As you may have noticed in my previous posts, Florida has not been the most ideal vacation spot this week. All over the news for the last several days they have reported flooding up and down the coasts of Florida, reporting that they have received more rain from this "system" than they have with any of their previous hurricanes. Lucky us, we got to witness it. Just to recap the rest of the week:
Wednesday. I dropped Mike off at the convention center and encountered my first rude Floridian. Actually it was a cluster of 3; they were employees of the convention center who were just standing on the sidewalk outside of the convention center. Cabs lined the right side of the
drop off strip, so I slowed down in order to drop Mike off and the 1 female rudely motioned for me to keep moving. As I pulled up to the 3 of them a guy rudely said pull off there, and pointed. I looked where he pointed and observed a cab pulling out, in my direction. So I said to them "Can I wait til he moves?". I don't think I was rude about it, but apparently I was, because as I rolled up my window to avoid rain and continue driving I heard the woman say "They've all been rude today" at which point I stopped the car, put it in reverse and began to roll down my window. Fortunately Mike was still in the car and urged me to continue on, which I did. As I left the parking lot it was all I could do not to drive back through and give them an
ear full, but instead I went to get an iced coffee -
Yummy!! I got back to the hotel, drank my coffee, watched Divine Secrets of the
YaYa Sisterhood, something else and fell asleep in the bed sitting up, cause the sun was still no where to be seen. At about 11:00 I woke up to the sound of the vacuum in the room next door and rolled over to see the sun, making an appearance. I don't think I've ever gotten out of bed, brushed my teeth and changed so quickly. I gathered anything I thought I might need from the pool and headed down. GLORIOUS!!!!! The sun was bright and hot - everything I love about laying by the pool. I greased myself down in tanning oil - no SPF (I know, I know) and
laid there for about an hour. Unfortunately the sun was short lived, as it began to downpour at about 12:10. As everyone scrambled to pickup their stuff and head for shelter I exchanged conversations with a couple from Spokane, Washington - who told me that it always rains where they live and that Wednesday was their last day in Florida....it had been sunny in Washington the whole time they had been in
Florida - now that sucks. But we all made the best of the situation and headed to the covered outdoor bar. I opened up my book (wow, I know) and ordered fish tacos for lunch and a
girly frozen beverage. About an hour later it was too windy and still
down pouring to sit outside so I headed back up to our room, changed into workout clothes, headed to the gym for 45 minutes, then headed back and did a little cleaning up. I was supposed to pick Mike up at 5:30, but at 5:00 it was raining so hard outside that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, so I begged him to catch a cab back to the hotel, which he kindly did. And as soon as he got back, it stopped raining hard and went to a sprinkle...go figure. We were so excited for sprinkle rain that we both instantly thought - Lets go to the pool, but nope, the pool was closed because it had been thundering and lightning, we were told it possibly would be opened back up in an hour. Okay, whatever, we've waited this long...let's have dinner - AMAZING DINNER... at Miller's Ale House - cheap food, cheap but quality drinks, what more could you want? (SUN, sorry...) After gorging ourselves we decided it probably wouldn't be kind to bare our bulges at the pool, so we headed back to our hotel, where I fell asleep, and Mike got
Haagen Dazs...again.
Thursday. Checkout day. Because Mike's conference was only a half day this day he decided to drive himself to and from, which left me to pack up the bags and checkout of the hotel by 11:00am. That sucked, I tried to call down for a late check out since I flight wasn't until 8:52pm, but nope, the Florida Parent Educators Association was checking in (home
schoolers) and they needed our room. So, I showered, packed, checked our bags with the front desk and was down at the bar by 11:00 for chips/salsa and a blue moon. I knew Mike would be arriving at around 12:30, so I ordered another blue moon, and another, and another...so by the time Mike arrived, I was insanely happy that the sun was starting to show and a little intoxicated. Amazingly, Brooke (our friendly outdoor bartender and more importantly Bar Manager) was able to score us a late checkout and gave me a new set of keys. Awesome - we ordered a pizza, scarfed it down, changed into our swimsuits and headed to the pool, which was freezing from all the rain. Oh, but don't worry about intoxicated Sarah drowning herself, because after about 5 minutes of sun, it started to rain again. So, we packed up our stuff, closed our tab and headed back up to our room.
We left the resort at about 6pm and headed out to find some dinner before our flight at 8:52, SONIC showed up on our GPS and so we headed there, I love me a Strawberry Limeade!!! We arrived at the airport at 7:05 and headed to
Airtran to
check in. Mike swiped his card through the reader and a message popped up "You are too late to check in for your flight, please see an attendant" -
haha, we're here an hour and a half early, must be a computer problem. So the attendant came over and took our Id's, then casually looked up and said "I don't have you on this flight, could it be under any other names?"
