Mattgarza.net

Hard to believe I’ve been alive two decades. I mean sure, the 90’s were my hayday and I have some of my best memories from those times, but it feels strange to say that another decade has passed already. Crazy to think that I was starting high school in 2000. It truly seems like yesterday. Anyhow, the new decade is off to a great start already. My first good news in 2010 is that I am happily engaged to the woman I’ve been dating for the past 6 years (most of the last decade, crazy). While I’d like to say it was crazy romantic, the truth is, after I had the ring hidden away in the house for a few days..it was hard to resist breaking down and asking, which is exactly what I did around 11:05pm CST on January 10th, the day before our 6 year dating anniversary. The original plan was to ask her the night of the 11th when we went out to a nice dinner at Perry’s Steakhouse. Either way, it was great and I’m glad I asked when I did. “What’s with all this mushy crap Matt, move it along” – I know I know, with that said…

Besides getting married this year (we’ve set the date as June 26th) I hope it to be a year of improvements and life change for me. Hopefully not in just one way (relationship status) but spiritually, physically and any other “-ally” you can think of. I feel like God’s called me to be a helper this year, to be more generous with my money, my time and my talent. There’s some people in my life who I really think I need to set an example for and help get through some hard times. I like to think of it not so much as a new years resolution, but a life resolution. If there’s one attibute I could have that would out-weight all others, it would have to be wisdom..

So, what have I been up to since I last checked in? Looking at my Youtube channel, it’s pretty apparent that I’ve been making a crap-ton of videos. So far, one of my best investments of 2009 has been my little Flip HD Ultra camcorder. I like carrying it around with me and documenting my Texas adventures. Here’s a few video updates:

So down here in the south, these little rat/beaver/rodent things called “neutria rats” are pretty common. Apparently they originated from South America, but were somehow brought to the states a bunch of years back through Louisiana, then made their way to Texas. There’s a park about two miles away from my apartment with a pond that’s stocked full of these things. Normally their pretty skiddish and run away from humans, but since so many people come to this pond to feed them every day, they’re not afraid to get close. Here’s the video:

For awhile now, I had been considering purchasing a gun. Not only to fulfill my obligation as a Texas resident, but a few friends have guns and I’ve always had fun going to the range and shooting off a few rounds. So after some research, I decided to spluge and buy the gun I had really wanted for awhile. I picked up a Beretta 92FS 9mm, which is basically the civilian version of the Beretta M9, the most popular military & police service sidearm. Put together a quick video of some friends and I shooting it at the range:

Last weekend myself, Amanda and some friends decided to take a Saturday afternoon and spend it in Galveston. It’s about an hour drive from Houston and is the closest beach destination in the area. While I wouldn’t call the beaches real nice, Galveston is a cool little beach town that kind of has a little Key Largo vibe to it. A few years ago it was ravaged by Ike and is still being fixed up from all the damage. Here’s a short video from our trip there, which consisted mostly of doing beach donuts in my friend’s car. We did take some really nice pictures out there, which can be seen here.

It took me awhile, but this past week I finished editing all the video from my trip back home to Connecticut for the holidays. Put together a video from my trip home, including some clips of my friend finding his car filled with packing peanuts..and some hilarious time spent chatting with my grandpa:

Last but not least, this past weekend I met some of my younger co-workers from HP at a local paintball field. Decided to bring along the Flip along and get a little daring with it, carrying it around during a few games alongside my gun. Thankfully the camera didn’t take any direct shots and I got some cool footage with it.

Phew, I really have been churning out a lot of videos. The main reason I bought the camera and committed to all the editing was that my family could kind of follow me around from a distance, I can only hope some of them are watching (and reading), so are you!? (I’m talking to you mom) Anyhow, another recent purchase of mine included a new camera lens, more specifically a Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR Lens. I figured it was time that I spent some good money on a nice lens, considering I’ve had my DSLR for over a year and a half now. So far, I’ve been blown away by the quality of shots I’m able to take with this lens. Pictures are so much crisper and detailed. Feel free to check out some of my newer shots with the lens on my Flickr page here, and please..comment!

Recorded some video footage this past weekend of some geocaching adventures with Amanda, I hope to put some of that together and have the video up on the blog this week, so look out for it.

As always, thanks for reading.

