A Wild Weekend

This weekend was the Ellsworth crawfish bash. Wes Ellsworth is the man
responsible for our texas surf forecasts and he is an all around awsome
guy. Saturday night they invited everyone from our surf forum
(www.elride.net) out to their lovely home. Tons of people made it and it
was awsome to finally put some faces to names of the people I chat with
online.

The party was freeeaaakin wild! Everyone was having a blast. I had just
a tad bit too much to drink and then started eating crawfish which ended
up getting me sick as hell. I puked a couple of times that night before
I crashed on a couch there. That
suckkkkked. I haven't been hungover/sick like that in a while.

Anyways, we had a blast. As you can see, my counter is getting lower and
lower. I'm within 3 weeks of departue now and I can hardly contain my
excitement. I'm almost ready to go and I have just a few more things to
take care of. I could have been doing it now but my dumbass flipped out
the other day when checking out some things in my bank account. I had a
wierd charge that just said "HOU ITV MEXICO D.F" for $40 bucks and then
a wellsfargo charge of 1.20 for converting usd into pesos. Hrmmm...... I
though about it for a while and could not remember any purchases to
mexico so I called and started to have it investigated and
cancelled all my cards. 15 minutes later.... "DAMN I'M A FUCKING
IDIOT!!!!!!". That charge was the charge from the consulate banjercito
to get my vehicle import permit for my car. Damn why couldn't they just
call it "Banjercito" or something? So I called back and canceled the
investigation on it quickstyle for fear of messing up my paperwork and
creating a redtape nightmare to get it fixed in mexico. The cards
however could not be cancelled so here I am waiting on a new set of
debit cards for the next 6-8 biz days. Doh!

I got my new video camera in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I bought it
just for this trip and I cannot wait to be filming with it. It has
amazing picture quality as it is a 3ccd camera. I got the Panasonic
pv-gs320 from newegg.com for $430.00 with a badass carrying case.
Everyone else wants around $500 for this camera so I got a pretty good
deal. Like I said though, the picture quality is just totally unreal! Be
looking for a webcondensed version of my trip dvd when I return. Well
its a beautiful monday here in Houston and tax season is officially over
so I only work tuesdays and thursdays now! Well I guess I will do some
laundry, clean the bathroom, and go work out.

Surfed Today

Wow, did texas go off!

Chest high and seriously on shore when I showed but the weather was crossing the coast. I had to wait out a serious lightning storm before I could get my jollies wet. As I paddled out, I suddenly realize just how out of shape I am. So with that thought, starting next week, I will be paddling my ass off in the lake nearby to strengthen those arms.

I surfed for a while and only got 1 ride when the cold front approached. Its very eerie watching a cold front approach like that. I stayed in the water while it passed and it brought with it 20+mph offshores. NO BUENO! Its sooo hard to get over the lip with a 20mph offshore blowing all the water in your face and making the front of your shortie act like a damn kite! It got cold fast and I finally paddled in to wait out the rain and pray the winds would back off. My friend Charlie showed up and I waited it out with him and we ran off to grab some food. Finally, the sun came out and the winds backed off to around a 5mph offshore. PERFECT!

After a 1 hour nap in my car while Charlie caught up on his session, I paddled out on the fish to try and make something of this whole trip to the coast. Low and behold, I did. I caught the longest ride of my life today and even though that long ass ride had some serious downsides like a massive paddle back out, it was worth it. It was probably over 70 yards and lasted what seemed like forever. I finally had time to slow it all down and execute my moves by wanting and not just muscle memory. PERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRFECT!

I couldn't have prayed to make it better. I needed that ride, I have needed that ride for almost a year. Thank you....

So......Tired

I'm blogging mobile from my phone today. I'm incredibly tired and today
will be a very long day indeed for me, that I can be sure of.

I hung out with my ole computer buddy and damn good friend Chris
lastnight/this morning. We got together and decided to get back in our
old coding ways and start programming some stuff. Well, we decided to
make an all nighter out of it and here I am at 9:45 am, about to finally
take a 1 hour nap before I head into work.

