USGround - Because USAir Doesn't Really Fly Anywhere

It began like any other day. Well, actually, no it didn't; except for the waking up part. That happens everyday. The rest doesn't.

The girl and I jumped into the car, met K, and rolled to el aeropuerto. The girl, however, was taking a different flight, scheduled to arrive in Las Vegas two hours prior to mine. She took off. I waited. I took off. Thus began a long and frustrating day, prior to a nice vacation and class...

When I arrived in Atlanta, I discovered that The girl, who was flying through Charlotte, had not yet gotten on her second flight. Apparently, a piece of the plane broke, and they had to try to fix it. I discovered that her flight was canceled. They had to find a different flight for all of the passengers on that flight. She ended up having to go from Charlotte to Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, my second flight was slated to leave, and so I had to get on the plane. Three hours and forty minutes later, I arrived in Las Vegas. My first act of business was to call The girl and find out what her status was. She (you guessed it!) still in Philadelphia, waiting for a way to get from there to Vegas.

While in Vegas at the airport, and on the way from the airport to the hotel, I learned many things. The USAir flight that was to take her to Las Vegas had to land prior to getting to Philadelphia to get more fuel due to thunderstorms in Philly. After the plane finally arrived, which was later than every estimate thus far.

I got to Caesar's Palace and checked in. I went to our room. She was still in Philadelphia. I arranged to get dinner with another guy there. She was still in Philadelphia. I went back to the room. She was still in Philadelphia.

Somewhere around 8:00 PM or so, they began boarding the plane, and she took off. I lapsed into a coma, being that I was tired from traveling, and awoke at 2:45 AM (Vegas time) to a knock on the door.

Thirteen hours late, we cursed USAir for not handling this fiasco very well, and went to bed.

To shorten the suspense, I spent each of the next four days at the class. The girl and I also wracked up a probably very large texting bill while I was in class. The only thing of note besides that was seeing the geeks line up at the windows to peer down on the Venus pool. Boobs represent the unattainable to many geeks, but not to all. I didn't see any female geeks looking down on the Venus pool. Are you surprised?

We did a lot of fun stuff after class, though. We went to dinner at Serendipity 3. If you're reading this, I recommend that you NEVER GO THERE! The service was so slow that we didn't have a whole lot of time to spend on the rest of the night. The food was OK, but not OK enough to spend an evening in Vegas at a restaurant. Afterward, we went to see the Bellagio fountain show, which is always spectacular, and then returned to the hotel for the evening.

Speaking of water, Las Vegas has these outdoor mist machines that are meant to cool down areas in which patrons eat. They do nothing. The water evaporates before it hits the ground, and so it generally just results in a colossal waste of water and energy, not that the rest of Vegas isn't an energy waste. I mean it's never dark, even at night!

On night two, the girl decided to plan our evening. This was awesome! The only problem is that Vegas was out to defeat us. We went to the Apple store, which is always fun, but always causes me heartache. I'll leave that for another time, though. Afterwards, we went into ghetto hotel land, AKA Imperial Palace, to see the Automobile Collections. First off, it's remarkable what the difference is in classes of people at the Imperial Palace and places like Caesar's, the Bellagio, the Flamingo, or even Treasure Island. Amazing... We learned, however, that the auto display closes at 6:00 PM, and we were late. So, no cars for me; at least not at the Imperial Palace. On the way there (from the Apple Store), I got to see the car of my dreams; the 1969 Shelby Cobra AC 427. I want one. If only we had a garage.

After the auto fiasco, we went to Margaritaville to drown our sorrows in dinner and tasty beverages. It was pretty good, and the atmosphere is fun. That's about it. Nothing exciting happened there other than dinner and people on stilts. Finally that second night, we went to the gardens at the Bellagio. That was fantastic! It's a small garden, but very pretty, and they do all sorts of interesting things with water spouts. On the way back to the hotel, we watched another Bellagio fountain show.

Night three was the big night, though. That night, we went to the Cirque Du Soleil show Mystère. That was a lot of fun, and we had the absolute best seats in the theater; fourth row, just above the stage performers' eye level. People flew. People danced. People performed unbelievable strength and acrobatic feats. There was a weird baby...

After the show, we ate dinner at Kahunaville, which was surprisingly good. I didn't expect much from it, but I had a fantastic Black and Bleu Burger and a tasty margarita. I'd recommend going to Treasure Island and eating there. They also have a bar component in which the bartenders do their own shows, which are pretty spectacular. That's just a good place in general. I recommend it.

