[balloonia]

I've spent a lot of time lately wishing. Wishing I was back in Baltimore. Wishing I was moving to a new city, a new country. Wishing I was anywhere but here.

It's not that here is bad. I grew up here. I would raise my future children here in a heart beat.

But right now, here is...boring. Here is the suburbs. And the suburbs don't have the vibrancy of the city.

So I wished. And waited. I was stuck (am stuck): I can't move within my company quite yet and I don't want to take a new job at a new company until I find out my bar results.

Then one day I got fed up. Just totally, completely fed up. Fed up with waiting. Fed up with wishing.

I decided to do something about it. No, I can't leave yet. Yet. But that doesn't mean I have to be bored and mopey.

When Mom called me from New York and told me she had seen something on the national news about a balloon festival near our house, I immediately looked it up and made plans to go.

When I got to the site, the lines were wrapped around the stadium. I hopped in one anyways and watched kids play in the grass by the line. After 30 minutes, we'd barely moved 10 feet. A gentleman approached his family and said that he'd met someone who had been in line for 2 hours and still hadn't made it into the stadium.

Then he said: "You know, you can see the balloons through the fence over there. Why don't we just go look there?"

It sounded like a brilliant idea to me. So I hopped out of line and weaved my way through the throngs of people to a chunk of fence already lined with other people who had gotten the same idea.

I squished up to the fence and shot through the chain links. The balloons were so fun to see and they reminded me of my childhood.

Growing up in Houston, during warmer months it was not uncommon to see hot air balloons float over our backyard. Houston is flat as a pancake so it makes the perfect place to go ballooning. Plus the area we lived in was a bit rural so there were plenty of places to take off and land. I remember hearing the flames from our swingset and looking up to see a brilliantly colored balloon drift lazing across the backyard. We would wave to the people in the baskets and often times they were close enough to wave back. I loved it. I would even run to the backyard as soon as someone said there were balloons coming, just to catch a glimpse.

Back to last night. I waited around for a while, sitting in the grass and watching the throngs of people both in and out of the stadium. Eventually the sun set.

I went back to the fence and got a few more shots in the dark.

I wish I had brought my tripod so I could truly capture how beautiful the balloons were in the dark. The flames lit them up like a light display, each firing at different times and making the balloon glow brilliantly against the black night. 

Even though I didn't make it inside the stadium, I still enjoyed my experience. 

It turns out that even in the suburbs there are things to do, if you just look for them.