Part 21: Independence Day (Galveston revisited)

Wednesday July 4th, 2007.

We left Husky Village early in the morning to go to Galveston. We had it all planned. We were going to watch the 4th of July Parade at 9:00 a.m. and then eat at the Rail Road Museum, to later spend the afternoon at the beach and watch the fireworks at night.

On our way there our plans were literally flushed away. It was raining so bad that it was impossible to see anything more than maybe 10 meters away. Since we were already on the road, we decided to continue on with our journey.

There was not a soul in the city where the parade was supposed to be. I thought that patriotism in the States beat bad weather, but I was wrong. The parade was cancelled, so we had to decide what to do next. There were seven of us, and we couldn’t come to an agreement. Frankly, I was open to any suggestion, whether it was going to the beach or to Moody Gardens or whatever. The only option I didn’t like was to head back to Houston. We asked for directions to anywhere at a gas station and they told us about some Crystal Beach. We headed there, but the road ended at the ferry. When we asked again at another gas station, the man there told us that we needed to take the ferry in order to get to Crystal Beach. So we did. It was still raining really hard. The ferry was fun. When we got on the other side, we drove for miles with no sign of Crystal Beach whatsoever. I tried to text and call Google for directions but I only received businesses with the name of Crystal Beach, not the actual beach itself. After asking in a couple of places and driving around for an hour or two, we finally got to the beach but didn’t get in, because by this time everyone was already tired and wanting to go back. What a waste! I was still hoping to have a good time at the beach, but at that moment the tension in the air was so dense that if you wanted, you would have been able to cut it with a knife. We had to switch places in the cars so that an epic battle didn’t start.

We had to take the ferry back home and this time we saw a lot of dolphins. It was cool. Also, suddenly the raining stopped. Of course, we were already on our way back home.

When we got to Houston we had dinner at a Jack-in-the-box and went to Circuit City. I bought “Monster House” on DVD. It’s the third movie I buy here. I also bought “Catch me if you can” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: The curse of the black pearl” some days earlier.

I took a shower and got ready. We picked Christine, Silvia’s friend, and went to Hermann Memorial Park to see the fireworks. They started just as we got there. The timing was perfect, and the fireworks were pretty cool.

After that, we went to Valhalla, the Bar at Rice, for a couple (a whole bunch) of beers. Ended up pretty drunk, peeing inside the campus. I was not the only one, and it was not the first time (I miss Colorado State).

Part 20: Working hard or hardly working? Working hard… damn.

Monday July 1st and Tuesday July 2nd, 2007.

Ananth told me he really likes what I’m doing. He told me that they’re going to acquire an Adobe Flash CS3 license for me to work. Rocks. I worked really hard on Monday, because I didn’t want to work late on Tuesday since Wednesday is a holyday and Thursday I have my review meeting.

To my surprise, I had my meeting on Tuesday. I was nowhere near prepared for it, but it was still good. Everyone liked the graphical user interface that I’m developing. Tuesday was over and I was free to do whatever the hell I wanted (at least until Thursday).

We ordered some pizzas at night and had a couple of beers. We’re kind of getting used to drinking in the apartments and breaking those nonsense rules.

Part 19: See Galveston

Saturday June 30th, 2007.

Woke up and by noon we were on our way to Galveston. It was raining on Houston, but we had faith that we were still going to have a great time at the beach.

Now that I had been living in Houston for almost a month, I’d heard several times Galveston being mentioned. The common denominator for all of those was: “something, something crappy beach”. They were probably right, but (quoting) “a beach is a beach”.

It was actually not that bad. It wasn’t raining; it was sunny, and that was more than enough for all of us. We had a great time there, and by 7 we had supper and drove back.

At night we went to downtown to a couple of Irish pubs and danced at a club. We rock. I have nothing else to say.

I don’t remember doing anything on Sunday other than going to church. I probably did laundry and played poker. The rest is a huge blur.

Part 18: Rainy days and Mondays always bring me down

Monday June 25th to Friday June 29th, 2007.

Got in the lab at 9:00 as usual. It was raining since I woke up. The computer was compiling for 3 hours straight, and the System Monitor indicated that the CPU was being used 100% - 99% all the time.

Lunch hour. I’ve been eating cold turkey ham, Little Debbie pastries and granola bars every day for almost a month. Could that be healthy in any way?

