Sheep Guarding Llama

Day Two in Houston, Texas.  It is slightly hotter today than it was yesterday but only by a degree or two.  The heat index broke one hundred today.  A heat index of one hundred is really mild for Houston in late July so I am happy with that.  At that index you can still step outside without being covered in sweat as long as you are not out for long and do not really do anything while you are out there.

I worked for a few hours this morning then convinced Francesca to head out to Waffle House again.  I found out that this Waffle House is the very same Waffle House at which Francesca and Dominica ate their very first meal in Texas eleven years ago when Dominica helped to drive Francesca down when she first moved to Houston.  This Waffle House is directly next to the Motel 6 where they stayed while apartment hunting.

After lunch it was a busy work day for me.  There was a lot to get done so that I would be able to leave on the early side to get out for SpiceCorps.  Being in a region on central time while working eastern time is quite handy.  Having an evening event in central time means that I can still work a nice, long day back in “New York” and still make it to events across the city.

I took Francesca’s Toyota Sequoia, to which I am quite accustomed by now having driven almost one thousand miles it in already, at five thirty local time and headed out to the far side of Houston for our event this evening.  The distance really was not too bad but it was rush hour traffic which is a bit of a pain in Houston.  The drive is not bad it is just that everything moves really slowly.  It is not a level of traffic in which you really worry about driving you just have to calculate how much longer it is going to take to get anywhere.

The drive took almost an hour and a half so it is a good thing that I left as early as I did.  I was just on time as I arrived at the location on I10, the Katy Freeway, many miles west of Houston proper.

I pulled into the parking garage of the building where we were going to be meeting and was greeted by a fellow SpiceWorks user who was just preparing to head into the meeting.  We introduced ourselves and discovered that we were the two big “celebrities” heading to this event.  It was Talon63 who I met outside.  It was he who I unseated as the top SpiceWorks poster a few months ago and who has now, just this week, fallen into third place in the total rankings.  He was the SpiceWorks IT Hero contest for 2008 at SpiceWorld as well.  It was very apropos for us to meet in the parking lot and to be able to walk into the event together.

We got inside and made it up to the meeting conference room.  There were ten or twelve people already there ahead of us and everything was already set up which was nice.  I am very thankful to have some people doing organization other than just myself.

The team was ready with a practical joke for me as I arrived.  I walked up to the desk at the front of the conference room where Duwayne was handing out name tags for everyone.  As I walked up he looked up at me and said, “You look like you might be the real Scott Alan Miller.”  This caught me a little off guard.  I said, “The real Scott Alan Miller?”  Then I turned around to find the entire room full of people who were wearing pre-printed namebadges that all said “Scott Alan Miller” on them!

There has been a running joke in the SpiceWorks community for some time that I am actually multiple people who use a single account to post to SpiceWorks.  So we all found this really hilarious.  It was a great joke.  There was also speculation that Talon63 and I were actually the same person as we have both been extremely prolific participants in the SpiceWorks community but never at the same time.  So tonight’s presence puts that rumour to rest as well.

The meeting went really well.  We had a really great group of people and had a record turn out for a SpiceCorps event – 21 people!  We had a great time and we even had people bring in jalapeno poppers, fresh home-made cinnamon rolls, cake, pies plus soda too.  We met for close to three hours before breaking so that some people could head for home.

After the official meeting was over, Talon63 and I hung out in the parking garage talking for probably half an hour and then we met up with over half of the people from the meeting in a parking lot just down the street where we were able to enjoy some home-made, microbrewed beer from one of our organizers.  Unlike most of the United States, it is legal to consume alcohol in public in Texas.  The group ended up hanging out there for a really long time with the last of us straggling out well after one in the morning!  It was almost seven hours of SpiceCorps for those people who got there before the meeting started and held out until the very end.

My drive home went well.  My mobile phone had died and that meant that I had no maps or GPS and no way to call anyone since I had not thought to bring a charger with me.  Oops.  I did not miss a single turn the entire way back to Francesca’s, though, so it was fine.  It was after two in the morning when I pulled in to League City.

Instead of going straight to bed I did as much packing as I could tonight.   Tomorrow morning is going to come very quickly and I am not going to be thinking very clearly in the morning so definitely best if I can get as much done tonight as possible.  I need to be up at five in the morning in order to make my flight out of Houston so there is very little opportunity for sleep tonight.  I got almost everything packed so that it is just my CPAP and last minute items that I need to deal with tomorrow.

