Monthly Archives: September 2008

I was watching an episode of News Radio with Pete the other day. One of the characters referenced the last episode of St. Elsewhere. After six seasons of St. Elsewhere, it is revealed that the whole show, characters, etc, took place within the mind of an Autistic boy staring at a snowglobe with the hospital building inside of it.
I found this to be an excellent illustration of life. It’s as if my little universe is a snowglobe. Sometimes it’s sitting in the curio cabinet and my life is calm and quiet. Sometimes the snowglobe gets bumped or moved to a different shelf and things get stirred up, but the jarring is so minor that things get back to normal fairly quickly. Othertimes my snowglobe is so vigoriously shaken that it takes weeks or months for the snow to settle.
Currently it seems as if my snowglobe is being passed around a class of enthusiastic preschoolers.
I returned from Bristol on September 3rd and things were mildly unsettled, very light flurries in the snowglobe. I finished the week out and tried to spend the weekend relaxing and getting back into my groove, so that things would settle. By the time that Tuesday the 9th rolled around, it became rather apparent that things would not probably not be settling for quite some time. That’s when Ike arrived on the other side Cuba. Wednesday showed us that Ike was really keen to visit Galveston and Houston. Thursday, they sent us home. Thursday night Stefan and Natalie joined us. By this point my snowglobe resembled a rather solid winter storm in Wisconsin. Pete decided opening up a bottle of wine would be a nice relaxer. Two and a half bottles later, I was living in 800 square feet of apartment with three rather intoxicated individuals, with a complete range of different types of intoxicatedness. We had happy drunkeness, mellow drunkeness, animated drunkeness, and belegerant drunkeness. I decided that bed was a good idea as I don’t really deal with belegerant drunks particularly well.
I could really see a storm brewing, and it wasn’t Ike.
Friday was filled with short tempers and hurt feelings. I considered going to Kingwood to stay with my parents, but decided using the gas was a bad idea. Then I got into a rather explosive tiff with Stefan. I decided going to Kingwood might not have been such a bad idea after all, but now it was too close to Ike’s arrival to leave.
I opted instead to bunker down in my bedroom to avoid conflict at all cost. Storm hit, power was lost, and now we were a volatile group of people in a hot, stuffy, dark apartment. Stefan discovered he actually had power, so he returned to his apartment, with our X-box 360 to entertain him.
This is how things were until our power finally came back on Tuesday. I returned to work on Wednesday, to another location, as my office had lost power due to a busted transformer. The office still doesn’t have power, and it is unknown when we will be back to work at Timmons. The power and management companies are telling us next week, but I’m skeptical.
Meanwhile, the rest of Houston was reduced to Mad Max insanity with people forgetting how to drive, mile long lines at the gas station, people fighting over the last pint of milk at the drug store. Thursday, riding my bike, I was nearly struck by a Range Rover, saw a man urinating next to his car at a major intersection, was chased by a group of dogs dragging the small children that were supposed to be walking them, When I finally got to my normally quiet intersection, it was clogged by the influx of people trying to avoid the inactive street lights. I was cut off by an angry looking chick in a Honda who thought it was her turn at the stop sign. All of this took place within 15 minutes.
This was all peppered by a friend who had sworn life long spinsterhood getting engaged after 3 months of dating her boyfriend, drama within the relationship of two of our friends, inability to actually use my cell phone to call people due to really bad post Ike reception, and reaching the 3.5 year mark with Pete.
Thank goodness we leave for Disney World on Saturday.

I’ve spent the last two days with Pete, pedaling around Houston. If its within 3 miles of our apartment, we’ve pretty much biked to it. Most of our errands and excursions this weekend have been on bicycle. We only rode just under 12 miles in distance. But that’s a nearly whole gallon of gas that we’ve saved by not driving the Jeep. Since we aren’t bumming around the apartment, that’s nearly 16 hours of electricity we didn’t use. Not to mention that we are actually being active by doing this. The only disadvantage I have discovered thus far is my sunburned shoulders.
I’m of a fair skinned Germanic people. The upside is that I don’t get the rickets because fair skinned people absorb Vitamin D efficiently (I’m a wealth of knowledge, the usefulness of which is debatable). The downside is any exposure to the sun and my skin broils. I discovered this on Saturday, quite early, so when Sunday rolled around I was prepared with SPF 45 Spray on Sunblock. Great stuff so far, sprays on with ease, and I don’t have a funky sheen or a lobstery complexion. And since I don’t want to look like Keith Richards when I’m fifty….I think these are all great things.

One of our weekend jaunts included Bikesport near where I work. I purchased one of those nifty Frog LED Lights for my Bike, to increase drivers’ awareness of me, and some new wheel reflectors.

We also went to Whole Earth, where I rediscovered prAna. I’ve never actually owned any prAna items. I only really knew of their existence because of this girl that dated a friend of mine in college. She was such a devotee of prAna’s climbing apparel that she named her cat after the company, seriously. While I don’t think I will rush out to get Lias and Daphne a new brother or sister in order to name after a manufacturer of Yoga and Rock Climbing apparel, I do admit that they’ve got some really great looking, activity conducive items. Many of their products would fly in my rather casual office.