Under the bonnet!

Okay I am being very stinky, as I sit here typing this in my gym clothes. I have had dinner, filled the car with water and now I am thinking about a shower then bed.

I have to admit I am now hooked to Farmville on Facebook. I have had to tend my farm during the day because the strawberries ripen in 4 hours! Unless you give it a go, you wont know what I am taking about!

Anyway, back to reality, it was another hard day at the office and then an extremely hard day at the gym. I think my personal trainer was having a bad day. He was not quite a smiley and chatty as normal and was really mean to me - I certainly worked hard and that was on top of my cardio session I did beforehand. My arms are feeling very floppy right now, but they should recover by tomorrow.

When I left for work this morning the oil light came on. I had only been for an oil change a week and half ago so I knew I could go back to the place. I drove to work and thought I would deal with it at lunch. So at lunch I went down and checked the dipstick, and the level was fine, and importantly, the oil was absolutely clean, and then when I started the car the light didn't come back on - so I must have been a blip on the sensor. Since this was the first time I had looked under the bonnet, I decided I should check all my levels at home. The most I managed was to fill up the squisher bottle, but the rest of the car was too hot. Considering, I had only driven a short distance from the gym I was quite surprised how hot it was , but I suppose it is high 30's outside!

Oh I haven't updated you on the bugs! I have been finding plenty of dead ones (cockroaches especially), so whatever my exterminator sprayed it is working. I now need to go around cleaning up all the bodies! This weekends job :)

What happened to variety?

I was still in a deep sleep when my alarm went off this morning. Since going out on Monday night, I am a day out, so this week is feeling like a four day week.

Work is busy at the moment, which is great, except I always want to get more done than I can so I get frustrated. Wednesday, so wraps for lunch! The only thing that is utterly predictable, oh and that chicken will be on offer! It is my current grumble, along with a number of other people at the office. I feel bad, because the food is generally good, if only a bit 'samie'! I had a visitor today - I know the picture is poor, however, this cricket (I think) was taking a rest on my window. I don't know why he was up so high, but I got Cecelia to come and admire him as well.

This evening I had to go to the gym, no hangover or sleep deprivation as an excuse. It just happened to be my hardest run day (it was meant to be last Friday), so I suffered for my lack of commitment, plus I had to stay and do the circuit my personal trainer had set me to do for yesterday! I have to say I feel quite satisfied sweating, so much, that it is dripping of me. However, my cotton sport top is not great as it gets very wet, and is very obvious, then stays wet and goes cold against your body! There is something to be said for the fancier man made fabrics. After all my hard work, I then went into the spa for an extra stretch out. I was at the gym for about 2.5 hours!

I bumped into one of my neighbours this evening when I went out to the letter box. He is very friendly and asked about our wedding and I was telling my mystery husband will be joining me soon. He said we will have a party to welcome Stu. I said once Stuart gets here we can host one, because he is the cook in the relationship! This made the neighbour laugh, and then I made him laugh even more when I said I had to go because my poached eggs were cooking! Actually, I have also lined up Stuart to bake bread for our Friday breakfast at work (a new thing starting where one person from the team brings in breakfast each week and we take turns). Sorry honey.

In the meantime, it was back to poached egg and asparagus!

Fossils!

Oh my goodness, an armadillo sneaked in, in the night and did something nasty in my mouth!

I was not feeling good this morning - and strangely, I was actually feeling slightly sick, which I don't normally suffer from. However, I managed to get up at 0530 like normal. It took until lunchtime to start feeling human again.

I was freezing at work all day. Our meeting rooms are set about 10 deg cooler than the offices and I had back to back meetings all morning. It is not until I leave the office at the end of the day that I actually warm up. I sometimes remember to take a jumper or cardigan with me, however, this morning, for some reason, I didn't!

Have you noticed I haven't mentioned the gym for the past couple of days? Well, today was the first I had been since Friday night, so I hadn't done my homework for personal trainer! Opps!! I will get back to it tomorrow as I have heaps to catch up on. He made me do some horrible exercises as punishment! I could feel the wine coming out of my pores. I have lots of stretches, stability and strength exercises now. We are using more of the ball - like what people use in pilates, because it wobbles and makes you use more of your core muscles to hold still.

I have finally taken some picture of the fossils in the tiles at the gym. They are very impressive - a lots of ammonites and crinoids. You would laugh though as I decided to go into the toilet with my camera (I identified the best toilet first!), less embarrassing taking photos in the middle of the changing rooms. From a quick search on the Internet I think these tiles might be all the way from quarries in Germany. The limestone was deposited in the Jurassic. The tiles are called Jura Limestone, and maybe from the Swabian Jura, but obviously I am not absolutely certain however, they definitely matches the descriptions. There you go a bit of geology for you :)

I had a quick swim back home as it was still over 90F at 7:30pm. Then dinner, but I don't plan to stay up much longer, beauty sleep calls!

Wine on a school night!

This has to be a quick blog not only because it is half past twelve but because M&D will be printing this off in half an hour and wont expect me to be this late on a Monday!

Tonight, I went to a wine tasting dinner. The wines were all from the Columbia Valley, Chateau Ste. Michelle wines from Washington State. You eat a five course dinner at a restaurant, in our case Churrascos, and have appropriately selected wines from one vineyard selected to match the food. It was all very nice, but I think I have now drunk a little too much for a Monday! not considering I already slept in this morning after a busy weekend! One of the girls from work invited myself and another colleague, Cecelia, along. We had 14 of us at the dinner, not all from the oil industry, which is unusual in Houston (it is sort of like Aberdeen in that regard). One of the guys had brought his 89 year old mother along who was visiting from Holland! They were all so friendly, that when one of the guys arrived he said hello and hugged and kissed all the ladies, including me, however, was surprised when he discovered he didn't know me! I was a little shocked too, but thought at least they are friendly!