After class the final day, we went to the Sin City Brewing Company, which is inside the Flamingo. The beer was OK. The bartenders were nice. The glasses they sell there are cool. Finally, we headed back to the airport to catch the red-eye back home, and that was that. Karina picked us up from the airport, just as she had dropped us off, and we went home and lapsed into comas.

THE END
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Bermuda: Day 2

Bike Day! The group minus the Girl, Karina and Amanda went biking. We met the same outfit who would ultimately be the dive people. The bike tour ended up being our own personal bike tour, too, which was awesome.

Bermudians really like their Oleanders, by the way. It came up on every tour. You know, they're poisonous.

Bermudians also like their roofs. They are functional, which is cool. I wonder what it could do for other societies to implement something similar.

The bike tour also stopped at a fort. At one point the tour guides issued a challenge to climb and really rough hill and touch the wall of the fort. After all of us attempted, they informed us that there was actually a mote pit around the fort, and that touching the wall would have been difficult. What they didn't know was that they have a climber in their midst, and I would have done so anyway just to do it. I didn't make it to the top, however. I didn't win the case of beer or the rum. Bummer, because the ship just didn't have enough of either...

At the conclusion of the bike tour, we swam in cold water where Forrest did his beached whale impression by hydroplaning face first into water that was maybe two feet deep. Laughter ensued.

When we returned to the ship, we had lunch and then attempted to once again get me to my climbing destination. Bermuda transportation thwarted me once again, damn it. We instead took a bus to the Gibbs Hill light house, walked the one hundred eighty odd steps to the top, and peered around for awhile. While there, we realized we weren't far from Horseshoe Bay.

We decided to walk there, my climbing gear in tow. A seemingly endless walk later, we arrived at one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. Even better, there were rocks in the water! I got to scramble/climb on some of the rocks in Horseshoe Bay. Awesome! Thanks to everybody who tried so hard to get me to climb!

At one point, I decided to kamikaze off a rock into the water and swim back into land. What I failed to realize was that the floor of the ocean surf was only about two feet deep. I'm lucky I didn't break something. I came back in, we saw some man-of-wars, and we trekked out to the taxi.

We had decided to return via taxi because of the walk to Horseshoe Bay. We fortunately found two other cruisers on Horseshoe Bay, and we all split a tax back to the ship. Best money spent ever. Whew!

That night was one of the best nights there. We went to a little place in King's Wharf called the Frog and Onion Pub. We had some awesome hanging out and some beer and various other mixed drinks and some good food and whatnot. I dug it.

Exhausted, we returned to the ship. I'm pretty sure we had super chocolate rush once back on the ship, and then lapsed into comas in preparation for the next day...

Bermuda: Day 1, Cinco De Mayo

We showed up to Bermuda, wide-eyed and ready to roll. All of us went on a tour to the aquarium and some caves. The first thing we learned was that our transportation to this excursion wasn't included; strike 984 for Norwegian. However, we bested our apocalyptic Norwegian taunters and made it to our excursion.

Despite that, it was a generally enjoyable experience. But why? Why did our tour guide have to stop at a cemetary and talk about death and cremation and whatnot? The Girl and I just sat there crying.

From there, we made it to the aquarium, where we saw a puffer fish, turtles, other fish, an eel, and animals. Did I mention animals? After that, we went to the caves, which were also cool. Pretty and interesting.

The sights were pretty. I got some of (what I believe to be) the most perfectly colored digital photos I've ever taken.

We had lunch at a place that, if judged by appearances, would have been terrible. We went up, though, had an awesome lunch, and enjoyed one another's company.

After the excursion, my family and friends reminded me just how lucky I am. Everybody really tried to get me to my impromptu excursion. I really wanted to go climbing (deep water soloing) in Bermuda. I've never had the opportunity to free climb over crystal clear water. However, I did not realize just how formidable an opponent the public transportation system would be. The bus system, the only way to get where I wanted to go (or so I thought), had left a few minutes ago, thwarting our collective attempts.

Defeated, we went for a nice long walk, saw a really cool park where I took out my climbing frustrations on the nearest cool tree, and then saw a fort. I was done at that point, and so I sat while the others explored the fort. I felt happy just petting the putty tat, a cat much like Creepy the Dinner Cat.

