Summer Update

It's been a long time since I blogged. So much has happened since my day in the airports on July 12 that it almost seems too much to recount. Rather than attempt a post for each day, I'll just make a "digest post" of the major happenings.

Monday, July 14 - Ichetucknee Springs

We packed a picnic lunch and drove to the north end of the river. At the midpoint, we ate lunch (BLTs) and then Elena and Brendan left (Brendan had an appointment). The rest of us continued on down the river. Overall, we got a little too much sun, but the water felt great and it was a fun day.



Thursday, July 17 - Drive to NC

We stopped in Valdosta and got our annual family picture taken at Portrait Innovations. Then we made it to Macon for lunch. We were attempting to eat at an old fashioned lunch counter place we read about in a book called Roadfood, but it was closed. We settled for "White Lightning BBQ." Tasty.


Made it to my parents' house in Canton around 8 and had a late dinner with my parents and Lynn.


Sunday, July 20 - My Birthday

Dad, Lynn, Alex, and I went shopping for birthday stuff. At the farmer's market, I bought a box of beefsteak tomatoes and a basket of fresh peaches. Man, I miss fresh tomatoes that are actually red on the inside.


I wanted chicken wings for my birthday dinner. Lynn and Evan came over, as well as Beth, Gabe, and Aunt Anne. We had some other stuff, but the wings were the star of the show (for me). My dad has a deep fryer, so I was able to make them the best way they can be made (although not the healthiest...but chicken wings aren't supposed to be health food). They were borderline perfect.

Cake and ice cream completed the birthday celebration.



Monday, July 21 - A Date with my Wife

Sofia went to Dollywood with Mary and Sara. Bonnie took Alex and Bella for the day, so Cristina and I were free for the afternoon. We went to Amazing Savings (a little grocery store that has a lot of discounted, organic grocery items) and then went to the movie theater that Evan works at (he's a manager at Beaucatcher Cinemas). We were in between shows, so after a tour of the projection booth for old time's sake, we watched the last half of Wanted. Then we watched Get Smart. Even though I had seen it already, I thought Cristina would enjoy. Evan's theater is a relatively small one, so there weren't many choices. We enjoyed the movie.

Tuesday, July 22 - Looking Glass Falls

We met the Beaudets at Looking Glass Falls near Brevard. We played around in and near the water (too cold for my liking). Alex went in all the way and swam to the falls with Brian and Forest. We had lunch at a little picnic site and then explored another little creek that had a high rock ledge for jumping into the water. Alex made a few jumps before we loaded up and moved on. We were going to go to Sliding Rock, but it was closed due to lightning in the area. We settled for an hour at a place called "Cradle of Forestry," which was kind of like a museum. The Beaudets followed us back to Canton where we made a big bowl of California Tuna Toss for dinner.

The Beaudets

Wednesday, July 23 - Guitar Hero

After breakfast, we played Guitar Hero on the Wii. It was more fun than I epected. I even got Cristina to play it. Here she's playing "Barricuda."

Bella, the Cereal-head

Thursday, July 24 - Health Adventure

That afternoon, we met Tina Beaudet and her kids at "The Health Adventure," a science museum exploring the human body. They had a traveling exhibit about how toys work. I particularly liked seeing what the inside of an etch-a-sketch looked like. They also had a jack-in-the-box with a video camera inside, so you could see in close-up detail what was going on when you cranked the little crank.

After Health Adventure, we checked out a gem and mineral museum next door. We only had an hour before closing, so it was a quick pass through.

Friday, July 25 - My Nephew's Baby

Drove down to Landrum, South Carolina to visit with Andy and Jessica. Andy is my sister Bonnie's oldest son. Andy and Jessica just had their second baby a week ago, the day after we arrived in North Carolina. He's a cutie.

Bella and Lola

Andy, Jessica, Lola, and Staten

After our visit, we went to Bonnie and John's house for dinner.

Bonnie and John (photo by Bella)

Saturday, July 26 - Final Potluck Get-Together

Roll call: Wayne, Cristina, Sofia, Alex, Bella, my mom and dad, Mary, Jimmy, Patrick, Sara, Carmel, Aunt Anne, Beth, Gabe, Lynn, Hunter, and Chase. Food was plentiful and tasty. After breakfast, Alex found a bird on the back porch. It was alive, but was not moving. We thought it had maybe gotten too wet (it had rained all morning) so we put it in an old bird cage and kept an eye on it. Eventually it became more active, so we let it go. It flew off into the trees. Nice.

Heading back to Florida

After 5 days of Reader/Writer Workshop training, I am typing this from the gate at Sky Harbor Airport, waiting to board a plane for Orlando. It's been a decent week, although a lonely one without the kids and Cristina.

