So, here I sit on my last day of summer vacation…possibly ever…and what am I doing? Procrastinating, of course! I figure that yesterday was eventful enough with the evacuation and chemical fire that I thought I deserved a lazy day. (Wylie would argue that I have had nothing but lazy days for the last 2 weeks, and he might be right, but this particular lazy day was well-earned!) We did get up super early to go get our Texas driver’s licenses, which is quite an accomplishment. There were some characters at the DMV…my favorite was this very elderly gentleman who reminded me of a Billy Goat Gruff–kind of crotchety on the outside but really sweet deep down, you could just tell. And a big ol’ white beard. A nice start to the day.

This afternoon I had intended to work on some dissertation stuff, but then we went to Downtown Bryan for a little jaunt and a stop at one of the two soda fountains. Wylie had a malt and I had a sundae…pretty great. The other part of the store is an antique shop, so I browsed some really amazing old costume jewelry as well.

So…here I am back at the computer again with dissertating intentions. I already gave in to some 10gallon-hatting. We shall see if I can resist the siren call of the new TV that we got on Wednesday (kind of on accident, but I will let Wylie tell that story)…hmmmm…..

All of Bryan was evacuated this afternoon due to a chemical fire at a nearby warehouse. Teresa and I are safe, and at a place called Sweet Eugene’s in nearby College Station. We got out before all of Bryan was evacuated thankfully. We heard that traffic outside was crazy.

It even made the front page of cnn.com.

And Twitter went crazy.

Here is a picture of the fire (via theeagle)

Hooray! Today was an exciting day in Texas because I met most of my intern cohort! And ate some pretty super pizza with Wylie! I met 2 of the other 3 kids who will be interning with me at the TAMU counseling center, and they were super fun and nice, so I am looking forward to getting to know them more and having some giggles and learning with them. We met at a local burger joint–The Chicken Oil Company–which was full to the brim with local color and charm…and crinkly fries. Which are pretty fabulous. (Crinkly sweet potato fries are even better, but you usually have to make those at home, or at least unfreeze them at home. Wylie and I did that last night, and in the process burned up a silicon cookie sheet that was being stored in the drawer under the oven…that smelled bad…but the sweet potato fries were delicious!)

Then this evening Wylie and I did some spontaneous errands…about which there is a rant coming at the end of this post…and tried Gumby’s Pizza, which was ALSO full to the brim with local color and charm. It was super yummy (don’t tell Mr. G though) and super cheap, and pretty much the definition of “no frills.” It seems like lots of college kids go there and they have a dining room that is a haphazard collection of various kinds of tables and posters that a 15 year old boy would like (i.e. a Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks, a Mullet Guide (hairdos, not fish), a monkey drinking beer, etc…). The tables and posters are unattended, and there are no plates in the whole place. They called my name, gave us the pizza, and we ate it straight from the box. So, it’s kind of like being at home, only in a restaurant. I liked it. It is my new favorite place…the only negative was that they have Pepsi products, but even that was forgivable in such a relaxed atmosphere…Everyone seemed to be eating these little pizza roll things, so we will try those next time.

I have also been busy with dissertation stuff, which is good. I had to buy a subscription to Zoomerang for a year, so it is quite possible that you will start seeing random surveys around 10gallonhat.com because I want to get my money’s worth.

In other news…WARNING, A RANT COMING…I got my Texas vehicle registration yesterday, and it turns out that TX requires front and rear plates, which I do not now nor have I ever had on Atom, and it seems that getting a front license plate mount is more of a hassle than it should be. Here is my opinion: There should be a standardized rule for all 50 states–one plate or two–and cars should come at least with the holes so that you can easily attach a cheap mount. The Scion dealer wants $35 just for the mount, then who knows how much to drill the holes…I am going to try to sweet talk them into putting on my cheap $5 mount from Auto Zone tomorrow…we shall see. For some reason this particular detail of moving has made me more annoyed and upset than it should, and for that, I apologize to Wylie because he has had to deal with it. A couple of naps helped. Also, the memory foam for the bed came yesterday, so sleeping like a baby angel tonight will help too…

We have had a busy two days here in the Lone Star state. Monday evening involved going to many stores; Bed, Bath & Beyond, Pier 1, World Market, and Office Max, all looking for a basket to attach under our desk to hold computer wires. After we finally found the right basket at Office Max, we had to get something to keep it held underneath the desk, so we headed to Michael’s for some little brackets.

This afternoon involved getting a license plate holder for Teresa’s car. Texas requires two plates on your car, but her car does not have a front holder. Hence our quick trip to AutoZone. After that we needed a drill in order to pre-drill holes for the basket under the desk, so off to Lowes we went. Then we were feeling hungry and decided to have our pizza night tonight, so we searched  for local pizza. We looked around a bit, but decided on Gumby’s Pizza mainly because of the name. When we got there the sign was awesome. The inside was what I imagine a dorm room to be like, dirty and full of college students. Thankfully it wasn’t too dirty to eat, so we ordered one of the best pizzas we had had in a while, and enjoyed ourselves.

Tomorrow we will complete the desk fixin’s. I am growing tired of kicking wires.

I have some photos to post that relate to Teresa’s posts but are form my point of view.

And this video of what I see from my office window every once in a while:

Also a couple updates.

1. You can now sort posts by the author of the post. So, lets say you want to see all of Teresa’s posts, just click on her name under the post title. It’s that simple.
2. You can now “Like” a post. Under the main body of each post, above the Tags, you will see the word “Like”. Click that if you like the post, but don’t necessarily want to leave a comment. For those of you familiar with Facebook, you will recognize this feature from there.
3. All the videos now have their own page. No more wading through each post for an exciting video.