Note at this point that it was Cinco De Mayo. A restaurant on the ship, Salsa, was giving a single complimentary margarita. Oh, yeah, and crappy service with not the greatest food. Strike #1547 for Norwegian.

Yet, despite Norwegian's attempts to make us despair, we were still having loads of fun. Going on vacation with friends is awesome. And that was only day one in Bermuda! There were still two to come...

The Bittersweet Geriatric Cruise of 2009

It was a wild ride. So much happened. New York happened. Rain happened. Wild seas happened. Bad food happened. Fun with friends and family happened. Lots of alcohol happened (I think).

First, New York...

The Girl and I jumped in a car with Amanda and drove to New York City on Friday. It's been a long time since I've been there. Highlights include the girl eating Octopus, us walking 18 miles in two days, us meeting the woman we suspect George hires regularly to act as his wife, and karaoke. Yes, karaoke. I sang and I wasn't drunk. Well, if you can call that singing...

Next, the cruise...

I could probably write a book about spending a week on a ship, and in Bermuda, with our friends. There were good times. There were bad times. There were great times. There were exceptional times. There was good food. There was bad food. There was just so much alcohol...

I started out in a tizzy. The Girl and I took a train from George's back down to where the car was parked. I was already anxious about getting us there on time, and about the car, and about the trip, and about being on the ship, and about whether or not everybody would have a good time together, that when we tried to meet up with Amanda, our conversations got mixed up and I got short. Not in the literal sense where I lost height, but I just couldn't figure out what was so complicated. Well, it all worked out, and her friend Jon was awesome for storing our luggage, and we got it, and we drove.

It took about ten minutes to drive from the Village to the point where we could see the dock. It took another 15-20 to make the left-hand turn to go to the parking lot. It was rainy and crappy, and things were not looking up. We finally made it to the line, I started calming down, and we met Forrest. So, the four of us, while waiting in line, looked outside to the ship and saw the other half of our crew standing on the ship waving at us! We were all here! Things were starting to turn for the better.

After getting on the ship, we hung out and just sat for awhile. After that trip, who wouldn't?

The first two days we spent at sea. The comedian sucked the first night. At one point, I had the only good meal we would eat on the ship, which was sushi. Go figure. We hung out, played Fluxx, dressed up for formal night, and generally had a good time. Also spent some time in the hot tub, which was relaxing, but ultimately suffered (for hopefully only me) from me being in a less than happy mood. Ultimately, it was OK, though, and I enjoyed it.

I definitely ate too much the first few days. I spent those first two or three days learning what the capacity for my stomach was, and subsequently exceeding that limit by about 100x. Maalox! Awesomeness for the stomach! That should be its new slogan.

Stay tuned for part 2...

Update: The Girl points out that the title of this post is not yet appropriate. The cruise, the freestyle cruise, was full of really really old people. Really really really old people. Oh, yeah, and us, and maybe a couple others, but mostly really really old people. Typically, women in bathing suits are supposed to make men feel warm and fuzzy inside. You know the cruise is for old people when this fundamental man principle does not hold.

OLD PEOPLE!

Vermont, Part 3: The Tiredness

It's amazing. Apparently, the height of the mountain plays a significant part in determining which body parts feel like they're going to fall off the next day. Both arms and legs are major contenders. However, the winner, shockingly, was my head. All mental jokes aside, it's felt like it was going to explode out through my eyes all day. Not a good feeling. Much more sleep in the car on the way home later, I felt better.

On the way back from Vermont, the major event was that we missed the EMS and snowboarding shop in Paramus, NY, and just kept thinking we'd see them. We didn't realize they were in Paramus, so we kept hoping. Hope turned to despair when we reached I-95 in New Jersey, though. At that point, we just felt like we needed to eat or we'd expire from hunger.

All-in-all, though, the trip back was OK (except for the headache), and the ride was not bad. Definitely the way to go if you plan to go up to New England and don't want to take the three hours going through New York during rush hour. That's just a major nightmare.

Anyway, we're back, and I got to snowboard for one day in powder up to depths of two feet. It was exciting, and now I know where there's a condo I can rent to get a bunch of boarders on vacation.

:-) Out...