Tomorrow I fly to Austin at seven and will be spending the day working from the SpiceWorks offices there.  Then in the afternoon I fly back to White Plains.  I should be home around midnight.  I am going to be very tired by the time that I arrived back in New York.  I have hardly gotten any sleep for days and tonight is not going to help the situation at all.

I slept pretty solidly last night once I finally got to sleep around one in the morning.  I slept until eight thirty local time giving me seven and a half hours on top of the hour and a half that I got yesterday evening for a total of nine hours of sleep since getting out of bed in Frankfort on Saturday morning.  Far from being really rested but doing okay.  I don’t have to drive a single mile today so I am fine.

I got up and worked for a few hours getting caught up on stuff as much as possible.  Then, for a very late breakfast, Francesca, Garrett and I went to Waffle House for omelets and waffles.  We had been talking about getting Waffle House since yesterday.  The girls had gone to the beach with Joe and Brit so it was just us getting breakfast since Bennie was at work.

Breakfast was awesome.  One of the best things about life in the American south is getting the chance to eat at Waffle House.  I love Waffle House.  Cheap, friendly, fast and delicious.

Back to the house to work for the rest of the day.  It was a very slow day for me.  Nothing adventurous.  Just sitting around the house doing my office work while the girls spent the day with the Disney Channel playing on “continuous loop”.  For several hours they were even watching the same shows (not the same “shows” but the very same episodes of those same shows that they had seen earlier in the day) that they had already watched and pretty much nothing was on at all all day that they (let alone me!) had watched within the last few days while in New York.  There is so little content on the Disney channel.  It is insane.  It’s just the same few items playing in a loop with loads and loads of commercials.  I really do love The Wizards of Waverly Place, though.  That is a great show.  I am addicted to it.

I talked to Dominica a little today and she said that our newspaper did finally arrive this weekend.  So she is now getting coupons that way so, in theory, that will save us a lot of money.  She has subscribed to one of those coupon services and has this whole process worked out for doing coupon management.  I’ll be surprised if the savings cover all of the overhead both in spending and in time spent managing it, but we will see.  Seems to be it would be easier to work a few hours contracting somewhere each week and get more than 100x better return on the time investment with less actual effort expended.

Today was my catchup day.  Catchup on sleep, catchup on work.  Nothing really happened today.  Worked all day and we had sausage and peppers for dinner.  After dinner, Joe, Brittany, Emily and I went out to Dairy Queen for dessert but at 9:45 the DQ was already closed!  We couldn’t believe that they closed to early so we went on to WattaBurger and got milkshakes there.

I went to bed early tonight – probably around eleven central time.  All I did was get home from our milkshake run, finish my milkshake and head off to bed.  Today was my only day without extra stuff going on.  Tomorrow I will be working at the house most of the day but then heading out to go to SpiceCorps Houston in the evening so that will make for a pretty busy day.

The weather is really awesome, considering.  East Texas has been in the hundreds for the last three weeks having one of the hottest July streaks in a long time.  Once we arrived the temperature fell and was in the high eighties and low nineties which is surprising cool for Houston.  It is still hot and humid.  No doubt about that.  But you do not walk out the door into the wall of hot air like an oven when you go outside.  This is New York hot, not Houston hot.  Nothing like I had been expecting.  I am very pleased with Texas at this temperature.  Very bearable.

Day two.  Still driving.  Fifteen hours of driving yesterday.  No real stops the entire way.  The only stops that we have made are for fuel and for the obvious bathroom stops.  We are making quite good time on this very, very long trip.  We managed to get our trip split into almost exactly two even segments between yesterday and today – not that it matters when we are not taking a break in between the two.

Technically we did not make the decision to skip getting the hotel for the night.  We just kept driving until it was unreasonable to get one.  I was feeling really good while driving and was able to drive for more than another six hours before needing to have Francesca take over again.  So we didn’t want to stop while I was still on my initial burst of driving energy – that would have just been a waste of my driving energy and made us much later than necessary.

The route that we decided to take from St. Louis to Joplin in Missouri took us right through the heart of the Ozark Mountains which was pretty neat although we would have been much more exciting to have seen during the day.  We were definitely surprised to find how heavily populated that stretch of Missouri was, especially considering that we were in the Ozarks which, I always though, were lightly populated.  The population felt very similar to Ohio.  No single large cities but constant, significant population the entire way.  It never felt like we were really out in a rural area.

While we were driving on the outskirts of St. Louis we were very, very surprised when suddenly, without any warning, my bottle of Rockstar energy drink gathered enough pressure to blow its top!  It caught us totally by surprise and could very easily have caused an accident.  The should was loud and made Francesca and I both jump.  There was enough air pressure released that I got a blast of air in the face and suddenly the vehicle smelled like fruit.  It took us a minute to discover what had happened.  We were laughing hysterically once we realized what had happened.

