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.

Beaches, bonfires and butterflies

What a good weekend! Saturday we loaded up both my and Dave's trunk's full of firewood and went to the beach and had a bonfire! Look at all the wood that fits in my trunk!
It was a beautiful night, the fire burning brightly on the beach, a full moon casting its light onto the rolling waves, just a few clouds obscuring the stars. Sirius is huge now, and Orion was about halfway above the horizon. He's a winter constellation, so I won't be able to see him for much longer. Dave brought his mechanized telescope, and it gave us a tour of the skies. We got a gorgeous view of the moon and Saturn, good enough to see the rings clearly! I brought marshmallows and roasted and ate them with brownies, better than s'mores!


Sunday we went to the Songkran festival, a Thai New Year's festival at a Buddhist temple in Sugarland. We met up with some friends I used to work with, and enjoyed delicious Thai food with them and their family. One of my friend's Aunts, who is Thai, was surprised that I ate all the authentic Thai desserts. I said the key word there was "desserts" lol.

After we ate we lined up to be blessed by the monks for luck in the New Year. We filled golden bowls with water from an urn filled with water and flower petals, then poured the water over a statue of the Buddha and over the hands of monks who held their hands over flower-filled glass vases. They sprinkled us with water in turn, blessing us and wishing us health and luck in the New Year. There was a lot of running around sprinkling water on each other afterwards, it seems like a fun tradition. Then there was a cermony releasing 99 doves for world peace, harmony, and love. It was a beautiful ceremony, I wish more people could see it. Maybe if everyone could spend a sunny afternoon eating good food with their friends, being blessed, and watching doves fly, there would be a lot more peace in the world.
We also released hundreds of Monarch butterflies, to remember lost loved ones. Everyone in the audience got to hold a box with a butterfly in it, and we released them right after the doves were released. I thought about my grandfathers.
It was really a very good weekend. Exhausting, though, we came home and took a 4 hour nap. Back to work tomorrow, and homemade pasta and roasted tomato sauce for dinner tomorrow night.

I took all the pictures here on my phone, they came out pretty nice, I think. There were a lot of people taking pictures, and the whole ceremony was filmed, so I didn't worry about offending anyone there.

Bah, politics

The reason why I may be voting Republican this year, if the primary doesn't turn out well for Clinton: Obama wants me to lose my job. He's obviously timed this announcement well, most of the states with large space programs have already had their primaries, and many of the remaining states aren't doing so hot in the education department.

Some numbers provided by Ben:
States remaining to be decided in democratic primaries: Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina
Discredited States: Florida, Michigan

States with NASA Centers: California, Virginia, Ohio, New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico

Rank of expenditures per student for states left in democratic
primaries:
Oregon: #28
Montana: #26
South Dakota: #35
Indiana: #22
Pennsylvania: #21
West Virginia: #15
Kentucky: #30
North Carolina: #41

School Teacher Salary Rank:
Oregon: #14
Montana: #46
South Dakota: #51
Indiana: #17
Pennsylvania: #10
West Virginia: #42
Kentucky: #34
North Carolina: #24

Only one of the states remaining has a NASA Center. The majority of the remaining states are in the bottom half of salary and expenditures per student.

It is very rare for NASA to compete with education for money, because they're separate issues, both of which deserve a lot more money than they ever get. But his plan would put us without human spaceflight capability for almost 10 years! Not to mention how many thousands of NASA employees and contractors will be laid off in the states that had their primaries before he came out with this plan, and it's not like there's that much commercial spaceflight going on yet to pick up the slack.

People, we will never have colonies on the moon if all of our engineers die of old age before we get around to going back, and everyone knows it won't be the future until we have moon colonies. Apparently Obama just doesn't want it to be the future. I guess we shouldn't even bother asking him for funding for flying cars or hoverboards.

Libraries

I greatly approve of the idea of libraries, in principle. Everyone should have access to a wide variety of books, and they have entire teams of people who seem to find great satisfaction in helping you find something to read. Libraries are places to collect knowledge and distribute it to anyone who asks for it. Their function seems to epitomize the concepts of freedom and equality, where anyone can read any book they choose, freely, and then pass it on to someone else, sharing knowledge.

But they have one flaw, in my eyes. They want their books back.

This is necessary for the whole "sharing" part of the sharing knowledge thing, I know, but somehow it feels like every book I read becomes a part of me, and I don't want to let that part go. I was never so happy and comfortable in my apartment as when I got more bookcases and could finally look at all of my books at the same time. This fulfills some deep-seated need inside me, for which I have no explanation. My mother and sister are perfectly happy to read a book once and release it back into the wild, never to be seen or heard from again, here one day and then gone, like the wind. (Possibly with,..)
I am perfectly happy to lend books out for extended periods of time, like foreign exchange children, sending them out to see the world, knowing they will come back one day enriched and wise from their travels, eager to share their journeys with the stay-at-home books still on the shelves. But I might want to read them again! Or lend a particular book to someone who absolutely has to read it, in my opinion. (There are a lot of books a lot of people absolutely have to read, usually starting with the last one I just finished.) Plus I feel like I've just won something when I find some old, out of print SF book I-just-realized-I've-been-looking-for-my-whole-life in a back corner of a used-book store, how could I let it go afterward? SF readers tend to be hoarders, it's not just me. I've heard from used-book store owners that the only way they get large collections of SF is when the owners die and can't complain about people giving away their books anymore.

Maybe my problem with libraries is I don't own them. Maybe I should have been a librarian. Maybe if I continue accumulating books, I can just open my own library,..

At any rate, I now have a library card for the Harris Country Public Library and have requested about 50 things from their online catalog. They actually have a very good selection of movies and TV show seasons on DVD, which are much easier to return after watching. And I finally requested Your Money or Your Life, a personal finance book I couldn't bring myself to spend money on but have been wanting to read.

So hopefully I will be able to overcome my squirrel-like hoarding instinct and Charlton Heston-like resistance-to-having-things-pried-from-my-warm-and-living-hand instinct and give them their books back when I'm done reading them.