I just don't get it. I have been around long enough to think that I've seen it all, but this one has me quite confused.

People claim to be your friend. They claim to know you and want to see you happy. Then it comes down to the wire. You make a decision for your own life, and instantly you're the bad guy. As far as you're aware, you've done nothing wrong. This is where it gets confusing though: Everything you do offends the other person - this "friend" - and they hate you for all you're worth.

I've had more than a few cases of this as of late, and I just don't get it. I do understand that my friends have feelings and they will be sad to see me leave the area. I don't understand why they think I'm just tossing 'em to the curb and that I have no feelings towards the matter at all.

Am I sad to be leaving this area? A little.
Will I miss my friends around here? Heck yeah I will!
But am I looking forward to the new adventures? If I weren't, I wouldn't be taking them on.
Okay, okay... Am I at all nervous or scared? All of the above.
Then why am I doing it? Because I feel it is a necessary step in my life. I have been given the opportunity of a lifetime, and I feel I will hate myself forever if I don't at least give it a shot.

I understand that people have had suggestions to keep me around here. While I appreciate it, the suggestions that have been offered do not necessarily place me where I want to be in my career or life. It's not that I hate this area or the people here; there just isn't much more here for me.

Please, don't hate me. I've done nothing wrong.

With moving, I'm trying to figure out what to do about my mail. I don't receive a lot of mail, but it's enough for me to worry about this.

I'm going to be leaving my apartment on 7/29, but I won't be moving in to the new place until 8/1. I wonder if I can file a change of address to begin on 7/29, but also file a mail hold for 7/29 through 8/4.

Do you have any experience with this sort of situation? What do you suggest?

YES! YES! YES! YES!

YEEEEEES!!!!!!

If you have a time machine to loan me, please send it to my apartment NOW.

I finally put new brakes on my car today. I have to say, it made a HUGE difference. I still need to fix the coil springs and EGR valve, but those should be relatively easy.

I've decided I'm going to take a different route to work. Heh, actually, I kinda have to since I'm moving to Houston. Here's the route I'll be taking: link.

This map should give you an idea about where I will be living. It looks to be a nice area, so that should be good. When I was there last weekend, I saw lizards running around. It was kinda cool.

There are a lot of things I need to get going now, such as:

• Moving my stuff - I'll probably get a cargo van for this.
• Transferring utilities
• Fixing my car - There's no way it's going to pass safety inspection the way it is
• Getting insurance - My renter's insurance isn't going to transfer

There's a lot more than this, such as packing, etc., so I'll be busy over the next couple of weeks. Not to mention doing things around here with friends and family before I go.

Also, as I promised before, the pictures from last weekend are online here. They're mostly of JSC, but there are a few others there. Enjoy. :)

I'm a slight late on adding this entry, but I'm sure you'll all forgive me.

Day 2 was spent mostly on the road and at the Houston Space Center. Dad has always been interested in space travel related stuff, and I figured this would be a great chance for him to see NASA in person. We took the "red" tour, which went through the Astronaut Training Facillity, and through Rocket Park, where they had several older rockets standing outside, but the more famous Saturn V rocket on display in a giant building. I got plenty of pictures of all of this, which I'll have on the gallery in a few days.

We came back to the hotel after that to just "chill" for a while before dinner. Sean and Naomi took us out to eat at Maxx's Wine and Dive over towards the Galleria district, which was different but good. After that we came back to the hotel. Dad stayed in my room for a bit while we watched Jurrasic park on the TV, then he ended up going to bed shortly before it was over. I fell asleep sometime not too long after that (around 9:30 local time), and I slept like a rock until 6:00AM. I tossed and turned from then to now, so I finally got out of bed.

Today we will be leaving here around 1:00PM so we can get to the airport and drop the car off, get through security, and maybe find something to eat. Our flight leaves at 4:15PM Houston time, and will arrive in Indianapolis at 7:43PM Indianapolis time. I should be back to my place around 9:00 or 10:00.

Yeah, I brought my laptop this time...

Anyhow, today was a bit of a wild day. It started at 3:00AM, when I crawled out of bed to get ready to go. Dad spent the night at my apartment, and we hitched a ride with John Jack to the Indianapolis airport. We met him downtown where I normally park for work, and left for Indy around 4:30AM.