Missouri was very entertaining in general.  As we were driving we saw some green fireworks directly in front of us.  We were not expecting fireworks late at night.  What made this really funny was that when we were driving on our way to Dayton from Columbus Emily had asked what was so special about this route that made it exciting compared to the normal route – apparently she is not as entertained by driving over new territory and seeing new sites and cities as we are – and Francesca had remarked that she couldn’t expect this route to have fireworks or anything.  Emily had replied that, “duh, of course there are no fireworks, it’s still daylight!”  We had laughed then but the last laugh was on us when suddenly there were fireworks.

Missouri was definitely a long haul.  Just as we got to the border we took the final exit off of i44 to make a quick stop into Kansas as we had never been there before.  Kansas goes right into the corner of Missouri and Oklahoma where we were crossing the border so it was less than one mile to get to Kansas.  So officially, one more state off of my list!  We were only there for a second.  Drove in, said “hey, it’s Kansas” and drove right back out again.  Less than five minutes total time spent there.

The most exciting state to see on this trip was Oklahoma.  I have never seen the Great Plains before and Oklahoma is, a little, exotic compared to most of our trip.  I drove the first bit in Oklahoma getting up to just east of Tulsa where Francesca took over as I was starting to have problems keeping my eyes open.  The sun was not up yet and it would be a while before I would get my second wind.

Once the sun came up we were treated to a landscape like nothing either of us had ever seen. Oklahoma really is just flat and the prairie grass is a yellowish green which is quite unusual.  There was a light fog laying over the ground as the sun began to rise.

Once the sun was up I started to feel better.  I got my second wind and, after getting some quick breakfast on the Choctaw Nation, Francesca drove for about fifteen minutes before we decided that she was really tired and that I needed to drive again.  So I drove through the rest of Oklahoma, which was still a long way, and a good ways into Texas getting us through and a ways south of Dallas – another city which I have never seen before.

Francesca took a nap while I drove this stretch.  This is the very first sleep that either of us has had this entire trip. The kids have slept for hours and hours in the back.  They did really well.  We stayed awake all through the night talking like tween girls at a slumber party and singing along with the radio.  Francesca managed to get a good hour and a half sleep at this point which was important so that she would be fresh enough to be able to handle the final bit of the drive.

Once we were into Texas it was time for me to be working so I hooked up my BlackBerry and put my laptop online from the car while Francesca took over driving again now that we were on the home stretch and she knew all of the drive from Dallas to Houston.  I was feeling good enough to drive but we did not really have that option any longer.  Work was not too busy but there was a bit to do and working while driving is rather challenging even there is not very much going on.  It did work, though, and that was quite impressive.  When pressed I definitely am able to work from the car with this setup.

On the outskirts of Houston we had rather a significant scare.  Francesca was driving when a minivan just barely in front of us completely blew its front left tire.  There were four vehicles pretty close together when it happened.  The minivan dived from the right lane to the left lane from the pull of the missing tire.  The cars directly adjacent to the minivan lept from the road and Francesca hit the break attempting to slow the completely loaded truck and heavy trailer as quickly as possible.

The minivan driver, not knowing what to do with a blown front tire, slammed on her breaks in a panic bringing the minivan down onto the bare metal of her remaining rim which provided no traction at all and put the minivan into a flat spin with its rear end going left and around.  She ended up pulling a full three-sixty spin and came dangerously close to rolling over on her side which would most definitely had caused one or more vehicles to plow straight into her.  As it was she luckily landed over on the right side of the road facing the way that she had originally been facing.  I looked at her as we drove by and I could see her screaming and waving her hands frantically but there was no “human” damage and she was only badly shaken.  The vehicle was quite damaged and, for all I know, was totaled.  But the passengers were fine.  Several cars had already pulled over which were able to stop many times faster than us and we had no spare space with all of the kids so we did not stop since they had more people checking on them than they needed.

The rest of the drive went by without incident and we were at the Grices’ house by early afternoon.  Boy were we glad to finally be out of the car.  I really wanted to just collapse and go to bed but I had to work yet so that was not really an option right away.  It was probably two or maybe two thirty when we arrived.

I tried going to bed around three thirty and just watching my BlackBerry.  That did not work very well.  I got paged out every hour.  I had to get up and work at four thirty.  Tried to sleep again but had to get up at five thirty.  Once again at six thirty.  This was making my exhaustion worse.  Francesca managed to get to bed during this stretch and, in addition to the hour and a half that she slept during the drive earlier today, she was not doing too badly.  I finally managed to sleep for an hour and a half from six thirty to eight.  Then Emily woke me up to tell me that dinner was ready.  I was so delirious that I couldn’t even tell her to open the door!  I did not manage to fall back asleep after that, though, unfortunately.  I tried but it didn’t work.

