Next Stop: OdessaSunday, January 16, 2005 | 3:06PM |
Spur of the moment, I was going to drive to Odessa, Texas, the place I was born. The setting of that mediocre movie “Friday Night Lights”. 6 hours West of Austin. I considered leaving at 9pm and getting there at 3am. That plan became “leave at 6am, arrive at noon”, and, when I woke up around 9am on Sunday, “leave next weekend”. So I’m still wanting to do it. Basically I’ll get up early next Saturday morning and head out. And I should get back early evening next Sunday. It’ll give me a chance to visit the church I grew up in, which I actually remember quite a bit.
I don’t know why I want to go out there so badly. I was reading one of those guidebooks on things to do in Texas, and it even said that the Midland-Odessa area wasn’t really a place to visit, just a quick stop on your travels to better places. And I even get the impression that it’s like a larger version of Orange in many ways: not much to do, but it holds too many memories to abandon entirely.
Also according to that book, Odessa saw a number of booms and falls in the oil industry over the past century. The bottom fell out of the market in the late 1970s, and we moved there in 1980 (when I was born). Then a few years later it happened again, after an apparent recovery. Since that time it has supposedly diversified industrially, but the Permian Basin continues to produce 20% of the domestic oil market; only second to Alaska. (I hope I got all that correct… not that it really matters.)
Friday and Saturday were spent frantically finalizing 3 of my 5 graduate school applications. The University of New Mexico application had to be there by January 15th, no later. Well, Friday was the 14th, so of course I had to overnight everything. It was only about $21 for the papers, letters, and slides in a carousel. Here’s hoping they got there on time and in good shape.
I had to get the applications for Arizona State University and University of Colorado postmarked by the 15th, so I had a little more time to get those together. And as I arrived at the post office, they were in the process of closing. Luckily, everything I needed to do was automated, and I only had to fight time and the line. So assuming the USPS doesn’t let me down, as they’ve done many times before, I will at least be considered for graduate study at those three schools now. The only two left are the University of Arizona and Columbia College Chicago.
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