probably think I don't live here anymore. I ran my first Aerospace Scholars Conference this week, it was chaos. We made it through though, and Katherine and I worked 40 hours in 3 days, but we took on 100 college kids and 30 college faculty, and ca e out successful. I slept for almost 13 hours last night, and am beginning the recovery process.

Also, yesterday, I worked at a college fair talking about Cal. It was just like sinking back into the old college tourguiding days! I think I might have possbily be throwing out old college statistics from 2003...oh well, they got the idea. However, these kids were all private schools kids. Now, I have nothing against private school kids, but man, these kids were so stuck up,. And the moms! Just all about prestige. I think I got asked about pre-med more than anything else, and of course, how hard is it to get in. People want easy access and high prestige. It just doesn't exist. Morons.

It is my birthday this week. Consider yourselves warned.

I am off to go and sit in my hot tub and relax all my sore muscles.

Switzerland

So, in the last post, I said I would never actually "live" in Texas. Hmm, how four months can change things. I have done the unthinkable...I have bought a house in Texas:

House picture

Yup, my very own, four bedroom, huge walk in closet, kitchen you can do cartwheels in, backyard with palm trees and a hot tub, house. I close on Monday, but basically we are all done, and I am about to write a very large check. And I am SO excited!

In other news, I have just recently returned from the best international trip yet, all the way to Switzerland to visit Cara, and then on to London to see the fam. It was a great trip, and I will try my best to illustrate some of the highlights below:

I arrived on a Saturday night and Cara immediately whisked me off to the local family bar, where we proceeded to drink a large amount of wine and eat some delicious french bread and fresh sliced meat. I met the cousins and the cutest french 3 year old ever, who could not figure out why I couldn't speak French to her. She said I talked like Dora.

Sunday we spent the day in Geneva, seeing the UN and the Red Cross museum (a must see for all those girl scout moms out there!). We walked around by Lake Geneva and read the bible (ie, the tour book on Switzerland), and then hung out in Cara's house with a bottle of red wine and some chicken for dinner. Life was good. Geneva picture highlights:


Monday morning we picked up the rental car (stick shift driving for the first time in a LONG time for me) and took off for Gruyeres. Luckily, they drive on the correct side of the road in Switzerland, so other than some curvy mountain roads, some sketchy roundabouts and some questionable road signs, we did pretty well. We made to Gruyeres in about 90 minutes, and stopped on our way in to the Cheese factory. First touristy thing of the trip: we took the tour. We learned all about making and age-ing cheese, and how what a cow eats can affect your cheese. It was lovely. We had cheese samples, which were really just appetizers for lunch: Cheese fondue. Just little baby potatoes, bread, and cheese. We were carb loading to a max. We spent the afternoon exploring the Gruyeres Chalet and taking in the amazing views. We drove up to another town, Chalet de Oux, which a) neither of could pronounce, and b) did not have a chalet. We were disappointed, but only momentarily as we soon found a cafe to have out MAPB (mid afternoon pastry break, pictures at the end). Refueled, we drove back through Gruyeres, through Bulle, and out to Friesburg (Freedbird I called it). We drove into Friesburg, decided we were not even getting out of the car in this city, and drvoe back. Sort of like driving into the shopping area of Oakland. Slightly sketchy, lots of people, and nothing to see. We spent the evening eating in Bulle, and then back to Gruyeres for the night.

Day 3 we drove up to Bern, the capital of Switzerland. This is where Switzerland became more like Germany, less like France. Bern is German speaking. Neither of us speak German, and let's face it, I am barely holding on with the English language at this point. We checked into our hotel around 10am after a short ride in the Sixt car rental car back into the city center with out German speaking car representative, who taught us how to say Thank you. We checked out the local outdoor market (my favorite thing to do in any city) and saw all the local cheese and vegetable. We wandered down to the bear pits in Bern (no pictures, since the bears were too cold to come out). The city has the bear as its mascot, and they keep live ones in this pit all year round. We met this random American woman from Arizona who now lives in Bern who invited us along on her tour. So, Cara, me, three British people and Henriette our tourguide, headed of to learn all about the history of the beautiful city. Henriette was pretty good, although she didn't walk backwards as all good tourguides should. We learned all about the old buildings and the churches and the city history, and then took off on our own when they stopped for lunch. We then decided to eat on our own, and had to find the picture menus in order to know what each thing was. Stupid Americans. We spent the afternoon checking out Einstein's old house, where he lived when he began the theory of relativity (still can't explain it, after 4 years of studying it). We then did what every good tourist does on day three of a trip. We napped. Actually, I napped, cara watched BBC or something on TV for a while. We headed out later in the evening to get some dinner and see the night life. As the German boy at the front desk told us, it was Tuesday and it was Bern, so there was nothing going on. He was right. We ate, and returned the hotel to warm up and relax for the evening. Yup, and I fell asleep early again. Jet lag is not pretty. Bern pictures are below:


Day 4 we took the train to Lucerne, which was the typical beautiful European city. It was right on the lake, and had an old town portion with cobblestones and street vendors and cute shops and such. We ate on the water for lunch, and then took a boat ride on the lake, which went across to several other Swiss towns. The boat ride was beautiful and it allowed us to see several sights and mountain views not otherwise accessible. We eventually had to go inside because the outdoors was just too cold, but we enjoyed the views through the windows just as much as from the cold outdoors. That evening Cara set us the goal of not going to bed before 10pm. We decided to have a fancy dinner with steak an accidental order of half a bottle of wine instead of just a glass. You might notice a slight progression in the pictures below. After our fancy dinner we had fancy dessert at the fondue restaurant. That's right folks, despite chocolate fondue not being as big of a thing as we might think it is in Switzerland, we sought it out, found it, and enjoyed it. And it was well worth it. We sort of rolled our way back to the hotel after failing to find the jazz cafe we were looking for (we didn't look too hard after we found the fondue). We were staying at this old jail house, which was hilarious. I think I have a picture of our door which I will include below.

Day 5 we took the 3 hour train back to Geneva and spent the afternoon shopping. We had our very special Valentine's dinner with one of Cara's teacher friends, and then packed for our impending trip to London. We were up late and up again early the next morning to get to the airport for our flight to Lutton airport just outside of London. London, of course, was its own adventure, which will have to wait for a second blog, since this one has become such a pain in the butt with loading pictures. My advice, go to my picassa page and check out all my pictures (did you notice I didn't load any? Yea, that is because they kept freezing my blog up). So, my pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/debhutchings/DebInSwitzerland

Enjoy!