Touch of Class

We took another trip up north again in November.  One thing a little different this time was we hauled a 65 inch TV in our van for one of our friends.  They were down in Florida for a few days checking out their place after the hurricane and decided to do some shopping…..for a TV they wanted in Minnesota!  Hey buddy, maybe you should do your BIG shopping for Minnesota items in Minnesota, especially when you are flying back and you can’t carry them on the plane LOL.  But they did call Gary first to see if would fit in the van and to see if we had enough room to drive it back to Minnesota, which we did, so they bought it and brought it over.  Gary moved a few things around and it fit nice and snug.  Gave Smokie a cuddlier place to sleep.

Smokie All Snugly

Unfortunately his litter box, which is usually directly behind the passenger seat, was shifted to the very back of the van.  Gary had put some other things where the litter box went and I had covered those items with my nice Touch of Class jacket so Smokey would have a nice soft place to sit on if he decided to sit on those items.  Such a good mom that I am but I guess it was too tricky of a walk back to the litter box because Mr. Smokeman proceeded to pee, poop AND puke on MY jacket!  Crap, Crap, Crap!  We pulled over at the first available stop.  I tried to clean off my jacket and Gary rearranged things to put Smokey’s litter box back where it always is.  Lesson learned….the hard way.  So I went online to order this little gem so hopefully it would be waiting for us when we arrived

Miracle worker

This stuff is amazing!  Just douse whatever has cat pee on it, wait for it to dry, and the smell is all gone.  I also washed it too to get the barf stain off of it.   At least the rest of the trip went smoothly for Smokey 

On our trip north and south we always pass thru an Illinois toll when we get close to our hotel in Rockford.  We always have to make sure we have change handy to pay the toll.  We were envious of the cars that could just sail right thru and not have to stop.  So, we bought our very own I-Pass!  It works very similar to the Sun Pass we have down here except instead of the toll being $1.90 for a car if you have to hand the money to the lady, it is only .90 if you use the I-Pass.  Man, it will take us forever to use up the $20 we had to put on the account to open it.

On our first pass thru using the I-pass, I took a picture

Keep your fingers crossed

just in case I had to prove we had the I-pass up there.  Yah just never know and I didn’t want a surprise bill waiting for us when we got home.

When we arrived at our final destination, we were greeted by the family dog

I’m sooo glad your back, pet me, pet me!

She was so glad we returned to give her our undivided attention.  Well, we made it to Minnesota with no incidents except a coat with disgusting cat stuff on it but the TV made it in one piece!  Delivery charge $500 

As you know, we belong to a boat club down here.  Each member is in charge of setting up a boat trip.  When your year comes up, you pick a month and then you decide on the place to go to, gather all the information for the boats and the people who are coming, make the reservations at the marina, obtain a meeting place to have our pot luck dinner, find a suitable restaurant and make reservations there, search out transportation to the restaurant if it is not in walking distance, greet each boater as they arrive, set up for the pot luck, make sure everyone is having a good time, and last but not least, make sure everyone gets off the dock when it is time to leave.  Then when you arrive home, you park your boat and break out a Honey.   So in other words, it’s a lot of fun 

The day we left the water was a little rough

Seas are a little rough

It was a tad chilly 65 ° and 16 MPH winds.  The cold weather and windy conditions weren’t going to stop the die-hard fishermen

Brrrrr, we have to wear our hoodies to go fishing

and the Sheriff has to go out no matter what   I bet they weren’t pulling anyone over today making any checks, it was just too darn cold for those Floridians.

We just kept plugging away and were the first to arrive at the marina, Pink Shell.  At the marina’s down here, they always have one or two guys to help you tie up and if you are having problems, they even tell you which way to turn your wheel.  Although Gary didn’t need any help with which way to turn the wheel, I certainly appreciated the help with the lines 

The wind was blowin pretty good and the tide was also going out so the rest of the people had an interesting docking experience.  I should have had my camera going ;).  Most of them backed in which presented a more challenging docking, but everyone made it thru with flying colors!

