We finally made it to Houston.  After some travel troubles and switching of planes in Dallas, we made it into Houston last night a couple of hours later than planned.  After some time spent talking, laughing, and enjoying an absolutely ridiculous movie, we got some much needed rest and enjoyed the day today.

Today started with a quick breakfast (at 11 AM) and then an afternoon spent lounging in the pool at Emily and Katie’s apartment complex.  It was well over 100 degrees today, so the time in the water was definitely appreciated.  We then ran some errands, grabbed some lunch fixings, and spent the rest of the time before dinner hanging out in the apartment watching some TV and Emily and Julie whipped up some bars.

Next we were off to pizza, with myself, Julie, Trav, Emily, Katie, Emily’s cousin Shawn, and Emily’s parents Jim and Joann.  The pizza was great, and we followed it up with a couple of games of bowling at a local bowling alley.

I warmed up my “strike pose”, and we were off with two games of guys versus girls.  Turns out the girls had a faulty score machine that kept giving them pins they didn’t knock down, so it wasn’t much of a fair fight, but the guys still managed to eak out a couple of wins.

My main achievement for the night was to beat Trav in the second game.  For those of you who don’t know, Trav is somewhat of a bowling savant.  His friends in NZ have deemed him the Rain Man of bowling, so to manage to beat him at bowling meant two things – he had to not bowl to his best game, and I had to bowl a near flawless one.  Here’s the scorecard to prove it (He’s N, and I am V).  The turkey I had definitely helped.

It definitely was a heated battle, with a lot of gamesmanship and intimidation used to try to throw the other team off.  Here was are at the end making sure Emily feels the full pressure of the situation.

We finished up the night with a couple of episodes of Wipeout, to cap off an absolutely fun-filled day.