Like my departure from Orlando 6 days ago, I had to be at the airport at 5 am, but at least I got a little sleep. It helps to only be 5 minutes from the airport. That two hour drive from Gainesville to Orlando is a killer for an early flight...

I did, however, stay up too late. I hate leaving for a trip when the house isn't at least basically clean (no dirty dishes, no dirty clothes, trash cans emptied). You wouldn't think chores that simple would keep me up late, and they wouldn't have if I hadn't put off doing them until Friday evening. I got it all done, but before I knew it, it was 1:30 in the morning. So I got about 3 hours of sleep. Enough to probably allow me to sleep on the plane, but not so little that I'll feel crappy all day.

I'm taking an online PowerPoint class at the local community college. That is, it's a class that teaches you the finer points of using PowerPoint, which I use on a daily basis as a teacher. I'm almost done with the class, but I have to finish my final project. I'm making a PowerPoint presentation of John F. Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis speech. We had a choice. It was that, or MLK's "I Have a Dream" (great speech, but a little too over-exposed), or the Declaration of Independence (too long and wordy). It's been kind of fun making the PowerPoint for the JFK speech. Maybe when I'm done, I could post a link to it or something.

I was surprised that the Wendy's here in the airport serves breakfast. I didn't know Wendy's served breakfast. Although, I must admit, I'm a little out of touch with fast food menus. Thankfully. I should probably get something before I board. I did bring some lunch (leftover chicken parmesan with rotini pasta that I made a couple of nights ago). But the thought of eating that for breakfast is kind of revolting. Actually, I'll be doing good to eat it cold for lunch. But maybe sheer hunger will overcome the cold-food aspect.

We're probably boarding in 1o minutes, so I'll close for now. I realize I didn't discuss much of my week of bachelorhood, but it wasn't very interesting. I went to work, I ran errands, I worked out (had to do 2 hours a day to finish the fitness class). I guess the highlight of the week from a bachelor perspective is that Peter and I finally pulled off the double-feature. We went to see Hancock and then immediately saw Wanted. They were both fun, but I got a little sleepy during Wanted, and that probably tainted my overall vibe for the movie.

I tried the chicken biscuit. Decent.

I think this was the first time I had flown out of the newly-renovated terminal 4. It's very pretty.

On the plane, one of the flight attendants looked like Alex's preschool teacher from a few years ago. The flight from Phoenix to Albuquerque was luxuriously empty...I had a whole row of 3 seats to myself. I sat in the middle and spread out, snoozing during takeoff, then working on my PowerPoint during the flight. It's only about 45 minutes to Albuquerque, though, so I didn't get much done. When we landed, they said the flight from Albuquerque to Orlando would be full. Bummer. My comfort was to be short-lived. As the plane loaded up, I scooted over to the window seat (Southwest doesn't assign seats) and tried to doze. Then I heard the magic words over the PA.

"Attention ladies and gentlemen. We have oversold this flight, so we need one person--" before she could even finish the statement, my hand shot up. She saw me and said "Okay! We have a volunteer. The man in the Florida hat." I followed her to the gate and after some keyboard-clacking and paperwork, I had a new flight, a travel voucher for $344, and a voucher for lunch. It was a no-brainer. Unless I have an important appointment, I always volunteer to get bumped. The Southwest people were so grateful that I volunteered. I'm not used to that. I didn't think the airlines ever had a hard time finding volunteers.

My new flight leaves at 1:30 and it was now 9:00. 4 hours to kill. Not a problem. I have my laptop, a comfortable area to plug in, free wi-fi...I can update my blog, check my email, work on my PowerPoint. My new flight arrives in Orlando at 7:20. I knew Cristina would already be on the road. I called her cell and told her the new plan and she said they would just go to the Orlando Science Center without me instead of with me. That works.

My aunt and uncle live about 20 minutes from this airport, so I should call them. I'm only hesitant to arrange a get-together because I'm tempted to use this block of time to work and maybe catch a little nap.

I sent a few emails, and got a decent little chunk of my PowerPoint done. It must be interesting on some level, because I caught the guy next to me looking at my screen while I played what I had so far. But then again, airport boredom can focus your attention on all kinds of things.