Later that day we had our Hors d’oeuvre on the deck right outside the ships store

I’ll have another drink 😉

Gary and I had contacted the maria manager several months in advance of this trip and the hotel was going to allow us to use a room to have our pot luck dinner.  The hotel is located right across the street from the marina, so it’s nice and close.  We had checked with the marina manager that morning and he told the room was all ready.  He took us over to show us the room and then gave us the key so we could get back in.  So after our Hors d’oeuvre we gathered everyone and all their food and all their drinks and we traipsed across the street to this room.   I proceeded to open the door to the room and huh…..those doors weren’t open when we were here before…..and the tables weren’t set up in that order either….what the heck is going on here?!  “Can I help you?” a big guys asks us.  I proceeded to tell him how we have the room reserved for the evening thru the maria manager.  He tells me he is setting up for a meeting that is happening first thing in the morning.  I tell him I knew about the meeting and we were going to put the tables back the way we found them and take out the trash.  He tells me we can’t have the room.  I tell him I reserved this room months ago thru the marina.  He tells me the marina manager has no authorization to reserve rooms in the hotel and besides that, we can’t bring our own food in here.  Oh I say, “crap” I am thinking.  Now what are we going to do?  Think quick Colleen.  You have a bunch of people here with their hands full of food and they are getting snippy with this guy.  Ok!  I remember all the meals we had on our dock at Sunnyside.  That was always fun, hopefully it will be just as much fun.  So we all trudge back to the marina.  Gary pulls out all the collapsible tables we bought along and people start putting their food on the them.

Pot Luck on the Dock

We stole some chairs from the deck by the ships store and all was good except it was still pretty windy, and kind of cold and some of them had to sit in a few boats so they didn’t freeze their patubee’s off…..so maybe not as much fun as the parties on the dock at Sunnyside but what can you do?  One day down, two to go.

I stopped at the ships store the next morning to give the manager the heads up that we got yelled at by some big goon when we tried to use the room he told us about.  The manager wasn’t there, he was called over to the hotel for a meeting with management.  Oh oh!  I told the guy, I hope he wasn’t in trouble for what happened last night.  The guy tells me “Oh No, he’s fine.  They have these meetings all the time, he’s not in trouble”.  About an hour later the manager shows up at our boat.  He got in trouble.  The hotel changed their rules several years ago and decided that people from the maria couldn’t use the room and bring in their own food, they just never told him.  So he got a butt chewing and he apologized to us left and right.  I just felt bad he got in trouble because of us. 

The next day we decided to walk down to the restaurant we were going to have dinner at (when we made the reservations they were remodeling the place so we were keeping our fingers crossed they finished on time).  We didn’t have enough food on our boat to feed all these people if the restaurant wasn’t open so we figured we better check it out ahead of time.  We decided to walk the beach (only a mile down).  We found this nice sand castle

Professional looking sand castle

I was impressed, they even had little palm trees by it.  We got to the restaurant and all was well.  They had our reservations and the place was still standing.  Good we are all set!

Some people walked to dinner, others took the Trolley.  The Trolley only took exact change so I brought along a container of quarters in case people in the group didn’t have the exact change.  Just like the scouts motto, be prepared!

Everyone seemed to  have a nice dinner that night and started walking home along the beach

Beautiful Sunset

Some of us got side tracked by the call of the bars at Time Square on Fort Myers Beach

Bars and music

So we had to stop and have a few.  By the time we left the bar it was REALLY dark on the beach.  I had to use the flashlight on my phone to see where we were so we didn’t accidentally walk past our hotel.  Those dang kids that dig those holes in the beach!  Good way to get yourself killed walking down a total black beach, slightly inebriated and fall in one.  Parents!  Please be courteous to those drunks weaving down the beach at night and fill in your kids holes.  Luckily, none of us fell in a hole.  End of day two.

The final day when we awoke,  it was still pretty windy.  Everyone got off with the help of the marina manager and other people pushing and holding the boats away from the dock.  We were the last ones to leave.  Whew!  That’s over with…….until we have to do it again sometime.  Maybe because our trip was so bad we won’t have to do it again….we can keep our fingers crossed.  Right now though, I think it’s time for that Honey!

Cheers!

Last time I posted, it was a most important subject of farting.  I am here to report that the consensus is……..AYE wins it.  As one person put it, some of us are at the age where we can’t help but fart in public so we might as well be comfortable ;).

P.S.  I bet you thought we died or something, didn’t ya?

