mellificent | Entries tagged with galveston

I'm not saying you're actually going to get 7 kinds of random here, but I'm pretty sure that the only way I'm going to get an entry out tonight is to loose the random.

Well, ok, let's start with some updates on things I've talked about previously: first of all, the Texans lost rather ignominiously on Monday Night Football. But hell, they had those injury problems that we had talked about, and it was New England in Foxboro in December and if you read between the lines when I was talking about it before, I wasn't really holding my breath for a victory there. But hey, we're still 11-2. Most teams would give their eyeteeth to be in the Texans' size 14 shoes. We'll see what happens with Indianapolis this weekend.

Also, regarding the cruise ships, this was big news in Galveston this past week: Disney has decided to leave earlier than anticipated. (It looks like the rest of that article is behind a pay wall now, darnit.) Anyway, they're still staying through 2013, they're just not going into 2014 as they had previously hinted they might. And apparently the other suitor for those berths was going to be Princess Cruises, but they have decided to go further inshore and go out of LaPorte. (It's always possible that that will not work out, anyway; LaPorte has had a couple of flings in the past at being a cruise ship departure city and it never seems to work out too well. We'll see.)

I stayed home from work today because I had a sore throat. (I say I stayed home; I didn't drive to Galveston, is what I mean, but I ended up doing several hours of work anyway.) What I really was leading to here, though, was that I have been sick for pretty much the last month now. I'm pretty sure I caught a cold on top of my normal fall allergies, and I was sick for the 10 days or so immediately before Thanksgiving, and since then I've had trouble shaking it. I've been through bags and bags of cough drops. I am getting better, but really slowly. And every few days I get these sore throats, which are usually bad in the morning but then go away again. It's very annoying. I'm pretty sure it's just allergies, but with the way it keeps dragging on, you gotta wonder. (But then what is it? Strep throat? I dunno. I suppose I might should go to the doctor and see what they say. But I hate to.)

I started sending out Christmas cards, finally - I had 5 people on the TUS list who were out of the country, so I did them first, and they're all mailed, and today I started working on the rest of the list. TUS people (until I run out, anyway) are getting some of my precious hoarded cards that I made myself. I've been footling around with more homemade cards this year but haven't gotten far. Anyway, I'm going to use up last year's stash first, some of which are very cute. (I also have Grinch cards and... something else that was on the morbid side... that I'm really tempted to give to my elderly neighbors just to wake them up a bit. But I probably won't.)

(Look! Texans icon! I made it myself!)

More Houston-Galveston stuff, some of which refers to yesterday's entry:

Aw man, I knew it was probably coming, but Jim Deshaies is leaving us for the Cubs. I adore that man. (But I'm not sure I adore him enough that I'll go watch Cubs games just for him. Of course, if the Astros are bad enough this next year, that may start to look like a more attractive option.)
In other (ex-)Astros news, Brad Lidge is probably retiring. Also, bonus footage there of the Astros clinching in 2005. (Rob and I were watching the faces and in some cases the jerseys during the scrum, and going, "Berkman! Biggio! Clemens!" Damn, that was a good team, even if they couldn't win a WS game.)
I had to go to Galveston today for a doctor's appointment, and the other Carnival ship was in today. I got out of my appointment right at 4:30, which I have learned over the past couple of years is about the time that the ships usually depart. You could tell that anyway, because when I got back downtown, half the passengers were lined up looking over the railings. To me this always brings to mind old black-and-white movies where the passengers line up to wave at their loved ones who are waving back from below. But nobody is going to stand around to watch you leave when you're just going sailing around the Gulf of Mexico for five days or whatever it is. Plus most of the passengers arrive on buses or park remotely, so there's nobody to watch, in any case. (I'm sure the passengers aren't really lining up for that at all, they're just watching the ship pull out. Still amuses me just the same.)
I said confidently yesterday that the Texans game was taping (by which I actually meant DV-R'ing, of course, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it) so of course when I got home it hadn't worked properly, and I only got the last hour or so. I didn't really care that much, anyway, but I really should probably investigate what happened there. It seems to have switched on at three o'clock or something, and our games are nearly always at noon. Honestly, U-verse, you're supposed to just read my mind! (And often it seems to. I'm terribly spoiled, really.)
Also, the Texans have serious injury problems. They coped with it pretty well, yesterday, but that was just the Titans. New England may be another story.

Note to self: 45 minutes is too long of a drive for a routine doctor appointment. (As the university knows full well, it's why they have about a zillion clinics scattered all over the north half of the county.)

(I was going to add a picture of the rather excessive holiday decorations around our apartment complex, but my phone isn't cooperating. Sorry.)

It's Sunday afternoon and the Texans are playing, and while I am generally fairly calm on the subject (most of the time), I am kind of into this whole Texans juggernaut thing. We've had a lot of bad years and it's about time we had a good one! And unfortunately I can't see any of the TVs from my desk and I can't really go wander around because sitting at this desk IS my job, basically, but luckily, I have my trusty iPhone and the NFL '12 app to inform me that the Texans just won 24-10 and they are now 11-1 for the year, so woot! (I watched a little bit of it at home and then listened to most of the 2nd quarter in the car, and it's taping so I'll probably watch the whole thing again when I get home. So you don't really need to feel bad for me on account of missing it.) So let's see... the math here is that there are four games left and worst case scenario if we lost the rest of them is we'd be 11-5. We certainly hope it won't come to that, although we have New England at Foxboro next week so that's sort of the acid test. We still have to play Indianapolis twice, that's all I know about the rest of the schedule off the top of my head. Actually that accounts for 3 of the 4 remaining weeks, doesn't it? (According to ESPN, the Texans did clinch a playoff spot today. I didn't think we could do that today, but I'm glad to find out I'm wrong! Now it becomes all about home field and such.)

( Other Local Topics... )

I had to go around a big traffic jam yesterday on the way to work, caused by cruise ships. Apparently the City of Galveston knows how to handle the traffic caused by one ship offloading and reloading passengers. It's when there's more than one that they start having trouble. And both of the ones that were there were really big ships, which probably makes a difference as well. Until lately, the main ship that did cruises out of Galveston was the Carnival Ecstasy, which is a considerably smaller ship. Cruises out of Galveston are a booming business (mostly because if you live in the Midwest you can generally fly to Houston a lot cheaper than you can fly to Miami), so the Ecstasy has apparently been assigned elsewhere, and now we have the Carnival Triumph and the Carnival Magic, both of which are very much larger. They never come in on the same day, though, so the ones there yesterday were the Magic and then the Mariner of the Seas, which I'm pretty sure is a Royal Caribbean ship. It's been around about once a week lately as well. (It's a very pretty ship, I think - its design is much more interesting than the Carnival ships.)

My life kind of revolves around boats these days, a bit. I can sure tell you a lot more about tankers and tugboats than I could six months ago, believe me. Although my dad was a commercial fisherman for a long time so I guess I've probably always known more about boats than the average person, whether I wanted to or not. The funny thing is that I don't even like being on boats all that much - I'm either sort of claustrophobic or maybe it's that I'm a bit of a control freak in my way, and it bothers me that when you're on a boat you're out of control, unless you're the pilot, and you can't just get off any time you please. I've never been on a cruise and I don't much have any desire to - I would go if my friends were going, maybe, or something like that. Other than that, well, Rob's not interested either so I probably won't. It's a good thing for Carnival et al. that everybody's not like me.

(Also, speaking of Cruises of a different kind, we went to see the Mission: Impossible movie tonight. I am not Mr. Cruise's biggest fan, by any means, but it was pretty good.)

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Entries tagged with galveston

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