My parents and grandma visited the week of October 19. They actually arrived on the 20th in the afternoon so I left work early to pick them up, and then took the rest of the week off. They left on Saturday. On Tuesday hubby decided to skip his evening classes and meet me at the airport to pick up my parents and grandma. So when we got them we just went home for dinner. We had put some beef stew in the slow cooker so it would be ready when they got home, and they were quite happy with that. I also prepared some cheese and salmon appetizers on a platter and they liked that too. I like being able to impress them. Much better than them criticizing me heh.

Wednesday was Daddy’s birthday. We spent the day hanging out downtown while hubby was in class. We hung out in the tunnels and ended up in Macy’s. And spent way too much money. But a really nice lady in the shoes department told us if you’re from out of town, you can go to the customer service department and get a “welcome visitor” coupon for an extra 10% off, so Daddy got one hehe.  Dad paid for all the stuff I got so that was cool. It was kinda odd he was buying me stuff on his birthday, but whatever. No complaints out of me. That evening we went to McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant in downtown and it was really good. I didn’t realize it looked so formal inside. Great food.

Thursday hubby had class all day so my parents and I drove to Kemah. Turns out most of their stuff doesn’t get started until 6pm so we just wandered around cause it was pretty and then went to the Aquarium restaurant for lunch. They had an exhibit where you could feed and pet the stingray so that was fun. When we got done there the stuff was opening up and we rode some of the rides, like the train around the place and the Ferris wheel.  Then we went through the haunted house which was more funny than scary cause Dad and I would go through and point out the people who were pretending to be fake and then would jump out at us. Then for dinner we went to Babin’s seafood restaurant. I know, eating nothing but fish all week. Seriously.

Friday hubby’s class got canceled so we hung out in the new outlet malls in Cypress. Bought too much stuff again, but hey, clothes are good stuff. Then we went for lunch at our favorite BBQ place, Carl’s BBQ in Cypress. YUM!

On Saturday we went to Forbidden Gardens, the miniature museum based on the Forbidden City in China. Then we went to eat at the Orleans seafood place (Daddy was on a seafood kick and wanted Cajun style food). After that we took my parents and grandma to the airport for their return flight.

It was a good visit and I enjoyed seeing my family. My parents and I got along great this time, mainly I think because we had a common enemy: my grandma. She’s so much trouble that we kept fighting with her, but didn’t fight with each other.

Saturday evening hubby and I went to a Halloween party. I was a pirate and he was a cowboy. I posted photos on facebook. Sunday I had two shows to attend with my other friend with the same name. First, it was our theater season pass tickets to Mary Poppins.  Then, Julie and I went to see the Star Wars in concert - the symphony where they played each score while the man who was C-3P0 narrated the movies. It was quite awesome.

All that excitement wore me out, and I caught a cold, so I spent the rest of the week trying to relax and get better. That weekend hubby and I flew to Jacksonville and drove up to GA for his sister’s wedding. She got married on Nov 1, but we flew up the day before so we missed Halloween. I was happy that I got to go to the party the previous weekend so I didn’t miss out entirely. Then I realized I was sick last year on Halloween too. I guess it’s just the changing of the seasons that gets me. Stupid colds.

Well I think that catches up to now. This past week at work was quite busy. We just hired a senior air person for our New Orleans office (she’s super nice) and just this week hired a senior air person for our Houston office (he seems nice too but I’ve only known him one day) so hopefully things will start turning around at work and getting better.

I went to the Katy Budget Books semi-annual sale after work yesterday, and needed to be rescued. I got stranded in the mystery/thriller department, as you can imagine heh. They had boxes and boxes of books on the floor that were on sale, all for $1 or less (the $1 was for the hardback, and I only get paperback). Hubby called me on his way home from his late class and I was still there. Then he called me when he got home, and I was finally trying to get to the line so I would stop looking around. I tried hard to only stick to authors I’ve read before or at least have heard a lot about. Even so, I ended up with 24 books. And the grand total was $15. OMG!

Then, I signed up for a bajillion book giveaway contest thingers. I found this great list of giveaways for the month of October on the Layers of Thought book blog. Right now they’re doing a giveaway for my friend Nicole’s book Release. Right now it’s only available as an e-book, but soon it will be in print too. It’s about vampires So if interested in the giveaway, go check it out.

