Thanks Dell!
A big thank you to Dell for letting us consumers know not what to do with the plastic that new keyboards come in. 🙂
A big thank you to Dell for letting us consumers know not what to do with the plastic that new keyboards come in. 🙂
The finale to my travel blitzkreig was this weekend. A flight out to Arizona for my sister’s wedding. A three hour time difference back and forward in a 3 day span whacks out your body clock pretty well so we were tired when we shouldn’t be, hungry when we shouldn’t be and awake when we should be asleep. Crazy.
Our travel day on Friday started at 5:30 am when we left our house and ended at 2:30 Arizona time. The flight out was fine. Our first time flying on Continental and we were impressed by the planes and the service. Every plane we were on (except the Cessna) were very modern and clean. The crew was all very polite. What impressed the most was they gave us an actual donut for breakfast and they brought the drink cart around a SECOND time asking if you would like anything else. Unheard of in todays tight belted airline industry.
Once we landed in Phoenix we got our first taste of “dry” heat. You normally hear people from that area boast of how it is hot but it is a “dry” heat so you don’t mind it. Well I tend to disagree. Ok, instead of fealing like a steamroom like Florida does in the summer it feels like a sauna in Arizona. Either way it’s HOT! It was 100 plus in Phoenix.
The wedding was in Sierra Vista which is south of Tuscon. A 3 hour drive from Phoenix. The drive was very interesting. Lots of beautiful mountains surrounding the flat desert. Cactus are everywhere. I thought they were cool looking. Ali thought less of them and labeled the ones with no side branches as turd-like. We crossed a bridge that said it was over a certain river. There was no river, just a dried river bed. Evidently there is only a river there during their wet, monsoon season. Pretty much eveything at ground level has a coat of dirt or dust on it. The speed limit on the interstate was 75 mph so we were able to chew up the 180 miles in sub 3 hour time.
Friday evening we got to meet up with my mom, my dad, step mom, and my brothers and sister. We were all staying at the same hotel. The hotel was fine. We got together a caravan and headed over to meet my sister and brother-in-law to be. We got to his parents house for the rehearsal cookout. Their house was like 95% of the others we saw in that they have rock lawns. Instead of grass, their yard is all pebbles. Instead of plants for landscape pieces they use bigger rocks. Not something I would like but I guess in AZ you have little choice. We got to meet Damon (groom) and his family. They are Canadian and very friendly. Damon is very outgoing and seems to be a great guy. We had a nice dinner but bagged out at about 8:30 local time as the time difference was hitting us hard.
The wedding day was a hectic, sweaty affair. The wedding was at 11 am OUTDOORS. To be fair, Sierra Vista is not as hot as Phoenix due to it’s higher elevation. It was probably ONLY in the the low to mid 90’s. 🙂 We showed up at 9 to do pictures a full 2 hours before the ceremony. My sis looked great in her wedding gown. I assumed my sis didn’t care about that bad luck thing if you see the groom before the wedding. After pictures we had to set up some decoration on the chairs that were set up outside by a practice putting green. The ceremony was a bit disjointed but thankfully it was quick and a well timed cloud and breeze gave a brief reprieve from the heat. The reception itself was indoors. But the DJ and dance floor was OUTDOORS on a covered pavilion. By the time it was over, anyone that stayed for the dancing part was a sweaty rag. The entire event was over by 3:30. Afterwards, we went to the new house Damon and Torrin were moving into. He built it, as he is a building contractor. It’s a great place and I’m sure they will be very happy there. Torrin had the bathroom decked out in her favorite color, purple. We then went back to Damons parents house to watch them open gifts. An odd thing to me as I don’t remember having or wanting to have anyone watch me open wedding gifts after either of my weddings but maybe it is a Canadian thing. About 6pm, we said our good byes, wished everyone well and left with a 3 hour drive back to Phoenix ahead of us.
