Friday Five

The Excuse

Ok, so I typed this up on Friday. I thought I posted it when I was sitting in the airport bar but realized later that I hadn’t. This weekend was just simply living life and I didn’t get around to clicking on publish until now.

The Week

What a week it was.

I was in Houston this week. To answer the first question right up front – I didn’t see a lot of damage. Some windows knocked out; a good amount of debris from trees and the like; numerous billboards blown out. But the bulk of the damage came along the coast and I was on the NW side of Houston most of the time.

The biggest issues I had were traffic and hotel. I’m not sure which was worse.

Trying to find a hotel proved near impossible – between closures and people seeking shelter. I spent Sunday morning (the morning I was leaving) trying to find a hotel. After about an hour or so of calling hotels I found somewhere that I could get into for the first two nights. I took it figuring I at least had a place to stay and could work on the rest of the week later. After spending my free time on Monday and Tuesday hunting, I finally found somewhere for Tuesday night – just one night, and a smoking room at that. I made the decision that a smoking room was better than no room. By Wednesday, one of the people that works at the training center I was at took pity on me and let me crash at her and her husband’s place.

The freeway system ground to a halt this weekend. Roughly half of the traffic lights in the area were either sans power or flashing red. This meant that major side-streets that often serve as a relief valve for the freeways were rendered useless. As a result, the freeway system faced gridlock all week. I wound up staying far outside the city, and probably spent a good 2-3 hours per day in the car trying to get to and from work.

The Exercise

Yeah, about that…… Did not happen. What little free-time I did have after the commute was spent looking for a place to stay. Next week will be a make-up week.

The Restaurant

I did still manage to find a restaurant. I wound up at Lyndon’s Pit Bar-BQ (after discovering the place I wanted to go to didn’t have electricity yet). The place was a typical Texas cafeteria style BBQ joint. Nothing overly remarkable about it. But that’s always the thing with trying new restaurants – sometimes you win, and other times…

The Five

Let’s see if I can’t come up with another five just random things about me.

1. My favorite season is fall. Now I must admit it’s easier to say that living a place that doesn’t suffer from winter, but fall has always been my favorite. I love the crisp cool air, Indian summers, and of course football.
2. There is a part of me that likes a bitterly cold day. There’s something about the cold that makes you feel alive. Plus, the comfort of a blanket and couch is inversely proportional to the temperature outside.
3. My favorite time of day is early morning just as the sun is rising. There’s a certain something about the start of a new day. Of course, I can’t ever get up early enough to enjoy it, so I only get to see it when I’ve stayed up the entire night before – which oddly enough makes that time of day more special to me.
4. I worked graveyards for a little over a year of my life. Fastest way to suck your will to live – work a graveyard shift.
5. There are few things better in life than a nap. It would be nice if we could roll out our sleeping bags in the middle of the day and catch 40 winks.