1998 Vacation Part IV: Alfred, $2 Island, and the Ocean Star
9/21/1

written by Postwood, Monday, September 14, 1998

Yawn. We woke up naturally, meaning without an alarm, for the first time on our vacation and ate ham and cheese croissants from the supplies we picked up at Wal-babies.

As I was sitting watching the three to five foot waves from our balcony and munching my grub, Aisai started at the front door being knocked.

I got up and started for the door so I, too, could find out what the deal was. Aisai was doing the "Who is it?" to the visitor's "Me." Aisai then switched to "Me who?" and he still said, "It's ME". Yeah, like we know many people named me. You just don't name your kid after any commonly used pronoun. Aisai did one more "Me who?" as I approached the door. "Me Alfred" said Alfred in his best Tarzan grammar. I peeked out the blinds and said "Sorry, Alfred. We'd rather not let you in since we don't know you." Alfred was obviously embarrassed and "Sorry, I'm at the wrong place" and then rumbled his self and his luggage cart away.

Don't get me wrong. Alfred looked like a nice older man. I'm quite certain that he is quite adept socially and a pleasure to be around, but we are wary tourists at that time.

After that, Aisai and I went on a drive. We had already been to the northeast side of the island, so we decided to drive up the seawall. The reason that I say up the seawall, is that to me it felt like north. The whole time we were there, I was directionally illiterate, thinking that Seawall ran north and south.

There are a few pictures that were taken on this drive, or maybe just one. We haven't gotten the pictures back.

One place that we fully intended to take a picture of was the place that we called the kettle house. Actually it was a large, maybe 36 foot diameter half sphere. Probably someone had bought a methane sphere as scrap and cut the top half off. The top was finished with a radially symmetric roof with a little cupola in the middle. There were windows with little shingled roofs over them, if I remember correctly. It was really cute. Aisai and I decided not to take a picture of it until it was a day that wasn't overcast. Unfortunately, we forgot to get around to it.

The place that we did get a picture of was a driftwood monster on $2 island. The reason that we called it $2 island is because that is how much you have to pay to get on the thing. I think the bridge was called the "San Luis Pass" or some other pretentious name. It was famous for some jerk pirate of something.

Well, on $2 island, there was this convenience store that had a big old piece of driftwood painted up like pelicans and sharks and dragons and such. It was very impressive. It started sprinkling on us as Aisai took a picture of me in front of it.

The drive back was beset by light rain that didn't last too long. We went straight to the strand district. There we bought a wooden postcard at an "American Indian Art" store. This card we wrote to Aisai's Mother. We went straight to some steps that were on, like, 22nd Ave and wrote the text on the back of the card. The wood really soaked up the ink from my pen, so Aisai and I ended up writing in a script that we don't normally write in. You really had to keep the pen moving or it would make a big black dot. Aisai put the stamp on the postcard and we mailed it from in front of a bank downtown.

I took a picture of Aisai mailing this postcard too.

I tend to drink coffee. And since I didn't get any coffee on Sunday at all, I had a headache. Aisai was looking for a postcard of a jackalope, so I wandered into an old Greek deli that was quite the comfortable dive. I took at least one picture of Aisai once we were sitting in one of the badly ripped and partially duct-taped booths.

The coffee was wonderful. The lady who served it asked if I wanted milk in it and I said, "Sure." She poured a lot of milk in. And she didn't pour it all at once, she put in a little, and stirred, then more, and stirred. At one point, I said to her, "Hey, not so much" and she responded, "it isn't as much as you think. It's a big cup." She was right.

I don't know if they had added a little cinnamon to the coffee grounds or what, but the flavor was very nice.

We chose to walk around then, and in our wanderings we ended up near the Ocean Star. The Ocean Star is the name of a jackup oilrig which managed to scarf up a good amount of oil for any rig, and it was a smaller one. The Ocean Star was then bought for scrap and $4 million dollars was poured into it to make it into a museum. If you are in Houston or Galveston, I highly recommend visiting this.

The rain returned while we were in the rig. I walked out on a catwalk to the drilling platform, or whatever that area is called, and Aisai took one or two pictures of me.

When we were walking up the long elevated walkway up to the Ocean Star, Aisai wasn't as nervous as she usually is on bridges or things that are over dark water. Well, on the way down she made up for it by clutching at my arm like she was hanging on for dear life. She didn't really let on to anyone else, but I sure knew it, and so did my slowly-turning-blue arm.

I didn't mention it, but as crowded as the beach down toward the 2000 block and lower part of Seawall Dr was, and the Strand was rather busy too, the area around the Ocean Star and that pier thing with the ugly boy statue had very few people around it.

Man, was I hungry. And so was Aisai. We decided to go to the "inexpensive" place that the security lady from the day before had told us about. I got a salad, since I was concerned that everything was so expensive, so did Al, and we got out of Casey's with only a $30 bill. The food was great, and they gave us a free desert.

"You forgot to tell them about the really lovely southwestern chicken noodle soup." - Aisai

Aisai and I went back to the room and I tried calling Matt, a friend of mine, at work. I also called and left messages on my boss's voicemail at work. But I forgot he was out of town for the week also. I left a message on my boss's boss's voicemail telling him what account and password he could use to get onto my machine at work.

I'm the only person in the office that has Windows NT. I have it mainly to free up the RAM that Win95 will never let go of.

Ah, I got sidetracked. Time to break off and start another section.