Combining the last two days into one entry, since one day had a lot of travel…

Day Seven: Friday, another day in for Ken and Jerry gets to play.  While Ken was sitting in his conference, Jerry went out to Sugar Babies Cupcake Boutique and bought a couple of cupcakes (what else) as well getting misdirected by Google searching for a Christmas faire, but still coming out ahead with finding a rather swanky fully lined hoodie.

Jerry’s mother joined her later in the day, and then Ken joined up in the evening for dinner at a Taste of Texas –  a very popular steakhouse that Jerry had been wanting ti hit since we learned that we were going to Houston.  It did not disappoint.  Jerry hates to wait for dinner, but the 45 to 60 minute wait was nothing for her in this case.  They have a waiting room that is almost a small restaurant all of it’s own, serving chips and soda. 

The numbers breezed by – we were 70-something, and the signs started in the 30s – and we were finally brought to our table.  Ordered drinks, then ordered our steaks, and were taken to the meat counter to choose our dinner (we got to meet our meat.) The meat counter is also surrounded by the salad bar, where Ken got to slice cheese off of huge chunks of cheese (everything is big in Texas, right?)  The dinner being enormously filling, we passed on dessert – but not after being shown the selection…

We were driven back to our hotel on surface streets, getting a little look at a bit of Houston. We got to packing, as we now had significantly more to pack than what we brought.

Day Eight: Saturday, the final day.  Ken had a short day, and Jerry and her mother went to Waffle House for breakfast (lucky them…)  We all met up and drove out towards mission control, to visit a space memorabilia shop that Jerry had information on – which was no longer there.  We did, however, find a sandwich shop called Firehouse Subs (apparently founded by firemen) which was really nice – especially since Ken had a light breakfast, and an even lighter snack…

Since it took a bit of time to get out to where we went, we decided it was a good idea to head back to retrieve our rental car and depart for the airport.  Jerry and her mother left the rental car at a shopping center, and kept the luggage with them – so all we had to do was to transfer the luggage to our car and leave (of course not without the parting photo shoot…)

Having said our goodbyes, we made our way to the airport.  Returning the car was easy, but checking in for our flight proved a bit trickier – as we had only slightly overpacked our checked luggage (53 and 57 pounds, when the limit was 50 each.) Lucklily we could add it to our carryon, so it worked out all right.  Getting through security was easy – well, there were no crowds – so we had some time to kill, and we killed it in a bar and grill playing Scrabble on the iPhone.

We had seats at the front of steerage, which meant we loaded in last.  The inflight film was Mama Mia, which Ken was originally excited in but Jerry ended up listening (and cringing) to.  The meal was pizza and salad, as well as a couple rounds of drinks.  We played some more Scrabble, and even some gin-rummy to occupy ourselves.  We landed very much on time, and made our way to the carousel of baggage – of course our baggage was near the end.  Getting a taxi was easy as pie, and the driver had some fun stories of people getting off in San Jose that didn’t intend to.

So, were back at home.  The cats eventually came out to be petted by us (they had ot be sure that we were us, and not someone else…)