I went to Houston for the weekend and drama ensued... it's almost too much to write about, what? You think I was visiting a significant other? Unfortunately no, I went to see my parents, my friends.

I found that my parents and I have a better relationship when I'm living here in Austin, than when I'm there in Houston. We didn't even speak and I told them I was coming into town weeks ago, but they made plans all weekend long, its okay, do you really want to hear about this? it seems a bit trivial once I start getting it out, but then again nothing is too trivial when your parents are treating you like garbage so I’ll share as much as I like even though it's not all about my parents, but I'll get to that later.

I went to Houston with a friend of mine she lives about 15 min from my parents so I took her home for the weekend. While I wasn't able to be around my parents I went over to her house and hung out with her family. Her little brother is in a band and needed to sell tickets, Nicky, my friend didn't have the cash to buy them so I bought them and said I would go too. Later that night we ran into my friend Jean, who talked about seeing our friend Drew who was in a motorcycle wreck and is still in the hospital this is the first time that drew has allowed visitors. So Nicky and I agreed to go, the problem was that Nicky’s brother didn't sell enough tickets to his concert in time, so they bumped him from 2:00 p.m. to 11:00 a.m. to play and we had planned to meet with jean around 9:30 a.m. to go see drew, cause he is better in the mornings, well when you get a bunch of friends together that haven't seen each other in awhile at a local coffee shop in the morning everyone's going to say hi and whatever. So Nicky and a friend left early to go to the concert and I said I would meet them there after I found out where Drew was so that we could see him later. Well when we got to the Hospital it was already 10:30 a.m. and once I got there, my friend Drew took precedence and I didn't go to the concert, I mean Drew could have died right? So a concert didn't seem all that important.
Apparently Nicky’s pissed off and says that her brother would have rather sold his tickets to someone who would have come to the concert, apparently even his own brother, Dustin didn't go. Well, I thought he would have understood everything with Drew in the Hospital. Michael seems like a level headed kid, but maybe it's just Nicky.

We had a friend who had to go to fort hood on Monday, to get some stuff. I was supposed to leave the truck in Houston and Nicky and I ride with them, but they decided to leave early, and I wound up having to drive to Austin, I was leaving the truck in Houston so that my dad could take a look at it, it's been running oddly.

I know I probably should have left the truck for my parents, but I got into an argument with someone before leaving Houston and I tore out of there with the truck. I was probably upset because my now official ex-girlfriend emailed me, it’s a bit complicated, but she basically said that this is what it is and it’s the way it has to be, she won’t talk to me or anything and that pisses me off, I’m not even given a chance to either defend myself or talk to her about anything at all. I did call her and tell her that I was in Houston on Friday and if she wanted to talk then to give me a call, that's all I said. I know I know, but at the time it seemed like a good idea, I really liked this girl and I still do, but just like the others I’m going to have to learn to move on.



On the way back to Austin I remembered I had forgotten my bike at Sun&Ski, so I had to turn around and go back. I get the bike, see some friends at Sun&Ski, chat it up for a bit, then turn around and fight my way through Houston traffic,

So now I'm all upset and driving like crazy back to Austin, because I just want to get home to someplace normal, lol... Austin... normal....
Anyway my boss calls me and asks me when I'll be back in Austin and I told her I was just now leaving Houston and wasn’t sure, she needed to know, because she wanted an Apartment shown to a prospective tenant, so we decided on 8:00 p.m. would be about the time I would get back. A couple of minutes after getting off the phone with my boss I just happened to look up in the rear view mirror, cause I do that every now and then.

There is a huge cloud of smoke spreading out from the back of the truck, at first I thought I was driving on a dirt road, but no I was on asphalt I checked the gauges and lights and everything seemed fine, no indications of anything wrong. Everything was working fine. Well I remembered a gas station that I had passed and so I turned around and went back.
It must have looked like a scene from Spy Hunter I pull into this chevron and I pop the hood and check everything, it seems fine. So I look under the truck and there is red-black fluid pouring out from under the entire bottom of the truck. What was it you might ask? Transmission fluid and I was like hm... Weird... is it just leaking? No it was pouring. I didn't have any tools or anyway to fix it. So I tried calling my parents, no answer. I called my boss and told them I'd be a little late, if I even got to Austin I called a bunch of people to see if anyone could help, I got a hold of my good friend Timbo, but he was in Houston and I wasn’t about to ask him to drive all the way out to where I was, I was in the middle of nowhere. I finally go hold of my sister and she, my brother-in-law and the entire pack of rug rats showed up a few hours later.

In the meantime here I was lying on the side of the road with my legs up in the driver’s side of the truck with all this red-black fluid pouring everywhere... I thought it was pretty artistic, all these random people kept coming up and asking if I was okay and friends kept calling me and asking where I was, so I kept telling them where I was, lying on the side of the road.

I had to leave the truck after my brother-in-law pronounced that it was too late to do anymore looking at it, so they convinced me to grab what I could and they and the rug rats drove me to Austin, it was great, my nieces sang to me and my nephew just slept. Yeah and when they got here they invaded my apartment like a tornado and now I'm 1 football, 1 basketball, and a few other things less but it was cool, I enjoyed having them over, They played catch in the front yard of the apartments with some of the other tenants and just basically ran amuck around the place for a little while. I'd like to think that it strengthened my relationship with my sister and her husband, whom I didn't know well, but I got the opportunity to do so. So my weekend didn't end so badly.

Though the next day, Monday, started off badly, I went with my friend Nicky to Starbucks for Coffee and she started into me about the concert that I didn’t go to. I was eating stale oatmeal raisin cookies and banana nut bread and afterwards Nicky kept saying she was hungry and couldn’t decide where to go. After several minutes of that I was annoyed, I told her I wasn’t hungry because of what I just ate and I asked her where she would like to go, she replied back with some smart comment like why did it matter to me I had already eaten. At that point I just got up and left, I came back here to the apartments and just stayed to myself for the rest of the day, just me and my thoughts.

So now it’s Tuesday, what do I have planned for the rest of the day? Well, I'm about to go have lunch with my buddy Dave, study a bit, maybe write if I can get what I'm thinking out of my head and onto paper, try to resolve the concert issue with my friend Nicky (she’s still pissed at me and we haven't spoken since yesterday) and then I have class later from 5 till 10. So I’m out like a dying street light, slowly fading away…