For awhile now, every time I would sit down to watch some Food Network they would be running some drool-tastic special on grilling. You’ve seen the shows, where a camera crew infiltrates a BBQ show and showcases all these good ol’ boys grilling their faces off with these fancy grills and smoking rigs. Sure there are a lot of good BBQ places in Houston, some of which I’ve found, but something about doing it yourself has always been intriguing to me. So I went out yesterday and picked up a Brinkman Gourmet Smoker/Grill at a local Lowes for around $75, went to HEB and picked up a rack and a half of baby back ribs, meat thermometer, some BBQ sauce ..and all the ingredients for a sweet dry rub.

So I more or less followed this guide here with a few twists, but lets get into it..

I started off by taking some of the Hickory wood chips I bought at the store and soaking them in water during my prep process. From what I’m reading, it looks like if you soak them overnight for 12+ hours you get even better smoking results, but I didn’t have time for that. I soaked them for 20 minutes and set them to the side.

From here, I trimmed some of the excess fat off the ribs where I could. Along with this, the guide I linked above talks about removing the white membrane from the back of the ribs before putting on the dry rub. Luckily, HEB did this part for me, which saved some time.

Applied some dry rub to the ribs

Prepped the hickory wood chips and wrapped them in tin foil. Poked a few holes in the top to let the smoke come out. I tried to throw the ribs on the grill shortly after placing the foiled chips down, as the smoke starts to come out a lot..

I cooked the ribs 2 hours, uncovered in the smoke. Afterwards, I wrapped all three portions in tin foil, threw them back on the smoker for another hour. After that, I cooked them the final hour without tin foil again. This is called the 2-1-1 method, which is explained in more detail in the how-to guide I linked above. For my first time, I’d say it was an overall success. We ended up eating them just after midnight with a nice new years toast. I’m going to try smoking a brisket next I think which takes a lot more time, then make my way on to a pork shoulder or something.

Anyhow, here’s the final results..

and of course, the ultimate destruction laid upon the ribs…

So here I am, stuck in traffic on 95S just outside Providence..a situation pretty familiar to me just a few short months ago when I lived here. spent the past two days up in Boston, which was pretty awesome. Was nice to spend some time yesterday walking around Boston, and even do a little geocaching.

I have to say, the cold has hit me like a brick. Its amazing what 8 months in a near tropical climate will do to your temperature perception. So glad I left my snowboard jacket down here, I would be an icicle with out it at this point.

The last few days in providence have been kind of nostalgic. Getting to hang with my buddies at Trinity, eating at Apsara..and even driving through my old ghetto neighborhood. It’s great to be back up here and visiting everyone.

With that said, I feel like I’ve really grown to love my new home. I feel like my quality of life has improved a ton from just the people I’ve met, places I’ve seen and experiences I’ve had living in Texas. My love for New England will never change, I just feel fortunate and I’m going to make the most out of where I am in life.

Anyhow, looks like we’re now crossing into Connecticut as I write this. Looking forward to spending the next few days with family, friends and enjoying the holiday. Oh yeah, and attempting to finish my Christmas shopping.

I’ll be sure to post some video and more concise thoughts of my trip when I get back to TX on the 30th. Merry Christmas all!

Back about two weeks ago, we decided to take an afternoon trip to the Houston Gun Show to take a look around. Apparently, they have one once every month, all year long, and it gets tons and tons of attendees. With nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon, off we went..

It was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. Lots of camouflaged overalls and orange hunting hats walking around with guns slinged over their shoulders. Having never been to such a show, it kind of caught be off-guard, seeing guys walking the streets to the show with M4’s slung over their shoulders. Anyhow, in order to enter the complex, you must have no ammunition in your gun..and have a zip tie forced around the trigger (or some kind of modification which doesn’t allow it to shoot). Not to mention, all the guns on display at the show have the magazines removed and the triggers zip-tied off.

Even so, I had a really good time checking out all the goods. I had been thinking about getting a gun since I’ve been down here for protection and range shooting, and getting to handle a few guns I’ve only seen in video games was pretty awesome. While I haven’t shot one yet, I think I’m leaning towards picking up a Bertta 92FS 9mm. I think I’m going to head to a range and fire a couple different guns before making an actual purchase.

Amanda picked up a custom hand made knife for her stepdad which I think he’ll love. I forget the name of the craftsman, but he custom builds all these knives in a shed behind his house in Alvin, TX. The quality was just amazing. I’ll have to remember to post some pictures of it before she gives it to him for Christmas. Anyhow, check out the video above.

