Chronological Schmonological. Icing on the Honeymoon Cake. HOUSTON!

We are HOME.  Mom's, Boston, Trinidad, Tobago, Trinidad, Houston, Mom's, Dad/Deb's, then HOME!   I've been delaying in posting, trying to keep this going in chronological order, but that's out the window now.

We left Port of Spain early, early Friday morning, rising at 5 (3 am central time), picking up aloo pies and baingan bake at TriniTaste on our way out of town (I don't know why, but there were cops with HUGE guns all over the place on the street there) and getting on a 9 am (7 central) flight.  

By 1:30 we back in central time, and in our rental car in Houston.  Not to sound like an advertisement, but we booked our hotel and rental car combo through Orbitz and holy moley value.  Thirty eight bucks for our room at the airport Ramada.  Hell, yeah!

We'd been looking forward to our Houston layover since the moment we booked our tickets.  I pushed pushed pushed the booking site till we had a 15 hour layover  -- and an opportunity to see four of our favorite people.  Two of our closest grad school friends took jobs in Houston in November, and two of our college friends live in the area also -- one a Houston native.  

We had not seen our Houston native friend in almost seven years, just weeks after Walker and I started dating.  I remember him coming to visit the campus, and being so excited and not wanting W to miss a second of his visit, so I went and sat outside of George Davis Hall, waiting for W to get out of class so I could let him know that Lucas! was here -- this was pre-cell phone era, folks.  As I sat there I started to feel creepy, waiting for him.  But I also got tired of standing, so I sat in the tree across from the door, and feeling creepier yet.  We had a hard to getting ahold of our long lost pal, but just a few days before our arrival in Houston, it was discovered that two hitchhikers who'd stayed with my friend and I in Colorado in 2002 were long time friends of his, and one of them hooked it up and got us in touch with him.  Success!

Looking forward to Houston made it much easier to leave paradise, and in a lot of ways, was more exciting than paradise.  We hope to make this happen again.