1/2 sunburn + 1/4 frost bite + 1/4 stack of waffles = Florida

I'm writing this morning from "sunny" (but yet cold at the moment) Florida. I managed to fry my backside while at the beach (well, "fry" everything legally exposeable). The flight to Florida was uneventful. The rental car is nice, i had a free upgrade with a military discount thing, I finagled a Chrysler Sebring for the cost of a cheaper car.

Then the fun begins. It's 1 am and we are trying to find the "Beach side Resort Hotel" and it was proving to be very elusive. Finally after an hour of travel we call and get directions (we had directions, but the "resort" wasn't well marked). I have come to find out that hotel operators in Florida have no clue how to do this. So it's now 3 am, and we park in the lobby, i go inside and get the room keys. The lobby isn't overly impressive, it's dirty, kinda dank, and smells oddly like liver and cheese.

With keys in hand i go back to the super cool car, hop in and drive around to the parking lot in the back. We grab the bags and make for the side entrance. The key doesn't work. I try it again, it still doesn't work. The security guard comes up behind us and says "just pull, It'll open". Sure enough, he was right.

We get to the room, the key doesn't work. I try it again, it still doesn't work. I try it about another 35 times before i decide to walk down to the lobby. The night clerk sends the security guy up with us "because that door can be difficult". oh boy.

His key works fine. He trys our keys about 60 times in every way possible, to no avail.

Oh, i almost forgot to mention the best part. The clerk tells us that it's the last room, and she's "Not sure what the prior occupants did, but the faucets are missing". But she gave us free breakfast vouchers and assured us the plumber was coming tomorrow to fix. wow.

We walk into the room, and the first thing that we see on the floor resembles a turd. On closer inspection it was only a mushroom. a full size mushroom. right next to the pizza crust on the floor. So before i even pushed the handles down on my awesome new luggage (Thanks Mom!) we decided to continue our inspection. First place to look, the bathroom! i had to see the "missing faucets". Sure enough, they were missing. including the piping under the sink. and all handle fixtures too.

And for some reason, the missing handles must have made the bathroom smell funny. Oh wait, no, the funny smell was coming from the golf ball size turd floating in the toilet.

I quickly avert my horrified gaze to the other side of the bathroom towards the tub. that view wasn't any better, i think a yetti with sandy feet must of showered in there last.

So we collect our things and make our way back to the lobby, and i politely notified the clerk of the discrepancies. She proceeds to explain to us how she plans on killing the day crew. Then says how she will pay for all of our meals during our stay. But she also recommended we stay away from the pancakes and waffles "because they are frozen". And she was in the midst of calling the neighboring hotels that are owned by the same company to get us new accommodations. I politely refused and offered that i would rather sleep in the car. Julie was in complete agreement.

We make our way along the "SR A1A" (beach front road) and stop at all the well known names in Hotel chains, but none had any rooms available for less then $380 per night.

Julie manages to get a list of hotels with room vacancies from the night crew at the Baha Sur (spelling?) and she starts calling around. She found an awesome hotel called the Renaissance Plantation, just outside of Fort Lauderdale. The place was like walking into a palace! And whats even better, they take AAA! So, thanks to the quick thinking of the my super awesome traveling companion, we got a better rate, and a nicer hotel!

The next two nights we spent at the Marriott on the beach. (Which were also attained by my traveling companion). The room and the hotel were absolutely incredible. From now on, Julie is booking the hotels :-)

So now we are in Orlando, which is 47 degrees, and getting ready for a day at Sea world. But first, Waffle house! yeah!

Random Cold

This past weekend was in the upper 20-ish degree range, I took advantage of the warmer-than-usual weather and decided to bring a mountain of 'stuff' to Goodwill. The guy who was unloading the back of my Xterra accidentally dropped a bag of dishes onto the cement. oops. I know he didn't mean to do it, and he was very apologetic, but he also didn't bother going through the bag to see if anything was left unbroken , since most of the items were well wrapped. He just took the whole bag and *tossed* it into a dumpster. I also forgot to "itemize" all the stuff for a tax write-off. In years past, you could just put a dollar amount on the receipt, but i think the law changed for '08, you now have to have a "by-line" list of each good and the dollar amount.

Is it lunch time yet? i'm hungry.

AJK

I miss ya cousin

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