tay-has

my little sister inge and her husband jared just moved to the city of enchantment (aka, lake jackson, tx -- about an hour outside of houston). and what's a better housewarming gift than ... me!? yup. 4 fun-filled days with the coolest almost-cpa in southern california. what more could you want? no, really: what more could you want?

i was to arrive on november 7, wednesday evening, late, but this was the first time last month that i missed my flight. so instead, i arrived thursday morning, early. inge picked me up a little after 6 am and took me to her apartment where i slept. yeah. she had a doctor appointment or something, so i crashed on their guest bed while she was gone.

when she got back, we showered and got ready for the day. it was fun to just chat and catch up. we took a walk over to the sea center texas, which is like a small aquarium that has animals, etc., specifically local to the gulf coast area. (i was interested to learn that dow chemical is a supporter of the sea center.) at the sea center, inge introduced me to gordy. he's a jewfish. inge thinks it's funny that "jewfish" sounds like "doofus".

we came home from the sea center and ate tuna fish sandwiches, which sounded appropriate, and then we played games/chatted/hung out until jared *finally* got home from work. at which point we all changed clothes and went to the rec center! so much fun! "the recreation center-lake jackson is 65,500 square feet of family fun and fitness." and yeah, it is! we played racquetball for a while -- jared played with some friends that actually know how to play, and inge and i played with each other and pretended to know what we were doing. i think we had more fun. though jared got more sweaty. and then we went to the swimming pool to slide down the slide. *loved* that!

the next day was friday and jared doesn't have to work every other friday. so friday we drove out to galveston, after a lazy morning of waffles and wii tanks. we saw the seawall and went to the aquarium at moody gardens. i had a blast watching the sharks swim around in all those tanks. sharks are pretty cocky.

that night we watched stranger than fiction since i had just purchased it when i spent the night at the airport, but i think all of us fell asleep before the movie ended -- it was a long day.

saturday we lazed around again in the morning. i guess that's what vacation is for, isn't it? and then we headed out to brazos bend state park. on the way there, we stopped to take pictures of longhorns -- we were in texas, after all -- and we stopped to observe a memorial site for albert sydney johnston, confederate hero and texas patriot. this is a picture of me looking confederate, in honor of mr. johnston. this is also me looking unsuspecting as fire ants were eating my left foot.

back in the car, we continued the drive out to brazos bend state park while i complained and tried to weasel some fire-ant sympathy from the newly-native texans.

at the park, we saw an alligator! he swam up just after we arrived and posed for a few shots. if you look closely at that picture, you can see him in the background between inge and me. it was mesmerizing to watch him swim over, which i think is precisely what he intended. it's probably part of his attack plan: enchant them with my movements, then straight for the jugular!

after hanging at the swamp for a few minutes -- not too long because we quickly became aware of a covert mosquito operation to eat us alive -- we drove to the george observatory. we had a 15-minute "mini class" about the stars and constellations and then got to go look through the enormous telescopes to see some of the amazing things in the heavens. we saw a dumb-bell nebula, some other-cool-things-that-i-can't-remember, and lots of stars. we also saw the andromeda galaxy! oh, *that* was so cool.

sunday was church. i enjoyed visiting with inge and jared. their ward is nice. after church we played ticket to ride, a way fun game that i have mentioned in this blog before. inge and jared have the märklin version that has passengers, which makes the game a little more interesting. after the game, we went to the airport and i didn't miss my flight back to l.a.; so i'd say it was a productive day.