Spawn of Satan

The girl and I got to hang out with Irene tonight. It was fun. Irene made a tasty meal of risotto and salad, and for dessert... tiramisu. I love tiramisu. Then we hung out and talked all night. Irene's a ball of fun. She has some interesting qualities too. Somehow, you can get her to laugh to the point that she does all of laugh, hiccup, and burp simultaneously. It's one of the funniest things I've ever heard.

The other bit of humor involved her stomach. It seemed to speak all night to the point that we figure she's going to spawn the anti-christ sometime in the near future. "Mwarwarmwarwar..." All night long. It's pretty impressive. Then, when the hellspawn comes, her completely perfectly circular toilet will probably eat it and send it back to hell.

It's been an interesting night...

El Crucero

The idea for this post began with a simple phrase; "half-hazardly speaking Spanish." Guess who said it. If you said the girl, then you guessed correctly. Good for you. You get a cookie. There are probably plenty left on the cruise ship. I decided when I heard this that I needed to keep track of the important events of our honeymoon cruise. So I did. And here is the remarkably long stream of consciousness that began on a tired Saturday evening...

It all began at 0315 (you might want to go get a beverage and some comfortable clothes). We woke up. It was early. We went over to Amanda's since she so kindly agreed to wake up at that ungodly hour and take our sorry butts to the airport. And she did. We made it to the airport, to the terminal, to the plane, to Miami, and on the ship with relatively little in the way of events, except for the entire bag of Reece's Pieces and M&Ms that we ate throughout the day. This, as we were to discover, was just the beginning of a long string of days that began with us eating way to much unhealthy food, continued with eating more unhealthy food, and ending with an unhealthy dinner followed by postre (dessert). Now, you may be asking yourselves (or me), "why is there Spanish intermingled in this post?" Consider this an intriguing question that will fuel your desire to read on.

We made it onto the ship. We could eventually check into our stateroom, which was very nice and had a balcony that we spent a deal of time on. We discovered that day that the ship was amazing. It had a rock climbing wall, a wonderfully funky thing called a Flowrider, an ice skating rink (yeah, ice), a basketball court, miniature golf, many bars and restaurants, a Ben and Jerry's, a pizza place, a coffee place, more pools than you could shake a bikini at, a Johnny Rockets, an Italian Restaurant, a Steak House, a casino, and a bunch more that we probably didn't even get to see. Some of these will play prominent parts of our wonderful honeymoon. But, onto the fun. On that fateful check-in day, I did get to climb on the rock wall. They actually had some good climbs, too. The staff working on that deck (deck 13, the sports deck) were all unbelievably nice, friendly people. An inordinate number of them were from South Africa, too. In fact, a statistically significant portion of the people I ran into that worked on the ship were from South Africa. Couldn't say why, though.

Onward to dinner. This requires its own separate explanation, as it is a motivating factor for one of the major motifs of our honeymoon. Upon boarding the ship, it is immediately clear that a very large (metric) number of people speak Spanish as a first (and sometimes only) language. Prior to dinner, I stated in a humorous manner, "What do you want to bet we get put at a table with people who speak only Spanish?" Sure enough, our dinner mates were Cristina (the mom), and Anna (the daughter). I was apparently half correct, since Cristina spoke primarily Spanish with a sprinkling of English. Anna spoke both Spanish and English. It became apparent in the ensuing days that I was fortunate to have had Senor Black for Spanish in high school. You heard right, high school. As in more than 10 years ago high school. As in, "has had one summer of Spanish practice since high school" high school. Knowing that dinner would have been horrible if none of us spoke to one another, I broke the ice. The ice gave way to nightly language lessons, as well as discussions of translating between Spanish and English, the subtleties of Mexico Spanish versus Spain Spanish, and why learning English as a second language is enough to make one want to kill Webster and all of his dastardly cohorts who provided any input to the English language. We also discussed the final couple that should have occupied the empty spaces at our table. It got to the point that we thought the might be Chinese and jet-lagged. It was a fun dinner. I had had a glass of wine, too. From this point on, the missing couple was known as "Los Chinos," even though we discovered on the first formal night that they were from Delaware and New Jersey, and neither had a speck of Asian blood.

On another interesting note, Anna is a communications major with a specialty in TV. When the girl learned this, she jokingly said, "So you're going to go work for Telemundo when you graduate?" Anna replied that she wants to work for MTV. We proceeded to make fun of her lightly for this for the rest of the trip.