I started to get a little hungry, so I walked around to check out the choices. My lunch voucher could be used for anything in the airport. The voucher was for $8, and while I could always use my own money to supplement the voucher, I wanted to try to use the voucher only. Coffee sounded really appealing. A cup of plain, old coffee was around 2 bucks. And of course all the coffee places had yummy-looking pastries, which ran 2-4 bucks each. And then if I went with a "fancy" coffee (frou-frou coffee, as I call it somewhat pejoratively) that would be closer to $4. I could probably count the number of frou-frou coffees I've bought on one hand, but something sweet and dessert-y, like a cafe mocha, sounded good. I was trying to find some combination of legitimate lunch and coffee and or pastry...within the $8 range. I was about to give up when it hit me: my cold chicken parmesan pasta that I packed! I could eat that as my legitimate lunch and then be free to squander the entire $8 voucher on a frou-frou coffee and pastry. I found a comfortable lounge to eat in and got most of the cold dish eaten. Good enough. Then I found a coffee place and made my selection. Grande cafe mocha with whipped cream and a big walnut brownie that was heavy enough to make a nice doorstop. Total cost: $7.78.

As I reacquainted myself with what a cafe mocha tastes like, I realized that it was tasty in a dessert kind of way, but I wished I could taste more espresso in it. It pretty much tasted like hot chocolate. I wanted more of a chocolate-flavored coffee. I would have even settled for coffee-flavored hot chocolate. But of well. You win some, you lose some.

The doorstop brownie I packed away for later. The extreme sugar and chocolate of the mocha in combination with the brownie would be too much (although I have a sister and a wife who would disagree). Perhaps I'll need the brownie during the flight. Or perhaps I'll save it for Cristina. Score some brownie points. Literally.

Too bad I don't have a camera, or I could post some pics of my airport adventures. One of these days I'll have a phone with a camera. My cell phone is so old, you have to plug it into a phone jack. Okay, that's an exaggeration. But it does not have a camera.

My plane arrived in Orlando a little early...7 pm eastern time. I called Cristina and they were in the middle of eating, so while I waited for them, I grabbed a bite at Chick-fil-a. Through the wonders of airport wi-fi and time on my hands, I was able to update this post, which has grown quite long.

Cristina and family will be here any minute, so I think I'm finally done with this post for the day. In 2 hours I'll be back in Gainesville.

Flight to Phoenix

Saturday, the 5th, we did a bunch of thrift store shopping. Or I should say Cristina, Jarue, and Sofia did a lot of thrift store shopping. Since I'm flying back to Phoenix on Sunday, it was the perfect chance to take stuff back on a plane instead of having to haul it in the van to NC and then back to Phoenix. And I'm all for not loading up the van any more than it already is.

Some old family friends, Millie and Martha, came to dinner. It was nice to see them. After dinner, the kids did some more sparklers and those little things you throw to make popping noises. After the two "M's" left, we got the kids to bed and Cristina and Jarue started packing. I tried to get a little sleep, since I would have to leave for the airport at 3 am, but I had drank too much caffeine at dinner, so I was wired.

I got to the airport a little after 5 am. The flight was uneventful. I slept a little, but it wasn't very solid sleep. Once I got home, I spent the rest of the day relaxing. I didn't want to sleep all day because then I wouldn't sleep enough at night, so I watched a couple of movies and made myself some dinner.

I went to bed around 8 and slept for nearly 10 hours.

Errands and Fireworks in Gainesville

We all slept late and then made a big egg and bacon breakfast. After a leisurely morning, we split up. Jarue, Cristina, and Sofia went thrift store shopping and I took the two younger kids on some errands. We picked up something from Walgreen’s, then hit Wal-Mart for a few items. At Save-a-lot, we bought a watermelon, a cantaloupe, and some zucchini. Then we went to Publix. It seems I always see someone I know at Publix, usually a former student either working or shopping there. Sure enough, as soon as we walked in a guy in line waved to me. I recognized him as a former student, but couldn’t remember his name. I had had him in TV 1 either my last year or second to last year at GHS, which was 5 or 6 years ago. Let’s see, I’ve had roughly 500 students since then. So I think it’s excusable that I didn’t remember his name. After the kids and I checked our weight on the Publix scale, we circled around and I approached the student. “I’m getting to be an old man and I’ve forgotten your name” I said apologetically. “I’m Derrick Ross,” he said proudly. I could tell he was happy that I remembered him to some degree. He definitely remembered me and was very polite and humble. We exchanged a few pleasantries and then we got to our shopping.

