My Trip to Chattanooga

That post title sounds a lot like a paper you'd turn in on the first day back to school about your summer vacation. "Here Mrs. Teacher, this is my paper on my summer vacation. It's called 'My Trip to Chattanooga.'"

Anyway, a few weekends ago I took a trip to Tennessee to visit two of my very dear friends. One is my BFF from high school and the other is her husband. My BFF, Kelly, is a pharmacist and after college she moved to TN so when we want to see each other we have to travel. I was excited to spend a weekend away!

My two sweet friends.

Their sweet puppy Stella.

We ate dinner the first night at a wonderful Tapas restaurant. I ate blue cheese puffs, spinach artichoke dip and what they call papas bravas. Yum!! We all shared and they gave me some of their pear and walnut quesadilla. It was so good!

Selfie in the car on the way to lunch.

I was so happy to see they had this Daft Punk table!!

I've loved Daft Punk since Discovery.

We ate lunch at the best pizza place. Basically you pick the pizza size and that's a base price and then you pick all your toppings including type of cheese. We got spinach, artichokes, mushrooms, tomatoes, feta cheese, garlic and mozzarella. It was so tasty! I loved that there were so many toppings options and that we could pick whatever we wanted.

After lunch we headed to the Aquarium. It was so nice!!

 

 

 

We really enjoyed the penguin exhibit. We even made new friends.

Look at this penguin on the left standing on another penguin!

We even got trapped in this cage with a shark right behind us!!

I bought a souvenir before we left. I got this cute, little owl mug because of course when you think of the aquarium, you think owl....

Bobby and Kelly cooked the most amazing dinner for me. The made their own ravioli from scratch.... It was pumpkin ravioli with a sage cream sauce. Yum!!! They also made honey ricotta bruschetta and we enjoyed a tasty salad. These two have been taking cooking classes and they are quite the chefs! Dinner was soooo good. I wish I lived closer so I could drop by for dinner more often. :)

I had such a fun weekend. It's always great to catch up with Kelly. :)

Houston Trip

Occasionally I get sent out to Houston, TX for work trips. I went there for 10 days in November for some training and I had a great time. There are quite a few folks out there that I work with closely, even though I don't live there, so when I get to go hang out with them in person it's a lot of fun.

The more I go there, the better I get to know my friends there so it's always exciting to go these days cause I know I'll have people there!

I'm certainly no expert on Houston because I pretty much never get my own car while I'm there so I don't really get to explore on my own. I was so shocked when on this November trip, I was given my own car for a week!

Anyway, here's my trip in pictures:

Of course my first picture involved food. I love burritos. :)

I took this awesome blurry picture of where I spent my days in Houston.

Spent one day in the control room with my Houston counterpart position which was cool. The person sitting there that day actually is one of my favorite planners (I have worked with her a lot these past 4 years) so I lucked out.

I got to see a lot of mock-ups while I was there including this one of the space shuttle, which is a little outdated now. ;)

This was in the lobby of mission control center so I had to snap a picture.

Everyone teased me because I thought these old, little phone booths were so cute!

My best Houston friend picked me up on Saturday so that we could spend the day together.

We ate at this amazing Mexican restaurant there called Chuy's. Check out this ceiling covered with hubcaps.

I thought the pendant lights over the tables were so cool! They had all these tiny pieces of colored glass in them and the light coming through looked awesome.

My food was so good. Now that I am back home I crave this dish all the time, but I don't have a Chuy's in my town. :(

I ordered the vegetarian combo and it came with a vegetarian enchilada that came with a spicy sauce and a chile relleno also with a spicy sauce. My meal was so amazing.

They also had several different dips for the chips there too. 

We went to the outlet mall and walked around a park, but I didn't get any pictures of that. :(

Then we went to this little cafe called Le Madeleine. It was so precious and their desserts are delicious!! I had the lemon tart and it was sooo good. Sometimes with lemon stuff it can be too sour, but this was perfect!

I ate the whole thing and regretted nothing.

On Monday, I for some reason took a picture of this guy explaining work stuff to us. He was pretty cool.

I took a picture of this drill because it had it's own little tool belt and I just thought that was so adorable.

Awwwww!!

I took this picture because I am weird and thought it was funny that the stick person broke the table.

This is a real tool on the International Space Station that astronauts can use. It's soooo little and cute!!!

Some of my Houston buddies took me to eat at the Indian restaurant. It was sooo good! They had my favorite dish, Sag Panir. :)

A model of Station:

See if you can find the tiny astronaut in this picture:

I took this one for my English friend that thinks Americans are extremely patriotic and have too many American flags everywhere. :)

Meet my friend Robonaut:

He's got muscles and he's super cool! While we were doing our training on Robonaut, they gave us a demonstration and let us all shake his hand. I was so honored because I really like this payload!

My sandwich for lunch one day:

We went to this place called Nobi House and everyone told me I had to get the egg sandwich and I was so confused, but now I know why!! It was really good. The place was pretty cool and modern too.

My friend hanging out in one of the mock-ups of the astronaut's sleeping quarters.

He was pretty cramped because dude is over 6 feet tall.

This is a mock-up of one of their exercise machines.

Just chillin' in the mock-up of the Russian segment of Space Station.

This contraption is what the astronauts use to weigh themselves. It's called SLAMMD because they sit on it really still and it "slams" them into the wall in order to get their weight. Obviously they have to do it that way because of the lack of gravity. :)

The last picture of my trip is my trying to perform one of the procedures the astronauts commonly have to do on Station. I was very confused and needed lots of  help. :( Mainly because I didn't know all the tool names.

I had such a good time and I'm hoping I'll get to go back within the next year. If I get to go I will go back to downtown and visit the Sam Houston Park. I went there the trip before last and it's beautiful. They have a gorgeous Japanese garden in the park. I hope you enjoyed the virtual trip!