So....

I almost managed to kill (or at the very least, seriously injure) myself yesterday. I had decided to wear 4 inch heels to work (they are surprisingly comfortable, so this isn't as unreasonable as it sounds). The trouble came when I decided to go down a flight of stairs and the heel of one shoe snagged in the cuff on my pants, causing me to trip. The stairs here are the steel/concrete variety that are pretty damn scary. My life flashed before my eyes....well, actually, not my life, but I could immediately see the outcome of my tumble down....i got a flash of me lying at the bottom with a broken leg and my hair all eskew.

Fortunately, I was able to grab the railing, and get my feet up in time to catch myself. I think i cleared 5 steps in this jump. In fact, I think that if there had been people watching and judging my landing, I would have gotten atleast a 9.3 for technical merit. Maybe only a 8.9 for artistic interpretation though.

Dancing in the Moonlight

I was all excited a few months ago when I found out the my float for the Jupiter parade would be wearing pirate costumes...but, it was just not meant to be. We found out, when the costumes were picked up, that we're not going to be pirates....

Any guess on what I'll be dressing up as next Saturday? The only clues I can give is that the parade has a Halloween theme...and there was a campy movie made in the 80's starring this particular character....

Update (happy Minty Cheeks?)

The Jupiter and Orion balls were this weekend...both at the River Center so fortunately, we were able to walk from one to the other throughout the evening. A lot of fun was had....even if the Jupiter ball was a little more hard core this year. I believe only two people were taken away by abulances (passed out woman found in the bathroom and a girl who danced so hard she broke her leg!). Fortunately for my clumsy self, we spent more time at the Orion ball where things seemed to be a little less dangerous and injury was less likely to occur.

I'm really getting excited about the parade. For those of you in the area of downtown BR on February 3rd, I will be on the "pirate" float (yay! pirates!). I will be wearing a mask, but you can find me as the 2nd person from the front on the passenger side of the float. Get my attention, and I'm sure you'll get covered in beads. :)

Work is going well and keeping me busy in Galveston. I thought that I'd get annoyed with the drive, but its really not bad...I think the fact that it can take me an hour to get to the Galleria area some nights, the traffic-lite daily commute really isn't bad.

Yeah, that's about all that's going on right now. :)

New Year

Happy New Year!

Let's see if I can re-cap my Christmas holidays....

I had two weeks off work, which was really nice. I need to get away for a few days to think about things there. On the first Monday of my vacation, I flew to Longview to help my sister pack up and move to Houston. I guess I should say that I watched the movers she hired pack up, but whatever....I was there....

The next day I drove my sister and the rugrats to Houston and ran general errands/followed orders for the next few days. My parents showed up at one point and we celebrated an early Christmas before I drove to BR to have dinner with Kyle, Lindsay, Kristen, Melissa, Maureen, Greg, Mary and Richard. I like that tradition...I think we should keep it. I think I'm going to say "save the date" for next December 23rd.

I drove to Ville Platte on Christmas Eve to visit with the Fontenot's and the Fontenot's. Mamere used to throw a party every Christmas Eve and my uncle has continued that tradition for the last 13 years....tons of food, drinks, family, laughs and fireworks (to show Papa Noel the way). We used to really love the fireworks when we were little, but had grown out of them in the past few years....I'm happy to say that with a healthy portion of my cousins starting families of their own, the next crop of Fontenot's is developing their firework popping abilities at the guidance of my cousins (which is actually pretty frightening). In fact, we had to laugh when we heard that my cousin Leone's son told his friends that he couldn't wait to get to Louisiana for Christmas (they live in Colorado) because he has an uncle that pops fireworks using his cigarette! Leone was properly horrified, but we just laughed and told him to leave out the part about "Louisiana".

Christmas day was spent with my Dad's family and was a little more low-key. All in all, Santa was very nice and I had a good time visiting with that side of the family.

Thursday brought bridesmaid dress shopping and about 400 dresses to try on. Fortunately for me, we found a dress that we all liked and I won't have to try on a dress again for a while....hopefully.

My sister, Renee', came in from Germany that night. It was nice getting to spend some time with her. I would really like to visit her soon, but I just don't know if that's going to happen or not. I need to start my next project before I will know for sure.

We all drove back to Houston on the 30th, so that Renee' could see Carrie, Larry and the kids. We introduced Ally and Andrew to fireworks just after dark on New Year's Eve. Ally wasn't all that impressed with the noise, but I suspect she'll get over that by next year. Andrew, our future electrical engineer (his favorite toy is the electrical outlet and anything that he can plug into it) was (not suprisingly) facinated with the fireworks. I'm sure he'll be a little pyromaniac by this time next year.

After lighting a few sparklers and spelling out "ALLY" a few times, I drove back downtown to meet up with Carrie, Taylor, Mo and Greg. We drank too much, rang in the new year and then stumbled to bed. The new year was looking pretty good until about 3am when our fire alarms started going off. There was no fire, just a broken alarm system, so we all sat out on the balcony (it was quieter there) and grumbled in the cold for about an hour before they were able to shut the noise off. Although, I have to admit, it was probably a pretty humorous site to see a bunch of drunk people trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I know that I tried to wave the "smoke" away from the alarm in my room (nevermind the fact that there was no smoke, or anything to cause smoke in my room).

Anyway, the year has gotten better since then....no more alarms, and my return to work has been pretty uneventful. I'm not assigned to a client this week, so I've just been taking care of some administrative stuff that i've left for too long. Next week I start a new project. I am scheduled to be on it for about 7 months and will be staying in the Houston area. I will be working with a few people that I've worked with before, and I am excited about this project. I think that I will be commuting to Galveston every morning, but that shouldn't be too bad. Living in the area that I am in, I will be driving against traffic to and from Galveston. The mileage money won't hurt anything either. :)