I took Wednesday and Thursday off work, and caught a VERY early flight out of Wichita and over to Denver, then caught another from Denver to Houston. I arrived in Houston right at lunchtime. Joella suggested a visit to her favorite margarita place for lunch, and I was all in favor of that, because I LOVE authentic Mexican food, and I've soooo missed having it since we moved back to Kansas from San Diego. It didn't disappoint - I had a delicious shrimp enchilada with my margarita (which really was quite good), and which came with some yummy sides that enhanced the experience. I also got to meet one of Joella's fellow transitional year students who met us at the restaurant. It was nice to see that Joella had at least one good friend down there.
Joella drove me past the huge medical complex where she works on our way back to her apartment. It is a pretty incredible collection of buildings. I can't imagine that there's any procedure that they wouldn't be able to do on a sick person down there. I did have to deal with my "no scrubs in public" pet peeve more than I'd have liked to, because the place was full of doctors and nurses and students running around on the street in their scrubs... but I survived.
We eventually made it back to Joella's apartment where we spent the afternoon just relaxing before the concert. It was about 100 degrees outside with 100% humidity, and we were NOT looking forward to the one mile walk to the stadium for the show. Happily, Joella ran into one of her friends down by the apartment complex pool who volunteered to drive us to the stadium! We had a quick bite to eat at her place before hopping in the car for the ride over to the show.
The stadium was nice and air conditioned, and the roof was closed when we got to our seats. Eventually they started blowing smoke around the stage, and they opened the roof of the place up, but I'm pretty sure they kept the A/C on, because it never got really hot in there. Muse finally came on and played an awesome opening show. We both really enjoyed watching them. I'm pretty sure that most of the other people at the concert didn't know any of their music, but Joella and I happily sang along anyway. They played about 10 songs, and then it was time for them to go off stage, and for the roadies to start setting up for U2.
It took a while, so we went on a popcorn run and had time to eat enough to get our fill before U2 came on stage. It was a bit surreal to think we were in the same building as these people who have all these iconic songs and who we've only ever seen on television for the last 30 years. It was a really amazing show, though, and it was so worth the trip down to Houston to see. The band was fun to listen to, but the thing that really impressed me was the stage. I was thinking how much fun it would have been to be an engineer on that project.
The concert got out at about midnight, and Joella and I walked back to her apartment from the stadium and totally crashed for the night. We both loved the show and agree it was the best concert BY FAR that we've ever been to.
My flight home in the morning left around 9, so we had to get up early again. There was a bit of a traffic jam on the way to the airport, but I made it in time to get through security and on to my flight to Denver. I was in Denver for the whole child-caught-in-a-helium-balloon fiasco, which made my three hour layover there a little more bearable. My flight back to Wichita was only delayed by about 10 minutes, even though it left right about the time the supposed missing child was flying past DIA. I made it back home to Wichita and back to the house before Jeff got home from work. It was a really fun trip, and I'm so glad I got to see Joella in her new city!
