Goodbye Sunshine State...

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 5th 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.