The drive again was very scenic. We saw the fires in the Tuscon area first hand. At one point we saw 5 or 6 separate paths of smoke burning down the mountainside. Kind of freaky to see. As we got to Phoenix we were navigating towards our hotel. Since we booked it, we were worried that the hotel we reserved would be a dive. It was one of the lowest priced options on Expedia.com and it was a Days Inn so I hoped it would be ok. As we approached, we passed several adult stores. Shortly afterwards, we passed what appeared to be several prostitutes walking the streets. It wasn’t looking good. I pulled up and went in looking around to see if our hotel had any “per hour” rates posted. Thankfully they didn’t and it wound up being fine. It was clean enough and everything in the room worked. Another early morning followed. 4:45 am the alarm went off.
We returned the rental car after mistakingly going to the wrong lot. As I returned it, the clerk came back into the desk after inspecting the vehicle and asked me how the side mirror got damaged. “What”? I said, and went out to look at it myself. The plastic casing of the mirror had a big crack in it. I came back in and said I had no idea how it got there. In the meantime, he found out that the crack was preexisting. Crisis averted. We got to the airport and hopped our plane. The travel was fine but we had 2 layovers this time. Both of them were in the 2 hour range. Blah. All this layover time gave me a chance to finally try to beat the computer on my Palm Zire chess game. No luck. In total I played over 20 games and got spanked everytime. Damn it I used to be good at chess.
The last leg of our flights was a CESSNA from Tampa to Fort Myers. Neither of us had ever flown on a commercial cessna before and we both had been dreading this last leg. It was a 10 seat plane. Ali actually got to sit right next to the pilot in the front seat! It wound up being way cool and the best flight of the trip. The experience was unique as well as the viewpoint. We could see everything. Our top speed was 180 mph and our top elevation was somewhere around 9000 feet. I was surprised with how little stick work is done by the pilot. He basically sets a heading and the plane goes there without his input. Ali wound up really enjoying the flight as well. We landed safely and headed back to Naples. After picking up the puppy, I dropped both Ali and the puppy off at home. I had to head BACK to the airport to pick up my mom from her flight! I was able to hit bed around midnight.
Thankfully we had Monday off to recuperate. Of course, I did little recuperation and instead attacked home chores. I knocked out a bunch of stuff and rested afterwards. I am very much looking forward to having nowhere to go for the next few months. Now my blog entries can go back to be being little short dumb ones!
People like this walk the streets. Well this guy isn’t right now thank goodness…..
Here are the pics from the PA trip.
Here are the pics of our flooded property.
This is a long one. This weekend was our trip to PA for me to play in the Pottstown Rumble, my favorite volleyball tournament ever. Due to all the money we spent last month, I booked the flight out of Fort Lauderdale to save a couple bucks. (a 2 hour drive) The drive was long and the airport was very busy. Our connection flight to Atlanta left a half hour late but the flight itself was uneventful. However the late take off meant we had about 15 minutes to get to the next gate. We hurried to the gate and got there during the final boarding call. Whew! We found our seats and were taxing out to the runway when the plane stops. After a delay, the captain informs us that our flight to Philly was going to be pushed back an hour and a half due to the crappy weather in PA. BY the time we taxied back to the gate, it was only going to be 15 minutes till they began boarding again so we just stayed put on the plane. We finally got in the air and soared into Philly, as we approached and got down into the clouds, it got amazingly dark. We could not even see the ground until 30 seconds before landing. When we emerged there was nothing but grayness and rain pouring down. It was nasty, real nasty.
Our next leg of the journey was a drive to my bro’s place. Of course to do so we needed a rental car. I pulled out my reservation form I printed from the internet. 34 bucks a day for a full size car for 3 days. Came to about 130 odd bucks. The person behind the counter asks me for the driver license, and if I wanted the minimal, medium or full coverage on the vehicle. I said minimal of course since I have rental car coverage through my auto insurance policy. She prints up the bill and the total is over 200 dollars. Woah! Wait a sec, I say. What is this? This is almost a 100 bucks more than my quote from the internet! She goes over the charges and lists the 19.99 a day charge for minimal “insurance” !!! The way she presented it, it was like there was no option for NO additional insurance. When pressured, she said I didn’t have to take any additional coverage. Nice. They try to just slip that in and hope you shrug it off. Bastards. That really pissed me off. Don’t rent from Dollar. At least the car was VERY nice. A Chrysler Concorde with all the goodies.
