June 2009 Archives

When I left off two days ago, I had covered our arrival and first lazy day in Belize. While two lazy days in a row sounded slightly appealing, we couldn't pass up the turquoise blue waters of the Caribbean, and on the second day we went snokeling! The Turtle Inn has its own full service dive shop, so we hopped on a boat with two other couples and headed 11 miles offshore to Laughingbird Caye. This island is a national park, and probably the smallest national park I've ever seen -- it measures about 40 feet wide by a few hundred feet long.

After hopping off the boat at the shoreline, we dropped our bags on a few picnic tables and headed into the water. I had never technically been snokeling before, but I've used a mask and fins in pools so it didn't take long to get the hang of things. The water was warm, calm, and as clear as I've ever seen -- we could see 30-40 feet easily, and the guides told us that at its best, visibility gets up to around 100 feet. Craziness! We swam from the beach across an underwater field of seagrass, and quickly arrived at the coral reefs surrounding the island. The largest coral reef in the western hemisphere is off the coast of Belize, so we were exploring part of that.

I don't have any photos since the inn was out of the cheap Kodak underwater cameras, but we saw tons of cool fish and underwater creates. The coral itself was really neat to look at -- lots of different kinds. Some looked like giant leafy plants, while others looked like tubes or antlers. And the fish! They were everywhere! And in all colors! There were zebra striped fish called "sargeant majors" and angel fish and snapper (TONS of snapper) and flounder and these cool black fish with neon blue spots. There were also lots of conch shells on the bottom, many of which probably still had conch inside since the national park status prohibited fishing and freediving for food. Inside some of the large coral and rock formations, we also saw Caribbean lobsters which look totally different from the lobster I'm used too -- they're long and spindly and not all red.

After about an hour of snorkeling, we swam back to shore for a picnic lunch on the beach. It was quite tasty. After eating, we explored the small island just a bit, but soon retreated to the safety of the picnic shelter to slather ourselves with another coat of sunscreen. (Sunburn prevention was a primary reason for all the extra clothing we've got on in the picture above! Our efforts were mostly successful, but I managed to sunburn two strips of my butt right where my bathing suit ended.) We went snorkeling for another hour after lunch, this time on the opposite side of the island and saw a similar array of awesome and colorful sea creatures. Overall, it was a very fun day and I was still smiling when we got back on the boat to leave.

One of the nice things about snorkeling (and scuba diving) was that we got back to the Inn every day between 2:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon, which left plenty of time for lounging. After the day of snorkeling, we went back into Placencia around sunset to buy a few souvenirs (a painting and a couple wood carvings). We called a taxi this time, and while we waited we enjoyed the lovely entrance to the Inn. There was a pond with a bridge, and there were turtles swimming around. It was the Turtle Inn, after all.

After our awesome day of snorkeling we were ready to tackle the one thing we knew all along that we wanted to do in Belize -- scuba diving! We arranged with the inn to go on a "Discover Scuba" dive the next day, where they spend a half hour or so teaching the very basic skills and then take you down with a guide. Those plans were postponed, however, when we were abruptly woken at 2:30 a.m. by...

...an EARTHQUAKE!

To be continued in a day or two... ;)

Today is our month-a-versary, and I think I've just about convinced Jose that we should eat at least a little bit of our wedding cake tonight. I mean, we've got this huge cake top that by many accounts will be gross if we actually wait until our first anniversary to open it. And it was good cake! I want more! But whether we open the cake or not, it also seems like a good time to post the honeymoon recap! So here we go...

After we decided to go to Belize, we chose the Turtle Inn on a recommendation from friends that stayed there a few years ago for their own honeymoon. Randomly, it's owned by Francis Ford Coppola -- he has three resorts in Belize (and they all serve wines from his vineyard). There was so much going on for the wedding that, unlike for any other trip I've ever taken, I hardly thought about our honeymoon at all. Once we bought the plane tickets and made the reservation at the resort, I didn't think about it again until the day after the wedding, when we both realized we need to, you know, PACK. We were up pretty late that night.

Our flight left IAH at 9:00 a.m. on Memorial Day. It was only two hours from Houston to Belize City, and we quickly got through customs and went to find the checkin for our next short flight to Placencia. It was 10:55 when we walked up to the desk, and the girl cheerfully asked "would you like to switch from the 12:20 flight to the 11:00 flight?" We looked at our watches. The girl assured us we'd have enough time, and of course we did -- it took only a minute to walk through the metal detector and into the small terminal. There were only half a dozen gates, and this was our plane:

Tropic Air plane, capable of carrying ~10 passengers

Our puddle-jumper flight was very exciting, and a great start to the trip. About halfway to Placencia, we stopped to let a man and his son off the plane. The runway was a thin dirt strip, and there was no building -- just a metal pole and white tarp tent. The man and his son hopped into a pickup that was waiting for them and off they went, while we just turned around and took off in the opposite direction. The pilot used every last inch of runway, and we left the ground just before running into the grass.

