July 21, 2005

We had a pretty good time the last two days. I don’t know what it is, but even when I am off work, I am up by 6-6:30 every morning (hell, that’s two hours later than I get up on work days), even when I have been up till 2am or later, as in Wednesday morning. That can make for a pretty shitty day.
As usual, I was up about about six this morning. It does have it’s benefits, because I managed to get a bit of free time without the kids underfoot. Went down to the lobby, got some coffee, and hit the beach. Very peaceful. It was already in the low 80’s at that point. I wrote the prior post at that point. I tried to connect with the ipaq, but couldn’t. It pisses me off, because I was able to get in for like 10 minutes the first morning, paid $9.95 for access for the day, and couldn’t connect again after that. I know I am going to have to fight with someone over that, and force a charge-back, even if it is only $10, it’s my fucking $10. Panama City can kiss my ass if they think they get $10 free. Oh well, I will deal with that in the morning.
We all at a little breakfast, then headed to the pool. After last night, the beach (at least the ocean part :> ) was still closed and I know that Ruth is less than enthusiastic about swimming in the ocean. She loves the swimming pool, but you can’t get her in the water at the beach. We hung out there for a couple of hours, then checked out of the hotel. Once we got the van loaded we went and hung out at an arcade for awhile, went and ate lunch, and took the kids for putt-putt. It was pretty fucking hot, but we all had a good time.
It took a bit longer to get home (around six hours) due to VERY heavy rain through parts of Alabama. We got here about 10:15 or so. Had some problems with the pond. One of my damn pumps is acting up again, and there was only about 6-8 inches of water in the bottom of the pond. Very weird. I refilled the pond and will have to look at it tommorow. I had thought about driving down to Savannah or Hilton Head tommorow, but I don’t think so now. I may take some of the money that I would spend there and work on my gardens this weekend while I am still on vacation. Need to brick in a couple of areas where I have that crappy plastic border, and need to build up a couple of brick borders a bit higher in the back yard.
Didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked, but I will post some later. I think that Stephanie already has posted a couple, at least one. Well, time to surf awhile, then crash. I am pretty damn tired, although she did all of the driving on this trip.
One cool (geeky computer nerd thing) that I did was to use the ipaq for music on the drive back. Last year when we had an ice storm, I had to pick up a 400 watt power inverter for work. Of course the thing came home with me, because I will use it more, and if it snows again this year, it will go back with me. Any way, I hooked up the ipaq to that so as not to kill the batteries, then hooked up an el cheapo belkin FM transmitter, in combination with a 1 GB SD card full of mp3s. Hell yeah, better than a damn case full of CDs. Stephanie and the kids think that it is a pain in the ass when I start playing with my toys, but when they work well, they kick ass.

We’ve spent the better part of the morning swimming at the beach. Ruth got worn out pretty quickly so everyone came back to the room to de-stress.W00t, cartoons. There is a Hooters next door, so I think we are doing wings for lunch.
May have to do the goofy golf thing later this afternoon for the kids. Hell, it is the only kind of golf that I know how to play. Have to remedy that someday, but I have better things to spend my money on.
I signed up for and paid $10 to access the net, then promptly lost fucking access, so these posts may or may not make it before I do.

Never was able to connect from the hotel, so everything will pretty much get posted once I get home.
I have not watched the local news this morning, so everything that I know about the drowning is pretty much hearsay. I was feeling like shit last night after supper, so I walked the baby and myself back to the hotel. There were a couple of firetrucks, police, and an ambulance. The ambulance pulled out of the hotel before I got there. Rurh and I headed up to the room,and sat out on the balcony for a while. Everyone on the beach was just milling around and there was a police vehicle with it’s lights on. Apparently some kids got caught in a rip current, someone swam out to help them. The person who swam out drowned, and one of the others was still missing.
When Stephanie and the kids got back to the room, she I?d that someone had been pulled out of the water and was being given CPR.
It’s all really pretty sad. One of the things that I tried to impress upon the kids when we got here is that the currents are much stronger than in Hilton Head, and to stay close.
As I am sitting here, it looks like the purple flag is up, which I believe means Shark. Once Stephanie and the kids get up we will probably go for a swim anyway. I am not sure, as She seemed pretty upset last night.
Otherwise we have had a nice couple of days, and I am considering lengthening the trip.