Later, when our eyelids were collapsing in upon themselves due to having awoken (despertado) at 0315, Jessie busts out the wonderful "half-hazardly speaking Spanish." This may have been the second night, though. Remember, every night is a late night on a cruise ship.

The following day, day 2, was a day at sea. Day 2 becomes labeled "the day Greg discovered the Flowrider." It's one of the days I realize that I'm a lucky guy for having married a woman who likes it when her man shows off for her, or does something that looks frightfully painful and makes her laugh. Both of these end up being true statements. The Flowrider session of choice was stand-up surfing on something about the size of a skateboard deck. This masterfully elegant pressurized water cannon provides for loads of interesting tricks as well as melodramatic losses of balance resulting in the unified cringing of the audience and cries of "ooh" in stereo from these same onlookers.

Day 2 held many other things in store as well. It was the day we found the ice skating rink (deck 3). It was also the first formal dinner evening. I like it when the girl gets to dress up. She always looks so pretty. It was also the day that I became known as "the guy who says peachy" to our stateroom attendant. Every day from then on, he set me up with, "Everything is?" to which I was required to answer "peachy" before we could continue on with our day. Also, day 2, I discovered that we had the good fortune of being on the ship during Euro 2008 (soccer), and that it was almost always on when we wanted to return to our stateroom for some R&R.

On day 3, we looked around the ship some more. I am certain in all of this looking that we never found all pieces of the ship. At one point, though, we wandered into a part of the ship that we most certainly shouldn't have been. You can tell immediately when you're in the wrong place when you see no decorations anywhere. The floors and walls are plain, undecorated, neutrally-colored surfaces with no features whatsoever. Then you get quizzical looks from the staff who is supposed to be there. Then said staff member realizes that nobody else is going to police the guests out of the area. The fortunate step was in passing through a door that had no "Crew Only" markings. In most cases, the doors are labeled that way if guests can't enter. This particular door was not.

Later on day 3, we arrived in San Juan. We saw Fort San Cristobel and the Bacardi factory. The fort was very nice, and very picturesque, and it's always fun to see random iguanas meandering about. We don't get a lot of that in Maryland. Meaning absolutely zero. At Bacardi, we got free drinks. Jessie got two, as did I. Which means literally that Jessie got one and I got three. The rest of the tour of Bacardi was surprisingly mellow. A fun fact about the tour was that we started in a pavilion, at which point we were shuttled to a tram car. The tram car never left site of the pavilion in its various wanderings to other buildings during the tour. What's the point, you ask? Well, so did we. The answer, I am afraid, is not forthcoming. The tour was fun, though. Bacardi probably has the best corporate logo in the world.

Day 4; SCUBA day. We spent day 4 (from about breakfast to 1700) in Philipsburg, St. Maarten. We got to go SCUBA diving, and had a wonderul French guide named Ann Charlotte. She was nice. I also discovered that sea urchins can hurt, and they don't need much force to do so. The girl discovered that sunken boats can also hurt, and leave fun little red scratches on legs that hit them. She says the boat attacked her. I never saw it move. :-)

Following SCUBA, we walked around Philipsburg. Five people offered to braid my hair, which would have been an interesting feat had I let them try it due to the tangled mess that resulted from SCUBA. I also got one offer for drugs. It must be the hair. I look like a hippie. What's an 8-ball, anyway? In any case, I obviously didn't accept.

Enter day 5, a day at sea. I spent the morning on Flowrider. Awesome device. I want one in my back yard. I also entered a bouldering competition, and took the gold. I had only my self as a competitor, though, as nobody else entered. Que lastima! Day 5 was also the second formal night. The girl and I got dressed up again. More formal pictures on the ship. Fantastico! Day 5, I believe, was also the day we learned from Tramaine, our head mesera (server), about great white shark attacks off the coast of South Africa. She says they grow to 15 meters. We never convinced her to come with us the next day to Labadee. She doesn't like the water. Can you guess why?

Day 6, Labadee, Haiti. This gem of a location is owned by Royal Caribbean. It's fenced off from the rest of Haiti. It looks like a little beach resort. It's picturesque. The girl and I got to go on a zipline, which was the longest over-water zipline in the world. I got a video of that ride. Of course, I also had to be curious about the stopping mechanism used by the zipline.