We were working on an awsome project we think we can sell to small
business owners. Its a VNC Que Tech Support server to get all advanced.
In english, its a server that ques remote desktop connections so a tech
support team can just click and connect to you and help you with the
problem and all this without dealing with custom firewall/router
configurations etc. Its awsome! We are probably 30-40% done overall. We
spent all of our time tonight working on the main server and reverse
engineering the VNC protocols to use them the way we want.

Anyways, bleeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhh..... Yea so, wednesday I went to the
consulate of mexico in downtown and got my vehicle import permit. That
was incredibly easy, only took 10 minutes and I was outa there. I'm
really excited because we are nearing down on the date and all these
things are bringing us closer and closer.

Yup, well its time to pass out for a bit.

Babel

Well I watched this movie for the first time last night and I have to say that I have not been so moved by a movie in a while. The director first and foremost is a genius and I have seen his other works (21 grams, Amores Perros). If you have not seen Amores Perros, watch it! Its in all subtitles but cmon, don't miss out on a great film just because it is not in english!

Babel was simply moving. Im not afraid to admit that it made me cry in more than one part. Its amazing the way the director is able to beautifuly portray the Human condition. Always fighting, seperating ourselves, especially by language country and tradition. I truely understand the meaning of the title now. Watch this movie, you will not regret it.

Anyways, I had a pretty good weekend. Passed up some surf but thats ok. it was good but the cold front hit faster than expected and the water temps keep dipping back into that 'wetsuit' territory. Im getting very tired of this as we are merely weeks away from May. The water needs to hit a solid 75 and STAY THERE! I've pretty much given up on surfing until I go on my trip. Looks like Texas once again is going to fuck me. Thanks Lone Star State.

Easter Weekend

Well, I did not do much. I hung out with my friend Adriana from Mexico as she came into town for the weekend and that was fun. I haven't seen her in a while so it was good to see her. As I dropped her back off at the bus station (the same bus station I left from on my trip to Mexico last year) I started to become overwhelmed with that crazy pretrip traveling. Just looking at the bus in all of it's monstrosity, the smell of the diesel thick in the air, the driver checking tickets at the door. I suddenly began to think of the possibilities. I could run inside and grab a ticket to just about anywhere if I felt so inclined. I started to feel free again. I felt compelled to get on that bus and just blast away, I'll think about the consequences later.

*sigh*, moving on, I saw the movie '300' this weekend. The acting was a little subpar but I have to say that the story and the cinematography were amazing. I haven't seen that much gor and blood in a movie in a while but I felt like they did it in a pretty tasteful way. Its hard to avoid bloody scenes in war movies I don't care what anyone says. It was a gigantic buffet of beautiful people though as I had heard hahaha. I swear, every guy shot in that movie was just totally rippppedd!!!! Maybe one day I can look like that, blehhhhhh.

The End is Near!

Well, for my work anyways. Our last day I think is going to be the 17th this year and that is pretty exciting. What ever will I do with myself after the work is no longer fullt time you may ask? Why, I will being a very tough workout routine until I leave for my trip. I gotta drop some pounds and get the arms ready to be pulverized. I plan on paddling the lake as much as I can on my shortie to build the stamina back up. Its worked well in the past so Ill try it again. Maybe I cam tie something to the back of my surfboard and pull it around, like a person on a raft or another surfboard or something. Thats the other thing we used to do when paddling the lake.

In some other news, I talked my boss into paying me for my entire 2 month vacation! The catch is I have to go on this cruise thing he and our office manager are promoting all over houston. Its a 7 day cruise from October 27th - November 4th and it hits Grand Caymen, Jamaica, and Cozumel. My ticket plus gambling and whatever should run me around 800 max so Ill still be making 1600 for those 2 months I will be paid. That money pretty much pays for my entire trip so I'm pretty stoked. All the money I have saved up so far is now "idle" but thats a great thing! I will keep saving it and throw it towards my trip for next summer.

I got some Yakima racks for my RAV4 and they are awsome. Totally worth the $257 they cost me. Solid as hell and I think they support like 150lbs on the racks!!! I wish I could post some pics....