I’ve been doing some book clubs lately and that’s been helping me ramp up in my reading. Right now I’m attempting to be a semi-active member in two different book clubs, but seems like I’ve been doing alternating months since I can’t find the time to read more than one book per month. But maybe soon.

Let’s see, well, I’ve been keeping my social calendar ridiculously busy.  Mostly with girls nite out type events, so hubby has to sit home alone. Well, that’s what he gets for being gone so much for the military, I make my own plans and then don’t want to stop them when his schedule gets less busy when summer ends. But anyway, he’d been complaining that he has not been able to spend much time with me and said he’s been wanting to kidnap me on a secret date for a while. So we made plans for Saturday the weekend before this one (the 19th). I didn’t get to know anything about where we were going. He gave little hints during the week prior but not much to go on. I finally got told what I’m supposed to wear, and it was basically something I wouldn’t mind getting muddy. Um, huh? So turns out we ended up driving to San Antonio (and back in the same day!) to go spelunking! He took me to Cascading Caverns and Natural Bridge Caverns. Cascading was neat because that’s where Patrick Swayze’s movie Father Hood was filmed. They also had some dinosaur bones found there so that was on display. The cave formations there were not as impressive as some others I’ve seen though. The cathedral room was pretty neat though with the waterfall inside the cave, but you could barely see it since it hugged the cave walls. Then we went to Natural Bridge Caverns, and the formations there were absolutely amazing. We’ve been to quite a few caves, in California and Tennessee, but this one is definitely the best. It’s the largest too. I took a ton of pictures but I haven’t uploaded them from my camera yet.

After we got home from the caverns trip we had to change real quick and turn around to go out to a friend’s birthday party at Pete’s Dueling Piano bar, which just happens to be my favorite bar! I hate bars in general, but piano bars I like, and this one is the most fun. So we had an absolute blast, even though we were quite exhausted. Even hubby enjoyed himself, which just shows that it’s a great place, cause he didn’t like Howl at the Moon at all. Yes, that was quite the busy day.

Let’s see, tonight I’m going out to see the new movie Whiteout with my friend Nicole that I met a few weeks ago at meetup. The meetup was at the Chocolate Bar to discuss Twilight, so of course I went to it hah. Nicole told us there that she actually was about to have her vampire novel published! And, she’s practically my neighbor (anyone who lives within a 10 mile radius is pretty much my neighbor with how big the Houston area is). For now her book is only released online as an ebook, but will come out in paperback later this year or early 2010. I of course already bought the book, but haven’t had time to read it yet. It’s called RELEASE. If you’re interested in another vampire-themed book written by someone I actually know (I’ve never known a real published author in person before), check it out at the ebookundead.com publisher site. It sells as a PDF of less than 300 pages for about $10 (US). Hopefully my little plug here will get her some more sales. Anyway, we’re going to go see Whiteout at the Alamo Drafthouse cinema (I like that place cause they serve food!) and we’ll have dinner at the show. Hubby it out of town today and tomorrow for military stuff.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Houston Museum district open house, where all the museums are free and there is even a free shuttle to take you between them. I’m going with a women’s meetup. Then when hubby comes home that evening we have plans to go see the new 9 movie. Sunday I have theater tickets to GREASE! Then, Sunday night is the True Blood season finale! It will be awesome! [By the way, the season premiere of Supernatural was awesome and the series premiere of Vampire Diaries was pretty good as well. Yay for good Thursday night TV] Monday I’m going to girls nite out at the Melting Pot. So wow, I’m quite busy back to back like that.

P.S. 9/11 - Never forget.

After Galveston, was Jenn’s Houston Farewell party. She’s moving to San Antonio with her fiance so she had her last rock star party, limo and all. It was a blast, at least for me. I love Howl at the Moon and we stayed there for most of the time, and then went to Wild West where some people did karaoke and some of us who were sleepy just sat and watched and tried to stay awake. After that, at 3 am, we went to get some Mexican food. Hah.

