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.