On final approach to Placencia airstrip

The landing in Placencia was similarly exciting. The runway (paved this time) is visible in the middle of that picture. It spans the entire width of the Placencia peninsula; in fact, the dirt road juts out to go around the end of the runway, and there are stop signs cautioning drivers to check for airplanes before crossing.

Our pilot skillfully landed the plane on a runway no wider than a typical neighborhood street. Actually, it probably wasn't even that wide, now that I think about it. Jose and I were duly impressed with the pilot's landing skills. We hopped out of the plane. The Tropic Air terminal in Placencia was slightly better than a tent; it was a trailer. We were told the trailer was a recent upgrade from the shack that used to be there. There were two other people on our flight that were also going to the Turtle Inn, so the van was already waiting to take us the half mile down the road to the Inn.

We had to wait a couple more hours for our cabana to be ready, since we'd arrived early, but that was no problem -- we just relaxed, ate some lunch at the beach bar, and admired the blue, blue, VERY VERY blue water.

The cabana was worth the wait. It had an awesome screened front porch with comfy wicker chairs and a wooden couch. The room itself was spacious and comfy, and since they knew it was our honeymoon, there was a giant heart made out of flower petals on the bed. ;) The bathroom was similarly incredible with a cool open-air shower/tub. Finally, we had our own private garden in the back, complete with an outdoor shower where the water poured out of a piece of bamboo.

By the time we finally got into our cabana, we were exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before, and we crashed for about three hours. When we woke up, it was starting to get dark already! This was partly due to clouds rolling in -- something that happened almost every afternoon, though it didn't rain a drop until our last night there. Turns out that Belize is on central time, does not follow daylight savings time, and is south of Alabama (that would be east of Houston) so the sunrise/sunset times were not what we are used to. The sun set around 6:00 in the evening and rose around 5:00 in the morning! The shifted daylight hours, combined with the activities, which all began at 8:00, we quickly adopted a much different schedule than the one we follow at home. We got up each day around 6:30, and fell asleep every night around 10:00!

We were both hungry for dinner when we woke up from our nap, so we made reservations at one of the three restaurants at the resort. The one we chose was on the beach just feet away from the ocean, and it was the perfect "welcome to Belize" meal. We ate seafood, coconut rice, and even coconut gelato, washed it down with tropical drinks, and looked at the stars -- which were everywhere, thanks to the lack of ambient light from any nearby cities.

We decided to spend our first full day relaxing at the resort by the swimming pool, which itself is only yards from the ocean. For whatever reason (currents? season?) the water right at the beach was overwhelmed with seaweed and sea grass, so we never actually got in the ocean at the resort. (The snorkeling and scuba diving spots were offshore, and those beaches were sparkling and pristine, no sea grass to be found.) Instead, we swam in the pool, which felt fantastic in the middle of the day. This of course meant slathering ourselves up with sunscreen because the sun was BRIGHT and HOT, and on the first day we each missed a couple spots and ended up with some interesting sunburn. Ironically, our backs were fine -- which was the part we had done for each other. Where we put on sunscreen ourselves, we slacked off and ended up with red shoulders.

We dragged a couple lounge chairs under a tree and read for a few hours. I had to laugh at our choice of books. I went with a fun read about a guy who got jilted at the altar but decided to go on the honeymoon anyway, taking his brother along. They enjoyed it so much that they sold their homes and traveled the world for almost two years! Jose, by contrast, read a book about biocentrism. I dunno, it's something physics-y. He liked it. ;)

That evening, we walked the 1.5 miles down the road to the village of Placencia. Being on the road took us away from the shore so there wasn't much of a breeze. It was hot, and dusty, and there wasn't much to see so we ended up taking a quick taxi ride every other time we went into town. I don't know how many people live in Placencia, but it can't be more than 500 or so. It was a very small but interesting place, with tons of colorful houses. The main road runs along one side of town, and a few hundred yards away on the other side of town is "The Sidewalk." It's just that: a sidewalk that runs the length of the village and is the main drag of Placencia. We were a bit disappointed with Placencia, because it seemed we'd come into town at just the wrong time -- most of the shops had closed for the evening and everything seemed pretty dead. We did find a restaurant and enjoyed more fish for dinner (and in subsequent trips to town, we timed it a bit better to be there when stores were open).

