Went to see the bats come out from under the bridge tonight. It was really cool although it was kinda scary when they flew too close to our heads. You really can't tell from these pictures but there were zillions of bats flying. At first they started to fly around just under the bridge and then they came out in bunches flying towards downtown.
The only hitch in the adventure was driving home. I decided to take I-10 to the tollway. I took the tollway exit off of I-10 only to find out that the tollway was shut down. We got back on the Katy Freeway and went all the way down to SH 6.
When we went to the parade yesterday I messed up on the way there but did great getting us home quickly. Today I did excellent getting there but on the way home took the long way around. Maybe the next time I'll get it right both ways.
Yesterday we went to see the Art Car Parade. I parked the car on West Gray and we walked over to Allen Parkway. It was about five blocks through a pretty rough neighborhood. As I walked with Clay in front, John in the middle and me bringing up the rear, I thought to myself that if James saw this he would kick my butt to the curb. We were following another group of people who were about a block ahead of us, to myself I prayed that they were going to the parade also. I also tried to keep my eye on them and kept the pace up so they didn't get too far ahead of us. We got there okay and next year I'll remember that I should look for directions to get to the Federal Reserve Bank because the parade went right in front of it.
Saw some pretty creative entries and some pretty rauchy (sp?) ones which I won't describe here. It was really hot and next year we'll bring a big cooler of water to sell.
I don't know what this one was made of but it looked really cool.
I don't usually watch American Idol but I like David Cook. I can't wait to see what he does after American Idol is over. I think he'll be another Daughtry.
Clay and Anna went to prom Saturday night. They were taken advantage of by the limo driver who thought he was
dealing with a bunch of kids. Clay really shined though and took charge of the situation. It seems that the company double booked the stretch excursion that Anna and Britney had reserved. The company said the would give them a free upgrade to a Hummer for $450. So what's free about that. Clay told him that it wasn't his or their fault that the company has messed up and they weren't going to pay it. He said that they had entered into this transaction in good faith (where did he learn that) and that the company had accepted the $400 deposit also in good faith. I guess the $450 was for gas, the driver told us he gets 2 miles to the gallon. Several parents came over and mentioned to me that Clay really held his own with that guy.
Look at this thing, John and I saw a trolley car going down 1092 and I thought that it would be fun to go to prom in it but John said it was gay.
We went to Kemah last Sunday to see the Blessing of the Fleet. I thought we would see shrimpers on their boats tooling past as we stood on the boardwalk. What we actually saw was BIG sailboats, cruisers and coke boats crusing up and down the channel burning God knows how much gas. This is the only shrimp boat we saw.
We also saw a boat compaigning for Mark Wiggins, I think he was running for a Kemah councilman position. They must look at politics differently in Kemah than they do here in Sugar Land. I doubt that you'd see girls in coconut bras rubbing they're butts together as they asked everyone to vote for someone in Sugar Land. If they did it would at least make it interesting.
With in James in Qatar I've had to take care of things. By that I don't mean call someone to come fix it, I've had to fix things. The battery went out on the Durango, thankfully in the driveway. I went to WalMart at 8:30 pm on a Sunday, bought the correct battery (woo hoo) and put it in the truck (double woo hoo). Okay I'm feeling pretty proud of myself and then the pilot light went out on the hot water heater. When my brother was here he offered to show my how to light it but for some reason we didn't get around to it. I looked on the internet and there are all kinds of instructions on how to do it but none of the water heaters looked like the one that was in my attic. We went a few days without hot water which wasn't too bad since we live in Texas and it was in the middle of a warm spell but yuck. I'm afraid of three things, deep water (over my head), electricity and natural gas. But as I drove home on Friday night I thought come on girl you can do this. I looked up the instruction manual for our particular water heater and printed off the page about lighting the pilot, read over a dozen times, and went to light it. woo hoo! All the stressing and it wasn't that difficult. Then Clay who I guess doesn't have much faith in me, kept saying "I smell gas". My next feat was cleaning the carpets. I have watched James do this a bunch of times but never realized how hard it was. I rented a carpet cleaner from Home Depot and started this huge job. I can't take complete credit for this, I couldn't do it without Clay's help. He lifted and filled the water container for me. On Saturday night we went to see an Arena Football game. After the game and we stood to leave both us looked like an old couple. We finished the job and returned the cleaner to Home Depot without an additional charge or late fee. Woo Hoo!!! The weekend we cleaned the carpets was also the weekend of the MS150 and on Monday when I went to work even though I hadn't ridden in the ride, I sure felt like it. I have always thought a woman can do anything a man can do but after experiencing the past two months I've come to the conclusion that it ain't (sorry, I know that's not proper but it fits) so. If a woman tells you that she can do anything a man can do, she's either not doing it or paying a man to take care of it.
Got home from work early today and was hit when I came in the door about getting XBOX 360 LIVE by John. This is just one of the things I hate about James being in Qatar, I'm the go to person for everything.
He hooked it up directly to the phone line which resulted in the communication being broken between the security system and ADT. Now the house is beeping not loud but annoying as hell. John unplugged everything and hooked it back up the way it was, I called ADT and they ran some kind of a test, which was loud and annoying. Then we were good to go, I thought. When Clay got home John asked him to see if he could hook it up which he did. But this time a silent alarm rang at the Meadows Police Station and 4 officers and 3 cars showed up in our culdesac with lights flashing and guns drawn.
Needless to say even though now I know how the XBOX 360 LIVE should be hooked up it's not going to happen.
Some people think it's vandalism but John and I love it. He told his art teacher last year about some of the different pictures we had seen on railroad cars. Unfortunately she squashed his enthusiam and told him it was all gang related. Good news is she's retiring this year.
Anyway last week while I was sitting at 90/Dairy Ashford, I just happened to have my camera with me and took this picture.
"Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."
"When things turn weird, the weird turn pro."
"A word to the wise is infuriating."
Hunter S. Thompson
An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. Mahatma Gandhi
The next time I catch myself feeling sorry for myself, I will think of Suthkaren, James friend from Qatar. While working in Qatar Suthkaren received news that his parents, wife and children, two small boys were killed by rebels in his home country of Sri Lanka. That's him on the your right. As John said "You know Mom I see things like that all the time on the news but now I have a face to go with it and it makes it real." So when you're complaining about how much you have to do, the job you have or the things you don't have, please remember this young man who has lost everything and say a prayer for him and those who aren't as fortunate as you and me.
From the land of sun and sand. How's it going in the big city? Sounds like the boys are flurting... read more
on Mary Margaret - Sunday, February 24, 2008 11:11:22 PM