Excited about leaving for Connecticut this Saturday for two weeks. I’ll be in the CT/MA/RI area from the 19th to the 30th. Hopefully I’ll have access to a car so if you want to hang, get in touch. I hope to post a few pictures and such back home. Have a great holiday all.

This time of year is incredibly awesome. Thanksgiving usually amounts to a nice long weekend of extended eating and sleeping and then only a few more weeks later, Christmas is here. When I was in school, I remember working all the way up until Christmas Eve in the JWU marketing department, thank God not anymore..

The past two years HP has been shutting down for nearly two weeks during the holiday season, which is both good and bad in my book. While shutting down all operations for two weeks saves them tons of cash in operating costs (electricity, heat, AC, etc) these 8 days are mostly unpaid (with the exception of Christmas and New Years day). What does this mean for me? Well, as a college hire and two year veteran of the company I don’t have a ton of vacation built up (new hires start with 10 days and get an extra day, per year or working). Since HP is shutting down for a total of 8 workdays, 7 of which are unpaid..this means we are forced to take vacation for the remaining 7 days. More or less leaving me 3 total days to use for actual vacation..

Anyhow, enough of my whining. Let me explain how my Thanksgiving went..

Leading up to Thanksgiving, Amanda and I had been trying to figure out exactly what we were going to do for Thanksgiving (not going home for Christmas was out of the question). We sat down and looked at place tickets for the Thanksgiving weekend back home to Connecticut. Starting at around $800 round trip per ticket, we decided we’d stay local and figure something out. On a trip down to Corpus Christi for autocross, my co-worker Kevin had brought his family along to check out the event and hang out with us. When we told them of our situation, and the ridiculous plane ticket prices, they offered to host us for Thanksgiving at their farm in Oklahoma.

Having never been to Oklahoma, I was excited at the idea of visiting the state and seeing what it was like. The only thing I knew about Oklahoma was some corny song I sang back in grade school choir. Since we did the majority of driving at night, we didn’t get a real chance on the way up to see the scenery and general surroundings – not that there is much of that anyhow..

Once we got there I was surprised. His family lives probably 5 miles back on this dirt road in Westville, Oklahoma. I forget exactly how many acres they own, but it’s set wayyy back in the country where cell phone towers and even gas stations are far far away. Although not having easy access to Twitter was difficult (I know I know) I honestly enjoyed being far from civilization. We spent the first day exploring their property and the creek that ran behind the house – super clear water, clean enough to drink. That afternoon we decided to do some hunting at dusk, typically when the deer come out to eat. I sat in a hunting tent for about 2 hours, with no luck. Little did I know, we found out why we had seen nothing over the few days we went hunting. Someone had set up a tree stand on their property a few months ago and had been shooting the deer before they could make it down the ridge, to where we were hunting. All that time wasted..

Anyhow, we did a little bit of geocaching where I managed to get some pretty bad poison ivy..which is only now starting to go away. I had a geocaching travel bug that I placed while I was there too, check it out. We got to shoot some guns and even take a trip across the Arkansas border (I didn’t realize it was so close to where we were). The only thing worth nothing in Arkansas, was the amazing mullet that we scoped in a Wal-Mart – see the the video below.

Overall I had a great time and have a new respect for the state. It really wasn’t the backwoods-tornado-plain-filled-hick-state that I thought it would be. Check out the photo album here and the video compilation I put together below..

Here’s another video I put together a few weeks back. Some friends and I found a cool fire spot near a creek where we live in NW Houston. We’ve been out a couple of nights to build fires, eat smores and hang. Check it.

Also, a video from a recent trip to an indoor rock gym here in Houston. I’ve been trying to learn how to rock climb, or boulder. I’ve been going with some people from work who’ve been teaching me a ton and proper techniques. I didn’t realize how strategic rock climbing really was (and how much of a workout it is)..

Man, time flys..

Hard to believe that as of tomorrow, I will have been living in Houston for 8 months to the day. I think it’s finally started to settle in that this place is my new home and I’m excited about that. Back in February when I found out that I would be given my current job opportunity, it was so completely overwhelming. Just the thought of a new place, completely new (much bigger) city and new people. Somehow I looked forward to the fact that after some time, I knew I would grow into my new home, meet new people and become comfortable in my new surroundings. 8 months in, I think I’m there.