To begin with we had whites and then moved on to the reds. I have taken a photo of the menu, but I am not sure if you can read it. I also managed to get a photo of the group with all the wine glasses still on the table! I said I was a tourist and they happily obliged with a photo!!

I shared a taxi there and back with my colleague from work, and her British boyfriend, so it was my first true night out in Texas without the worry of having to drive :) Oh my poor head!

Nothing else much to report as I came straight home from work to go to this and I already know tomorrow will be a struggle!

More Footie

Girlies football today out at Bear Creek Park. Laura picked me up at 8:30am and off we went, well we did once Laura turned her shorts the right way out! It was the first practice before the winter season starts in September. I haven't signed up as yet I was just giving it a go.

There are loads of pitches at Bear Creek and it was where I had watched Laura playing football on one of my first weekends in Houston. However, the pitch we had reserved had lots of men on it! We had been doubled booked! We managed to go on to the kids pitch sine it was only skill practice it didn't matter it wasn't full sized pitch. I was just as bad as I had been 5 years ago at five aside! However, it was fun. We were outside playing for about 2.5 hours, but it was getting hot by the end as the sun came out and I was relieved when at 1130 we call end it an end, not to mention the boots Laura had kindly lent me were pinching!

We were a right state, sweaty and covered in sand and grass. In spite of that we went to a place, somewhere not too far away, to have some lunch. It was like a ranch with horses outside. Everyone laughed at me when I complained the water tasted odd. Fortunately when I passed it around for a consensus most agreed with me. The waiter eventually said he would get me 'princess water'! That meant bottled and it tasted much better :) What you have to understand is that although Houston water is perfectly OK to drink it tastes odd and you mostly get filtered water for a good reason!

Laura and I spent a very relaxing afternoon by the pool and reading our books in the shade. I of course kept falling asleep after reading three pages! It was certainly the way Sunday's are meant to be spent :) Laura started weeding around the pool that I have been looking at for ages. The gardener only does the grass by the looks of it! Since she started she inspired me to continue in the flower bed next to the pool which had loads of grass in it. So all of that is now clear as well.

Tonight I was dying for a frozen margarita as I haven't had one for ages. So after a quick search on the web, I found a Mexican restaurant just round the corner called La Hacienda. I said to Laura we could walk, so we did, and it was no more than 15 minutes. We did, however, get a toot along Memorial! Possibly as we were so strange walking, even Laura said she hasn't done it much in Houston. The great thing is we can potentially walk to lots of places in the area. There are limited pavements, or rather sidewalks, but it is not an issue on the little roads. I should say the place itself had good food at extremely good prices and the frozen margarita's were pretty good too!

PS the reason for the shiny face is because I had to apply aloe vera aftersun! A bit much sun at football.

Forever Orange

Well, I did manage to get myself out of bed at a reasonable hour, however, after being up for 1.5 hours I decided to go and lie on my bed and read my book! Well, 2.5 hours later I woke up and it was nearly 1pm! Hmmm that was most of Saturday gone.

I had no inspiration for the gym, and I had agreed to help Laura painting again, so I went off to hers and we got going on the kitchen in the garage apartment. I was doing the wood work, while Laura got the ceiling! (I definitely had it easy). There was plenty of sweating once again, but it was all worth it as Chris brought home some monster steaks, huge shrimp and a couple of scallops. All of which went on the barbie, sorry wrong terminology, the grill. Andy met us at Laura's and once we had our fill of protein, we went off to see the Dynamo's.

The Dynamo's are Houston's football team, or rather soccer team. Their strip is orange and hence their motto is 'forever orange'. Tonight, they were playing D.C. United. The stadium holds about 30,000, but was no where near full. The atmosphere, however, was very jovial and not as serious as games back home, which was nice. There was a mascot called Diesel, and some poor chap had to wear a foxes costume in this heat! There were cheerleaders and a band that didn't stop banging on the drums throughout the game. The first 36 minutes were rather uneventful, then the Dynamo's scored three goals in as many minutes, so at half time were 3-0 up! The opposition got some goals in the second half, but the game finished 4-3 to the Dynamo's! There were a lot of yellow cards given out (some were definitely dubious), but other than that there was no trouble. It was good fun and considering it is just around the corner from Laura's it is silly not to go.

I wonder if I can use any of the tips I learnt tonight when I go and play with Laura's football team tomorrow?!

Cultured!

We had some super rain this afternoon, including thunder and lightening, obviously, and I thought it was going to effect our plans for the evening at the open air theatre. But that was silly, as the rain soon past and the ground dried up - so it was all back on. None of that all day drizzle like you get in Scotland.

After the gym, of course!, I met up with Laura, Andy and Danny in an Irish bar in midtown called McElory's. From the outside it looked like some seedy bar you would find down George Street in Aberdeen! It had a good outside area where I was eaten by mosquitoes despite putting on my Avon skin so soft and extra mossie repellent.

We had to be at the Miller Outdoor Theatre before 8:30pm to see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Very cultured! It was performed by the Houston Shakespeare Festival. They add their own bits togive it a twist. It was funny in parts, but sometimes quite difficult understand/hear. Laura brought along snacks and wine so we had everything we needed :) We had seats because it was a play, but when they have music events you can take a rug and a picnic and sit on the slope behind the theatre. I should also mention it is totally free!

Well I am back later, actually it is 2am, because we went back to Danny's. Laura jumped in his pool I just sat with my feet in it. He has a great house in midtown that is very handy for going to the theatre in the future :)