Home!

I'm home! And I have power! And the kitten looks as if she may forgive me one of these days, if I keep the treats coming.

I cleaned out five very heavy garbage bags of food from the fridge, and cleaned the inside. It was pretty gross. The plants are back on the balcony and looking, well, not quite dead yet. The wall hanging is back up, my quilt is back on my bed, and I have internet! As you've probably gathered by now.

As soon as my belly is full of soup, I'm going to bed. We left at 2 pm yesterday and got in about 8 am this morning, so we made good time, but he got about 4 hours sleep and I think I got 2 or 3.

Yay for being home! I'm so glad to be here, safe and sound with the cat, and I'm so glad it's still here!

Evacuation

So, since Hurricane Ike is apparently going to roll right over Houston, Boyfriend and Kitten and I evacuated,... to Nebraska. We wanted to be sure to be out of the way, but the hurricane actually looks like it will end up following us here. By then it will be mostly rain though, so we should be good. It looks like there will be a lot of flooding where we we live, but we both live on upper stories and Boyfriend moved his car to outside a friend's house which shouldn't flood too badly. We're keeping an eye on the Weather Channel, but we are extremely glad to be at Boyfriend's parents', safe and warm and full of his mom's meatloaf, which is second only to my own mother's :)

Getting out of Houston was orders of magnitude better than for Rita. We went around most of the city on Highway 6, which was not very crowded at all. We left at 10 am, stopped by our friends' to drop off the car and help them move some plywood around, and then left and were at the border of Texas by about 10 pm. We made pretty good time until shortly after we entered Kansas. It started to rain, and it rained like there was already a hurricane on top of us. Also, apparently the last one to leave Kansas at night turns off the lights, so it was dark, darker than I think I've ever seen. Add that to the fact that reflective paint hasn't made its way there yet, and I could see about 3 of the dashed lines from the median ahead at any time, so we lost our 70 mph average (that was actually the speed limit there). We switched off driving and the one not driving tried to get some sleep, but after straining our eyes for hours neither of us could take it anymore, so we pulled over to a rest stop and got a few hours sleep before we continued.

The Kitten was amazingly good the entire time. She spent most of the trip on the floor behind the passenger seat, and when we checked on her (about every 10 min the entire trip) she meeped at us and butted against out hands.

But almost exactly 24 hours after we left home, we finally made it to Boyfriend's parents' house! Kitten went under the bed at first, but soon emerged to eat and use her litterbox, and when I came to bed she crawled in under the covers with me and we slept for a few hours. It
was a very long journey, but I'm very glad to watch Ike do his damage from a safe haven.

Sister?! Sister!

My little sister has gone home now, and I am back to the work and school round. Her visit was so much fun! We went rock climbing at a gym in Houston, where she scampered up the walls faster than I've seen squirrels climb; stayed up late watching the girlie movies 27 Dresses and P.S. I'm Dead Now (AKA P.S. I Love You, but I like our title better); rescued Stan the tiny gecko from certain death and voyeurism (he tried to watch us pee, but we thwarted his plan!);
went to La Madeline's 3 times in 4 days; bought more bath products than you would think any 5 people might need; and generally bonded very sisterly. It was an awesome visit, and like all visits went by much too quickly.

So, now back to work and school and such. I will write up our San Francisco trip when I get a chance, but in the meantime, if you haven't seen the pictures and want to, let me know. I took enough that if you scroll through them really fast it's like a flipbook video of our 8 day trip!

Boyfriend's Birthday!

Months ago Boyfriend asked me, pretty much joking I think, to make him a Lego cake for his birthday. I agreed, but haven't said anything about it since, hoping he'd forget about it. He did, so was very surprised when he saw his birthday cake!

He liked it so much he refused to cut it! He said he couldn't disturb it, but I had no such qualms.


I got the recipes from my new favorite cooking blog, smittenkitchen. The cake is Chocolate Butter Cake and the icing is Swiss Buttercream, so a lot of butter went into this thing, which of course works out well. The pegs are marshmallows!

Boyfriend brought the leftovers into work and reported that his coworkers were very happy, and he seemed very happy with it last night, so I think it was a success!