While we shopped, I found someone else I knew: my grad school teacher/advisor Dr. Wright. He retired from UF a few years ago, and recently (about 4 months ago) I tracked down his email address and reconnected with him via email for the first time in about 10 years. So it was an amazing coincidence that I would run into him at Publix. We chatted for a while. He had never seen the two kids I was with. We were pregnant with Sofia when I started grad school and she was born 3 months before I finished. Dr. Wright’s wife was dying of cancer at the time, and we went to a dinner party at his house towards the tail-end of the program. We took a picture of Dr. Wright holding the infant Sofia with Mrs. Wright looking admiringly on. We gave him a copy of the picture and he said he cherished it because it was one of the last pictures of his wife and she looked so happy. So he’ll always remember Sofia from that picture. He asked me if Alex had been the one in the picture and I mentioned that he wasn’t born until 4 years later. Time does fly. Dr. Wright has recently remarried and he seems happy and healthy. I’m glad. He’s a very nice man and I enjoyed my time with him at UF.

We headed home and unloaded our booty. At Wal-Mart I bought Alex a Gator basketball and Bella a little Gator cheerleader doll. While the kids played I cut Jarue’s grass (she just got her lawnmower out of the shop). Then we got back in the van and headed to Westside Park. Alex said he wanted something like pizza for dinner, and I kind of had a hankering for chicken wings. While the kids played at the park I called in an order to Gumby’s pizza. We picked it up and headed home.

After dinner, we all loaded up and went to Flavet Field for the annual Fanfare and Fireworks show. Flavet Field is the field at the UF bandshell, right near the dorm that Burt and I lived in during our first year at UF. There was live music while everyone waited for the sun to go down. While we waited, the kids played and we even ran into an own friend, Leiba Gowan, and her family. Leiba took some great photos of us when we were pregnant with Alex, and then later when Alex was about 2. In fact, 2 of her pictures are framed and mounted over our bed.

A Gainesville Sun photographer took a picture of me playing Alex like a guitar. It appeared on their online edition a couple of days later. You can click the screen image to go to the webpage:

The fireworks started at 9:40. Bella was tired and grumpy but she calmed down during the fireworks. It was a bit of a walk back to our parked van, but we made it home, had some ice cream, got showered, and went to bed.

Finally Florida

The final day of driving takes us from Gulfport, Mississippi to Gainesville, Florida...450 miles. We hope to be there by dinnertime.

When we arrived at the Days Inn in Gulfport Tuesday night, there happened to be a Krispy Kreme about 50 yards away. Even though the “Hot Doughnuts Now” sign was on, it was getting close to bedtime, so we decided to get some the next morning.

Gulfport has a Navy Seabee museum, and Cristina’s grandfather was a Navy Seabee. Seabees are the Navy’s construction battalion (C.B... Seabee…get it?). Basically, they’re in charge of building stuff during a war, whether it is barracks, or runways, or whatever is needed. Cristina’s grandfather, Alden Rogers, was stationed in various parts of the South Pacific during World War II. He died in 2002, but a few years before he died, he donated some items to the Navy Seabee museum in Gulfport. So we wanted to swing by the museum before we got back on the road.

Bella woke me up around 7, so I took my shower and got dressed while the others slept. Bella and I drove down to the Krispy Kreme, but unfortunately they were just starting to make fresh doughnuts. I didn’t want to buy cold doughnuts, so I bought a coffee and let Bella pick one doughnut (she picked one with sprinkles). We sat down so she could eat her doughnut. I asked her if I could have one little nibble and she picked off a sprinkle and gave it to me!

We filled up the gas tank before returning to the hotel. $3.83/gallon. Cheapest so far. Never thought I’d be “happy” to see gas for $3.83. Back at the hotel, the others were still sleeping, but we roused them and started packing up. We had done a good job so far of eating oatmeal, grits, and yogurt/granola each morning, so we let ourselves junk it up for our last breakfast on the road. We went down to the free hotel breakfast, which was muffins, doughnuts, bagels , and OJ. We had a little bit, but I think we were all holding out for the Krispy Kremes which were coming soon.

We got two dozen glazed and headed to the museum, which opened at 10. Because the museum is on base, we had to get passes, which took a little bit of time, but finally we arrived at the museum. However, the museum is not really a museum anymore. When Hurricane Katrina hit, the museum was damaged and the items sent to a base in California. They’re building a new museum there which will open next year. But this place still had a few display cases of Seabee memorabilia, and a gift shop. We chatted with the lady in the gift shop for a while. We talked to a soldier who was headed to the base in California. He offered to look for the items Alden donated and call us. The base where the new museum is being built is about an hour north of LA. Maybe we can make it out there before we leave Arizona for good.

Finally on the road, the drive was an easy one. We hit one short patch of very heavy rain in Alabama, but it didn’t last long enough to delay us too much. To save time, we ate turkey and cheese sandwiches in the car for lunch.

We finally got into Gainesville around 8:15.

The other LA

Today we're driving 473 miles from Columbus, Texas to Gulfport, Mississippi. This is our longest day of driving, but at least we go through 3 different states.