So I was at my gym today, I know, unbelievable huh?  Anyway, I had finished my workout and was in the shower when I bent over to wash my feet and a little fart escaped my butt, brrrrrrttttt.  Of course I did what I always do when I hear a fart, a little smile comes to my face and I let out a little chuckle.   Then I started thinking about farts.  Why is farting looked down upon.  Why can’t you fart in public?  Why when you are a little kid your parents always told you, “If you need to do that, go in the bathroom!”  Why if you accidentally fart, you are forced to say “Excuse me!” and look embarrassed?   It is just a natural function of your body.  Let’s face it, farting isn’t much different from sneezing.  Both can sneak up on you and make a loud noise.  Some people are more apt at stifling a sneeze, they make little tiny noises, “achoo”, and others just can’t control them selves and they sneeze to loud they scare the bageebees out of everyone.   And have you noticed when you sneeze people say things like “God Bless You” or “Gesundheit”.  So when I accidentally fart why can’t people say “Oh, I bet you feel so much better now don’t you?”

Isn’t it better to just let the fart out rather than holding it in and giving yourself gas pains?  How many of you had to fart but held it in and then when you were finally able to leave, you got into your car and let one rip saying “Man!  Now I feel better!  I’ve been holding that in all night!”.  I mean, wouldn’t we all feel a lot better if we could just let them out no matter were we were?  You don’t have to lift your leg and do the fist pump every time you fart.  I mean, if your out in public and you’re in the middle of a conversation, you’d could just pass a silent, but hopefully not deadly, one.  You’d  not miss a beat in the conversation and plus you’d feel so much better.  Of course there is always the chance it may be one of those stinky farts.  I have to agree, those can be pretty bad.  I’m sure everyone finds them as offensive as do I.  There is the option that if there is an animal near by, you can always blame the smell on them (providing that the fart was a silent but deadly one).  “Spike!  Bad dog!”  If you are prone to those kind of farts I do hear that they have some kind of underwear with charcoal in them, you could do us all a favor and buy some of that underwear.  I think it would just make everyone feel so much better if we could just get rid of the bad stigma that is attached to farting.

Anyway, I’m glad I got that off my chest.  All in favor of farting in public…..say AYE!

I snarfed these pictures off the internet.  This is what hurricane damage should look like.

 a maria

 down in the keys

 Hope that guy had good insurance

 Good luck getting those off

I’m glad we didn’t come home to this.

After calling several times a day to the power company, the power was finally restored to our place on the Thursday after Irma hit.  We were lucky that the guy who weathered the storm at our condo building works for the power company.  He told us what to do to get the squeaky wheel oiled ;).  I guess it worked.

We packed up our stuff and the fur bag and headed back to Florida.  We left on Friday which means we’d be traveling on a weekend, that should be interesting.  Hopefully the traffic won’t be too bad.  We had heard that there were lots of people returning to Florida and that some places were out of gas or had no power to pump the gas.  Gary used Gas Buddy again, to see which gas stations had gas and which had power.  We didn’t have any trouble getting gas and we only had one place gouge us. Their gas was $2.99 per gallon, so we considered ourselves lucky.

We did get to enjoy a little bit of “fall” while we were up north and also when we stopped in Illinois for the night

Pretty fall leaves

On our second night’s stop in Chattanooga, TN, Smokie got a little snippy with us.

My Pizza, keep your non-furry hands away! Meow!

I think the stress of so much traveling has left him a little edgy.  Luckily I shook his treat bag and got him off the pizza box so Gary and I could have some dinner.  That cat will do anything for a treat ;).

On our 3rd day, we got up at 4 A.M. to miss any traffic in Atlanta.  We arrived to “our HOV” lane and couldn’t believe it.  Look at all that traffic.

Traffic in Atlanta

Atlanta….5:51 in the morning……on a Sunday.  Just look at all those red lights.  People!  Where are you going Sunday morning at 5:51?  Too early for mass goers.  Are you the left over bar people still trying to make it home?  Either way, much too much traffic, even for Atlanta on an early Sunday morning!  But we made it thru and kept up with the crazy speeds going thru the downtown area.

As we heading down into Florida we were surprised the traffic wasn’t that heavy.  It was actually better than when we usually come home on a Wednesday.