It’s been raining all week. It’s really depressing and doesn’t get you in the mood to do anything.

On Thursday, like every week, I had a meeting with Ananth, Eric Gauthier and Dennis Vigil (the last two from Iowa State University), regarding the project. Some features I had to confirm and so far everything’s going great. Later on that day I had a meeting with José Florez. He tried to help me install and configure VTK with no success. Dr. Birmanns is out of town and won’t be back until next week.

During lunch I went to the Fine Arts Museum to meet Lydia Linke. We both lived together at the residence halls last year at Colorado State University. She’s from Houston and I was really excited to see her again. After we made plans to meet, I realized that I hadn’t brought a camera with me. There was no chance that I was going to see Lydia and not take any pictures, so I left the office, went back to Husky Village, grabbed the camera and traveled to the Museum. Yes, traveled. It’s really far away from home, but the fact that I had my camera with me and that I was about to see Lydia made the whole trip worth it. I arrived there and met her as planned. We all (her mother and cousin, too) walked through the museum. It was great. I was just hoping that Ananth didn’t call me at my mobile, so I turned it off (quite a solution). After that I returned back to the office to keep of working (or fighting with the simulation).

On Friday, Ananth came back to the office and I showed him what I had been doing the previous days while he was absent. He really liked the fact that I had moved on: I was developing a Front-end using something I’m really good at: Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash. He mentioned that we was about to tell me to go to the Apple Store and buy a Mac, but since I was able to move on, he liked the idea of me working on my own laptop with the language I was comfortable with. Imagine just how dumb I felt.

At night we went to see the Houston Astros vs. the Colorado Rockies baseball game. I was really excited. I left for Husky at around 4:30 in the afternoon. The game was at 7:00 pm. At six I was waiting for the bus outside of Husky. To my surprise, at 6:40 I was still waiting for the god dammed bus! I thought I was going to be very late for the game, but I actually got there during the second inning. When the game was about to end, Colorado was winning 8 to 7 and Houston had 2 outs, and a player on first base. To our disgrace, Houston connected a Home Run and won 9 to 8. I was cheering alright, I mean, Houston won. But I really wanted Colorado to win.

I still had a great time; I bought myself a huge hot dog and a huge beer (expensive ones). After the game they opened the stadium ceiling to reveal an awesome look at the downtown buildings. And then the fireworks started.

Gaby Ale, Morris, Silvia, Gisela and Paulina were expecting me at the Ginger Man Pub over at Rice Village, so I walked all by myself from the stadium to the METRORail station (around 11 blocks, because I walked one station south). There, I was all alone in downtown Houston until a really creepy-looking hobo sat right next to me. He was staring at the emptiness of the night, to occasionally laugh out loud. I was holding my camera and my breath, trying my best not to move or make visual contact. I wondered if I didn’t move, maybe he wasn’t able to see me.

Around half hour later, the train finally pulled into the station. I got off at Dryden and walked to Rice Village. It’s like a 20 minute walk. Around 1:00 am I was finally at the pub with everyone else.

At the Ginger Man Pub they have beers from all over the world. Oh how I wanted a New Belgium Beer. I opened the carte and saw that they had Skinny Dipping! The awesome (seasonal) beer from Fort Collins! I asked for one but to my disappointment they were out of them. Since I was open to new beer-related experiences, I ordered a beer from Canada which I’d never heard about: La Fin du Monde. What a waste of money. The beer tastes bittersweet, with a cherry flavor. Imagine drinking a whole bottle of cold medicine (but without the cool hallucinogen experience). Ça c’été “la fin du monde”, bien sur. After drinking maybe half of it, and about to puke, I ordered another beer. This time it was not that bad, but still really gross; I had to shotgun it to finish it completely.

Oh well, it had been a good day overall.

Part 17: Mexicans, at the shout of Goal!

Sunday June 24th, 2007.

I woke up at 8:00 am. I rushed to meet Gisela at 8:10 to go to church at 9:00. I don’t remember if the alarm clock went on and I just turned it off, or if I didn’t even set it in the first place. I didn’t shower nor had breakfast. We took two busses to get to church; even though it would have been a 5 minute drive if we had a car. If only.

