The end

I finished up the blog entry in the rental car just as Patrick walked home from work which worked out well. Sixer the cat was happy to see I returned and wasted little time reestablishing my lap as a hang out spot.  I filled Patrick in on my last couple days of adventures in Marienville since he and his girlfriend left.  We were waiting for Nicole to show up so we could all go out to dinner to celebrate my last evening in Pennsylvania.

The place we were going was in easy walking distance, a perk of living in an urban area like Patrick does.  The restaurant was called Scratch.  They had a very modern menu with more vegetarian entrees on it than the meat variety which worked out well for me.  I decided to complement my vegetarian tacos with a couple Iron City beers which seemed appropriate considering my location.

We had a very enjoyable dinner.  Nicole has had a very interesting background which complements Patrick’s world traveling adventures quite well.  She seems to be a really cool person and dinner just reenforced my already positive opinion of her from our first meeting.

I thought it was funny that one of the guys that worked there was familiar with Naples.  Evidently he was down there for one snowbird season.  It felt odd sitting there being able to say Immokalee Road and have a guy in Pittsburgh know exactly where/what it was. We listened in to the first part of trivia night which evidently is an every Tuesday night thing at Scratch.  As usual my knowledge of random trivia was less than impressive.

I wanted to pay for the diner bill but was thwarted when Chase shut down my card, assuming it was being used in PA for nefarious purposes.  I appreciate the caution but it was a bit annoying that I had to call when I got back to get it unlocked.  I have seen ads where other CC companies simply send a text if an additional confirmation is needed.  I need to see if I am able to turn that on for my card.

Since I was rolling out relatively early in the morning we didn’t stay that late.  When we got back to Pat’s we caught the very tail end of Obama’s farewell address which I heard from Cindy was very emotional.  Before heading up to bed Pat introduced me to a ridiculous but very funny animated series on HBO called Animals.  I need to check it out more in depth when I get home, you should too.

This time I made sure to pull my bedroom door closed until it clicked to prevent a noisy, middle of the night luggage licking session by Sixer.  I wanted to make sure I got a half decent night of sleep under my belt.  I still struggled somewhat sleeping, just because of the ambient noise associated with living in a city neighborhood but it was better overall.

When I got up I headed straight to the shower and then packed up my stuff to head downstairs.  As soon as I sat on the sofa Sixer immediately jumped on my lap and parked himself there.  I guess he missed me last night.  Pat came down from his shower and was ready to start his daily walk to work so I loaded up the car to leave.  I thanked him again for his hospitality and encouraged him and Nico to come down and visit Florida with us, the door is always open.

I had plenty of slack in my travel time to the airport.  I stopped at a Dunkin Donuts to grab some breakfast and a coffee and then stopped one more time to fill up the Journey. Oh, the rental car was a Dodge Journey SXT by the way.  Yea I never heard of it either.

Getting to the airport required dealing with rush hour traffic but with my GPS having my back it was no big deal getting back to the airport in an expedient manner.  Dropping off the rental car was a 30 second process and I was back inside the terminal 5 minutes later.  I used the self service Delta kiosk to check myself in.  The machine spit out the credit card receipt for my annoying $25 checked bag charge but for some reason did not print out the boarding passes I need to board the plane.  I wound up having the desk clerk repeat the process for me.

When I went through the security check point the woman running the x-ray pulled out my cheap Dollar General Store gym bag that is housing my glued together skull.  As she rocked the bag back and forth she said to me, “Is that a skull???”.  I told her yes, but it ws a ceramic, decorative skull.  She said she was concerned it was a real skull which evidently is not allowed in carry on baggage, imagine that.

So I have now found my way to the departure gate in plenty of time to allow me to punch this out.  My flight probably won’t even begin boarding for another hour.  The trip has come and gone quickly.  It was very nice to get another taste of the world I used to know and to see friends and family that I usually only interact with via the internet or the phone.  I of course look forward to getting home to Cindy, Elsa, the chickens, and even Tuki.  Not having to plan to avoid hypothermia will be a great thing too.