Holiday Season, Pt. 2

        The rest of our time in Houston was pretty fun.  We got to go to a museum called Body Worlds, which has human bodies that have been placiticized (year-long process that involves replaces water with plastic-like substance and then heating them or using gasses or other methods to 'mold' them permanently in a certain position).  It went through the different organs in the body and showed what the unhealthy ones looked like.  It also had exhibits showing babies as early as 4 weeks old, and even a baby still inside its mother's body.  A few showed only the veins/arteries.  One showed a guy with muscles on the outside and the body was holding its entire body's skin.  The most interesting one was one where they completely took everything apart and held it all up by almost 1000 strings, in an expanded form, sort of like a computerized virtual view of the body expanded out.  Overall, it was quite fun.

       Instead of going to the usual new year's eve dance, we elected to stay inside and play games/watch movies to our heart's content.  The only games we failed to play were Risk (they had 2 versions) and Spades.  The most played game was nerts (multi-person solitaire based game).  We got a visit from Dad and Sue, who I didn't even know were coming until just before Christmas.  While they were there, we played taboo and they took us out to eat at Fudd Ruckers (my first time there).  It was nice to have them visit.

       An interesting part of the vacation was J's roommate, Z.  Imagine a member of our family in a non-tom-boy form with a blonde personality, but still intelligent.  That is what Z was like, though she claims she was a tom-boy until college.  She is a vocal major (soprano), which added to the blondeness.  I don't think I've ever seen anybody be more upbeat, yet still somewhat sarcastic.  She was in and out of the apartment up through christmas day, flew out to family Christmas day, then came back suprisingly earlier than expected just before new year's eve.  Her presence added a lot to the vacation.  If I was still active and if everything in life (or at least the big stuff) had gone as planned, I would have definetely be interested in her, even though she still has her tom-boy trait of hating most guys a giving even fewer a chance.  She has the rare quality of actually being a woman I respect.  Heck, living in Kentucky, its hard enough to find a woman that even respects themselves.

       Getting back home was uneventful, though I was falling asleep at the wheel quite a bit the last 2 hours before hitting the airport (we didn't have any sleep before leaving Houston at 3am on the 8ish hour drive.)  There were no delays, and both flights were quite comfortable.  D (the older) was nice enough to pick me up at the airport and take me back to his place to await Dad and Sue, which saved them at least 2 good hours of driving time.  I quickly fell asleep on the way to Ashland and we finally arrived around 9pm.