Life of a systematist, nomad, and double Ph.D (or a look into the mind of someone who is questionably sane).

31 December 2006

let it snow let it snow let is STOP

Been an adventure the last couple of days. So we left for New Mexico on the 28th. The weather looked like it would be really bad the entire northern route so we decided to head south and take I10. I had fun playing with my GPS, there's a cool feature where you can pick a destination, like a city or waypoint then it will give you a running eta and milage to it. That kept me occupied for most of the drive. The first 1/2 of the drive wasnt' too bad, but when we hit Wilcox it started to snow. We stopped for lunch at tacobell/kfc place and grabbed food to go. We started checking the weather on dad's new cell phone every few min. Again, leave it to the dumb wildlifer to figure out how to zoom in on the radar. Wish I had internet on my phone, and dad was trying to figure out a way to justify keeping it after the month trial was up. At one point we had a little excitment because we got pulled over. But rather than giving us a ticket the cop asked if we were all US citizens. Apparenlty we looked suspisous in our van which he claims was riding low. I think he realized we were not illegals trying to make it across the border when he looked inside and saw a couple laptops and more elecronics than the average household strewn around the van. We were sent on our way without further delay. It started snowing in earnest once we were heading north on I25. We got to Albuquerque and by now it was snowing pretty steadily. Patty called and said they'ed closed the highway to santa fe just north of town so we turned around and went to her house. She had some turkey on the porch (everyone keeps all their food on the porch during the winter) so we had that for dinner, and watched some tv. There was a show on BBQ, and they taked about Sonny's (the greatest BBQ ever, except for sweetwater up in Misourri. The next morning we awoke to discover 6 inches or so of snow. The highway was still closed so we got to sleep in. It was nice to sleep as long as we wanted without worrying about missing anything since there was nothing to do. The day was spent shoveling snow and maria made a snow bunny in the drive way. We also watched coyotes playing in the snow in the field behind Patty's house. For dinner we had a bean soup with passole pieces in it. Very good. Based on the roads we decided there wasn't much chance of getting back to santa fe and me driving to College Station, so we bought a plane ticket to fly into houston. I was able to get one that left at 8am or so saturday. So I got all my stuff ready even though we knew there was really no chance of that flight making it out. I was woken up saturday at about 6 to discover that shockingly enough my flight was canceled. I told mom to call and see if they could reschedule it and luckily she did right away as I was able to get put on a flight for the next day that got totally booked minuets later. I went back to bed then christa called to tell me it was snowing in carlsbad. I told her id send her somemore snow, we had more than enough of it to go around. I called aubrey to let her know the new plan then went back to sleep only to be awakened by mom calling to see if i had called aubrey. except i though she was asking if it was sunny outside. i was rather confused by this since i was sleeping in the dark and she had an open window shade in her room. what made it super amusing was she has no memory of calling me. Once we finally all got up we spent most of the day shoveling snow. We finished pattys driveway then got volunteered to shovel all of her neighors. O well it wasn't like there was anything else to do. You can only watch so much TV. We went to church and almost got stuck in the parking lot. Church was nice, the servers were quite disiplined. I like it when servers keep their hands folded the entire time, it looks so much nicer than the ones that dont. Other than that just played around on the computer and made snow angels at cammacks suggestion. Eddie did his in shorts and a tshirt, i think hes crazy, since it was 17f. after he did it he jumped up and started freaking out he was so cold. before going inside my dad whipped us off with a towl to get as much of the snow off as possible, it was amusing. Hes like ive wanted to do this for years.

Sunday was spent flying back to TX. Patty took me to the airport- it was very exciting because she got me though the check in line and security line using her employee badge so we spent no time in line. We grabbed breakfast buritios inside secruity and she hung around with me until she needed to go to work. My plane was running way late out of abq, but at least southwest was still flying. Some of the others were grounded because they had run out of deicing fluid. Not sure how that happens since all the planes had been grounded fo so long there should have been more than enough. Odd. We finally boarded and took off. The flight out was really cool since everything was totaly white and covered with snow. Took some cool pictures of the mountians and roads. Then i realized i could use my GPS on board also, so that became my new toy. We landed in El Paso and I hung around there until it was time for my houston flight. We were running a little late out of there but not bad. I landed in houston and Aubrey was circleing for me. She picked me up and we went to REI. I wandered around some then found the perefect backpack- it was blue and had tons of compartments and was made for electronics. It was exactly what I wanted so I bought it to replace my old one. We grabbed mcdonalds and headed for college station and JACs new years party.

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