Less Than a Month Left! .... : )

Greetings yet again from Texas! Things are well here in the South. The temperatures have started to rise yet again as we welcome August. Going outside has become almost unbearable without a sizeable frosty beverage of sorts. My usual garb of flame retardant clothing hasn't helped much with the heat. The fibers enjoy quality bonding time when it's hot (which is good because it keeps us from getting burned), but that quality time also makes for some serious sweating. Mmm...the joys of the heat.

Beyond complaining about the weather, things are going pretty smoothly. Work is starting to wrap up as I prepare for my final review and the big move back home. I am VERY lucky because one of my close friends and long time roommates back home has agreed to fly down and drive back home with me. Assuming her boss is 100% in for letting her off work for a few days, we should be good to go! : ) I can't wait to catch up with her and get my butt back up north.

On a side note before I talked a little bit about last week, I had a total nerdy engineering moment last night. Our deadbolt on the front door has been mildly intolerant of letting us in or out of the apartment lately. After a frustrating 5 minutes of struggling with the door yesterday, I managed to fix it well enough to be able to enter and exit without cussing a bluestreak in front of the zillion little kids who roam our apartment complex. My fix? Pam cooking spray and a leatherman. A true engineer turned foodie tool kit! I may have to peridoically Pam the front door a few times before we leave, but for now our deadbolt is working just fine.

This last weekend I managed to high tail it out of town for a few days to visit my good friend in Baton Rouge yet again. True to form, we managed to do a decent amount of cooking and relaxing. I was able to get into town early on Friday afternoon since I had Friday off (yaaaay 9/80 schedules!). After being filled in on my friend's chaotic work schedule (the poor guy has been swapping between 1st, 2nd and 3rd shifts for over a month now!), we got the chance to go out to dinner and the new Harry Potter movie with four of his friends. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed good 'ol 'arry Potter. i know it's lame, but I'm a big fan of the books and the movies seem to get better every time. I'm currently reading the 7th and final book. It's very good and I'm about 400ish pages in out of 750. I've already designated tonight as a Harry Potter night. : ) NERD ALERT!

Saturday and Sunday were pretty relaxed for us. We slept in, did some reading, watched "Turner and Hooch" (such a funny movie) and caught up on each other's lives. It's always great to get a little quality time in with other northerners who have mysteriously ended up in the deep south.

Speaking of being a crazy notherner, I've decorated my poor officemate's white board even more lately. As of right now it has his general mood forecast (it's been stuck on "Enter at your own risk" for about a month now), a spartan helmet, a disco dancing spartan helmet, a 2 humped desert racing prawn (an inside joke with one of our Saudi engineers), and now a list of Michigan-isms. Here's a few examples:

You Know You're From Michigan When...

• You know what a pasty is. (YUM!)
• You have a favorite hockey team.
• You drive over the Big Mac instead of eating one.

There are many more, but I can't quite remember them off the top of my head.

That's about all for now! I'll post some pictures of our culinary creations in a minute.