I got into Houston about 4am on Wednesday. The trip wasn’t as torturous as I had feared, but it was plenty tortuous, so I made the decision about half way through to just buy a plane ticket back. Then on the bus between Phoenix and San Antonio, the bus driver kept stopping to find somewhere to put air in the tires; after about ten unsuccessful attempts at this, we were about an hour and a half late catching the connection to Houston, and had to rush off the bus to the waiting one. In the haste, I left my MP3 player on the seat. So, I’m a littled peeved right now.

Looks like I won’t be flying home, since I want to replace it without turning this trip into a complete money drain: I bought $182 in clothes already (the idea was to buy clothes here and keep them here so I don’t have to lug along luggage everytime I come to visit) and still have to get socks and find acceptably priced underwear ($24 for 4 pairs of boxers at Kohls– wtf? did I grow breasts and am I buying a bra? I think not.) and yesterday was my Dad’s birthday, with an accompanying cash outflow. Then there are the social expenses of catching up with my friends and my sister to look forward to.

So yeah, money’s on the mind right now. And the weather is typically mercurial– this morning I drove my mom’s truck back from dropping her to work, in the kind of rain that makes you wish the windshield wiper had two extra settings. One of the cats loves water, so I tried taking him outside to look at the rain– he escaped my arms and scampered out onto the lawn, then turned around and hightailed it back inside at the first roll of thunder. Geeze did I miss these cats– I can talk to my family on the phone, and even not miss them much, but I really miss Gideon and Wil when I’m not here.

Possibly relevant posts:

• Back in business, different location (9/6/2006)
• Missing on-campus (1/17/2002)
• Travel reading (7/21/2007)