Darkavich's Daily Ramblings

We got up this morning and headed out to Fort Worth. We wanted to go to the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing. We had visited the location in Washington, D.C. back in the early 1990’s so we wanted to see this new modern facility in Fort Worth.

The tour was quite informative. We learned that they no longer inspect the sheets of notes visually, like we saw them doing in D.C. Instead, it is all done with digital imaging comparison. They are able to tell within 3/10th of a second if a note is bad or not.

We learned that they are unveiling a new $5 and $100 note this year and should be in circulation by next year.

Another interesting thing we learned is there is a department of the Bureau that deals with recovery of mutilated money. you can send them money that has been burned, petrified, eaten by termites and they will work on identifying the money. If they are able to validate the notes, they will pay you for them. They have some amazing stories of how they have been able to return hundreds of thousands of dollars to people.

After the tour we headed back to Dallas for our flight home. The flight was mostly uneventful. We arrived safely.

This morning we got up and headed into Fort Worth. I remember going here once before with my friend Tammy. It’s funny, the things you remember.

After the gardens we drove to the Fort Worth stockyards. We parked and walked around the shops and had lunch. I wanted to take the train ride, but didn’t really want to wait the two hours for the ride.

We finished looking in all the shops, then drove over to Arlington. We went to see about tickets to the Texas Rangers game. We got pretty good tickets. We walked around the ball park waiting for it to open. We still had a couple hours to kill. We visited the visitor center then headed back to the ballpark to grab a bite to eat. They have a restaurant that is attached to the park, but you don’t have to go into the park to eat there. We ate and watch the sky open up and rain (sigh, does this rain never end?).

The grounds crew did a great job. They covered the ground in record time, just before it started to pour. We got lucky and the rain stopped just as the gates opened. We walked around the ball park and then watched the game. Not too exciting to watch a games between two last place teams, but we had fun nonetheless. After the game we headed back to the hotel. A welcome change from leaving Petco Park. There was absolutely no traffic. This was probably due to the fact there where only a few hundred people left at the end of the game 😉

So up in the morning and we decided to go to Galveston. We wanted to go visit Moody Gardens. Boy this was not the best decision. It took us almost an hour and a half to get there because it poured on us the entire way. It didn’t stop raining until after we got out of the car and inside the building.

We toured the gardens and took a one hour riverboat cruise. Although it was hot and humid we had a good time. The best part of the trip was that someone gave us tickets on the way in so we didn’t have to pay for entrance. This act of charity, saved us about $88.

After the gardens, we drove to Fort Worth. We stopped about 1/2 way there for dinner. We arrived at the hotel around 21:30. The travel time was a little bit longer than we had planned. Finally, we arrived at the Green Oaks Hotel and checked in.

We headed over to a restaurant for a late night bite to eat then back to the room for bed.

Today we slept in until Ten. I planned to get up early, but some idiot at work decided to page me at 2am to tell me a piece of equipment I have no idea what it was or am responsible for is not responding. Even after telling them twice I was on vacation and they should page someone else, I still got a 3rd page. I finally just turned my cell phone off. Needless to say, proper escolation procedures will be the first topic of conversation when I get back to work.

We got up and ate, then headed south to Nasa We toured the facility and watched a couple movies. One note, their security procedures suck. All they do is waste peoples time. They have you go through a metal detector to get on the tram, but allow you to put everything you have in a bag that is unchecked while you go through. So if someone wanted to, there is no way they could prevent them from bringing something through. Angie and I have a theory that this procedure is only there to slow down people being put on the tram so that they are properly spaced out.

We visited the astronaut training center where they have mock-ups off each piece of the space station and each shuttle. This is where they can practice on the equipment before they go into space. One note, the tour guide thinks that we have Robots in space, as she called Robotic Arm a “Robot Arm”.

After we walked through this area, we went over to where they had a full size Saturn V rocket in sections.

We drove back to the hotel and got cleaned up for dinner. We found a nice little Italian restaurant.

Back to the hotel in the rain (lightning and thunder). Padres win two in a row from the dodgers and are back in first place.

Well we got up early this morning and finished packing. We headed out for our vacation in Texas. We are spending a couple days in Houston then driving up to Dallas.

We arrived in Houston to warm and humid (wow we just left that). Picked up our rental and headed out. Because we arrived just about the time rush hour started we stopped for lunch/early dinner.

After feeding ourselves we headed to the hotel. Checked in and Angie promptly crashed. I am just catching up on email playing with facebook and deciding what we will do tomorrow.

We are trying to decide if we want to go NASA or drive to Galveston. I think we will just see how we feel when we wake up.