Anyhow, it seems that part of me becoming more and more comfortable here has been finding my new church. Part of what I like about it, is that it’s nothing like my home church from back in Connecticut. While I grew up in that church through most of my early life, I always somehow felt there was something missing. Willowbrook here in Houston has been awesome. It’s nice being in a church community with people focused on expansion and not just settling for the mediocre Sunday service and shutting down for the work week. The staff is passionate about what they do and they truly care about people. Not only that, but they cater very well to the younger generation (I’m not that old..yet) with a lot of their killer live music acts they have come through (their youth building is a legit music venue complete with stage and all types of goodies). Anyhow, there’s a lot of exciting things going on which I’m excited about being a part of.

So, what have I been up to lately..

Part of the reason why I picked up my new-ish Flip Ultra HD camcorder was to be able to post my adventures here on my blog for all to see. Not only that, but it’s been giving me more opportunities to mess around with video editing – something I’ve always enjoyed doing, but never had much of a reason to do. I should mention, for the longest time I’ve always used the Sony Vegas suite of video editing software. Working at HP, we have access to the complete suite of Adobe software, including Premier Pro..which I’ve been slowing absorbing.

Anyhow, here’s a video from a recent trip down to Corpus Christi, TX back in September for a weekend of Autocross. I was pretty stoked to be able to finally bring my camcorder down and give people a glimpse of what went on at Autocross and how much fun it really is. We managed to drag a co-worker down with us for his first time, hopefully he’ll be coming back with us. I hope to make it down there in December, before the holidays. Anyhow..on with the video..

Also, a few weeks ago, some friends and I went to the Texas Renaissance Festival in Plantersville, TX. As far as I know, it’s the only Renaissance Festival in all of Texas. It’s a seasonal deal and goes from October 10th – November 29th every year and has been going on since 1974. Now, going into this..I wasn’t expecting a lot. Living in Providence, RI for the past 5 years..I had heard of King Richard’s Faire but never really had a chance to go. In my mind, I was picturing a huge field with old medieval style tents and people with horrible acting skills, selling “period” goods and generally having an excuse to act like fools. Man was I wrong..

I was completely caught by surprise when I walked into the gates. It felt exactly like a living, breathing town. The costumes and people that worked there were super convincing and were completely in character. The surroundings and all of the shops and stores were spot on – no rigged up tents here. All of the buildings were hand made and looked really really authentic, complete with ivy growing all over – which somehow added to the authenticity. Anyhow, I had a great time and I hope to make it out one last time before the season ends, maybe this weekend? I’ll let the video speak for itself (it bugs out towards the end, something went wrong with the rendering)..

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving. I couldn’t afford an $800 plane ticket back home to CT for an extended weekend (after dropping the $$ for plane tickets home for Christmas) so we decided to stick around this area. My co-worker Kevin was cool enough to invite us up to his parent’s farm in Oklahoma for the holiday. I’ve heard a lot about his family’s cooking and am excited to stuff my face and do some “man-stuff” on a farm. I’m hoping it involves hunting and/or shooting of some firearms. The camera will be coming along to document the journey. I’ve never been to Oklahoma, I picture lots of fields and tornadoes and almost immediately think of the movie Twister. I’m sure my logic is beyond flawed..

Peace for now!

I need to get better at this updating thing..

Figured I’d take some time tonight to give a quick update as to what’s been going on with myself down here in the good ole’ south. I’m coming up on 6 months of living in Houston so far, crazy to think it’s half a year already. Very quickly I’ve felt at home here in the south, could this be because my home was in the south originally? Possibly..

All the rumors of the Houston heat, well..most are true. Although, I’ve found this easier to deal with from my frequent visits back down to Florida to visit the family (although nowhere near as humid as H-town). Amanda and I have been hanging out a lot with a lot of the Hewlett-Packard YEN (Young Employee Network) people when time allows, most of which are pretty jawesome. It’s rare that we go a solid week without some sort of community meal by the pool or at one of our homes. Grilled pizzas are an easy favorite and are becoming a specialty.

