It's always a bit of

It’s always a bit of a letdown when a visitor leaves. Though I must admit to slight relief each time my apartment becomes my own again, the feeling of emptiness is stronger.
Kent is the embodiment of the ideal houseguest. He cleans up after himself more than I do, and is always agreeable. He’s happy to nap, to watch TV, to play games, and just to hang out all weekend. We had a great time, and I was sorry to have to leave him at the airport this afternoon. (An event made worse by the fact that I went straight from saying goodbye to Kent to spending what turned into four hours at the office. In the end, Gavin helped solved my scripting problem and my sims were — cross your fingers — running happily when I left.)
So let’s see. Friday night we had “family dinner” at Mely’s and then went back to Becca for two games of Settlers. Kent, Becca, Tiffany and I played; Tiffany and Becca were the winners. Towards the end of the night, Cari came home with food galore, and I ate taco soup and guacamole despite the fact that we’d just had a huge Mely’s dinner. Ah well.
On Saturday Kent and I were planning on hitting IHOP for breakfast when Jen called and invited us to join her and Gavin at…IHOP! You can’t plan it better than that, so the four of us enjoyed the many flavored syrups for a late breakfast. Kent and I stopped by Target to pick up a few last minute things for the Houston Urban Adventure Race. Around 2, Gavin, Michelle and Debbie came over and we loaded all four of our bikes onto the back of the Xterra (so rugged!). I left Kent to fend for himself (he went out to dinner and the movies with Becca) and headed downtown for the adventure race. It was really fun!
We started at 6:00 on the field (or, on the track just past the Astros dugout) at Minute Maid Park, where I stood mere feet from Adam Everett and got very excited about it. There were 10 checkpoints during the race, all around the downtown area. We began by running 3.5 miles from the ballpark to Hermann Park. From the map, I’d estimated this was only going to be 2-2.5 miles, and was feeling very dumb for being so slow. Of course it didn’t help that it was a zillion degrees outside. (Seriously, it was SO hot.)
After finding out post-race that the distance was more than 3.5 miles, I don’t feel quite so bad about how awful I was feeling. I was seriously overheating to the point where I got goose-bumps and felt nauseous, but Gavin and I perservered and even met up with Debbie and Michelle again. We got through checkpoints 1 and 2 at Hermann Park at about 50 minutes into the race and then caught the Metro (you could run or take the Metro — everyone took the train) back downtown to checkpoint 3 at the Aquarium. From there we headed the few blocks back to the transition area and hopped on our mountain bikes.
Checkpoints 4, 5 and 6 were all biking north of downtown. In all we covered about 10 miles by bike, and then headed back to the transition area. The final four checkpoints were all downtown, and required about 2 miles of running through the city streets beneath the skyscrapers as dusk settled. This third portion, right downtown, was the most fun portion of the race. The sun had gone down so it was ever-so-slightly cooler and running wasn’t quite as exhausting. Also, there were people all over the place since the Astros game had just ended and everyone was heading out for the night.
After hitting the final checkpoint we ran back to the transition area to the finish line, all four of us crossing in about 3:07. (The winning team did it in 1:47 or something.) The race was a lot of fun and I’m glad we did it. It would have been better if the heat weren’t so bad, but I survived.
It was 11:00 by the time we got back to Clear Lake, so Becca dropped Kent off and we vegged on the couch watching the end of the Les Miserables movie before crashing.
Today was a lazy day. We watched the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on HBO this morning, then met Becca for lunch at Jason’s Deli. After that we invited ourselves over to Gavin and Jen’s house where we played two more games of Settlers (Kent and I each won one) while Jen got ready for work (she’s on the 3-midnight Mission Control shift).
From there I had to take Kent to the airport. As I was just getting to the guard gate at work, he called and said his flight was delayed by an hour. Grr! We should have checked before we left, then he wouldn’t have had to sit at the airport. I went ahead in to work though, and saw Rich’s car in the parking lot as well. This AIAA conference is driving us all crazy in our own ways.
I was annoyed at myself that in the end I had to call Gavin for help getting my sims running, but he is a sim genius and all, and saved me days of time, so that’s good. And I was productive on a couple other things, so it wasn’t all wasted time. In a very odd way, it is sort of nice to be in the office when no one else is around. No distractions, but the bigger deal for me is perhaps that there is no one around for me to complain to…forcing me to just sit there and figure it out. That may sound silly, but I think there is some truth to it.
Now it is off to bed (visitors make me tired…in a good way!). Tomorrow morning I have to go downtown for jury duty. Cross your fingers that I am NOT selected, because I have way too much to do at work this week.