Travelogue: San Jose, CA

I now understand why anyone would choose to pay ridiculous amounts of money to live in California. As the plane was landing, the pilot announced that the temperature in San Jose was "a balmy 72 degrees, winds at 10 mph out of the northwest," and my reaction was, "72? What does that mean? Celsius?" It hasn't been 72 in Houston since January, and that was the low! I stepped outside and could breathe, it wasn't like walking into a used sweat sock at all, it was glorious! I ate lunch outside on a patio surrounded by flowers!


Mmm delicious almond apple tart thing with vanilla bean ice cream.


Walking through downtown Mountain View, where I stayed, I was surrounded by flowers, there were mountains in the background (the name of the town isn't sarcasm!) and I found a bookstore with more books than I have! Even counting the 30 boxes still in my parents' basement!

Also, while driving around getting myself throughly lost (it's my hobby, that's why I'm so good at it) I passed a Yahoo building, an AMD building, a Microsoft building, and a Google building! I was hungry at the time I passed the Google building, so I considered sneaking in to try their food, but unfortunately I think it was after lunchtime.

My company put me up at what may be the best hotel I've ever stayed in. The bed was soft and cushy, the bathroom arched and with glass shower doors, and the wireless internet perfect for playing World of Warcraft on for far too many hours.

My favorite part was driving around with the windows down the entire time, with the fresh air in my hair and on my skin. Luckily I'm going back on vacation! And this time I will get to hike and eat in more places and see old friends and meet their families and see the coast, and best of all, Boyfriend will be there to see it with me.

Frank R. Lopez

Last Tuesday my great-uncle Frank lost a long battle with cancer and died. He had the cancer for years, but in the last few months it became too much for him to handle. He was hospitalized, though he hated the loss of his freedom, and a week before his death he stopped eating. I knew a soon as I heard that that the end was near, he had fought the good fight but there's only so long anyone's body can last.

He's not in pain anymore. He's not regretting the loss of his freedom anymore. He's not waiting anymore.

He was 76, and saw a lot and did a lot while he was here, and had his independence up until the last few months of his life.

He was the last male in my family of my grandparent's generation that I grew up knowing. My father's father died over years, and it was hard on the him and on the family but we all had time to say good bye. My mother's father died suddenly, quickly as he did everything. He never was big on goodbyes. I've thought a lot about which way was easier, on the person dying and on the family, and I really can't say. No one gets a choice of course, and there's nothing you can do either way, but still I'd like to go out like my Grandpop Joe, catching squirrels and up on the roof one minute and then gone the next.
I'd like to leave people laughing through their tears.

Pater et Mater in Houston

My parents came to visit me! My mom flew down, and my dad took a train. Several trains actually, and a bus ride, but they both made it here safely. My mom arrived first, and we had a very nice lunch and took a nap (it's our family hobby) while we waited for Dad to come along. He was very hungry and tired by the time he made it here, so we had dinner at Frenchie's, which is the only place I've found in Houston that makes gnocchies. They are excellent comfort food after traveling for 3 straight days.

The next day Boyfriend and I took my father on a very nice tour of work so he could see what we do all day while Mom went out to lunch and on a tour of Webster's quilt shops with friends she knows from her quilting message boards. When her friend picked her up from my apartment, we invited her to come see all the examples of my mother's work I have in my apartment. I didn't realize how much I had! We showed her my gorgeous quilt, my pillowcases, my 2 wallhangings, my afgans, my table runner, and all the table cloths my mom has made me. I also have things made for me by my father and given to me by my sisters in my home, so I get to live surrounded by beautiful things given to me by people who love me, and every time I see them I am reminded of that. I'm very lucky.

A friend of mine invited me to take a Summer Pies and Tarts cooking class at Sur la Table with her the weekend my parents were here. At first I was going to decline, but then I asked my mom if she'd like to take it with me. Somewhat to my surprise, she accepted. My friend was sick and ended up missing the class, but my mom and I had a really good time! The class split into 4 groups and each made a different pie or tart with a very nice pastry chef telling us her tips and tricks. Once they were baked, we got to sample each one, and they were all delicious. I could tell my mom had fun because when she got home she found a Sur la Table not far from her and she and my sister immediately signed up for classes!

It was so nice to be able to spend time with my parents. They're very easy to entertain, they like to eat and nap and play with the Kitten and talk and that's exactly what I do! My father says he's going to try to come down twice a year now that he's gone part-time, which is awesome. That will almost double the amount of times per year I get to see him!

