The holiday is over, at least, technically. (I have yet to exchange gifts with my immediate family because I’m out of town, and because I wasn’t finished shopping before I left town.)
I haven’t seen much of Houston while I’ve been here.
I’m sure there are good aspects to this city, but so far it’s felt like one giant suburb. It doesn’t help that I’m literally in a suburb, and a posh burbclave-type one at that!
I did get to see NASA today. I was thoroughly unimpressed. It was not even as cool as our lovely Science Museum of MN. In fact, I’m sure I’ve learned more about NASA from that science museum than I did from my trip this afternoon.
There were a couple of cool aspects, I guess. One of them was actually seeing some of the big stuff in person. (An Apollo rocket, I think, specifically.) Otherwise, I couldn’t believe how little information they managed to pack into our hour-long tour of the “Historic” Mission Control room. I guess I did learn one or two factoids, (for instance, did you know you dehydrate in zero-g? how about that it’s harder to taste without gravity? weird, huh?) but overall, it was unenlightening. I think they should have had two entrances. The one that I went through, (obviously for tourists and people with mild interest, but no real desire to learn about NASA), and the “other” entrance, the one where you go on cool tours that actually give you dates and figures and stats, and where they show you more than one tiny room, and the pre-recorded tour guide doesn’t sound like it’s talking to a kindergartener.
Anyway, I did enjoy myself just the same.
The trip has been great, overall. Laura’s family is generous and caring. I got a bunch of gifts, which I wasn’t really expecting, and I think Laura and I did a good job of getting everyone stuff that they liked.
Unfortunately, I’ve come down with some kind of nose and throat cold. It seems to be getting better, slowly. I hope I’m feeling better tomorrow, because SCUBA diving will be more enjoyable if I can breathe.
I’m pretty far through Metroid Fusion. It’s only just the last time I played that I got to a part that I couldn’t beat after trying it a couple of times. (I only spent 15 minutes banging my head against this one part… and I’ve already got some new ideas on how to get through it.)
Laura’s dad gave one of her sister’s his old Gameboy color, complete with a couple of puzzle games. Klaxx, which is an old fun one I remember from the arcade (and more recently MAME), and a weird tetris-like variant that I’ve never even seen before, called Ballistic. I’m definitely going to have to try and find Ballistic. It’s different enough that I’m considering it a must-have on my quest to own all types and variety of console puzzle games. (oooh, and a quick search reveals that it was also released for the PSX!)
Well, enough for now. They have DSL, but what with all the hectic lazinessÂ… it hardly matters.