Houston Day 4

Yesterday was a pretty low key day and was more driving around than anything.  First things first, I am getting pretty good at navigating through Houston traffic.  Second, Houston traffic sucks, so the traveling rule of avoiding roads at peak hours applies big time.  Unfortunately, with accidents randomly happening, it's almost like peak hours are anytime.

Anyway, we woke up kind of late (like almost always) and headed out to do some stuff around noon.  Our first stop was Nan's Games and Comics Too for some Munchkin packs to add some fun to our Munchkin game that night.  To be fair, I really only stayed on one side of the store (the board game side), but it was a pretty cool store with prices that you would expect from a standalone store, meaning that most of the games can be found a little cheaper on Amazon.  I did buy the Munchkin 2 expansion, along with the Naughty and Nice & Easter Eggs booster packs.  Naughty and Nice was a few dollars cheaper than Amazon, so that was an added bonus. I would have bought a few more expansion packs, but it adds up pretty quickly and my husband and I don't really have an established group to play with yet back home.  We'll invest eventually...probably once we move to Albuquerque.

The Santamobile has apparently become more "santa-fied" than this picture shows...our visit had it decked out with graphics as well.

After this, we were starving (since it was around 2pm and no one had eaten yet that day) and found a high-ranked build-your-own-pasta type of restaurant right on the other side of the highway called Papa Mio.  It was pretty dead, but it was in the early afternoon when no one is out eating (except for us), so we gave it a shot...it did have 4.5 stars on Yelp.  It was pretty dang good! Not sure if it was homemade pasta or not, but it did kind of look like it, with mine being a spinach pappardelle (which I've never really seen before).  The BYOP starts at $5.95, but if you want anything other than sauce, it's 99 cents per additional topping.  Still, not a bad price...especially when we've been seeing ridiculous prices for food at touristy-type restaurants.  Also, the tiramisu was sooo good and probably also homemade.  My total for everything was $15 plus tip, so if you're ever in the area looking for some inexpensive and good Italian food, I'd say Papa Mio is a good place to check out.

Not a fan of the silly garnish, but the bread was pretty good and I was extremely happy they
had olive oil and balsamic vinegar to use for it.

We then decided after seeing cool pictures on TripAdvisor of the Sculpture Park, we would go there next.  I wanted my picture with the giant hippo because my hubby is OBSESSED with hippos for some reason.  Well, we drive all the way out to this place and it was extremely disappointing.  Let me say, this place is not an actual park with sidewalks/paths or even a parking lot.  It is a small area off the side of a freeway meant as a "look at it while you're stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic" with nowhere even remotely close to park.  We thought we might find some random place to park to walk back to it and traipse around, but no.  Also, not a very good area of town, considering the gas station we stopped at had signs up saying "stop begging, no loitering" and things like that, complete with bars on all windows.  Needless to say, we got our gas and got out of there, heading for the complete opposite of that area, the Houston Galleria.  Holy cow, this mall is big and full of designer stores.  We really didn't do anything but walk around and bought a few things because we had coupons (and of course, it was for stores that we have back home anyway).  Still, it was a cool sight and we got to watch some kid rock out for hours with some Xbox Kinect dance game in front of the Microsoft store.  I'm sure they were paying him, but he was so into his dancing and it was some funny stuff.

All of those culminated in "speeding" through rush hour traffic on I-610 (ha) back to my friend's apartment, where we spent another nerdy night of our vacation eating Domino's (Italian food day, apparently...not that you can call Domino's Italian food) and playing with our new Munchkin cards.  My sister won this time after we tried so hard to crush her.  She's one of those mysterious, silent types who keeps a good card in her back pocket...very good Munchkin strategy.  Also, I discovered my friend has a Dalek tumbler! I was so excited to drink some much-need Coke (for caffeine purposes) out of that; it made my nerdy Doctor Who heart sing with happiness.

A perfect vacation in my eyes.

We WERE planning on taking our day trip to San Antonio today (meaning Day 6, which I am writing this on), but my other friend and I stayed up waaaay too late playing my first real game of Civilization V (on Steam, of course), so I guess it's in the cards for Day whatever (I think I'm getting my days mixed up since I caught up a lot on Monday..originally Day2/3, depending on how you look at it).  I'll get my act together, I promise.

