Daily: August 2003 Archives

softball last night did not go well. despite our team playing perfectly fine defense, we found ourselves unable to get more than a smattering of hits, and against a team where everyone could find the holes. i swear, i've never played a team in coed rec softball that could hit as well as this one; they need to move over to coed competitive! then we wouldn't have to play them. ;)

my apartment still looks like a disaster area, even though it's slowly improving. i could have everything organized and put away if i had one full day, but alas, it's not meant to be. this evening after work, becca, jen and i are heading to enchanted rock (west of austin) for a labor day weekend camping trip. gavin will join us tomorrow, and we'll all come back on monday. it should be fun, though hopefully not too hot. the weather is calling for a chance of thunderstorms, which could cool things off more, however...note to self: make sure i have the rain cover for my tent!

enchanted rock is basically a big granite rock in the ground, like a smaller version of stone mountain in georgia. i always wanted to go (it seemed like there was a trip there every co-op tour) but i've never managed to make it over there until now. tomorrow we'll climb to the top and explore the cave and maybe watch some people rock climb on the back side, as well as hike the trails in the park. then sunday we'll either do more in enchanted rock, or drive to one of the nearby state parks for swimming or more hiking. i'll probably head back to houston monday morning so that i can do some labor day climbing at the rock gym and then to the cookout with the gang that evening.

enh. one day i'll finish unpacking. minor detail.

i've been having one of those weeks where it's impossible for me to get to work before 8:30 (or, yesterday and today, 8:45) no matter what my intentions. i have just been a big ol snooze-button-hitting sleepyhead. but it's ok, since i was here last night until 7:00. i get in these moods where i start on something and get on a roll, and don't want to quit until i reach a good stopping point. that happened last night.

last night i attempted to sift through more of my crap in an attempt to make my apartment more comfy and less cluttered. i'm having some success; i just need more time. i also tried to install my ceiling fan light for the second time, and was unsuccessful again. i am feeling totally incompetant that i can't install a ceiling fan light, especially since i took it down in the old apartment and saw how it was connected!! there must be something i'm missing, but i can't figure out what. there are two wires coming from the fan labeled "for light." one is blue and one is white. there are two wires on the light fixture. one is black and one is white. i connected white to white and blue to black, and i get nothing. i wonder if maybe it's not possible to hook up a light twice?? but that makes no sense. i can't figure it out.

my ankle is finally starting to look a bit more normal. it's still swollen, but i can tell it's going down. this is good, since i plan on hiking up to the top of enchanted rock this weekend. gavin, jen, becca and i are going camping there.

i just realized that it's been almost an entire year since becca, karen and i were cavorting around on the great scotland road trip. that was fun. but with that anniversary coming up, and the recent conversation about wish list destinations, i am feeling the need to leave the country again. it's a good thing that the trip to greece is only a month and a half away!

i have nothing interesting to say today. i have been sitting here for an hour trying to come up with an entertaining story, but nada. sorry.

so becca tells me this morning that ikea is adding 300,000 square feet to their houston store. ah. i am in heaven. i love ikea. in stockholm, there is an ikea store that is 600,000 square feet. yet another reason to go to sweden. :)

well, mars has made its closest approach and is now receding from the earth again, but if you haven't done it yet, you should go outside tonight and find it. mars is so obviously something closer than a star; it's brilliantly orange these days. i can't help but stare at it every evening and wish i had brought the telescope from home. my grandmother gave my family a telescope years ago, and for a while it sat in my parents' room with a blanket over it. i used to take it out in the backyard occasionally to look at the moon, and i vaguely remember dad setting it up to look at jupiter once. but now it's in the box in the attic, i think. maybe i'll snag it when i'm home for christmas.

it always makes me feel good to see stories about things like this in the news. combined with the release of the columbia accident report, space is all over the place, and though much of the coverage of nasa is bad, a part of me still thinks that any coverage is better than none. but the mars stuff makes me happy. astronomy so often gets completely ignored by the media; it's nice to see them making the public away that there are other worlds than these.

i skipped out on volleyball last night citing a swollen ankle. it's still swollen today, and i'm starting to worry, as i've never had anything stay swollen for this long. but george the amateur doctor tells me it's ok, and to just keep icing it. it was hurting more last night after i finished moving all my stuff from the old apartment (no comments from the peanut gallery on the irony of skipping volleyball, and yet still moving stuff up and down stairs), but this morning it seems to be a little less swollen. i am starting to be able to see my ankle bone again.

as of 8:00 last night, i am completely moved out of my old apartment. i took the last couple loads over to the new place, then went back to vacuum the floor and wipe down the counters. i pulled all the nails out of the wall, took down the hooks i'd put up, and took down the ceiling fan lights i'd bought.