At nine I was paged out again and had to get up.  So since I was up I had a bite to eat – pan fried trout that Bennie had caught in the Gulf yesterday while we were driving.  It was really delicious.  I stayed up for about half an hour before attempting to get back to sleep.

No luck on sleep.  I lay in bed for hours with insomnia.  After having been woken up so many times and having gone for so long without any sleep I just was not able to fall asleep again.  I finally got my laptop hooked up since I had some time to kill and was online from “my” bedroom for a while.  I did not end up managing to fall back asleep until one in the morning!  I am still going to be pretty tired tomorrow and likely quite hungry as well.

Dad had a change of plans for this week.  Originally he was going to be going to Peekskill tomorrow and spending the week.  But since his aunt Esther passed away he is going to Ohio on Monday and coming back Tuesday night.  I am not sure when or if he is planning to go down to Peekskill after that.  Dominica was originally going back home on Sunday afternoon but decided to push that off until Monday morning since she is not meeting dad down there.  So she and her parents went to see Hair of the Dog playing at the Irish festival somewhere near where they live.

Thus it begins.  Today is the beginning of the crazy long drive from Frankfort, New York to Houston, Texas.   No one got as much sleep last night as we should have but it was not too bad.  I slept in as late as possible this morning.  Dominica got me up at a quarter till seven.  Our goal was to be on the road by seven but we had to wait for the Friendly Bakery in Frankfort to have our cookie order ready that we are delivering to Houston with us.  Francesca was up much earlier than me.  I think that she got up around five or so.

There was a bit of packing to be done this morning before we could get on to the road.  Dominica packed up my stuff while I was getting ready and Francesca and the family packed the last of the trailer and the trunk of the car.  Boy are we ever taking a lot of stuff with us.  This is quite the load.

The cookies did not end up being ready until nine so we were delayed pretty significantly over what we had hoped to have been able to do today.  It was minutes after nine when we finally got out the door and into the car and pulled out of Frankfort.  Francesca took the first driving shift to get us out of the area.  The weather was perfect for driving today.  Clear and calm.

We took the New York Thruway west.  Nothing that we have not done hundreds of times before.  Francesca took the “boring” area for me driving through New York, Pennsylvania and most of Ohio.  All areas that I have driven through many times before and know backwards and forwards.  As far as Columbus, Ohio we covered area that I knew really well and driving the same roads over and over does nothing to keep me awake, but once we switched on to Interstate 70 in Columbus shifting our direction towards Dayton it became new territory.

The awesome thing about this trip is that we are Twittering from the car as well as testing out the new BlackBerry Tour with Google Latitude which is constantly updating everyone, every few minutes, as to our position.  So everyone was logging in to SGL to watch the map change and see exactly where we were.  Very neat.

Francesca drove all the way to Dayton.  We switched drivers there at a quarter until seven in the evening.  Francesca had driven for almost ten hours when we switched!  I was completely fresh at that point and barely felt like we had been in the car at all.  I took over on the “new” territory and drove us from western Ohio through Indiana and Illinois while we still had some daylight.  Early into Illinois we lost our sunlight which was a bit sad because both Francesca and I really wanted to see Missouri as neither of us had ever been there before.  We entered Illinois just before ten and did our final fuel stop there at eleven (that is still eastern time even though we switched to central time officially in Indiana.)

It was just after eleven when we finally reached the Mississippi River.  This is my first time ever seeing the Mississippi north of New Orleans, LA.  Very cool.

Coming into St. Louis was really awesome.  We could see the arch from quite some way away.  All lit up and signaling our arrival at the Mississippi River.  I have always wanted to see St. Louis.  It was a neat city to see even if we had to see it in the dark and only briefly as we zipped in on 70 and picked up Interstate 44 heading southwest through Missouri.

It was just before midnight when we entered Missouri.  We have a long way to go.  We have been driving for fifteen hours so we are approximately haflway to Houston.  The original plan was to drive until roughly midnight and then to grab a hotel.  But Francesca was very much awake and I was completely fresh still and did not need a break at all so we just pushed on through the night.  No reason to take a break and prolong the drive especially as sleeping on the road is extra hard when you have to get right to bed and only sleep a few hours and jump up, repack and get on the road again.  Not very effective and rather expensive.  So skipping the sleep it is for us.