Getting Started

Eventually, I plan to post the story and pictures of our move from Virginia to Texas, but for now, this is just the obligatory first post in my first-ever blog. Ooooh, I've caught up with the kids in the 21st century.

Today is Friday, September 2, 12:38 pm Central time. We arrived at our house almost exactly one week ago to the hour. Since then, we've lived our last weekend in a hotel, gotten lost in north Houston, had a timing belt break on my car (in north Houston), bought appliances, gone grocery shopping, cooked our first dinner in our new house, unpacked 80% of the boxes, driven 4 hours to north Houston and back to pick up my car, and learned to take care of fancy goldfish in the backyard pond.

I've worked my first week at Johnson Space Center, and today I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Neutral Bouyancy Lab, the big swimming pool the astronauts train in. (pictures are coming, as soon as I can find my camera's USB cable.)

Everyone asks if I like it here. Yes, although I'm still homesick for Virginia and my friends back there. It's hot here. It was hot in Virginia, but it seems even hotter here. There are fewer trees, and they're shorter, so the sky seems much, much bigger. It also likes to rain here every afternoon, and it's strange to see it raining, but with blue sky up ahead.

I don't like the traffic, but I was warned about that before I got here. For some reason, Texans here love donut shops. Just a guy with some dough and a vat of oil. They're pretty good. And of course, the Tex-Mex is pretty good, what we've sampled of it so far. No shortage of places to eat, that's for certain, however, with gas at $2.99/gallon today, I think we'll be eating in a lot for a while to make up for all the eating out on the trip down here.

This is a long weekend, so hopefully we'll finish unpacking, get more things straightened up and arranged. We have to buy new lamps, because every lamp we had was broken in the move. That Lowes' gift certificate from the guys at LaRC will come in very useful this weekend.

I'll publish more and my pictures later.