It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

So I'm back in Pensacola, on my friends couch, nice and comfortable in my pj's. But it hasn't always been this way. I came back to P'cola to cover for my old boss while she's out of town for 2 weeks. She bribed me to come back by paying for me to take a training seminar I really wanted to go to. I waited too long to get my plane tickets because I was waiting for the money to buy them. So I ended up driving, which was a bad idea. I think if I wrote a book about my life it would be titled "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time." What should have taken 11 hours, took 14 hours, due to gridlock traffic in Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Baton Rouge. Then, somewhere in Alabama, 11ish hours in to the drive, which was also about 11ish at night, I got off the interstate looking for gas. I got off at a couple of different exits looking for a gas station where I felt even remotely comfortable getting out of my car. Somewhere in there I got turned around and drove back to Louisiana. Yeah, I was just as shocked as you. Then, with 5 hours of sleep I throw myself together to go to the seminar that I was so excited about and not even thinking about what the speed limit could possibly be, I obtain a $130 ticket. I was also half an hour late to my beloved seminar. And now wine.

The Texas State Aquarium

Today we went to the Aquarium!! Every weekend my bf has to switch his schedule between days and nights. So every weekend we're either trying to go to bed early and get up early, which cuts out on fun time, or trying to stay up late and sleep in, which is much easier and much more fun. So today we slept in, made breakfast, puttered around the house, ok, so I putter around the house, while he plays video games, and then got ourselves together and headed out the door. On the way to the aquarium, my bf decides he's starving and gets uber cranky. The parking lot at the aquarium was full, so we pulled around to a public parking lot, which was $5 that had to be paid in cash. I only had a ten and 2 ones. So we decided to break the 10 at a restaurant next door. We had decided to eat lunch at the aquarium, but at this point I just wanted to get some sort of food, any food in this man's stomach. So we went in to Pier 99 and it was perfect. It was overlooking the water and the USS Lexington, which is an aircraft carrier that has been made into a floating museum. We had huge burgers and cold beer and I had a much happier boyfriend at the end of it. On to the aquarium. It had all your typical aquarium stuff, lots of fish, some sharks, and reptiles, even a few birds. But it also had tons of sea turtles, and dolphins, and otters! It even had an alligator. The sea turtles were very interactive and would come check out all the people, and the dolphins had an underwater viewing area where they would swim by inches away from you. They had a few petting tanks, we only ventured our hands into one of them. The sting ray tank. I had a very flowy sleeve that kept brushing the water. My bf was holding my sleeve when I reached a little too far over the tank to try to reach the nearest sting ray and my whole sleeve and arm dunked in. I got all flustered and splashed everywhere and the sting ray got all flustered and kicked up sand everywhere. It was only a small mess. I only had one soaking wet limb. We decided to get memberships so we could come back for free and bring guests when our families came to visit. Afterwards we got ice cream and walked on the beach. It was a beautifully sunny day. Not too hot, not too windy. Perfect for walking on the beach with ice cream.

The Beach

Thursday was the first sunny day since I've been here. For being so far south, it is not sunny here in the winter. It is surprisingly overcast and foggy, whether it's cold outside or 86 degrees. So I thought I would run over to the beach, which is a hop, skip and a jump from my house. I had to drive around Padre and Mustang Island a bit to find a place where I could park my car on actual concrete and not on sand. Because you are allowed to drive on the beach here I guess they decided to save the money and not build parking lots. I, however do not trust my little Genesis in the sand, the first week we were here, we saw some teenagers attempting to dig out a little 4 door that was not going anywhere anytime soon. I finally found a place where I could park on the road, hopped out and realized how windy it was, and a bit chilly, and actually quite foggy. So I guess it's not quite beach weather yet. I keep panicking that we are going to miss our small window of nice weather while it's still bearable to be outside and not in the triple digits. It was oddly beautiful, despite the wind tumbling peoples lawn chairs and towels, and the garbage that litters all the beaches here. I want to take a trash bag with me every time I go. There seems to be a plastic bag or some indistinguishable piece of unnatural rubber every few feet, it's pretty bad. But despite all that, the grassy dunes are really quite amazing and the wind made row after row of crashing waves, amplifying the ocean sounds. The water here is a green, almost a greenish brown. It's very dull

, unlike the bright blue of Pensacola. I hear it's darker because it is west of the Mississippi, and the gulf currents bring the run off this direction. The sky was very dark too, almost black on one side, giving the whole scene a very artistically muted feeling. The fog was very heavy, making people walking only 50 feet away from me disappear along the beach. It was pretty cool.