i took one last look around, and said "goodbye 803. i hope someone else enjoys you as much as i did." then i walked downstairs and locked the door.

my new apartment is nice. extremely cluttered at the moment, as i haven't finished unpacking, but nice. i'm impatiently waiting for the dsl to come on (which apparently can take up to 10 days from the time they turn the phone line on, which i don't really understand but it seems like they should be able to do it faster). and i can't figure out how to reconnect my ceiling fan lights, despite having observed how they were connected in the old place. sigh.

time to ice my ankle.

yesterday as i was carrying two big 14-gallon tupperware bins full of kitchen stuff down the stairs, i thought i'd reached the bottom. unfortunately, i was wrong; there was one more step. i missed it, and as a result, wrenched my ankle something wicked. it was a truly becca-inspired moment (which i say only because i know it will make her go "hey!" in mock anger). anyway.

becca actually happened to be helping me move at the time, and peered through the cutout in the wall of my old apartment to inquire about my well-being, as i sat in a heap on the floor clutching my ankle. i replied that it wasn't broken or anything ("oh good, you're not going into shock," she said, before disappearing back into the rest of the apartment), and then i got up and hobbled over to the new apartment. i moved a few more loads of stuff before realizing that my ankle did actually hurt, at which point i sat down and iced it.

i guess i didn't ice it long enough, as later last night it swelled a bit, and is still swollen today. in fact, it has a nice throbbing/slightly numb feeling today. i think maybe i slightly sprained it. this does not bode well for rock climbing tonight. stupid ankle.

other than that, however, i'm almost done moving. i put off moving the hanging clothes from my closet last night after hurting the stupid ankle, so i have to either do that tonight, or recruit someone else to do it for me. then i have to move my computer. then pull the nails out of the wall, take down the curtain rods, take out the hooks in the bathroom, and rescue the ceiling fan light fixtures that i bought. maybe an hour of work, total. then everything will be out of the old place.

i am liking my new apartment ok. saturday night when everyone came over to watch "so i married an axe murderer" and the help me move, rich and stephanie both walked in and said something along the lines of "wow, this apartment is awesome!" ugh. that is not what a girl wants to hear when she is moving out of that apartment and into a smaller one. i was sad on saturday night. but yesterday went well, and as i start to get things settled and organized in the new place, i am finding that there are some things i like better. i miss the space of my old place, and the big window. but the power lines are farther away from the new place, and the balcony is slightly bigger, and more open, and thus more comfortable. i like the little study area i have set up in what is otherwise the dining room. and the kitchen in my new place is much more efficiently laid out, and i have actually have more cabinet space than i used to.

i didn't officially work out this weekend, as in i didn't run, or swim, or bike, or go to the exercise room. but with all the moving, and stair climbing, and lifting boxes, i think i managed. my arms and legs are a little sore today.

it was really hot this weekend.

lately i have realized a few nice things about having been in one place for more than a year now. it's very calming to me to think that i have seen all the seasons change (insert sarcastic comment about how houston only has two seasons--hot and hotter). but seriously. it is nice to think that i moved here in the middle of the summer, watched the weather cool and the days darken as fall deepened into winter. i was sad at the lack of sunshine through december and january, and enjoyed watching the days get longer as spring approached. the weather got warmer, but may and june were pleasant, and even july wasn't that bad. i didn't find it uncomfortably hot until this month, and now, with september around the corner, i can look forward to cooling, and evenings on the balcony. fall is my favorite season, and it's approaching again.

i dunno. that's not a very good explanation, but last night as i was lying in bed, i decided that being in one place for more than a year wasn't that bad after all.

i'm typing these words while lying on my stomach, legs stretched out behind me, on the floor of my study. or what used to be my study. in any case, i'm sure this position is completely ergonomically incorrect.

i guess i'm living in my new apartment now. i still have the keys to this one, and there are still things here--i have yet to move all the clothes from my closet, or move all the dishes from my kitchen--but there isn't an ounce of furniture in here anymore. within the span of an hour or so, it all got moved over to the new place, with much help from matt, stephanie, rich, gavin, jen, becca, and betsy. the boys did a lot of the heavy lifting, including the couch (which went out a lot easier than it came in, it seemed) and the dresser and the bed. tonight, i moved all the bathroom stuff and shower curtain over, so i won't even be using the bathroom here anymore.

i don't actually have to be completely out of this apartment until next sunday. but i'm leaving town on friday, and didn't want to move during the week. tomorrow i hope to move everything else over to the new place. it's mostly clothes and dishes left, so it shouldn't take too long, and becca even said she'd come back over to help. payback for doing her floor last weekend. :)

i am sort of sad to be moving. my new apartment is fine, and a part of me is excited about the change. but another part is sad. and disappointed. the new place is smaller. two of my bookshelves had to go in a closet because there isn't enough space. they'll be just as useful in the closet, but still... my living room is more cramped now, with not nearly as much floor space, and no perfect place for the papasan. there's no way to arrange the living room so that the tv faces the kitchen either, so no more watching baseball across the bar while i leisurely make my dinner.

but it will be ok. it will take some getting used to, but it will be ok.

