I'm Back... Barely

Sorry for the lag here folks. Been pretty darn busy. The weather has been nice here since I made it back to the Apple. It was so fun to get to see everyone, well... almost everyone. My lessons were great and Dr. Lavenda showered me with much Genius and the dissertation is better than it was.

The weather was beautiful in Houston as well. Yes, don't faint. I just complimented Houston's weather. I definitely picked the right time to go back. However, there was one day that it poured pitchforks and El Caminos. That happened to be the day that I got lost... in Houston... lost in the town where I spent 6 good years of my life.

It is no secret for those that know me: me no homing pigeon. I get lost in large homes trying to find the flusher. It took me the whole week to find my way to the guest bedroom on the first try in the Holtzman's new home. I have zero sense of direction and if it weren't for Amber, I'd probably be lost somewhere right now.

So what should have been an 8 minute drive from my friend Tan's to the Holtzman's, turned out to be nearly a two hour detour. Don't ask me how I did it. If I knew then I wouldn't have this problem, now would I? I have a hunch though. See, major highways in Houston and surrounding Houston are shaped like a expressionist dart board made by a drunken toddler. So, it is easy for one to think that you are driving parallel to the road that you are eventually trying to get to (after you made a wrong turn) and then end up in Timbuktu.

Plus, something happens to you when you are endlessly driving to your destination in that town. You go into this kind of Sanskrit trance. You think you are going the right way and then... " Ommmmmmm Ommmmmmm .... OmmmmwWaaa hay hay haaait a second. I've never heard of that tollway before... What the?" What follows is a kind of nightmare. You know the kind that you are trying to get somewhere and no matter what, you fail?

Well, it probably wouldn't have been so bad if the sky hadn't been dumping half the Atlantic Ocean upon my econo-rental, creating small ponds and lakes in the interstate in my path. I thought several times of checking my iPhone GPS but see, I sorta opted out of the old car-rental insurance/wallet-rape/scam, and was too worried about hydroplaning underneath some random giant truck driven by a sleep-deprived man who probably fantasizes about crushing small cars in his terrible wake to keep himself from going brain-wall.

Oh well. You can't have everything in life. So, that's about it for now. Here are some pictures I took this morning with my iPhone on my morning walk in CP.