Houston Trip

[austin_tycho]

I finished up the final class for the year on Thursday and rushed to pack and get on the road. There was a communication error with hub about dinner and we decided to eat on the road. It was a rough start; the first bank we went to didn't have cash in the ATM and I got very crabby and snapped at hub. I tried very hard to pull out of that sort of temper and apologized, and we got some food in Bastrop and made our way to Houston.

It's actually not a long drive at all. In the initial confusion I left all my maps at home, but I had a pretty good idea of where we were going and double-checked with Brö before we were out of the county. Our hotel was a Holiday Inn just about 170 miles from our front door- we got there around 11pm or so and pretty much unpacked and crashed right away.

I had been fighting off the cold and was glad that I had brought an armload of drugs; the guiafenesin, NyQuil, Day-Quil, ibuprofen, vitamin C, and all that. It kept me civil throughout the trip.

We got up the next morning and ordered room service. Breakfast was not too bad, and we were able to get decent directions to the museum complex. I'd thought we could take the shuttle, but the hotel was father away from the museum area than I'd thought and we decided we might as well take our car. After some initial confusion (every highway we were on was under some major construction) we arrived safely at the museum.

The hope was that by going on a weekday it would be less crowded, but we forgot about field trips. There were a zillion shrieking children running around in weird little uniforms. We managed to see a lot of museum fun despite this, though it was a relief that most of them left around lunch time. We spent a lot of time in the magnet and electricity fun zone, made earthquakes, messed with weather patterns and the like. We also visited the stuffed animals who had doubtless all died of old age in their sleep.

We went to 2 shows- one planetarium show on Saturn that was either not very interesting or the seating was too comfortable, because I caught myself falling asleep a couple of times. The IMAX was a show called 'The Greatest Places' and was pretty cool. First, it was narrated by Avery Brooks, because every third science show must be narrated by a former Star Trek actor. It was also interesting and pretty. No I didn't know lemurs were only found in Madagascar.

After that we decided to sit outside and poke around the giant floating globe and the big sundial. I'll post pictures later so you can see what I'm talking about. Then we went to the nearby Hermann park and walked around the big reflecting pool. It had fountains and things in it so wasn't very reflective, but hub pointed out that maybe you were supposed to be reflective... that had never occurred to me!

There was a really lovely Japanese garden there. It was only remotely similar to the Oriental gardens here in Zilker park; ours are a lot more closed in. These were fairly open and centered around a little waterfall that spilled into a large pond that fed tiny streams around the park. The pond had a turtle and ducks and large koi; and the waterfall had an enormous white crane fishing out of it. The crane was apparently used to people gawking at it; it stared at us as we snapped pictures of it and seemed pretty unperturbed.

The rest of the park was nice and a little wild even, and I got a couple of really good pics of a monarch butterfly dining on some lantanas. By then it was dinner time so we headed back to the hotel- making the mistake of trying to drive anywhere in Houston at 5pm. I know Austin rush hour is supposed to be bad, but this was absurd. It took us a good half-hour to drive 6 miles or so. But we got there and met up with a couple that I'd known online for years and had dinner at a Mexican place called Escalante's. Then we went back to their place for some conversation.

It was interesting. I mainly knew the husband, and he'd described his wife like she was very shy. But she was pretty lively and talkative, and he seemed uncomfortable. He made very little eye contact, and even less as the evening wore on and got increasingly squirmy, and I kept wondering if I'd offended him somehow. But I've heard that he's just like that with everyone, and said on the board that he enjoyed hanging out with us. *shrug*

The next day we had planned to head to the zoo, but it dumped an amazing amount of rain that morning and I've seen enough soggy animals lately. So we went to a Waffle House- hub's first time! He was amused by the assembly-line set up they had that obviously got the job done well enough, though it's not somewhere to go if you're really fussy about cleanliness, to be sure. Then we went to the enormous IKEA!!!! that was across from our hotel.

I'm told that there used to be a smaller Ikea a block away but they tore it down in order to build this IKEA!!!! next to it. It was huge, though it didn't seem to have substantially more stuff than the old Ikea did (we visited it last year). Maybe it was laid out better. I know Ikea's stuff is sort of synonymous with Swedish Wal-Mart, but I really like the style of it. It's like what they have at Copenhagen Furniture but a lot cheaper. We got a few things including a neat bedspread in all cool colors.

Hub was feeling kind of sickly after that so we headed home. He's come down with the same cold I have, the poor thing. But it was still a fun trip and we both enjoyed it despite battling illness and weather and traffic. I feel nice and recharged.