On our second full day, we decided it was time to head offshore and do some snorkeling! I just realized I haven't uploaded those photos to Flickr yet, so I will pause the recap here. Come back tomorrow to hear all about snorkeling!

Christine has started putting our wedding proofs online and I'm so excited to see them all. I'll post some of my favorites later...maybe the proof version, or maybe I'll wait until I get the DVD with all of the originals. In any case, here's my family! They are all awesome and I love this picture.

If you want to see the proofs, you can get there by going to Christine's website and clicking "Client Galleries" at the top. You'll have to sign up, and the password for the gallery is our last name.

This weekend was very fun. We spent Friday night laptop-shopping for Jose, whose 5-year-old laptop was on the verge of complete exhaustion when you asked it to perform simple tasks like open a web browser or sync an iPhone. After reconnaissance at Fry's and Best Buy, we decided to sleep on it and spent the rest of the evening playing Wii over at Kelly and John's house. They had a game called Raving Rabbits, or something, that was quite entertaining. There was also much Mario Karting.

Saturday was an almost exact repeat of Friday. We went out to run a few errands, including a stop at Lowe's where we picked up pretty much every paint sample brochure (the "idea" booklets with pictures of various colors in various rooms) they had. Yes, the first week in our house will be a painting party. We headed from there to Fry's where we bought Jose a Fujitsu laptop will a 500 gb hard drive and 4 gb of RAM, as well as many other specs that we investigated but I don't feel like writing down. In comparison, my Dell laptop, which I bought 4 years ago for twice the price, has a 40 gb hard drive and came with 1 gb of RAM. It is really amazing how quickly computers improve.

After getting a new computer, it was tough to pull Jose away from it (now I know how he feels about me sometimes!), but we did end up back at Kelly and John's again to grill some steaks and -- you guessed it -- play a lot more Wii.

We finished the weekend last night in Galveston to celebrate Jason's birthday. We ate Greek food at a place on the seawall, then played a round of mini golf. Jose won with a 13-over-par score of 49. Let's just say we are not the kings of mini golf by any means. Much fun was had playing with a giant kooky dragon. Oh, and Jason got eaten by a snake. Perhaps not the ideal thing to happen to a birthday boy, but that's how it goes.

So it's Friday. I'm not quite sure how the week passed so quickly, but I'm glad it did. When the launch was scubbed again early Wednesday morning, it meant that the "contingency" rendezvous sim scheduled for yesterday went ahead as planned, so I spent the day in the control center. It was a good sim, with a particulary insidious failure -- so sneaky that we didn't even realize the full extent of its impact until we reviewed the sim in the office this morning. That's both the best and worst kind of failure. In the long run with the benefit of hindsight, you learn a lot. But in real-time it's almost impossible to 1) recognize the problem, 2) anticipate all the tiny but important effects and 3) react appropriately.

Our visits to the house have slowed as things near completion, but it had been a whole week (!) so we stopped by last night to check things out. We immediately noticed that we now have the standard two trees in our front yard.

We have a real front door now, as opposed to the fake wood door that used to be there.

They've also finished all the tiling in the kitchen and bathrooms, including the backsplash which looks AWE. SOME. I love it.

The shuttle launch scheduled for early Saturday morning was scrubbed late Friday night due to a pesky problem with the fueling process. This same issue delayed the launch of STS-119 for a week in March, so hopefully the delay this time will be similarly short. On the plus side, if we'd launched on Saturday morning I would have spent the better part of my weekend on console in Mission Control. Since we didn't, it was like I suddenly found myself with a whole extra weekend! And I made the most of it.

On Friday afternoon, I met some BAM people at our new open water swimming location. There's a guy who lives off 96 here in League City who has a large lake on his property, and he's nice enough to let club members use it for open water swim practice! All he asks is that we keep the place clean and put $5 per person in a locked mailbox. It is SO nice to have a place to swim that's only 10 minutes away, as opposed to driving 45 minutes or more to Twin Lakes.

The bad news is that everyone else had gotten there at 4:00, and by the time I got there after work at 5:00, they were all nearly done. I only got to swim one lap before everyone finished, and part of the agreement with the property owner is that no one will swim alone. So I got in a real hard core workout...yeah...a grand total of ~650 yards in 12 minutes.