We got in to Indy with just enough time to run through the security check and sit for about 30 minutes before boarding. After we boarded though, the pilot announced over the PA that his oxygen mask was malfunctioning, and that there would be a little bit of a delay in our departure. This only lasted about 10 minutes though, so it wasn't horrible. After arriving in Houston 2 hours later, we headed to the rental car pickup and went about our merry way.

We headed to the hotel to check-in, and shortly thereafter, Macguy called me to ask if we got to town fine and to let me know that he would be responsible for our tour of the datacenter (I requested a tour so Dad could see what we were working with). After the tour, Macguy took us to lunch at a burger/steak joint (which was pretty tasty).

Next, it was time to go find and look at apartments. I set the GPS unit to take me to The Bordeaux. About 20 minutes later we arrived and looked at the available apartments. Since they only had a 2 and 3 bedroom open here, I asked the manager if the management company - The Finger Corporations - had any other properties with 1 bedroom apartments available. She gave me a map with addresses of the other facilities, so we went to a couple more.

We ended up at 9900 Memorial, a nice community with fairly decent units. They showed a 1 bedroom, which was pretty nice. After finding out the price in comparison to the other places, I decided to go for it. This place was in the Galleria area, and was just a few blocks from I-10. At about 3:30PM, it took me just about 25 minutes to go from this apartment to The Planet HQ (I won't tell you about the problems I had getting on I-10 because of the stupid Tom Tom map not knowing about the recent construction).

Dad and I went back to the hotel and I called over to the office to see about a tour. We ended up making a quick tour and met up with John Jack and his girlfriend again, then we were off to dinner at Cabo. We came back to the hotel and pretty much passed out. I laid down on the bed and Dad was in the chair. A little while after I laid down I started to doze off, then Dad decided to go on up to the roof for a while (probably to smoke). I apparently fell asleep for the entire time he was up there. He came back to my hotel room sometime after that and left my key then headed to his room. I fell asleep again for a while, until the fun started.

I woke up around 8:30 and felt a bit nauseous. I tried to fight it off for a while, but shortly found my self in the bathroom, re-introducing myself with the blackened Mahi Mahi. I don't know if there was something in the food, something in the water, something to do with the flight, or if I'm just stressed to the max. This same thing happened last time I came to Houston though, so it's really hard to say. I do know that I'm not too thrilled with having broken my 10 year trend of not vomiting, and I'd rather not have to reset the trend each time I do anything in Houston.

Dad has expressed interest in seeing the Houston Space Center, so I think I'm going to take him there tomorrow. We do need to be back to the hotel around 6:00 though, as Sean said he would like to have dinner with us while we're both in town. I really hope this stomach thing will clear itself up before morning, because it's going to be a long boring day otherwise.

That's all for now. I'll have my camera with me tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have some new content to add to the gallery. For the time being, I'm going to pass out in front of the TV and do everything I can to not be hugging the toilet bowl any more tonight.

I will be leaving for Houston around 4:00AM this Friday (July 11th) to look at apartments. I will be traveling with my Dad, and we will be spending Friday, Saturday, and Sunday there, only to return Sunday evening around 8:00PM.

...let's hope I can get my laundry done so I have clean clothes to wear while I'm there.

I was just reading over the weather forecast for today, and I saw something a bit out of the ordinary:

This Afternoon: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 60. Very windy, with a east northeast wind around 80 mph, with gusts as high as 95 mph.

It went on a little further:

Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 60. Very windy, with a east wind 90 to 95 mph decreasing to between 80 and 85 mph. Winds could gust as high as 110 mph.

I have to admit, there was a split second when I thought, "Holy crap! I need to go find a bunker to hide in!" That didn't last long though. I ended up calling the NWS forecast office in Indianapolis, and I spoke with a guy named Mike. I explained the situation to him and read a bit of the forecast, to which his response was, "OH MY GOD! That's terribly wrong. I'll go fix that right now."

Within a matter of minutes, it was fixed. Not before I got a screenshot though. Enjoy!

LINK!

YouTube Video