Adding to my recent horrible string of bad luck, my car broke down today. So now my automobile is in some shop way across town while I continue staying at a friend’s place. Will it be fixed in time for school next week? What tomfoolery will Adam get into next? It’s starting to feel like I’m on a bad episode of Mr. Bean. Maybe I should go ahead and get my head stuck in a turkey and be done with it.

Oh well, I’ll just watch this over and over until I feel better.

But you do a great job of pretending you actually love me!

I’ve been presented with a VERY prestigious award over at Nintendo-G, and all I had to do to earn it was lose my house and my kitty cat!

Seriously though George, big thanks. It’s an oddly flattering thing, to be given an useless amazing internet award.

I went to the Texas State Historical Association annual meeting this year in Austin. Took some alright pictures. Here’s a few, check out my Flickr page for more. If you like.

Also this is awesome, if you’re into either the Flaming Lips or Madonna. For the record I only really like one of those things.

I know this is long, but it’s worth it. Trust me.

A few nights ago me and two friends went out to have some Mongolian barbecue in the Bay Area. We ate, and it was good, and began the short drive home. (Not to my home, obviously.) We sat at the red light here, at Bay Area Blvd and Highway 3. This is when things started to get weird.

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A frantic knocking at the front passenger side window. Muffled incomprehensible screams of a hysteric woman, probably in her mid to late twenties. Marilyn, who is in the front seat, cautiously rolled down the window just enough to be able to hear her.

“My boyfriend is an asshole!” She screams between sobs. “I just want to go home! Please! I want to go home!”

At this point the only thing that was certain to us was that she is clearly upset. I can’t be sure what is going through my two friends’ minds at this point, but I figured she was previously in a car behind us and was just in some kind of fight, possibly physically violent, with her boyfriend. What a horrible thing it would be to just drive away from a woman in such a terrible situation, I think. My friends and I instinctively huddle together between the front seats to discuss our options. We exchange “what the hell are we supposed to do?” looks.

“Well,” I whisper, “there’s only one of her, and there’s three of us. If things get crazy for some reason, I think we’d be alright.”

Justin unlocks the car doors, and she gets in the back seat next to me. We are pounded with the strong stench of alcohol. Smelled like she was soaked in it. She kept crying, fidgeting around, and at one point kind of rubbed her butt on my leg, which inspired me to move as far away from her as I could. The situation is extremely amusing to me so I cover my mouth, stare out the window and bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from a laughter that would have rivaled her mumblings on the insanity meter. We ask where she needs to get to. “Turn left,” she manages to get out between mumbles. This was the direction we were going anyways, so we turn. She continues muttering things under her breath, with only the occasional “My boyfriend is an asshole!” being anything close to understandable. We ask again where she’s going. “34th and Kansas.” It is clear that none of us, save for her (and come to find out even this is questionable) have any clue where this intersection is.

“You’ll have to tell us where to turn, because we’re not sure where that is,” one of us says. “Turn left at this Texaco. My boyfriend is an asshole!” More crying. We all look left. “That’s a Shell station,” someone says. “I don’t think there’s a Texaco around here.”

“I just want to go home! Turn around, we’ll go to my ex-boyfriend’s apartment, he’ll write down the address. He’s not an asshole like my ex-boyfriend.” (this is verbatim)

My guts wrench and my amused demeanor shifts to one of absolute horror. Is she about to take us to some place where someone is waiting to rob us? Has this all been a clever act on her part? Will I live to see tomorrow? From this point on I keep my eyes on her much more closely. I send out this twitter.

This bitch is either crazy or luring us into a trap. If I die I love you all. This is only partially a joke.

It’s obvious to me we’re all feeling this fear, although Justin and Marilyn’s horror is contrasted by their amusement for the face that I apparently make when I’m terrified. We turn around on Highway 3 and head back to Bay Area Blvd. “I just need ten dollars to get home,” I manage to make out.

“Turn left,” she says at Bay Area Blvd. She seems to have a propensity for left turns. “I just need nineteen dollars to get home! I want you to give me twenty dollars!” We turn left. “I don’t have any cash, and I don’t think my friends do, either,” I say. She picks up her expensive looking purse and places it on her lap. Her hand reaches in and stays there. I picture her finger on a trigger of a gun, waiting for the right moment. Adrenaline surges through my body at levels I’d never felt before (save for maybe a few close encounters with poisonous snakes in the wild). I run through all the scenarios in my head. What will I do? Will I have to tackle this woman? I prepare for the worst and am ready to tackle her to keep her from using whatever she might have. I am horrified. Part of me wishes she’d pull the gun out already so I could get it over with. “I don’t have any cash either,” both my friends add. She bangs her head on the door again. “I just need five dollars.”

Her consistent requests for money make me feel a little better. Why would someone who was planning on robbing us at gunpoint beg for cash? Still, her hand remained still in her purse, so my nervousness continues. Justin has had enough and pulls into an empty parking lot across the street from an open CVS pharmacy. “You want me to get out here?” “If you wouldn’t mind,” Justin says. “Do any of you have a cigarette?” “Sorry, none of us smoke,” I state while keeping two very close eyes on her hands.