Houston Day 3

Yesterday was a pretty chill day, but I think it was my favorite day so far. My run was not that great in the morning, but at least it was something? And the neighborhoods around my friend's apartment are pretty cute, even if they're surrounded by a giant interstate highway and Queenburger (a former Dairy Queen).

While my friend was at work all day, the 3 of us embarked on a journey to Galveston Island to hang out at the beach. It took us about an hour, but I was kind of surprised with my abilities to drive pretty well through all the crazy traffic. I guess living/driving in Albuquerque paid off?

We arrived and found parking pretty easy right along the beach and even though there were a lot of people, it really wasn't that crowded and was pretty awesome. If you're looking to go down there for beach/Pleasure Pier, I would definitely recommend a weekday, but if you're looking to also go ride the rides and things at the Pleasure Pier, don't go on Monday or Tuesday. We've got plans to go to the Kemah Boardwalk with our CityPass (actually a pretty good deal) later this week, so it didn't bother us too much. We wanted to go to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., so we did and were kind of disappointed. The prices are crazy expensive so we got appetizers for lunch instead. They were tasty, but not really worth it. I wish we could have found some little local seafood place, but we didn't have much time.

We came back into Houston and went to a little Vietnamese place for dinner near my friend's apartment and it was really good! If you're ever in the Lazy Brook/Timbergrove area, check out Dragon Kitchen and hook yourself up with some Pho Tai and a Vietnamese coffee. We also got to watch Dancing with the Stars (meh) on an old school big screen (a little cooler than meh) but who I assume was the mom/owner was a very nice and funny lady. I'd definitely recommend it, and they also have Chinese food as well.

We came home, watched Geek and Sundry's TableTop with Wil Wheaton to teach my friends Munchkin and we embarked on what was the longest game I've ever played. Seriously, it was almost 4 hours (years) long and it was more because we were super-interpreting the rules...and we ended up being totally off on some stuff, which resulted in a much longer game. We still had a great time though! Munchkin is amazing and we're going to go find a game store and buy a couple of decks to make it a little more interesting. More to come!

Houston Day 2

Yes yes, I know that I'm technically going out of order, but deal with it.  Day 2 of Houston consisted of eating at a diner for breakfast at lunch time, the Johnson Space Center, and a sketchy taco truck that served really good but incredibly small tacos.  The Space Center was pretty nifty, we went on the Red Tram Tour that took us to the Astronaut Training Facility and Rocket Park, with the Saturn V rocket.  I really didn't know too much about any of the spacecraft, but there wasn't a lot of "life on other planets/living on Mars/Titan" type things, so I was a little disappointed about that.  The size of the rockets were pretty incredible though, although we didn't get to see a lot.  

Parts of the Astronaut Training Facilities

Saturn V Rocket

Then my friend decided he wanted to find the best taco in Houston, which apparently is this tiny taco truck called Tacos Tierra Caliente in a small but cool neighborhood. Their tacos were about $1.50 and came with mounds of cilantro and raw onions...but I hate all of that, so I got their Pastor (pork) tacos with avocado and corn tortillas.  They were pretty nifty, but incredibly small...and we didn't realize this until we had traveled all the way back across Houston to our friend's apartment.   Still, I would recommend them to anyone, and to also partake in the West Alabama Icehouse Bar that is right across the street where you can take your tacos to eat and have a drink.  We didn't check this place out because we were all getting cold, tired, and it was a little crazy full with St. Pat's people.  We're getting ready to embark on Day 4 by checking out Galveston Island and hopefully lounging around on the beach for awhile to read...if it's not too cold.  It's freaking humid here right now (I'm from MO, and I know humid lol) and my run was not a lot of fun due to this fact.  I guess I'll just wake up earlier to do it from now on.  More to come!

Houston Day 1

Well, a couple of days ago I finally made my way down to Houston with my sister and friend to see a good friend of mine who recently moved down here.  He's also my sister's boyfriend...kind of weird to the outside world, but my family has loved him since middle school, so it's all good.  Anyway, Google Maps said this drive was 12 hours 45 minutes, so I thought, big highways and stuff...probably 12 hours.  Well, not really...we finally got down here after 14 hours of being on the road, but a lot of that was interspersed with picking up friends, food, windy roads through the beautiful Ozark mountains in northern Arkansas (seriously gorgeous, but no pictures to be had because I was driving), and stopping at "The Best Buffet in the State rated by The Arkansas Times!"  It was Brown's Country Restaurant/Buffet/something like that and boasted a 100 foot buffet, but it was kind of underwhelming.  Still, we had some really good fried catfish (if you've ever been to the Lake of the Ozarks region, you would know this is quite the staple in our diets) and it had a lot of country charm and coonskin hats! (That was the selling point for us) Here's a picture of some stuffed crabs that were also on the buffet...kind of creepy looking, but they were pretty yummy and fun to play with!

