I'm tired after this weekend. I was up every morning at 5 a.m.ish to get the balloon I was crewing for in the air. We also tried to launch every evening, but plans were foiled by mud, sunset, and thunder. Yesterday morning, we launched next to a hot air balloon shaped like a giant deoderant bottle. Weird. Every time a balloon took off, though, I pictured more and more the scene in Wizard of Oz, where the wizard casts off to return to the "real" Kansas.

It was a really fun time, though. It makes me want to learn how to fly a hot air balloon. Then I remind myself I already have a few too many consuming (both time and money) hobbies and I shouldn't add one more. It didn't stop me from having a weird dream that I volunteered to crew for a wacky balloon pilot who was flying him and his rooster around the world in 80 Days, I woke up a few weeks into it when we were somewhere in Africa. The whole weekend made me feel that special high you get the first time you do something new that turns out to be something you really enjoy.

I basically didn't see the inside of my house for this weekend - I tried to fill my down time with naps and helping Sarah move.

I don't think I'll have any time to rest in the near future either, 'cause classes start this week, making my schedule significantly more exhausting in order to squeeze my 40 hours in (especially with the no-working-Saturdays prohibition and this week where I'll have to spend a few hours longer at Rice in order to navigate their idiotically low-tech "computerized" class registration system). But camping this weekend will be a nice relief. And tonight, I think I'm going to go to the rock gym for NASA night, despite the fact that in general, I find rock climbing very scary.