Otherwise I’ve been keeping pretty busy with all these awesome meetup groups. BTW, thanks so much Rachel for introducing me to Meetup. I had a meetup last night with a Woodlands group and people there were so nice and had me follow them so I wouldn’t get lost from the dinner place to the movie theater (we saw Julie & Julia) since I don’t know the area and it was already dark and rainy and disorienting and really busy so it was hard to see where you were going. Today I went to a meetup at the Chocolate Bar (omg yum!). And during the week I had a book club meetup where we read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It was a really good gothic novel. I really recommend it.

In other news, I just got a hair cut. It’s light and super cute I think.

I’ve been lacking in motivation and energy lately. I’m just generally blah. Things at work are still weird. They’ve been interviewing and said they gave a verbal offer to one guy, but we don’t know yet. So for now, I still don’t have a boss, still don’t have guidance and direction, and just don’t generally care about anything I’m doing. Makes it really hard to stay focused. I miss being happy at work and I miss Paula. This blah attitude has been following me home as well. Usually I just want to curl up on the couch and not do anything and I’ve been so irritable. I’ve got to get out of this funk.

I was on my own this weekend again. Hubby’s Grandfather (aka Papa) passed away last Monday and since we couldn’t afford two last minute almost $400 flight tickets, he went alone.  Hubby and one of his cousins put together a slideshow with all the photos they collected and also binders for the Grandma and each of her7 kids with newspaper articles that he was in throughout his life. Everyone really appreciated that. They also took one large family photo with the families of each of the 7 kids. That is one massive family.

So what did I do? Well on Friday I went to Miller Outdoor theater with a womens meetup for a Night with the Bee Gees show. It was so much fun. No, not the real Bee Gees, but a Canadian band that really does a good job with the songs. At first there were some random people standing up on the grass dancing and I thought that was rude to block the view of everyone behind them, but once they started playing Night Fever, just about everyone was standing up dancing.  Myself included. So much fun. Though there was this one crazy woman who was sitting the whole concert reading a frickin book. In the dark. WTF? I know it’s a free theater and all, but why bother coming if you’re going to sit and read? Anyway though, I really wished I could teleport my parents out there for that concert since they played the Bee Gees a lot when I was a kid which is why I know all the words. I was also superproud of myself because I drove there on my own for the first time, and didn’t use step by step directions. I had been there the week before with another Julie and I liked the route she took, it wasn’t too confusing. But I couldn’t get googlemaps to draw that route, so I just winged it. And didn’t get lost. That’s amazing for me!

Saturday I went to Galveston with 4 British people and 2 dogs. It was quite an entertaining day!  Our friends Marta and Bryan are going to Portugal next month, where Marta is from, to get married, and Marta can’t come back until October when Bryan will be able to update her visa. So it was sorta a going away party thing with another couple that lives in their apartment complex also here on visa. We got to Galveston about mid-day and the couple that drove set up a big overhead tent thing so we could have cover from the sun. It was huge and really a good idea. Marta was building the barbecue set so we could make lunch while the rest of us just hung out (she doesn’t like people to “help”). All of a sudden this huge storm comes through and we’re hiding out under the tent for about an hour until the rain stops. We got the tail end of the storm, but we could see in the distance all the really really heavy rain and lightning. At least that part wasn’t on the beach. Once that stopped it was a beautiful day and we got some good eating and swimming in. Dixie just had a blast. As soon as I took her off the leash she ran straight into the ocean and started swimming. She’s like, forget you people, you take too long. She’s such a good swimmer, and it helped that the water was shallow and warm so we could just hang out and let her swim without needing to be there with her. The other dog was a small Cocker spaniel and she had to wear a little doggie life vest since she’s not a strong swimmer, and the two of them had fun swimming around. Marta cooked us some yummy chicken and burgers. It was great fun.

Sunday I spent the day just sleeping until it was time to pick hubby up from the airport. Today I’m going to see a free screening of Julie and Julia at Studio Movie Grill with the other Julie, cause how can you not go to a movie with your names and not bring someone with the same name? Hah. So that will be fun. Hubby’s got his exam tonight. [EDIT]Well didn’t get to see Julie and Julia because as predicted, the movie sold out. So we saw The Proposal instead. Hands down the funniest movie ever. It was so good!![/EDIT]