This is weird for me, but since I've been thinking more that I might have children one day, one of the things that worried me was how I can raise children that only see their grandparents and great-grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins once or twice a year? How can they grow up not knowing their family? But if my father, and probably my mother, come down so often, they will have a better chance of knowing their grandparents as they grow up. It's not the same as growing up 3 blocks from them, I know, but it's something. That won't be for a few more years yet, of course, but I wonder about stuff like that. I want my kids to know how awesome their grandparents are. Honestly, the older I get and the more people I meet, the more I realize how amazing they are, both as parents and as people.

Travelogue: Omaha

I flew back from Florida to Houston on Wednesday. I had an hour to wander aimlessly through Houston Intercontinental and then I boarded a plane to Omaha, Nebraska. Boyfriend's best friends were getting married, and they had done him the great honor of asking him to be their best man. He loves them both to death, and he was very excited about the wedding.

Before the wedding Boyfriend wanted to show me Omaha's zoo, which competes with San Diego's to be the best in the country. It was a huge zoo, we barely covered a third of it in one day. We saw a small fuzzy creature that made me miss my little sister and how she would squeak over it:
Omaha has a new butterfly exhibit that is amazing, there were butterflies and moths everywhere, sitting on flowers, fluttering about our heads, having dogfights, strafing each other, and taking a breather on a convenient tree.

Now, I have heard of Tornado Alley and understood that this was a problem in the Midwest, and I understood that at the time, I was in the Midwest, but this didn't really come together for me until Boyfriend and I drove to his friends' house and halfway there he looked out the window and remarked, fairly calmly in my opinion, that we should get there quickly as it looked like tornado weather. The sky, which was already cloudy and threatening rain, began to get a greenish tinge I found extremely alarming. I have been in the same county as a tornado before, when I was 6 or so, driving to Florida with my parents. We pulled over the side of the road and they tried not to panic in front of the kids. Not exactly an auspicious introduction to them.

Just as we arrived at the friends' house, it began to hail. This storm was not joking with this hail, it wasn't just thinking about hailing, or tossing a few ice cubes down. This was serious, golf-ball sized, hope-you-parked-in-the-garage, chunks of ice being thrown from the inexplicably green sky! We ran down to the basement, where everyone else watched tv and I panicked to myself. Apparently imminent death from above is common enough to not warrant interrupting the movie there.

Luckily we survived the night, and the next which featured tornado sirens at 3 am which were pretty ineffective, as I was the only one who woke up and I had no idea what they were or what to do about them, or if I was in fact actually awake or just dreaming of panic.

But we survived long enough to make it to the wedding!


The bride was beyond beautiful, the ceremony gorgeous, the pastor funny and fairly brief, Boyfriend managed to not lose the rings, much to his relief, and everyone was happy and crying at the same time, as they do at weddings.

On the way to the reception we stopped at a lushly green park for more pictures. (Girl note: my dress was blowing in the breeze, it didn't hang like that constantly. I got so many compliments on it!)
The reception food was good, Boyfriend's best man speech was perfect, very funny and he made fun of the bride and groom just enough, the bride's father's speech made everyone in the room cry, and I added two more people to whom I can say, "I danced at your wedding!"

Travelogue: Florida

I got to go to Florida on a business trip! It was my first work-related travel, and I enjoyed it very much. The strangest part about it was staying in a hotel room by myself, I've never done that before.

The hotel I stayed in was very nice, very family-oriented actually (the hotel where the conference was held was all booked up by the time I went to make my reservation) but the first room they gave me was on the second floor, which was accessed by an exterior elevator next to a hallway with a lot of bends and nooks, and was the last room down a fairly long, shadowed hallway. When I got to the door I discovered the hallway did not actually end at my door, it made a sharp right immediately afterwards and connected to other side of the hotel. It seemed like there were entirely too many places for people to hide (rapist nooks, as I call them) on my approach to my room, and I knew I would be coming back to it after dark each night, so just to save myself the worry I went back and requested a room change. The front desk was very nice, they hadn't really thought about where the room was, so they moved me to a room on the first floor in the middle of the hallway, where I could park 5 feet from my door and see all around me. The hotel was very nice and all, they had a security guard at the entrance to the hotel, but just for peace of mind and paranoia it was well worth the move.