Normally, this entire drive may take an hour and a half. It took double that because of the rain. Flooding everywhere. We were starved and decided to just pull off and eat dinner, hoping traffic would ease a little bit. We wound up not getting to my brothers until 10 pm. Our travel day started at 7 am. You do the math.
Eating at the back of my mind this entire time is what was going to happen with the volleyball tournament. The Rumble is ALWAYS hot and humid. Saturday was forecast to have even more rain and be in the MID 60’s! Unbelievable. As soon as I got to my Bro’s I hopped on the internet and looked at the tournament site. It said on there RAIN or SHINE , BE PREPARED. The weather was so bad that even I, a diehard when it comes to stuff like this, was considering calling up my partner and telling him that we should just bag it. Playing in the cold and rain sucks all of the enjoyment out of a volleyball tournament. If it isn’t enjoyable, what is the point. So, I called him up to hash it out and he told me the tournament had to be cancelled, the field was literally underwater. Ah geez! Even though I was contemplating bagging it myself, hearing that it was cancelled really bummed me out. 1200 miles for nothing. A bitter disappointment but I had to admit that even if it was played, it would have been horrible. So my depression was at a pretty deep level the entire weekend. Instead of battling it out at the Rumble my Saturday was spent visiting friends and family. Always a good time but I had a hard time masking my general feelings of blah.
Saturday night through Monday morning were spent at my brother and sister-in-laws. They scheduled the christening of their daughter (my neice) around this trip. I got to meet my 5 month old neice Lauryn for the first time. She is a little sweetheart. The christening went well, followed by a luncheon and then some family came back to their place. There was the normal drama that seems to pop up during family gatherings. By the end people were mad at other people and it was time for it to wrap up. My bro and sis-in-law are in an in between townhouse until they buy another house, so room was tight and I could tell it was a bit of an inconvenience for them to have us there. I slept one night on the floor and the other on their couch.
We pulled out Monday. The weather was great! 80 degrees and sunny. 🙁 The flight home was uneventful and we actually arrived back in Florida 15 minutes early. The 50 dollar parking fee and 2 hour drive back after a day of flying stiffened my resolve to never fly out of the other coast for the sake of saving a few bucks.
We got home to our house around 9pm. Evidently it has rained like mad while we were gone. 10 plus inches of rain over the weekend! Our property that was dry when we left was filled with standing water when we returned. Another 3 inches of rain in 2 hours Tuesday afternoon, totally flooded the low lying areas. Pics of it to follow.
So that’s it. In a nutshell the things that were enjoyable about the trip were:
Nice rental car
Seeing friends and family
Every other aspect of it, basically SUCKED.
Leave for AZ in 2 days. Not again…..
Here are some pictures of the latest snakes we found on our property. Tim identified the big one as a Florida King snake.
Here are pics from the FSL all star game. Including a picture of bell man!!!
Looking for some more puppy pics?
Mowing the grass. It is at least a 9 month a year job down here in SW Florida. I have a Murray 42 inch riding mower that helps me do battle against the always growing grass. I go through a lot of mower blades. We have many hard objects scattered through our yard which beat the hell out of the blades. During my last blade purchase, they didn’t have the normal Murray replacement blades but they had the “high performance” commericial style blades that were nearly double the cost. 60% more cutting area!!!! I was excited and put them on last week. I was out mowing last night and was thinking to myself how the blades are cutting just OK but not great, a lot of the grass blades were just bent up and not cut. So I turned off the blades, pulled back the chute cover and slightly engaged the blades so I could watch em spin. Yep, they were on backwards! Damn it!!! I put these new blades on facing the same direction as the old ones they replaced!!! And the ones before that, and before that…. So, I probably have been running the blades backward for the past year or so. Doh! After reversing the blades, it cut like a razor. My mowing duties just got a little easier. 🙂 It’s amazing how much faster you can mow with blades installed correctly.
One more day of work then out for 5 days. Cool!!!!!!!!!!
