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January 21, 2005

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

I will try to begin where I left off last Friday, while we were still on vacation. After stopping at the Crystal River library and checking our email, we were informed that the local McDonald's had wireless Internet service, so we "Mcposted" last week's journal from there. They really didn't know how it worked, and in fact, had not been able to use it themselves. But they gave us some printed instructions and a handful of coupons and it worked great! We are so spoiled in the Northwest as we have so many Internet cafes. In Florida, we mention the word "computer" and people freeze. For instance, we stopped at a Barnes and Noble bookstore where we were told they had Internet service. Nobody there seemed to know much about it until we went to customer service. The lady behind the counter nervously handed us one of the instruction pamphlets and backed away, swearing that she knew nothing of the Internet! It was like we were aliens or something! It turned out their service was very expensive, so we just thanked her for the information and left. I think she was actually relieved to see us go!

On Saturday, we drove up to Gainesville (the home of the U of Florida Gators) to visit with a young woman that had lived with us about five years ago while she was an OSU student interning at a company in Portland. She and her husband are from Albania and we have kept in contact with them over the years while they have moved from Portland to Houston to Dallas and now to Florida. Monika is studying for her PhD in accounting. It is a five-year program, so they will be in Gainesville for a while. We had a great visit and a wonderful meal with them and then we headed back to our Florida home, which was about a 2-hour drive.

On Sunday, we got up and ate some fresh Florida grapefruit for breakfast that I had picked up at a local roadside fruit stand and then just lazed around the house trying to unwind after all the traveling that we have been doing. We put about 1400 miles on the Jaguar in six days. We took a hike around the golf course later in the afternoon after all the golfers were gone. The weather over the weekend turned out rather cold, well if you can say 65 degrees and cloudy versus 30 degrees and freezing rain at home! Anyway, we are enjoying the weather just the same.

Monday, our last day in Florida...the weather was quite deceiving. The skies were clear and blue but there was a cold wind blowing. I think it got up to about 55 degrees during the day, but dropped below freezing at night. I guess Florida was preparing us to go home and face the really, really cold weather!

After breakfast, we drove over to visit with Ruth, Terrie's mother. She had her twin brother, younger brother and older sister visiting her from Oregon and California. After we left Ruth's we headed into Homosassa Springs and Crystal River to go online at McDonald's to read our e-mail and then back to that roadside fruit stand to get some more fresh oranges to take home with us. Then we drove down the Crystal River to look at the Manatees, which are a big tourist attraction around that area. We got lucky and saw several of them in 15 minutes or so. Those gentle "Sea Cows" as they are also known, can grow up to 15 feet long! As much beauty as we see, we were reminded of the devastation of last fall's hurricanes everywhere we looked. This was right next to the Manatees. After that stop, we took a short drive out to the Gulf at Fort Island Park. We were just driving around, reluctant to finally leave that beautiful place. When we did get back to the house, we washed a lot of Florida off the Jag and I baked a frozen pizza for dinner.

Tuesday, we left Florida and came back to reality. Terrie's Uncle David and Uncle Bud gave us a ride to the airport in their rented Cadillac. When we left Tampa it was a chilly 55 degrees and by the time we got into Portland, it was a nice 65 degrees, go figure!! The reason we went to Florida in January was that it was supposed to be so much warmer there than in Oregon! Most of the time it was...in fact two days before we got home, they had freezing rain in Portland. It was 35 degrees warmer on Tuesday than it was on Sunday! Did we time that right, or what? Our flight from Tampa to Houston was a little rough, due to winds, but we still arrived in time to grab a sandwich and catch our next connection. The plane from Houston to Portland was a ride from Hell! Not only was it long and a very turbulent ride where we had to stay buckled up most of the trip, but also, in the row right in front of us there was a family aboard with a young child who screamed and cried all the way. I was so glad to get home and I don't remember my head hitting the pillow Tuesday night! Now I am trying to adjust to Pacific Coast time and that's always a problem for me. I usually don't have a problem adjusting when I travel east, but the time zone difference coming back west can throw me off schedule for a week or so.

We stayed in town one more night to work a Blazer game and then on Thursday, we finally headed for home and it felt so good to be here again. It started raining on the way home so that REALLY made us feel like we were home. I got our luggage unpacked, the laundry caught up, and the bills all paid. We will only be here a couple of days before we head back into town to do a few more games. Starting Saturday there is a game every other night, so we'll just stay in Portland until next weekend. What a life!!

GIVE ME A BREAK!

On the flight home, I was reminded of one of my rants and that is ill-mannered children. Don't get me wrong, I love children and understand how tiring a long flight can be. I got tried of sitting for so long too. But, do you think that parents would expect this and maybe bring along some books or toys to help entertain them? What did they expect this child to do, sleep the whole trip? This small child that sat in front of us during the long flight home was the most annoying and obnoxious child I have ever seen and it was very clear that she had the upper hand on her parents because all she did was scream and cry if she didn't get her way. Now I am talking about a 2-3 year old who still used a pacifier and as far as I could tell, could not say one word. When she wanted something, she just screamed...LOUD!! And she did it A LOT!! This was something that I wasn't used to, and it was horrible to be in a confined space for 3-1/2 hours with this going on.