The other major benefit to business travel in Florida is that I got to see my Uncle and Aunt! I went to school in Daytona, and I used to visit them at least a few times a semester, and I haven't been back and spent time with them since the year after I graduated, so I enjoyed catching up with them. Perhaps because they live so far away from where I grew up that they weren't as used to me being a child, and that I saw them more as I was growing independent and getting used to this whole being-a-grown-up thing, they were the first adults in my family whom I felt like an adult around. It was really nice to see them, we played dress-up (I'm all grown-up, yup yup) with the clothes they wear to the Scottish/Irish festivals they go to frequently. This is my Uncle and I preparing to defend our lands:
And my Aunt and Uncle being silly:
My Uncle has that social gene that my sisters have and that I seem to have misplaced, the one that allows him to have a conversation with anyone, anywhere. He's genuinely interested in everyone he meets, what their background is, where they've lived, what they've done in their lives. He has also rather inexplicably turned into a redneck despite growing up 3 blocks from where I did!

Driving back from their house in the dark along the same highway I used to drive back to school on brought back lots of college memories. I lived as a child in Jersey and as an adult in Texas, but I did a lot of my growing-up in Florida.

Traumitized

I've had some rude awakenings before. My alarm has gone off before I thought possible to get me up for school the first day back after summer break, I've had people apparently not believe me when I tell them they're dialed the same wrong number for the third time, and even just last month I woke up to my toilet overflowing. That was a fun morning, frantic calls to maintenance, covering the floor with towels, trying to reassure the Kitten that she could still reach her litter box.

I would take a month of mornings like that rather than the way I woke up today. Possibly more. Really, if I could trade, however many were needed, I'd do it. I would enjoy my toilet overflowing every day if I meant I never had to wake up the way I did this morning ever, ever again, ever.

It started off innocuously enough. Boyfriend's alarm went off ridiculously early, as it does, and he got up and did his thing. Kitten crept up next to me and snuggled into the curve of my arm, and I pet her without really waking up. I was warm and comfortable, the Kitten was soft and sleepy, and I had at least 45 min before I really had to wake up. Boyfriend came along to kiss me goodbye, and the Kitten moved out of the way, then jumped over me to the other side of the bed.
Then.

Then the horror began.

Boyfriend flipped the covers off of me and said, "Come here, right now." I could tell by his face he was serious, so I climbed out of bed and asked "What? Why? What's wrong?" "There's a huge bug," he said, and I grabbed for my glasses because everything was a blur. The Kitten was on the bed looking up at the wall over the bed, directly over my head where I had just been sleeping, and it was not a bug, I wish it was a bug, I was prepared for a spider, maybe some sort of weird stink bug like we get here, a pincher bug, anything but what I saw, because I saw on my wall of my BEDROOM where I SLEEP all the TIME oh god i can't even type it a giant gigantic full grown hideous freak of nature COCKROACH CRAWLING up my wall not two feet from my pillow and oh god it was huge, I think it could have taken the Kitten back to its dank sordid lair and it was in my BEDROOM, which I may have mentioned that I had just been SLEEPING in.

Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god

Words cannot describe my terror and loathing of those foul things whose name I can't even type again. Boyfriend grabbed a tissue and went for it, and I left the room before I began shrieking in fear and outrage. He came back holding a pillow, yes it was that big that he apparently needed a pillowcase to restrain it, and asked me something, I'm not sure what, but it seemed the thing was INSIDE the pillowcase, so I pointed at the bathroom and managed somehow to convey that he must flush it down the toilet immediately, I don't think I was speaking English at this point but he seemed to understand, so he went in the bathroom and closed the doors and somehow wrestled the minion of hell into the toilet and flushed it away. It took a few minutes, it apparently was putting up a good fight, oh god, and then he came back and in the same hysterical language I told him he had to burn the pillow immediately, and possibly the toilet and my bedroom as well, but I don't think he understood that. I managed to mime that he had to put the pillowcase in the washer, the only reason I didn't throw it away immediately is that my mother made it for me, but I may have to wash it a few hundred times before I can use it again, and made him wash his hands a few times. Then I collapsed against him and sobbed in terror and horror for a while.

I was petrified that there may be more of these disgusting creatures, some sort of dark foul legion of them underneath my bed, maybe inside my mattress! Or behind the wallhanging my mom gave me! Or underneath my pillow oh god oh god. I hid in the living room with lots of clear space around me so I could see if any more spawns of satan were trying to sneak up on me and the best Boyfriend in the world took my bed apart and searched it for monsters.

It was clean, but I may be sleeping on the couch for a while. And people wonder why I'm not a morning person.