I got up super early Saturday morning to watch the launch, since I hadn't heard the news the night before. It was ok though, since I'd arranged to go riding with a few BAM people at the ungodly hour of 6:45. This was my first ride in at least three months, and it was a great one. My legs felt pretty good for the whole 23 miles at a nice and easy 15.5 mph pace. (My butt, on the other hand, was ready to be done after about 5 miles.) It felt good to get back on the bike. I'm signed up for the Y Freedom Tri in Pearland in two weeks, and that will be my first tri of the season. I know I won't be able to beat or even match my time from last year, so my goal is just to get back into the swing of things.

Jose and I spent Saturday afternoon browsing for furniture and appliances at Best Buy, Macy's, Rooms to Go, and La-Z-Boy. (We just picked the stores that were in the area where we already were.) We don't plan to buy anything until we're in the house, but that is imminent enough that we decided it wouldn't hurt to get an idea of what we want. And since we're moving from a 1000 sq ft apartment into nearly 3 times that space, the "what we want" list is long indeed.

First Tier, i.e. Things We Need As Soon As We Move In:

• Refrigerator. I like the french door style with the freezer on the bottom.


• Blinds. For the bedrooms, at a minimum, though we'll do all windows eventually. If you have a suggestion as to a good place to purchase them, please share.


• Lawn mower. Unless we want to hire a lawn service.


• Paint. Lots and lots of paint.

Second Tier, i.e. Things We Need/Want Sort Of Soon:

• Guest bed. This either means buying a guest bed OR buying ourselves a king-size mattress and moving the queen-size to the guest room. We're leaning towards the second option, which means eventually buying a new bedroom set...though that could come later. All we'd need is the mattress and frame to start.


• Large couch(es) or sectional. We need something bigger for the family room, and to have more seating now that we actually have room to invite people over.


• Dining room table. Until we get one, we have a small 4-person table for the breakfast room.


• Sod for the backyard


• Gutters for the back of the house


• Washer and dryer. To start, we have an old beat-up washer and dryer we got for cheap from Becca, but I don't know how long they will last or how well they work.


• Desk. I have one, but Jose doesn't.

Third Tier, i.e. Things We Need/Want But Not Badly Enough to Prioritize Them Higher:

• Bookcases


• Patio furniture


• Grill


• Bar chairs. At least two of them, so people can sit at the island. I have two stools, but I want chairs, with backs.

Fourth Tier, i.e. So What If We Don't Need It, We Just Plain Want It:

• Decor. Curtains, small tables, art, etc.


• Surround sound equipment.


• Aquarium


• Telescope


• Basketball goal


• TV for the bonus room

I figure it will take us years to get through all of those items, especially the "fourth tier" stuff, and the list will only grow. Still, I'm sure I'm forgetting some necessities. Those of you who have bought houses can let me know what I'm missing! What will we need immediately? What can wait?

Our fabulous wedding photographer is still working on post-processing everything, but she posted a "sneak peek" of the photos from our wedding! They are so awesome and I adore them. You guys all know how important photography is to me, so you can appreciate how important it was for me to find a wedding photographer that we really liked -- and by like, I mean both the person and their pictures. We did that. :)

Here's one of my favorites from her preview. Make sure to go check her blog to see the rest.

Thanks to Christine, and also to her second shooter Elaine!

We went by the house last Sunday night on our way in from Corpus Christi and -- gasp! -- found the door locked. I figure that means we have officially reached the last few weeks of house building. If the door's locked, that means there's something inside that could be stolen. Things like light fixtures, granite countertops (though that would be a feat), and tile. So we went back over last night before the main office closed, but it turned out that we didn't need to because three guys were still there laying tile when we drove up. They said not to walk on it because it was wet, so we climbed in the master bedroom window. :)

So yeah, we have tile down (though it hasn't been grouted yet) and it looks awesome. And our countertops are in and they look awesome. Everything is awesome. When we picked things out at the design center, we only saw one tile, and one cabinet door, and a small sample of the countertop, so it's exciting to see the whole picture -- and it's also a relief to see that everything looks good together on a large scale. We can't wait to see how the tiled backsplash looks once they get that in.

They've also tiled the fireplace, which matches the countertops. Looking good, although I wish they'd painted the mantle white.

We paid extra to have them continue the tile from the entryway through the dining room, which otherwise would have been carpeted. Definitely the right decision.

The chandalier and skylight in the dining room also look great. It wasn't my first choice of lighting fixture, but we didn't want to pay to upgrade it. I think it will look a lot better if I take off the little lamp shades (which I hate) and maybe buy some different fake candles. Can you buy those? I'm assuming I can.