See, the rider is harnessed to a contraption that contains two pulleys in it. The wheels of the pulleys ride a thick steel cable. When the rider reaches the end, the contraption hits a heavy block to bleed off speed. If it can't stop the rider in a short enough distance, death is immediate. That's why nobody ever complains about a bad ride! :-) Just kidding. The block then hits a very long spring, which compresses and stops the block, the contraption, and the rider.

Later on day 6, we went snorkeling. It was pretty, but very crowded in the area. We got lots of underwater pictures, I hope. We shall see. There may be a lot of pictures of water damaged 35 mm film. The line to get off the island was also ridiculous. It took quite a while. I'd rather not think about that part. Oh, we also saw Tortuga, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame.

Back aboard, I was (of course) back on Flowrider. Day 6 (or maybe it was 5) becomes the day I'm known to little kids as, "the guy who's good at surfing." Told to me on the elevator.

Day 7 began, as they all did, on the Flowrider Day 7 also contained the speed climbing competition. It was enjoyable, but also reinforced my belief that I am not a speed climber. We returned way too late to our staterooms, packed, and got ready to get off the ship the next day.

And now for something completely different...

This cruise requires some analysis. We had more fun on it than on our first cruise, but we couldn't tell why. So, the girl and I thought about it a while. First off, the ship itself. Fantastic! Amazingly large. The sports deck (deck 13) was a remarkable thing for people of my kind. I surfed. I climbed. We played mini golf. It was great. Also, deck 5 contained the shops, Ben and Jerry's, the pizza place, the coffee place, and the wine bar. It looked like a neat little street contained within a ship. Deck 3 contained the ice skating rink. Also fun for us.

Second, the food. The food was not the highest quality. Carnival had better food. Also, the food for the buffets was the same ever day, and they had "staple" dishes at dinner every day. So, there was a chicken, beef, and fish option at dinner every day, and they never changed. Each day they had specialty dishes, though. I was not, however, chomping at the bit to kidnap and torture staff members or chefs for the recipes.

Third, the open decks. The pool area could be crowded, but there were many places to sit and relax, and the options for these places varied greatly. There was every combination of shady, not shady, loud, and not loud you could imagine. So, you can always find a place to be that's right for you if you look hard enough.

Fourth, the shows. These varied greatly. The guest entertainers were very good. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? That's what they do for a living. The Royal Caribbean-produced shows were VERY mixed. The ice show was great. The musical production really blew. I mean, can lyrics really get anymore dull? The cruise review show was very good. The acrobat show was pretty good, and ended up being like a toned down version of Cirque du Soleil.

Fifth, the money. It doesn't really make sense, sometimes, thinking about what you have to pay for on a ship. It makes sense that you'd have to pay for alcohol and soda. It makes sense that all of the shows are free. It was nice that all of the sports deck was free. It's nice that the gym was free. It does not make sense that a couples' massage costs over $250. It does not make sense that you have to pay $3.95 to enter Johnny Rockets, but can then eat all the food you want, but then have to pay for milkshakes. The money thing was hit or miss, and could stand to be a little more consistent.

Tipping at the end was also a little less painful on Carnival than Royal Caribbean. Ouch...

Oh, and the staff. The Royal Caribbean staff was superior to the Carnival staff. I got to know many of them, and they were all very nice.

Overall, given the exact same ship, the Carnival cruise would probably be better. This Royal Caribbean cruise had more interesting activities for us, though. Perhaps we'll have to look at Carnival again sometime when they build a ship with a sports deck to compete with Royal Caribbean. Perhaps they already have one now, but we just don't know it.

Anyway, I hope you're still awake, or that you've had your several glasses of wine and are nice and relaxed by now. Hasta luego!
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Pasadena Drug Dealers

So on the way home from the legitimate Pasadena drug dealers (aka pharmacy), we saw pretty much the entire Pasadena police force huddled around a car right outside of our community. There was a shady-looking dude handcuffed, standing against the hood of his car. There were the police watching him. There was the police dog, searching for what I imagine were the drugs this guy probably dumped out in the woods before they could stop him. Good stuff. Nice show. Props to the cops.

Excitement abounds! We're leaving for our honeymoon cruise on Saturday. This is the first vacation we have gotten to take since we got married. I'm ten kinds of excited, though the girl doesn't think so because I haven't written the excitement all over my face yet because it doesn't quite feel real. I think it might on Saturday morning somewhere around 4 AM, which is coincidentally about when we leave so that Amanda can take us to the airport, which is awesome of her. Thanks Amanda! You're awesome!