On a more interesting note, two weekends ago I took a trip down to Biloxi, Mississippi, the same place we stopped off on my way to Houston during my road trip to move. My brother flew down from Boston to spend a week with my dad in Jacksonville, Florida before spending his second week with me here in Houston. All-in-all, the drive from Houston to Biloxi is a solid 6 hours..and while I thought this would be an easy accomplishment, it ended up harder than I thought (mostly resulting from the New Orleans/Baton Rouge traffic). Besides the traffic, I found the drive to be pretty interesting with plenty of stuff to look at, okay, I kid, unless you consider swamps and lifted trucks interesting.

Upon arriving in Biloxi, most of the time was spent with my father wandering from casino to casino, witnessing his loss of money on most of the slot machines. There’s no convincing him these machines are completely random and not somehow rigged to “put out” money. It makes for an amusing time, mostly because it’s not my money going in the machine. My brother and I wandered around the city a fair amount, if you want to call it a city. Most of the area was completely decimated by Katrina years back and is only now starting to re-gain a sense of normalcy.

While most of the time spent was avoiding the casino floor and the constant state of depression, watching 80-somethings, strapped to oxygen tanks scurry around in droves. We had a chance to check out the area and on our last night of the weekend went to the only night club in the area at club Rise, on the 16th floor of the Biloxi Hard Rock Casino. While we didn’t hang around long, it was nice to feel like a true G’ holding a cocktail, overlooking the gulf coast from 12 stories up.

Here’s a video compilation I took of my trip..

Right before my Biloxi trip I picked up a new Flip HD Ultra 8GB camcorder. I had heard good reviews about them and decided to snag one before my trip to document it. This little thing shoots in 720p and is a pretty good camera when held nearly completely still. It has no image stabilization to speak of, hence the tripod in most scenes. Regardless, I’ve been having fun with it. Check out another test video I posted here and a compilation video I did of my car, here. I’m going to try to incorporate more video along with photography into this blog.

Within the past two weeks it seems something else has caught my interest as well. I had heard from a friend Kevin about this extremely geeky hobby called geocaching. For some strange reason, whenever I had heard the term, I assumed it involved programming web map tools or something more retarded. Little did I know, this hobby involved searching for treasure.

Maybe not real treasure, but a treasure of sorts. Here’s a video which I think best explains how Geocaching works.

So after some persuasion and my natural interest in exploring crazy places and doing things which society may deem “sketch,” I went ahead and downloaded the $10 iPhone app and gave it a whirl. The app has this neat little feature to pinpoint Geocaches around you, using the built in iPhone GPS. To my surprise, I found quite a few of these “caches” hidden around the area, quite a few less than a mile away. The next day, I dragged Amanda along after work and tried it out. Within the 3 hours we were out and about, we found about 4 geocaches. By the 2nd one we found, Amanda was hooked and I was completely geeking out. I had so much fun, I actually went out and bought the necessary parts to make my own cache and hide it. I have a killer hiding place in mind, but have yet to place it. I’m thinking somewhere at this cemetary I posted about previously. If I get more serious into it..I’m thinking about purchasing a legitimate GPS that’s a little more accurate. The iPhone’s accuracy gets a little hazy in thick cloud cover, so I hear.

Anyhow, included a few pics of my geocaching adventures and other randomness.

Last weekend some friends and I decided to venture away from Houston for the day and head down to Galveston. Galveston is the closest coastal town to Houston and is a short hour drive away from Houston. This was my second time down to Galveston, the first being my trip with my New England buddies who came down to chill for a week, pictars from that adventure can be found here.

We arrived in Galveston and spent the first few hours at East Beach, one of the less populated beaches in Galveston. This was my first trip to a Galveston beach during the day time, so I wasn’t quite sure what it was going to be like. Upon arrival, I notice that there were very few people lounging on the beach with just chairs and towels. 80% of the people on the beach had extreme tailgate setups. They literally back their trucks right onto the beach, set up huge tents, grills, tables..the works. This New England native wasn’t prepared for this spectacle..

The water, salty and incredibly warm. I was used to Florida beaches, but this was much much warmer (I hear it could be all the gulf coast oil rigs, spewing all that oil into the water :O). Waves were basically non-existent. I had heard that the gulf coast rarely gets sizable waves (besides hurricanes). Something about the Florida panhandle, blocking most of surf, if that makes any sense..

