I am not sure. I’ve had the strangest month of days in recent memory. Between jury duty, this crazy sinus infection, the trip to Houston, and the time change, I’m not entirely sure which way is up. I’ve found myself asking, “Food? Is it my feeding time?” And that’s just weird.
I’ve been horrible at updating the site over the past couple of weeks, primarily because I haven’t had both the time and the inclination. I’ve also been sitting on an offensively large pile of email since I finished jury duty, and I’m not even sure where to start whittling it down. Hopefully, I’m able to remedy all of that somehow.
Today, though, I wanted to talk about my trip to Texas. I always like getting to go places on work’s tab, and this wasn’t an exception. If it wasn’t for the nose congestion, it might have been a better trip, but it still wasn’t too bad.
I have been doing some web work for Greater Houston Pool Management. Way back last year or so, Val and I put together their site design for them, and I have been tweaking their MicroWiki ever since. It’s not a big job, but they aren’t die-hard web developers, so getting them running with the wiki required some education.
So the trip was designed for me to visit and get the last of their questions ironed out, which I’m pretty sure is all taken care of now. (Incidentally, if you’re looking for swim lessons in the Houston area, they’ve got them.)
My impressions of Houston are sadly the least favorable of any city I have ever visited. Actually, Houston is probably the first city I’ve ever been to where I’m left with no desire to return. As I was saying to Berta while standing in the airport waiting for my flight home, I couldn’t wait to get the heck out of that place.
I’m not sure why that is, even. While I was there, it was very foggy and overcast, making it somewhat humid. That wasn’t a big factor, but it didn’t help my sinuses feel any better.
I didn’t actually see the city, I don’t think. I mean, I didn’t see a skyline at all. And the only thing I saw that even resembled a city was when I drove to the Galleria Mall to get dinner and have a look around. It was basically a very long road with lots and lots of restaurants, but not much else that looked interesting.
The mall itself was kind of neat. There’s an ice skating rink inside. I wasn’t inclined to do any skating, though.
Of course, everything in Texas is flat. Maybe that’s it. I’m used to seeing the rolling hills of Eastern Pennsylvania, and maybe the flatness of things makes me angry or something. Perhaps it’s all just psychological.
On the way back from the Galleria, the navigation system in my rental car sent me onto a “ez-tag only” roadway. Well, I didn’t have an ez-tag. I wonder what the fine would be for the $1 toll, if they ever catch up with me through the maze of paperwork that the rental car company pushes around. I totally expected some spikes to blow out my tires as I pulled off the next exit.
I did get some personal things done, which is one thing that makes getting away kind of nice. I watched most of Underworld: Evolution before I fell asleep. You have to understand that in order to catch my flight on Wednesday morning, I had to be up at 3am. The flight departed at 6am. I arrived in Houston at 8am. I worked a full day, then drove to the mall to tour and have dinner, and returned to the hotel to watch most of the movie, but not quite to the end. I guess it wasn’t as riveting as they had hoped. This was my third failed attempt to sit for the duration of this film. Oh, well.
In the morning I started another full work day, then took an 8pm flight home, getting me back to Philadelphia around midnight. (Don’t forget to account for time zone changes!) I drove myself home from there, and finally saw my own bed around 1am.
Fortunately, I had Friday off, and I slept in a bit, but my internal clock is still all out of whack from the daylight savings change combined with the weird hours and time zone switches. An uneventful weekend might help, but since we’re gearing up the house for moving (oh, no- I’ll write a whole new post about that) I don’t see that happening anytime, well, ever.
It’s nice to travel, but I’m glad to be home.
