First Week in Houston

I've just finished my first week at the Houston base. I would have liked to have flown to new destinations, but the farthest I got from the Houston airport was my sister's house - a 20 minute drive away. Despite there being relatively few reserves (at one point I was the only person on the reserve list), I didn't get called once . . . well almost. I got called on day 3 of 4 to be told that my reserve on day 4 would be changed from 4-4 to 9-9. This is far less than ideal on a day I'm trying to get home. I was not happy with this at all. Day 4 came and no calls.

So what did I do all week? Why I went to the Houston zoo you see. Of all the zoos I've seen this year, it was the best. If you recall, back in October I visited the Fresno Zoo which was a sad display of a lonely ostrich walking around a cell. The Houston Zoo was much more impressive. Not only was there a single lonely elephant like in Fresno, there were several. Now the elephants could play with each other, even though zoo work pays peanuts. My niece was of course accompanying us on this trip. She has become more comfortable with my presence. She now acknowledges me and looks at me when she's speaking as opposed to hiding behind my sister's legs.

Despite the general boredom of sitting alone wondering if a call would come, I appreciated being out of Minneapolis. The day after I left, a snowstorm resulted in hundreds of cancelations and delays. A good time to get out, I thought. But as the days dragged on and no new work, I began to wonder if the Houston transfer was all that beneficial to me. In the evenings, my niece liked to run around outside. She created a game, in which she wanted to be chased. The rules of this game favored the game-maker because anytime I got close, I was instructed to stop.


One day, I purchased a pair of new running shoes.

When my sister told my niece that I got new shoes so I could run faster, this upset her very much. She was now concerned that perhaps I would now be fast enough to catch her. She had to be comforted and told that they would make me faster, but not fast enough. While I enjoyed a slight warmup of temperature, I would much rather be working. If this continues the rest of the month (and into March it would appear), it could really make my move appear wasteful. The only real benefit right now is that I have every weekend in the month off. Hopefully I will have some time to use my travel benefits for something other than trying to catch a full flight home when my original listing had plenty of seats available before the company arbitrarily changed my reserve hours. Grrr.