When we came back from church, (and after taking a shower and having breakfast) we decided that this time we were going to go to Galleria for real. So we took the number 4 bus again and waited for the 33. This time it actually showed up and in a moment or two (more like 40 minutes) we were in Galleria.

The mall was really nice. I bought I shirt and a little something at the Disney store for my 5 (almost 6) months-old nephew Eduardo (a.k.a. “Eddy”). Before we knew it, it was already past 2pm, and we rushed for a bar to watch the final of the soccer Gold Cup tournament: Mexico – USA. The bar was full of Mexicans watching the game, aside for a couple of gringos watching baseball on a different TV. Service was less than O.K. because no waiter would pay any attention to us. In a moment, one of the two bartenders turned the TV volume down to a point that we couldn’t hear the game! We were all pissed. He argued that “there were other customers that weren’t there to watch the soccer game”. What a moron. Seriously, we were easily 20 to 1 in ratio. Then the bartender broke some glasses like 3 times so that was funny. When we were ordering, he told us that the chicken quesadillas were more that enough for the three of us: “more than what you three could eat” in his own words. “Swear on it” I told him and he said “It’s a pretty big dish”. What a mistake. I mean they were good but nowhere near “more than what we could eat”. I had two beers and the girls both had lemonades. All this is important. Regarding the game, both teams played fairly good. Mexico’s goal was awesome, but the lame-ass referee from Guatemala gave away a penalty shot. Mexico lost 2 to 1. When the game was over, I asked for the bill but no waiter would pay any attention to us! At this time there weren’t that many people in the bar, probably 20 or 30. When the bill finally came we read it to find out that they had forgotten to bill the lemonades. I handed it over to the bar tender with a credit card in it. After a little while, I was still waiting for the bill to come back, so the bartender looked at me and said “What?” to which I replied “Well, I handed you my bill! There was a credit card inside!!” And after looking for it for a while, he finally found it. When he handed over the receipt to be signed he told me “Is the game already over? Huh, I didn’t even notice”. So I remember someone once told me in Colorado that for cases like this, if you want to tell your waiter he’s done a lousy job, you just have to leave a dollar and a penny. So that’s the amount we left for tip, and we left.

We waited for the number 49 bus that would take us back home but never came. While we were waiting, a skinny black guy wearing a long t-shirt (long, long t-shirt) came to us, asking for money. Even though it was true that in the beginning we didn’t understand a word he said, we were pretty damn sure he was asking for money. We pretended we didn’t know any English and after a while he left. “Un dinero” he kept on saying, “un dinero”.

We kinda got lost for a while, there on our way back. Since we didn’t get on the bus we were supposed to (because of the lame bus schedules that end at 6 or earlier), we weren’t exactly sure when to get off the bus we were on. When we saw that the bus was taking a turn in the opposite direction, we did. We then guessed where we were based on our knowledge and orientation in Houston. That, until we saw “You are now reaching Houston city limits”. Where the hell where we?! After walking for about 5 blocks we discovered we weren’t actually far from a known place. We ended up finding Beechnut street and a bus stop that would take us home.

At night I did laundry. There was a huge storm going on; the kind of storm you don’t even dare to cross the street. Lightning was striking really near every second or so. After that I played some good ol’ Texas Hold’em with Carlos and JC. JC won but I was so close; I had more than twice the chips any one else had for almost all night. We’ll play again on Wednesday.

Another day over. Seems to me that these past few weeks have been going away faster that usual. In no-time I’ll be back in Monterrey. What’ll happen with my plans to go to Colorado?

Part 16: What’s a nice place like this doing in a girl like you?

Friday June 22nd and Saturday June 23rd, 2007.

In the morning nothing new really happened; you know, got to the lab at 9 am, turned my computer and laptop on, built some code (or tried to), waited for half an hour for my laptop computer to really finish turning on.

At 11:00 am Dr. Adol and I attended a conference called “The Internet’s underground economy”, by Rob Thomas (not the artist), founder of Team Cymru. It was pretty interesting as well as entertaining. It talked about how unsafe credit card information on the Internet really is, as well as some other things. Also, there was a free lunch, so that was really nifty too.

