July 2005

I always hate the last day. Still have too much that I want to do, and need to make sure I can get it done and still get to bed early. I usually spend the first couple of days awake by 6am, but by the time my vacation is over, I am having a hard time getting up by 8-9am. Don’t need to wake up at nine tommorow, considering that I have to be at work by 6:30am. That would just make for a real shit day, especially considering that my boss is off tommorow, which pretty much leaves me running the district. Damn.

Stephanie is outside starting to clean the rental. Have to return it this morning, then get Ruth enrolled in a fucking daycare. Have a bunch of yardwork to do, and I have been fooling around with and tweaking my home automation stuff. Running the beta test for Homeseer 2, and there have been some issues with my setup. I just need to finish my coffee and get my ass cracking I suppose. Inertia has sort of set in the last few days.

Well, we got there at 9:30 this morning, so as to beat the crowd. We did pretty well with that, got to ride Thunder River several times before a line formed. Took Anna on the Mine Train a couple of times. We spent quite a bit of time at the new part, Skull Island. Pretty cool. Definately do as I did. I took a bunch of sandwich bags for my wallet, phone, smokes, etc. Came in very handy.

Took this one during a much needed break. We stayed at the park until 7:30 or so this evening. I originally wanted to stay until the park closed but I (along with everyone else) was just too damn tired. My calves hurt and I am pretty fucking sunburned. Blew right at $200 not counting the tickets and we really didn’t get too much. Drinks and food are just getting ridiculous there. Every year they go up more and more.

It took a few minutes to get this one. There were several kids that were waiting to get their pictures taken, Anna and another little girl were patiently waiting their turns, and this bunch of little kids kept breaking in fucking line. I was starting to get pretty pissed off and made sure to tell Anna (loud enough for the lady that was handling some of the pictures to hear) that she just needed to go up there NEXT because those kids were going to keep breaking in line until she did. Some people just need to fucking get a handle on their kids. That is where most of the problems with kids nowadays starts. They just don’t get taught any fucking manners. Along the same lines, a lot of the service has started to really suffer over the last few years. One of the things that Six Flags has always done is to hire high school and college kids during the summer. Cheaper for them, and good work experience for the kids. The last few years though, it seems as if they just don’t give a fuck. You don’t see most of them smile, and they walk around like fucking zombies. Stephanie and Anna waited in line near the top of one of the new waterslides forever, and finally had to get on a different water slide. The girl who was running it would not let anyone go down. The reason? It was time for her fucking break. Stupid bitch. If your relief is late, you keep your stupid ass working until they fucking get there, or you send for your boss. Rather than do that, she just fucking sat there and wouldn’t let anyone go. So if anyone knows a girl named Kendra that works at Six Flags, tell her I think that she is a stupid fucking cunt.

Anyway, on to more pleasant subjects:

This was Stephanie and Anna’s third time on the ride. Chris and I waited at the end for them to ride. This was about the time that the line started backing up all of a sudden (they didn’t have enough help there) so it took about 30-40 minutes for them to finally get through. Got this as they came out of the tunnel just before the last waterfall.

All in all it was a pretty nice day, even with my anal bitching. Neither Stephanie nor myself have much patience for stupid and slow fucking people, but that is more our problem than theirs, other than the fact that they make it so. When I PAY for service, I expect GOOD service, especially when I am going to be dropping $200-300 in a day. We are thinking about taking the kids to Disney World this October, so maybe things will be better there. It’s been about 23 years since I went to Disney, so I have no idea what things are like now.

Taking the kids to Six Flags this morning, at least the two oldest. Ruth is going to church with her babysitter and will hang out there until this evening. It was interesting looking for tickets. Gate admission is something like $44. Online they are $35. You can get $15 off gate admission with coke cans, or go to publix and pay $25. Needless to say, I did my grocery shopping at Publix last night. Three adult tickets for $75 ain’t bad considering.
Of course Chris is pouting because he couldn’t find any friends that could go today, so he wants to stay home, says he won’t have fun, blah, blah. I hate it. He’s getting ready now. I remember how difficult it was being 16 (actually I went through most of my fucked up moodiness prior to turning 16, by then I was gone from home most of the time) but that doesn’t mean that he can exclude himself from family activities. Will post some pics later.

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.

Drowning

Originally uploaded by rmiles.

Bad pic. it’s from my cell. someone has drowned, someone else is missing. saw the ambulance when i got back from supper.