Busy Labor Day Weekend

I'm finally getting around to it now because I've been recovering from quite the Labor Day weekend...alright so I got sick at the end of Labor Day weekend and have been recovering from that while being constantly busy at work doing some simulation comparison work.

We had a guest down over that weekend, my college classmate T came down for an extended weekend. T got a 3 for 1 visit coming down here as 2 others from our UofM crew are down here. T got in on Friday morning, and we spent most of Friday just meandering around as all of us down here still were working during different parts of the day. Friday night Marc joined us at our place for some relaxing time with grilling and swimming at our house, followed up with some Rock Band to finish out the night.

Saturday Maren had to head in to work. Meanwhile, we met back up with Marc and hit up Space Center Houston. We got our blaster training on first. The three of us were accused of getting serious with the game, but how else are you supposed to take proper aim with your nerf gun mounted on a 3ft high table other than kneeling down!? However, everyone else followed our lead and we crushed the other team :-). We followed this up with a good ol' tour of the SVMF onsite at JSC along with Rocket Park. Lastly while there, T flawlessly landed the Shuttle and Marc docked the Shuttle to the ISS. To finish off Saturday, we met up with Maren and headed out to the Comedy Showcase for a fantastic show.

Sunday we picked up Marc and Lacey and we all (including Yahtzee of course) headed down to Galveston. T and I headed out to enjoy the waves while Marc and Lady hung with the dogs and scoured the shore. Lacey, as expected, was much more into running through the waves than Yahtzee. Though both were just as surprised when a bigger wave came through and picked them both up off the ground a little bit. After a few hours at the beach we were all beat. As was evident by how I think I was the only one awake for the drive home...which was a good thing since I was driving. We dropped Marc and Lacey off and headed home for some much needed relaxing. And what better way to do that than kick back and watch Galaxy Quest. [On a side note: Galaxy Quest is the first VHS that we watched with our projector, and we all were very impressed by how good it looked!] To finish off Sunday, Marc came back over for an evening of card games.

For Monday we spent the day over at Nikki's place visiting her, her husband, and their 2 kids. Nikki was another of our classmates at the U. Marc was able to stop by as well, and at that time we had the four of us back together for the first time in 3 years, good stuff! After the visit it was time to head back and get T packed up and off to the airport. That wrapped up a most excellent weekend, and we are all happy that T was able to make it down for a visit.

My sickness was kind enough to wait until T was gone, because it kicked in on the way home from the airport. We eventually came to affectionately call my sickness the Michigan Plague! [Inside joke ;-) ]

Blooming Birds!

When we got married, we wanted to have birds of paradise as accent flowers, but, living in the north, they would have had to be flown in from Hawaii, which cost a pretty penny. So when we moved to Texas, Mondo bought me a lovely Bird.

Now, three years have gone by, and she has survived catching a large tree, a hurricane, and my not-always-perfect gardening skills. Through all of that, we must have done something right, because she has finally graced us with a bloom. I'm excited. It's beautiful. That's my story.

Unusual Live Animal Sightings

Our sleep last night was interrupted at 3am by Yahtzee suddenly freaking out and banging against the door. So, once I recovered from my heart attack, I got up and opened the door for her. She tore out into the yard, in what I thought was her usual enthusiasm. I shut the door, and then as usual, flipped on the porch light. The light came on just in time to watch a living possum scamper up the big tree trunk in the back yard and perch at the highest point of it. The possum then became a statue at the top while Yahtzee attempted to employ her very limited tree climbing skills to reach the little bugger. That was the first live possum that I had seen in the "wild". I had to get Lady Gecko out of bed to have her take a look at it too. The most surprising item of this event was that while Yahtzee was jumping at the tree, she never barked. She only permitted the possum her huffy-growl.

I also must share that a few weeks ago, Lady and I saw our first ever live armadillo in the rustic wilderness of the Subway parking lot. We had to stay and be awed by its ... um, I guess we can call it beauty. Especially since it wasn't on the side of the road with its feet up in the air!