Spent a good hour in the water before throwing a football around, skimboarding and then deciding to head out. We had forgot to bring a cooler with drinks, so after 2 hours at the beach, most of us were pretty thirsty. We got in the car and cruised down Seawall Blvd to check out the scenery and grab drinks. I wish I had snapped a few pictures of the seawall, but it’s an interesting set up. Construction started on the seawall in the early 1900’s (I believe) to protect against the threat of hurricanes tearing through the Galveston coast. It’s an interesting setup, with the main road (Seawall Blvd) and the ocean a good 100 feet off to your left. In order to access the beach you walk down a set of stairs, surrounded by huge jagged rocks – intended to break incoming waves before they reach the wall. The seawall goes on for 30 something miles. Here’s a quick Google map of Galveston and where Seawall Blvd is, right on the water. You can probably imagine what happened to that entire area from hurricane Ike..

We drove up and down the Seawall for awhile as the weather was insanely nice. We decided to grab some food at this place called FishTales right on Seawall Blvd. We drove past it earlier in the day and they had a nice deck to sit out on and watch the hustle going on on the street and around the beach. Not to mention it was right across the street from the Flagship Hotel, a hotel on stilts suspended out over the water which was destroyed by hurricane Ike last year. Here’s some Google Streetview shots of what the hotel used to look like, and some pictures here of what it looks like now. Not quite sure why abandoned buildings fascinate me but it was pretty cool to eat across from that place and see it all boarded up.

After eating we decided to head back into Houston. Before we left, we filled up the gas tank and stopped by a small mexican tent. They were selling coconuts for $4. They saw the tops off and wrap them in saran wrap. Peel off the saran wrap, throw a straw in the top and you’ve got yourself a coconut juice cocktail. I was surprised at how different it tasted than what I envisioned.

Anyhow, we were greeted by a huge thunderstorm as we rolled into Houston. We ran into some pretty killer traffic and what looked like tornado conditions rolling through. As we were rolling on 610N towards NW Houston, we witnessed a lightning strike hit a telephone poll, just off the highway, shooting sparks everywhere. Scared the hell out of us.

The general consensus is that Galveston is a cool little beach town, a short drive away from Houston. However there was a certain “trashiness” about it that just left a bad taste in my mouth. Yeah, it could be the hurricane damage still visible all around, it could be the bums (not saying Houston doesnt have it’s share)..but it just left something to be desired. It made me miss the Jacksonville beaches so much more. Ahh Ponte Vedre, how I miss you.

Anyhow, check out the pictures below and others on my Flickr page.

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This past Tuesday I was hanging out around the house with nothing really to do. Since I’ve moved to Houston I’ve been wanting to take a drive downtown at night and spend some time exploring and make my best attempt at getting a good picture of the Houston skyline.

So Tuesday night I threw my camera bag and tripod into my trunk..and made the drive down 45S towards the city. I had no real direction whatsoever for this idea, I just assumed that if I was going to get shots of the skyline, pulling somewhere off 45S would be my best option as it goes right through the middle of the city.

As I make my way into the city and start to get closer and closer to the skyline, I decide to pull of into this little neighborhood and spot this little embankment right on the side of a major road, right behind what looked like a library. It was a bit sketch for me to be there if I was seen by anyone, especially cops. I made my way up the embankment despite and pulled off the shot above, along with a few others. With my view from the embankment I spotted a pretty huge skatepark across the highway.

I hopped back in the car and iPhone GPS’d my way over to the skatepark, for curiousity’s sake. I hop out, without my camera just to sort of check out the skatepark. As I’m walking in, I realize there’s a little walking trail with a huge view of the skyline, almost the perfect spot. I ran back to the car (managed to curb my rim in the process) snag my camera and set up for a few shots. Results here:

While I only spent about two hours out, I’d say it was pretty successful (besides giving my rim a healthy curb rashing). One of these days coming up, I need to get into the actual city and just walk around with my camera. I’m sure there’s tons of things I could check out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/garzilly

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Got home from work tonight and as the sun was going down. I noticed everything outside seemed really orange or redish. I’m no meteorologist but these were some pretty awesome looking clouds. The sunset combined made it look like we were living on mars. Everything was this deep shade or orange/red.

Ran upstairs to snag my camera and get a few shots. Tried to do it justice, but here’s the results. Is it strange that I’m excited for hurricane season? We’re one or two months in so far and we’ve seen nothing yet. There’s something exciting about uncontrollable chaos to me.

Spending the day in Galveston tomorrow at the beach. Hopefully the weather holds up. I’ll be bringing the camera for sure..