Access...Granted

I safely landed in Space City yesterday afternoon despite having about 4 cumulative hours of constant rain/drizzle to deal with. It wasn't completely bad, though, as Mal made me a new mp3 cd to listen to on the way down. Mp3 cds are awesome; you can put 3.2 bajillion songs on each one. No need for cd changing :)

To my surprise, when I arrived at Hotel Maier, Eric and Jennifer greeted me with a couple of steaks being cooked on the grill. Dinner that night was great. I also became indoctrinated into the dramas that are The West Wing and The Sopranos. Granted, it was the West Wing's last episode, but I enjoyed it. I really like the Sopranos too. We also dabbled in Big Love; Eric was correct in his diagnosis: it's more interesting than it is entertaining.

Work today was great. The whole gang was here, and it was good to do the "welcome back" tour and see everyone again. It looks like I'll be pretty busy this summer; they have alot of work for me this tour(I'm in ADCO again, for those of you keeping score). I also learned that the government has finished my background check, and I have been cleared for access to all the cool places on site. It goes without saying today that once my badge was activated, I played around with the proximity-sensitive card readers to Mission Control for quite some time. Now when you come visit me this summer(and you KNOW you want to!), I can give you my personal tour of JSC.

I've been here less than 48 hours, yet this week is already starting to get hectic. The Sox game was tonight(OWNED the Birds 11-1), tomorrow we're going to Minute Maid in an attempt to see history made by Bonds, Wednesday is the UEFA Championship Final between Barcelona and Arsenal(we're recording it and watching it at Colin's that night), Thursday we're prolly going to see the new GOAL! movie, Friday I'm sure something entertaining is going to happen(DaVinci Code anyone?), and Saturday will be my first experience of a Houston Dynamo game. Unfortunately I wont get to sit in our bitchin' season-ticket seats, but I will be there nonetheless. Eric knows a guy who knows a guy, so we were able to score about 10 free extra tickets. We're planning on tailgating all afternoon until kickoff. Hell yeh!

Next post I'll divulge all the details of everything that I'll be doing(and hope to do) this summer while in Houston as a 21-year old. I'll make it a top-10 list or something.

TWENTY SIX DAYS!!!