Then, very calmly, sounding more sober than she had throughout the entire ordeal, she lowers her voice and says “I think I have one.” Her hand shifts in her purse. I’m ready to pounce. She pulls out a lighter and fumbles it around. I let out a sigh of relief.

If she would have owned one of those lighters that was shaped like a gun I probably would have punched a drunk woman. I don’t think I could have ever lived that down.

My favorite cat in the whole world, Balls Nasty, was found dead today. No sign of trauma or anything, which is kind of surprising. I always figured that cat would die in a fight with some animal much larger than itself. Which means it would die in a fight with something that wasn’t a cat, because Balls Nasty was a huge cat. I’m going to miss you, BN. I’ve never been so sad about a pet dying in my entire life. He was both the angriest and sweetest cat I’ve ever encountered. Goodbye, friend. I love you.

And I’ll tell you my house caught on fire! Looks like I’m going to be living vagabond style  for a while, the house is uninhabitable. Luckily none of our stuff got messed up too bad. Having a fire truck in your driveway is a surreal experience that I don’t reccomend to anyone.

pictures of the aftermath

explanation

I finally broke down and got a pro Flickr account, I guess I really wanted those extra sets. I also uploaded some stuff – some new pictures from yesterday’s late night trip to Quintana Beach and some old stuff that for whatever reason I never uploaded before. Check out my Flickr page if you want to see everything all reorganized and new, but for those who are lazy here are some samples (click for larger size).

For one of my classes an assignment is to write entries in a “math journal” based on given prompts. It’s really pretty silly, but hey it’s an easy grade so whatever. I think I may have screwed the pooch on this one, though. I’ll let you be the judge. The prompt? Why can’t you divide by zero?

I’ve lived in the Houston area of Texas most of my life, and I’ve spent a good amount of that time complaining about that fact. It’s hot, humid, full of fatties, flat and polluted. Suburban sprawl is atrocious, the public transportation is terrible (it is getting better) and the city is so spread out it’s impossible to walk anywhere. In the past year or so, though, my view of my home town has softened significantly. While the aforementioned irritations still get on my nerves, I’ve grown to appreciate the city. Here are some reasons why.

1. The food. Surely a factor in the fatness problem of the area is the high volume of great places to eat. Drive around in the right parts of Houston and you’ll be in constant view of at least a few eateries that are worth your time. Whether you’re into diner food, Asian cuisine, Mexican, Italian, seafood, BBQ, or pizza at two in the morning, you’ve got some serious options. Of course, the farther away from the city you go the more crappy chain restaurants you’ll find, but even the more suburban outlying areas of Houston have their moments.
2. The museums. Houston not only has some nice ones, it has a whole lot of them. The Museum of Fine Arts (MFAH), the Menil, the Contemporary Arts Museum, the Holocaust Museum, the Museum of Natural Science (one of my favorites), and if you’ve got kids to entertain, the Heath Museum and the Children’s Museum. And this is just naming a few. There are loads of obscure/weird museums in the area that are worth looking up.
3. The zoo. It’s no San Diego Zoo (I’ve been so I’m allowed to make the comparison), but we’ve got ourselves a damn nice place to look at animals here in Houston, and they’re constantly adding new exhibits and improving existing ones. It’s especially if you’re into monkeys. There are a lot of monkeys at the Houston Zoo. 
4. The live shows. Due in part to the large size of the city and in part to the relative closeness to Hipster Capital, USA, we get more than our fair share of shows here. I’m primarily talking about music, but there are a ton of comedy clubs here, and Houston is also into live theater in a big way. If you’re into classical music, this is a good place to be, thanks (in part) to interest generated by our fantastic public radio station, KUHF (I like KUHF so much I considered making it point 5 in this list).
5. The surrounding area. If you’re looking for a way to spend a day and don’t mind a little bit of a drive, this is a pretty sweet place to live. The George Observatory is a close and a cool way to spend an evening, and of course NASA is here. If space isn’t your thing head Southeast and check out the Galveston seawall or the Kemah Boardwalk. Moody Gardens deserves an entire day all to itself, and the Lone Star Flight Museum is pretty cool. Now I’m not going to pretend like we have amazing beaches (we don’t), but spending a night at Surfside is awesome. As soon as it gets dark the place is deserted, and the rules there are very relaxed. Start a fire, cook some food, enjoy the breeze, take a late night swim (if you want), gaze a the Gulf of Mexico, or even set up a tent and spend the night. Drive a few hours West and spend the day at Schlitterbahn, which is considered to be the best water park in the country. If your a nerd, head Northwest in the fall and visit the Texas Renfest, which happens to be the biggest renaissance festival in the US. There are plenty more places to check out within a few hours, but if you’re interested in seeing another big city, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin are all a day trip away (although get ready to drive four hours or less each way). Louisiana isn’t too bad of a bad drive, either.

I could keep going, but I think I’ll stop, since this is starting to look like a travel guide or something. My overall point is, though, that Houston is really a pretty cool place to live, despite its shortcomings. I’m not sure if I’ll be living here years down the road, but for now I’m pretty happy where I am. It took years and a lot of exploring, but I’ve finally gotten over my Houston hatred.