Travel Trauma

Why can't it ever be smooth? After our disasterous flight fiascos to and from Las Vegas in December, I thought we were due some good kharma. Apparently not.

Coming back from the Caymans... Ok, first of all you're leaving the Caymans, which is traumatic enough. But then to have to wake up at 4:45 a.m. to catch an early flight and then enduring a 5 hour layover in Miami - now that's just cruel. But it didn't stop there. Oh no. About half an hour before we were scheduled to board our plane, Miami decides to give us a show with lightning and thunder and buckets of rain. Thanks but that added on an additional 2.5 hours to our layover - torture! And to make matters worse, the AA people kept taunting us with promises and then pushing back the ETA of our plane at the last minute. So fine. We're off and back to Houston, where my wonderful friend Lillian picked us up from the airport and took us to a fab little restaurant in Montrose. We are rejuvenated. We are young and fresh again. Hurrah. We're off to Austin.

Nope. Dead car battery. Luckily Lillian has the uber-deluxe AAA membership so after our attempts at jumping the car fail, she calls a tow truck to come to the rescue. An hour and a half later, rescue comes our way. He jumped the car, but we needed gas so we ask him to follow us to the gas station in case we need another jump. We do. But this time, it doesn't work. The battery is completely dead and gone to heaven. Our options, 1) tow the car to a garage where we'll get it fixed first thing in the morning or 2) get a tow all the way back to Austin (fantastic perk of the deluxe AAA membership - up to a 200 mile tow!). So we wait for yet another tow truck, this one with a flat-bed and hope that he can take us home. Mass confusion ensues. The tow truck needs to get permission to leave his district so he takes off with the car, promising to call us soon with the verdict. He finally does about a half hour later and tells us the good news. He can take us, but we'll have to all squish into his truck cab and it'll be another hour before he comes to pick us up. What time table do these people work from?

So for the second time this trip, we keep Lillian up until the wee small hours of the morning, depriving her of her precious little sleep and privacy. (Although I have to take full credit for the first time. Lillian is my very best friend from high school so we had about 12 years to catch up on.) The guy finally comes to collect us and I see why he's taken so long. He's stopped to pick up his little lady friend to make the trip with us. We somehow talk him into letting us ride in the car, which is loaded onto the flat bed, so we can try to catch some zzz's on the way. I suspect this is most probably illegal as he agrees if we promise to keep the seats reclined and our heads out of sight. Fine by us. If you've never had the pleasure of riding in a car riding on a truck, I can't say that I recommend the experience, especially if you're hoping for some rest. Its a very bumpy and noisy ride. Every time we turned, I got the sensation that the car was going to be jolted off of the bed and onto the ground below with us being crushed under it. Luckily, we made it back in one piece just in time to wake up the neighbors at 5:30 in the morning with the sounds of freeing our car back onto familiar territory. By the time we pushed the car into the garage, unloaded and said hi to the kitties, it was 6:30 a.m. Another 26 hour day of travelling.

But we're back. And I can comfort myself in the knowledge that we only have 2 weeks of work until we're off to Portugal. Let's hope that trip is nice and boring.

Guess Where We Are...

Grand Cayman with Greg's best friend Ray and his wife Emma! They're living here for the next year and a half as accountants, taking a little break from that lovely English climate.



We've already been beach bums and gotten the requisite sunburn under our belts, all of us except Emma that is. The freakishly brown English girl - how is that possible? - just became more tan. Today we're visiting the botanical gardens and souvenir shopping in a vain attempt to avoid the sun. We'll see.

Goals for the week:

1. Beach bumming as much as possible.



2. First attempt at parasailing.
3. Spot a shark.
4. Swim with the sting rays.
5. More beach bumming.

Congratulations!

To Mark and Brianna on their ENGAGEMENT!

We just heard the news while on the road to New Orleans for Karl & Terri's wedding. Mark proposed on Monday with about 3 dozen flowers. Nice, Mark, very nice...

Portugal: Sorted!

We're all booked for Portugal! Flights, car, hotels, and all that essential stuff have been finalized. Big smooches to Pantos for letting us exploit his Spanish skills in booking our few last hotel rooms.

Now I just need to learn some Portugese basics... This BBC site is great for getting the feel of things. Also, they speak French at at least one of our hotels - I'm a bit rusty but think we can probably manage.

Click on the map below to go to my customized Google Map of our trip!

Too Much Shoe For You

Chris S just sent me a picture on myspace of the most amazing pair of stilettos I've ever seen.


That inspired me to look up more crazy foot gear. Check it out...

Impressive, no?

The Lucky 8

Never heard of it? Its a sinful dessert at PF Chang's, consisting of:

"Eight crispy, chocolate creme filled sticks
served with a warm caramel and peanut butter dipping sauce
and bits of toffee brittle. Dip, roll and enjoy!"

Dangerous, ladies, very dangerous...

Why Do I Love Andrew Bird?

...because words like 'mitosis' and 'chemical reaction' and 'electrons' pop up regularly in his songs. :)

Oh, and because his music has a unique, quirky sound that appeals to me.

KGSR is playing his songs in anticipation of his ACL appearance. Can't wait!

Confessions of an '80s TV Junky

Bonus points to whoever can identify this show:

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Its the TV miniseries 'V'!

I was 6 years old when this show aired, but it definitely left an impression. For the longest time I thought the images in my head of humanoid aliens peeling off their faces to reveal green, slimy lizards were just remnants of some really freaky dream. Then I was somehow talking about it with friends who excitedly shouted Yeah! That's V! Apparently it left a lasting impression on almost everyone in my age bracket, even those who never saw it in the first place. In England, the whole series aired as a marathon session while 9-year-old Greg was on vacation in Greece with his parents. He returned to find all his mates obsessed with it, and he was "absolutely gutted" that he had missed it. (Yeah, the poor baby... He was frollicking on the beaches in Greece instead of home watching television. Cry me a river.)

So I netflixed it, and we watched it this week-end. Even crammed full of painful cliches and cheesy dialogue of all '80s television, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. There's something very nostalgic about seeing 25-year-old special effects - the stretched out jaw of the alien bombshell devouring a live guinea pig whole. Classic! And how is it that thousands of little laser beam bullets never seem to hit our hero Marc Singer's spaceship? Another highlight, the stereotypically horny and blindly ignorant teenagers. I kept wanting to slap the idiot child Rachel, who ruins everything for everyone because she just wants to party with her friends and make out with hot alien heart throbs. And then there was the reluctant heroine, a blond PhD biochemist, whose path to med school is interrupted by the Visitors' relentless persecution of scientists, saying lines like "I'd like to get my hands on their DNA". Beautiful.

So despite the sometimes cringe-worthy scenes and 3.5 hours of Greg constantly interupting the show to point out the blatantly obvious parallels to Hitler's pre-war Germany, I'm now obligated to netflix V: The Final Battle and V: The Series. Should be fun, though possibly a bit painful.

The Young Riders, Beauty and the Beast, 21 Jump Street, The A-Team, and MacGyver - those are next on my tour of '80s TV flashbacks. But I already have 379 movies in my queue so it may take a while...