I had my wife take that IQ test I took yesterday. She beat me by two! Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Another weekend hits the books. Some ups and downs. On Saturday we had housework galore to get through as well as grass to mow. We got it all done and cleaned up to go to the Florida State League All Star Game. It was pouring down rain the entire way there. They cancelled the homerun derby and wound up starting the game 45 minutes late. We had great seats. As we sat there, we got to do a lot of people watching. First thing that caught our eye were the 2 families within 5 feet of us. The kids in both of these families were at the baseball game, PLAYING THEIR GAMEBOYS. The entire time…. I am a video game junkie, I have played them all my life but this crossed the line even for me. How pathetic is it that a kid is at a baseball game playing a video game? Ridiculous. These same kids were both obese and were happily fed junk food and soda by their parents. The entire park was filled with obese children. I read in the paper that 1 in 3 children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes due to the horrendous eating habits and lack of exercise that plagues youth (and adults) today. That is flabbergasting, 1 in 3. I blame ignorant parents. Oh well enough of that. The other standout moment was the gentleman that brought a bell with. The type of bell they ring at a boxing match. Everytime someone from the minor league Dodgers team did something he would be banging the bell. It was really funny to watch. We bowed out after the 5th inning. Baseball is a lot more fun to play than to watch.
Yesterday I spent a lot of time on the puter getting some stuff done I have been meaning to. I ripped off stills and video from our Fort Myers vball tournament. You can see them here.
The weekend was warm and humid, both days we had some hellacious thunderstorms. We lost power for about an hour and a half on Saturday. We had more run ins with some new creatures. Ali found a baby snake, later my mom found what appeared to be the snakes mother. It is a type that I have not seen on our property before. I hope to have snake expert Tim identify it for me. 🙂 I also saw my first field mouse in Florida. We also seem to have adopted a permanent rabbit friend that hangs in the yard all the time.
I paid the bills Sunday night. I paid off the bills from our most expensive month of expenditures I can ever recall. We bought and did so much stuff in May it is staggering. I am in spending hibernation until further notice.
I have been sleeping abnormally solid recently, a full nights sleep with no interruptions. Last night the streak was broken. I woke up at 4am and was unable to fall back asleep. My mind went into the dreaded state where I do nothing but recollect things. I remember past events and how long ago they seem, which makes think about old age and how depressing it all is and then I jump to another memory that continues the cycle. I try to clear my head and remind myself how tired I am but it doesn’t help. Life would be so much simpler for me if I didn’t have to dwell on mortality and getting old. It really gets to be a drag.
Did anyone else imagine the homes they would show in Tide commercials were the ideal home growing up? This was another thing that ran through my head this morning. I remember seeing the laundry detergent , household product commercials growing up and imagining that was how I wanted my household to be. Weird.
The next 3 weeks are all short weeks. This weekend we go home so I can play in the Pottstown Rumble. The following weekend, my sisters wedding in Arizona. I wont be working a full week until July 7th. 🙂
David Brinkley died today at the age of 82. When I was growing up I used to watch the national nightly news quite often. Back then we only had a TV antennae so we got the major networks and that was it. So, from 6:30 to 7 you had news and nothing else to choose from. When I saw David Brinkley he would do special spots as John Chancellor was the host. (is he still alive?) He was a very odd looking man with a speaking style that was unmistakable. When I heard the news from him and John Chancellor, it was important. They were serious beyond reproach. I’m sad to see David go, he was a good one.
I found out some disturbing news today. Evidently FEMA, the governments disaster department wants to classify our entire area as a high risk floodzone. They want to make flood insurance mandatory. The insurance coverage down here is odd. If a hurricane rips off your roof and everything gets soaked, you are covered. However if the associated rains causes flooding and outside water gets into the house, you aren’t. Unless, you have a separate flood insurance policy. With a high risk flood rating this has the potential of socking every single home in our area with a 2000-3000 dollar flood insurance premium every year! (on top of your homeowners insurance!) Naturally there is an uproar. The people that live out in our area are generally working class people that live in the Estates because they can’t afford to live anywhere in the high rent districts of Collier County. Such an insurance premium would put a big squeeze on the majority of the people in our area. Evidently the FEMA maps are based on old data. The county claims that the building codes requirement of raised slabs also makes this floodzone designation erroneous. Our house is built on top of a 3 or 4 foot high mound. It would take amazing amounts of rain to climb to that height. It’s letter writing time….
