Ahoy.

I'm back from my 2 days of working. It's been a lovely week, really. I met a new friend :). His name is Matt and he is going to grad school for counseling. He has a great smile and doesn't laugh when I suck at pool. He recruited me on facebook as a bar buddy, and is a regular at Lou's on thursdays just like me. He has a slight Peruvian/Brooklyn accent, as he lived in both places for most his life. He's read a lot of psych books just for fun....interesting conversations ahead.

So hooray for new friends.

Houston was great. My duties included filing medical records and shredding old ones. My uncle is a geriatrics doctor, and after a patient dies, he is required to keep records for 7 years. So, the records I shredded were of people who died in 1998. Shredding paper through the shredder is very therapeutic. But then I started reading the documents I was shredding, and realized that I was destroying maybe some of the last traces of someone's identity. So, I started talking to the pages in my head: " goodbye, Maude....goodbye Walter....". I've been given the opportunity to stay there long-term and go on house calls with my uncle, since he needs female chaperones when he goes to female patient's houses. Sounds like it could be interesting, I just wish it weren't so far from Dallas. I might come back for a long stay next month if no other work comes up.

I saw Lindsey and Evan :). I love his Canadian accent and the way he says "Torronto". I'm jealous of you Lindsey for having the courage to take off to live in a town and a state that you knew you'd be happy in...but with no other inklings of how that would happen. Brandon, Nicole and I went to California Pizza Kitchen and I had the most delicious rosemary pesto potato grilled chicken pizza. With white wine sauce. I wish I could cook. I would have eaten the whole thing right then and there but I didn't want to look like a pig. We stood out in the parking lot and watched people almost get in wrecks on Westheimer. Houston is not a good place for driving at all. 2 million people do not make for good driving conditions.

I spent the last part of the day yesterday at Memorial City Mall with my aunt and 2yr old cousin. He runs around like a banshee and my aunt just lets him explore. I got nervous when he would run into crowds and grab at things on the kiosks, but my aunt just stands right behind him and watchfully lets him do whatever. I guess this lets him learn on his own, but I don't know anything about parenting. I love to see how my aunt has changed. She is my mom's twin, but to be honest, looks and acts 10 years younger. I always thought she was so glamourous growing up. She lived a barbie-doll life; dating neurosurgeons and pilots, always had big gorgeous pools at her luxury apartment complexes. I would play with her designer makeup and she would take my sister and I shopping and to the movies and just spoil us. She got married in her late 30's and couldn't have kids. It devestated her of course. When I found out she was doing InVitro I was kind of pissed because I knew there were so many kids out there that needed to be adopted, and her my aunt and uncle were spending so much money on something that wasn't a sure thing. It took them 3 tries and probably more than 100,000 dollars to have Mikey. But when I see him running around with this big goofy grin on his face, he looks like my aunt and my uncle. He looks like me too, since hey, my mom has the same exact genetic make-up of my aunt. So I guess genetically he is the same to me as my own half-brother. Weird! So, I see now why it is worth it to some people. I found not a single tube of Lancome or not a single high-heeled shoe in her house, but everywhere you looked there were little tykes toys and sippie cups. In developmental psychology they say that an adopted child, while they benefit from the love and upbringing from their family, will still have many of the personality traits of their birth parents even though they've never met. It's amazing to me how much of who you are really is inborn.

So I stopped last night in CS to kill some more time. I played a half-assed game of bowling with Casey, Jillian, and her husband. We all registered on the score board under pseudonyms, I was Hootie McBoob. Casey's at work blowing stuff up, I'm about to take off. Going to Hailey's tonight with Matt. I can't believe it's friday already...