The dates aren't pinned down for sure yet, but it's a good bet that we'll be living in the house within a month.

I haven't had time to post the first half of the honeymoon recap, but the photos are up on Flickr. We're off to Corpus Christi until Sunday afternoon to celebrate my cousin(-in-law)'s high school graduation. You can enjoy the photos until then, and I'll recap early next week. The first half will be about the Turtle Inn and Placencia.

(The second half will be about the awesome snokelling and scuba diving excursions! I haven't posted those photos yet.)

I will begin the Belize honeymoon recap tomorrow, since I'm not quite done going through the photos. We didn't take that many, but they were spread across two digital and one underwater film camera, so the organization is haphazard -- not to mention the CD I got with the film development contains crappy scans.

So yes, you can look forward to that tomorrow. The question for today, however, is this: why are our friends trying to make us fat??

Perhaps it is our own fault, since we registered for some kitchen appliances that we either didn't have or that needed an upgrade. We got a toaster from family friends, which was the only present we didn't save until post-wedding, mainly because someone really wanted to make some waffles and is not a fan of my very, very old toaster oven. We also got an espresso machine from Leila and Brian, something that I have wanted for a while and am going to try out tonight. Finally, we got two items that Jose is pretty much over the moon about: a Cuisinart Griddler from Nick & Heather, Matt & Melissa, and John & Kelly...and ice cream maker from Cari.

The Griddler was immediately put to work for paninis on Tuesday night, and steaks last night. Just look at the concentration on Jose's face! I'm thinking a nice grill for the patio will be high on our list of "things to buy" once we're in the house.

We got all the ingredients to make ice cream on Tuesday night, but our hopes and dreams were crushed when we discovered that the bowl has to be frozen solid before you can make delicious desserts. Undaunted, we slapped that baby in the freezer and last night enjoyed some quick, easy, and VERY tasty vanilla ice cream with Reese's peanut butter cup chunks.

In other news, perhaps I will start taking pictures of us using all of the gifts to send to the giver. Mainly because it makes me laugh, but also because of how creative we'd have to get for some things. Which would also make me laugh.

I haven't had a chance to go through all the Belize pictures yet, and Christine hasn't finished processing our wedding photos yet, but don't worry -- you can all be assured that full recaps are coming.

In the meantime, you get an update on our house! We found out via email from our sales coordinator on Monday that the construction manager expects to turn the house over to the sales department in three weeks. After some back-and-forth on final fixes, that means we're looking at closing in 4-5 weeks. WOW. In all likelihood, we will be living in our new house by the middle of July, which is a whole month earlier than we expected when we began the house-building process. The downside means a month of paying both rent and a mortgage, but the upside means: we will have a house!

We stopped by last night to see what progress had happened in the past week and a half. I have to admit that it was a little disappointing. After a couple months of significant changes happening on a daily basis, walking in and seeing only a few improvements like cabinets and paint was underwhelming. Still, we are getting really excited for the day we finally move in.

The last time I posted an update was right after they'd installed sheetrock, but before they finished it. Bricking was in progress, but not complete. They finished the brick and stone at the end of the week before our wedding, and I saw it on Friday the 22nd when I met up with Carter and Kent just long enough to show them the work in progress.

Here's what it looked like last night, all finished on the outside. I'm really happy with how the stone turned out around the doorway. And notice we have garage doors! Woo!

The most obvious addition were the cabinets! They were all installed, both in the kitchen and in the bathrooms, except for the kitchen island which is sitting a few feet farther out from where it will actually be. It's been a while since we saw the color, so we were happy to see them again. We love the dark, dark espresso stain. It's going to look so awesome with the countertops we chose. Also note in the background that we have a fireplace mantle now, and you can see that they've painted all the walls the standard "new house beige." They still need to go back and touch up all the edges though.

Other new additions included interior doors, for both the entrances to rooms and for closets and bathrooms. We also have windowsills, floor trim, moulding, a chair rail in the dining room, and shelves in all the closets.

Doors!

The brick is complete on the back of the house as well.

Just 4-5 weeks! I can't believe it!

We are back! Belize was AWESOME. We relaxed, read books, slept a bunch, ate a ton of delicious food, went snorkeling twice, scuba diving once, and generally had a fabulous time on our honeymoon. Wedding ring drama (don't worry, it ends well), a bit of sunburn, vicious fly-by-night mosquitos and a 7.3 earthquake centered less than 150 miles away did nothing to dampen the AWESOMENESS.

Did I mention Belize was AWESOME?

More to come...