In my typical groggy morning haze, as I laid in bed hitting the snooze button, I thought to myself "Hmm. Wait a sec. There was some reason I wanted to actually get up at 7:00 today. What was it? Hmm. Gosh, what was it? Geez. Oh, I can't remember, I'll just hit the snooze again."

And that is why I didn't remember (until I walked outside) that this is my favorite day of the entire year to drive to work. Why? Because it's the Friday before the last full weekend in August, which means it's the beginning of the Ballunar Festival! It doesn't officially begin until tonight, but this morning is what you could call the "warm up flight," when all the hot air balloons take off for an early morning jaunt around Clear Lake. Thus, despite forgetting to get up early enough to watch them filling and launching, I still walked out of my apartment to the sight of dozens of brightly colored hot air balloons gliding overhead in perfect quiet, save for the occasional burst from the burner.

They looked so beautiful in the morning sky as they floated over towards Friendswood. I pulled over on the side of the road just before I got to work to take some pictures, and waved at the pilots gliding overhead. Some were higher than others, in fact, one balloon accidentally came down in the middle of the road(!) before its momentum carried it off the pavement and into the field beside the middle school.

Becca is volunteering on a chase crew for one of the balloons; I will be so incredibly jealous if she gets to go for a ride. I've always wanted to ride in a hot air balloon. But alas, I'm moving this weekend and couldn't commit to a chase crew. Hopefully I'll be able to do it next year.

I remember this morning last year. Carter was visiting and was asleep on my couch, and Nick picked me up for work, because he hadn't left for France yet. We drove down the road in his convertible with the top down, and me snapping pictures as fast as I could. I couldn't help myself and called my apartment to wake up Carter, and tell him to look out the window. I don't know if he looked. I don't think he was nearly as excited as I was, not to mention he was half asleep. But that was fun. When I get excited, I have a hard time keeping it in.

Ah, my favorite day. Coming to work beneath a sky filled with balloons just makes me happy. This is going to be a great day. :)

(In fact, I won't even get too upset over last night's game, except to say: Damn the Braves bullpen. Damn them.)

The Cubs won the game last night, much to Rich's satisfaction. Ah well. It was still an enjoyable outing at the ballpark, and fortunately, the Braves weren't on TV last night so I couldn't stay up late watching that game. Damn the Giants and their walk-off home runs.

I slept...well, not badly, but weirdly last night. I remember waking up in the middle of the night sweating, despite the fact that I turn my A/C down to about 76 degrees at night. In my grogginess, I got up, walked into the living room, pulled my Georgia Tech blanket out from the end table, and laid down on the couch. This all seemed perfectly normal to my sleep-fogged brain. Next thing I know, it's 4:30 in the morning, and I'm still awkwardly positioned on the couch. So I get up and go back to my bedroom and sleep till my alarm goes off.

I guess in retrospect, it's not that weird, but it feels really weird. I've never done anything like that before.

I need to work out. I haven't been running in a week, and haven't done anything remotely active since climbing on Monday. Despite the fact that I'm not getting enough sleep this week due to all the evening plans, I think a lack of exercising is the more prominent cause of my grogginess. Well, at the least, moving this weekend will provide a lot of activity. I only have two more nights in my current apartment before all the furniture goes over to the new place. It'll be a few more days after that until I'm completely moved out of the old and into the new, but I figure when the furniture gets moved, I go with it. This move is weird. I haven't really spent much time thinking about it, which is a lot different from previous moves. Then again, this time I'm only moving 100 feet. Nothing will change except the layout of my apartment.

(The server that is currently hosting the wedding pictures that I linked to yesterday is down. I don't know why, but I'll try to remember to mention when it comes back up.)

So there's the western power grid, the eastern power grid, and the Texas power grid. Texas has its own grid! Ah, I love Texas. No blackouts for us; we can secede without fear of power loss at any ol' time. Go Texas.

Yesterday was very strange. It began with an early morning thunderstorm that woke me up, and when I fell back asleep I dreamed that I was climbing Mt. Everest (which my brain morphed into a tower a la the Tower of Isengard on the Lord of the Rings movie poster, except made of ice and snow). So here I was on a completely vertical Mt. Everest, wearing my crampons and clutching my ice ax. With me on the climb were Harry Potter, Ron, Hermione, and...Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Very random.