We're just two crabs in love.

We finally got to Houston around 10pm, after seeing many hilarious sights and I finally got some delicious Whataburger fries and ketchup at a gas station (we don't have Whataburger anywhere remotely close to where I live).  I've been missing these bad babies for awhile and they were wonderful.  My friend greeted us with some great baked spaghetti, garlic bread, and what can only be described as instant mashed potato soup.  Seriously...it looked almost like Alfredo sauce.  The rest of the dinner was great though, and I taught them a little Slide 5, which is a fun German card game that's easy to pick up but packs a lot of strategy planning as well.  Needless to say, after a couple of games, I crashed into my wonderful queen-sized air mattress and slept for a long, long time.  I'm still not completely over this sick stuff (I'm suspecting bronchitis as the culprit), but it was nice to get to sleep in after a week of getting less than 6 hours everyday while hacking up my lungs.  More catching up from tomorrow's visit to Johnson Space Center will be had, but for now I'm going to go try out my legs by running around my friend's neighborhood.  Wish me luck...it's my first real run that's not on a treadmill!

Last Day!

I'm a little behind on posting due to a lot of reasons, so let's catch up.  Last week kind of sucked, because I was sick.  I'm still sick, and it still sucks.  The really crappy part?  It was my last week working at the bank (woohoo!) and it wouldn't have been a good idea to take any sick days...especially with all of the new people still kind of training and stuff.  I suffered through it like a boss, but let's just say that a lot of menthol throat spray, cough drops, and hand sanitizer was used.  Anyway, on the last day, it's kind of a thing to bring food in and give a gift to the person that's going away, which was wonderful!  My lovely ladies (plus new guy, we're not all female anymore lol) bought me this beautiful pen set in Watercolor, which is one of my favorite patterns.  They told me it was so I could grade my future papers in style...I agreed.  It was really sweet of them, and even though we were all starting to gel together pretty well, leaving was the right decision for me to get some literature classes out of the way before we move to Albuquerque.  

I work out.

My sister-in-law and I have been recently trying to figure out a better work out plan to maximize our efforts while making it a little more fun.  As always, I'm looking for ways to avoid my online homework and so I came up with this little plan (yes, while adding a little Vera to it) to get us (me) in shape.  I'm a person that needs assignments to stick to a plan (which is probably why I'm so excited to be a teacher) and that's where this workout plan comes into play.  I recently conquered the Couch to 5K running program, treadmill edition, and have been needing something that's going to give me a little more of a challenge now.

*Side note: if you are looking for a good way to work up to running long distances, check out Couch to 5K, it was surprisingly easy compared to what I thought it would be like. I'm only running at 5.2 mph pace, so right now it's more like Couch to 2.5 Miles, but still! A girl that's 170lbs running 2.5 miles every other day? I think it's worth the commitment.  I'll be starting to kick up my pace in the next few weeks to get my 5K time down to 30 minutes by the end of April (hopefully) to run my first race.  My incredibly fit sister-in-law (even though she wouldn't agree with me) is helping to motivate me, so if you're like me and need a little help, find a buddy to work out/run with that you don't feel awkward around.

Anyway, combined with this, I'm going to try a new way of counting calories that I'll post either today or sometime this week.  It's more of a list of things with calories (that I personally like) and then allowing myself to mix and match.  Rough draft status right now, but I'll try to crank it out soon as well.

First Post!

Soo...since this is my first post, I guess I should explain what this is all about.  I'm extremely bad at journals, but I want a way to share what I like with other people that like it as well.  This really isn't a theme blog, designed to give you a certain type of post.  It's kind of like my Pinterest page, but more detailed.  I'll be doing a lot of traveling soon and would like a place to share my travel tips along with shopping, nerdy things, teaching, band, food, workouts, and anything else that I decide is interesting enough to post.  Like I said, I'm bad at this kind of stuff, but hopefully my smartphone can help me with that.  I think since I'm training to become an English teacher, I need to have my own experiences with a journal before I can ask my students to write/type one.  This is going to be interesting.