In the afternoon we went and bought some beer at the Foodarama (now we know better) and spent the rest of the afternoon and night playing “never ever have I ever” in the girls’ apartment. Always a fun game. We were there, all talking and laughing, in a cheerful environment. Suddenly I began to feel cold, so I tried to reach for a blanket to cover, because my bed was freezing. It didn’t take me a while to realize that it was already morning and that I had slept on the rug. When was the party over? There had been no actual transition between me being in the party and me falling asleep. Blacked out. Can’t remember a thing. Hung-over as I could be, I managed my way to the top of the bed, still in the girls’ apartment, to sleep next to GabyAle. She looked at me with that “I told you so” kind of face. She later told me all the things I had said last night and all the things that happened in the party that I was supposedly at. Funny stuff. Too hung-over to really care. Plus, I didn’t do anything to regret, aside from a couple of comments maybe.

I got to my own room, took a shower and had some breakfast. I’m really running low on food, the only thing I really have left are the Mac & Cheese.

In the afternoon Gisela, GabyAle and I wanted to go to Galleria, so we took the bus number 4, to later take number 33. We were at the bus stop waiting for bus 33 when suddenly a huge storm fell on top of us. We had but one umbrella so we were group-hugging under it. We were soaking wet. A nice Latin American family rolled down the car window and asked us where we were headed to. They didn’t give us a lift, because they weren’t headed there, but they did give us an extra umbrella. They were really nice. I wish I could repay them what they did. Anyway, but 33 never showed up so we took bus number 4 back to Husky Village. We decided that we were going to go later to Galleria when the rain dispersed a little. And it did, alright, but too late to go to Galleria, because the service stops at 6:40 pm for the bus we needed.

We ended up going to Downtown to search for a nice restaurant. Everything was closed. What the fuck is wrong with Houston’s downtown where everything closes on weekends? Working schedules for most businesses are from 9 to 5 from Monday through Friday. Don’t they realize that that is the same time when people are at work? We found a Popeye’s and had some crispy oiled something. When we left the place, it was already closed for new customers.

At night we ended up watching “Monster House”, then computer-animated movie that was on theaters last year. It was freaking cool! I love kids’ humor that has adult jokes hidden within. Too hidden for a child to realize what’s going on.

The movie ended at around 1:45 am so I left the girls’ apartment before 2 am. No rules broken this time. I feel I’m making accomplishments as a good citizen of Husky Village. As if I even cared.

Part 15: Smells like someone “arted” here.

Thursday June 21th, 2007.

It’s been two days that Ananth hasn’t come into the office (Tuesday and Wednesday). I have a mixture of feelings: on one hand I feel really relaxed that I can work at my own pace without being watched; on the other hand I feel that the more time he’s not here, the more work he’ll be wanting to see achieved when he returns, and that is a very dangerous situation.

I think I’ve made some progress, I mean, before he left I was not able to compile anything, and I was running a Java-enabled programming environment. Since he left I was able to figure out how to download the C++ plug-in, install it, add the include files, add the binaries and compile a “Hello World” program. I haven’t been able to render anything, but the basics, I got them.

In the afternoon we went to the Contemporary Arts Museum. Personally, at first I didn’t want to go, because I have a problem with contemporary artists: you see, when you hear about classic artists you can have certain confidence because the work you’re looking at has prevailed through time, and the artists that should be forgotten are already forgotten and only the best ones still stand. In contemporary art, you can’t. Anyone can be “contemporary”, and anything can be called “art”.

There was some interesting stuff in the museum, but nothing to be really amused. Taking pictures wasn’t allowed inside, so I didn’t take any. Plus, we had someone on our backs all the time, saying “Do not touch” every time we came near a piece of crap, I mean, art.

The only cool thing in the museum was the gift shop. It was full of curious things and mind games and whatnot; really eccentric stuff. We spent a lot more time in the gift shop than in the whole museum. I think we were there for a couple of hours at most.

Later on, we went back to our apartments and into the swimming pool. At around 9:00 pm I left to take a bath and went to the gym. I watched the Mexico – Guadalupe soccer game. Mexico won 1 to nothing and passed to the finals against USA. It’s going to be interesting. Sadly, Mexico has been playing tremendously awful, so I don’t have my hopes on. The goal against Guadalupe was awesome, though.

I really want to go to Colorado; I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Every day I think about it a little bit more. I’ve searched flight tickets and they’re not that expensive. I should go. I really should.