(Oh! completely unrelated side note: in Austin on Wednesday, as we were finishing our lunch at Kerbey Lane, a girl walked by wearing a Trogdor the Burninator t-shirt. It was awesome. Anyway, back to yesterday's craziness.)

So after I finished climbing Mt. Everest with Ahhhnold and woke up, I came to work, only to realize I'd forgotten my dentist appointment, yadda yadda. Went to the dentist, came back, and hurrah, the computer man was here to take away my old crappy computer and give me a lovely new black Dell, with speakers. I've been waiting for my computer refresh for months now; little did I know it would be such an ordeal.

I had 6.5 gigabytes of data on my old hard drive that needed to be transferred to my new drive, but instead of being able to simply connect the two drives and transfer things efficiently, my old computer had to transfer everything to a small portable drive. This took five hours. At 5:30, the thing finally finished, and the tech guy and I finally went home.

Ugh. At least I have a new computer.

In the meantime, however, while my computer was being otherwise occupied transferring the entire contents of the hard drive, I got a call from my apartment complex saying my hot water heater had busted, I would have no hot water until tomorrow, and that Javier the maintainence man had discovered the problem after seeing water leak out of my garage, where the water heater is located.

There were multiple problems with this assessment. One, my water heater is not in my garage; it's in my apartment in the utility closet next to the kitchen. I knew this, and feared that I would come home to soaked carpet. Two... ok, well maybe there was only one problem with the assessment, but it was a major one.

Anyway. I came home. Inspected the garage. No sign of water having soaked the cardboard boxes in the back of my garage. Went into my apartment. No sign of water anywhere, not the kitchen or the carpet. Try the hot water. The faucet sputters and does nothing, so indeed, I have no hot water. Hmm. Go downstairs to the empty apartment below me, which has been left open for me to shower. Aha! The carpet was wet next to that utility closet, which is directly under mine. Aha! The garage to that apartment is open.

Deduction: my water heater broke, leaking water into the apartment below mine, and leaking out of a pipe that resulted in water coming out of the garage next to mine.

Anyway. I showered at debbie's, which was fine because I needed to go pick up Viggo the fish anyway. I walk in, look at Viggo, and notice that he has turned blue in the week since I've seen him. Blue? I ask Debbie what happened to Viggo, and she smiles beguilingly and says "Oh, he's blue! He missed you so much that he turned blue!" But where's the real Viggo, I wonder? Suddenly, a horrible thought occurs to me.

"Did he die?!?" I ask. Debbie looks at me. "Oh no, he died!!!" I cry. "The post-traumatic stress from me accidently dumping him down the drain has killed him!"

Debbie couldn't keep it up any longer. She revealed Viggo, happily swimming in a new tank in her bedroom. The blue fish is named Vtot (pronounced vee-tote), and since Debbie didn't know what she was going to do with him, I have adopted him and can now put their tanks next to each other and watch them attempt to fight. Viggo the red and Vtot the blue. Or if you prefer, one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.

(As a finale to this rambling and late-in-the-day entry, I guess I have to explain the blue fish's name. Viggo (the red), which I pronounce vee-go, sounds to Debbie like Vgo, which is an orbital mechanics term for the velocity to go in an engine burn. To keep with the theme, she named the blue fish Vtot, which is the term for total velocity change. I am surrounded by dorks.)

It was brought to my attention yesterday, albeit unintentionally, that this is the first time I've been in the same place for a year since I was in high school. I am also told that this is normal. Doesn't help me from feeling restless though. Maybe moving to a different apartment will cure that, or at least help.

Even before yesterday, I have been missing California something fierce. A friend from Stanford sent around the link to a 20-minute "highlight video" he made. It showed so many of the crazy things that went on during the 9 months I was there, and made me picture college as a magical place where classes are a minor thing stuck in between surfing, biking, parties, headstands in the study lounge and men in catwoman costumes.

Ah.

I can't think of much to say today. Hmm. Let's see.

Yesterday afternoon I made a really cool map showing footprints along an entry trajectory all the way from EI to KSC. It was pretty cool looking, and as always, I am a big fan of cool looking maps and graphs.

The dress I bought on Saturday is a size smaller than anything I've bought since I was like 14 years old. Obviously Talbots sizes their dresses bigger than any other store, but it still made me feel good.

My arms still ache from climbing on Monday, but today it is a good ache, a friendly ache, a "grr, I'm gonna be rock solid someday" ache. Unfortunately, I'll still be out of town next Monday, but I'm already looking forward to the Monday after that, and more climbing.

I'll also miss softball this week. Sad. I need to recover from last time's dismal hitting performance.

I need to get outta dodge.