WHAT? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. She proceeded to look at the computer and find that
expedia had changed our flight at 11:27am that morning to the 7:26pm flight. Neither Mike, nor I had
received a phone call, email ....nothing to alert us that our flight had changed. So I kindly asked, can we make that flight, "Nope". The
Airtran rep was kind and explained our options, with the best option being taking the next available flight the next day, Friday, at 1:50pm. Wonderful, I know...we had just checked out of our beautiful resort room, returned our rental car and were dying to leave Florida (THE SUNSHINE STATE my A$$). So we agreed on the 1:50 flight, got our boarding passes, a number to a hotel and headed towards the waiting area, depressed and beaten down. Mike patiently called several hotels until he found one with a room and a shuttle to and from the airport, and within 20 minutes we were on our way to the
Crowne Plaza. Upon checking in, all I could ask is if they had a pool and a bar....just at the off chance the sun might come out the next morning. The rest of the night was spent watching So You Think You Can Dance and hanging out.
Friday. We woke up and headed downstairs for breakfast, both of us deciding on the buffet. It was okay. We checked out and caught the shuttle to the airport, as soon as we boarded the shuttle it started to rain again. Great. When we got to the airport the rain stopped but it still looked gloomy. Whatever, so we had over an hour to kill so we headed to the airport Outback and ordered lunch and drinks at the bar. Our coconut shrimp and
bloomin onion were delicious washed down with my club soda. We watched
tv and chatted eager to leave, we headed to our gate at 1:15, it was packed, looked like a full flight. We boarded the plane and were seated, the flight attendants went through their "
schpeel" and we were cleared to proceed to the runway, at which point, you guessed it, it starts raining. Raining so hard the plane was rocking and shaking. The pilot came over the speaker to say "Looks like a patch is right over us, we're gonna hang out for about 15 minutes then we're 5
th in line to takeoff". After 15 minutes he came back over to say "They've closed down the runways to incoming and outgoing traffic, I'll update you as soon as I know more". Nearly 2 hours later our flight finally takes off and we arrived back in DC at 5:36pm.
I want to end this post by saying I know I am lucky to have taken a vacation at all, with the economy as crappy as it is. I know many of you were working last week while I laid in bed and watched HBO, so I am thankful, and well rested, just sad that I couldn't spend my vacation doing what I love the most - hanging out in/by the pool getting tan.
Thank you Mikey for taking me along on your trip, I hope my complaining wasn't too
unbearable.
I'm not sure who I pissed off (God, was it you?) but after returning from the torrential rain vacation the first piece of mail I opened was a summons for jury duty. I am scheduled to be a "Petit" juror, meaning I'm on call the week of June 1 - June 5. We'll see how that goes.
This morning Mike and I woke up at 3:45am, showered and headed out to our taxi to get to Reagan airport. We boarded our flight to Atlanta at 6:00am, landed and transferred to our flight at Orlando. We arrived in Orlando at 10:20am then stood in line for our rental car for 30 minutes. When we got to the counter, picked up our Hyundai Sonata and headed to our hotel. As we're driving down the road, we see this humongous building - it was our resort - Rosen Shingle Creek. We pulled up to the front door and un
loaded. Once inside, we were still amazed - beautiful doesn't even begin to describe it. Our room on the 4th floor has amazing views of the 3 pools and parts of the golf course. But enough of that - Universal Studios closed at 6pm so we headed back to the car for our 10 minute drive to the park. Once there we were amazed at how NOT crowded it was. We rode everything we wanted, with the longest line being a 10 minute wait. The Hulk, Spiderman, Dueling Dr
agons, Log Flume, and more... It was amazing! At about 5:45pm our bodies told us to sit and refuel...so we headed to Margaritaville for dinner and drinks. The day was perfect, and everything I could have asked for. Thank you Mike for having a conference in Orlando and booking an amazing hotel, you're the best!!! (and thanks MPR for paying).
This morning Mike and I drove up to Baltimore so we could visit for the day with his parents and sister. I haven't seen his parents since February, so I was looking forward to catching up, and seeing how Mike's dad's shoulder was doing (surgery - April 09). We pulled up to Lauren's at around 11:30, followed by his parents arrival at noon. Lauren was kind enough to prepare lunch for us all - 7 layer quesadillas, pasta salad, deli sandwiches, chips, dips and more. We were very impressed! For dessert, Patty had made some delicious chocolate chip cookie dough brownies, also incredibly delicious. After our food had settled a bit we headed out to the Inner Harbour. The sun was out, there was a nice breeze, it was a great day. We did a little shoppi
ng - courtesy of Mike's parents I have a new pair of sandals - YAY & Thanks!!! We were entertained at Power Plant Live by an extremely loud band, watched a unicyclist show, had some huge beers then ended the evening with a delicious dinner at Houlihan's. We would have loved to stay longer, but had to head home to drop Emma off with the Gardner's - who are kind enough to watch our baby while we're in Florida. Can't wait to see Mike, Patty and Lauren in June for the Watson wedding!!!
ices staff who normally serve food in the cafeteria get a break from work too, I coordinate getting volunteers to serve the food. This year we needed 40 volunteers to serve from 11:30am-2pm, 10 people per half hour shift. They served hamburgers, veggie burgers, hot dogs, pulled barbecue chicken, baked beans, potato salad, pasta salad, cole slaw, watermelon and cookies....tons of food! Most volunteers are VP's, Directors and upper level Managers, so it's great to see them in hair nets and aprons, everyone enjoys seeing them do some real work (just kidding). We also had snow cone machines, karaoke, meet and greets with Mystics players and more!!! Enjoy the pictures!