When we got closer to where the hurricane hit we could see some evidence of the winds.  See this billboard

Billboard

If they were still standing, this is what they looked like.  And if you look closely, you can see the standing water in the field in front of the billboard.  There was more standing water everywhere.

Down here they take the highway lights

Normal highway lights

and lower the lights closer to the ground so they don’t swing in the wind

Hurricane lights

Someone was thinking when they made those.

We hadn’t seen too much hurricane damage.  We saw more standing water in places but not as much wind damage as I’d expected.  As we made our final turn down Del Prado, still, not much damage,  A few blue tarps, a few trees down but again, nothing like we expected.  As we turned down our street we saw more large trees down, sidewalks pulled up from the roots of the fallen trees.

Timber!

When we drove down the street and stopped next the to condo buildings next to us, we could start to see some more damage

This is the tree that took the power out

It seemed more open, like you could see more things than unusual.

I didn’t know there were tennis courts behind those bushes 😉

As we drove into the parking lot we saw

Even though it fell in our parking lot, it’s not ours 🙂

Turns out the palm belongs to the neighboring condo unit so we don’t have to pay to have it chopped up.

Our little palms that broke off

Front of our condo

We continued to check the side of the building that took the hardest hit

Those stairs are a mess

Pink, Pink everywhere.

On to the back

Bad avocado for breaking our glass top

What is that in the pool? Do I spy soffits and shingles?

Needless to say Gary was heart broken about the pool.  As the days went on, the pool got greener and greener.  Gary managed to fish out all the soffits, shingles and leaves.  Finally the pool guys came.  We don’t know what he put in there but within an hour or so all the green was gone.  Magic!  We love our pool guy ;).

And what comes out unscathed by the hurricane?  Our neighbors wooden steps on the dock

Steps on dock

they didn’t move an inch.  And let’s not forget little froggy

Little Froggy

Looks like he crapped his pants a little but he is still sitting on his favorite rock with a smile on his face.

So we had some roof damage, soffit damage, insulation all over the place and a few other things but all in all, we consider ourselves very fortunate to have a place to come home to.

Thanks to those of you who said some prayers, looks like they worked :).

Sunday we crowded around the TV and watched the drama unfold.  Gary and I have a Hurricane app on our phone that shows the predicted path of the hurricane.

Holy Tamolly

The red line on the left is the predicted path of the hurricane, the circled building is our condo.  Oh, oh, doesn’t look good.  Good thing we took the cat with us.

I was getting blow by blow updates from the only guy who was left at the condo unit.

10:05 AM – “Blowing hard now, got 1/4 inch of rain on the lanai”

5:32 PM –  “Retreated to my safe room closet, lots of banging.  Just lost power.  Roof is leaking, I can hear dripping.”  I asked him if he had something to cover his head with in case the roof went.  “I have my paint ball mask and helmet”.  I didn’t hear from him until about 10:00 that night, I was getting worried.  He finally called, he made it ok, there was a lot of banging going on but he was ok and the building was still standing.  He’d check out the damages in the morning.  Whew!  I think we dodged the bullet.

The next morning at 7 A.M. he sent us these pictures 

He knows the most important thing is how the boat fared.  It is looking pretty good.  Water looks high.  Luckily that 7 to 12 foot storm surge they were predicting didn’t happen.   Whew!  The power was still out and would be out for 2 weeks, the news people reported.  Well, no mater how much I wanted to get back there to assess the damage, there was no way in heck I was going back down with no electric.  Colleen gets grumpy when she is hot and sweaty.  So we wait till the power comes back on.

We left Cape Coral at 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday.  We had heard that people were evacuating in droves and the highway 75, which is the main route on the West side of the state, was packed.  We also heard the gas stations were running out of fuel.  Gary was able to go on his gas buddy app to see which gas stations had gas, so we planned accordingly.

Of course later in the day, the cat was trying to get a comfortable spot to sleep

Should I sleep this way?

Huh, these chips don’t make a very comfy pillow

Aaaaah, just right

We finally arrived in Minnesota on Friday morning.  I had just enough time to get my nails done before we went on the Grooms Dinner cruise on a boat on Lake Minnetonka

Us on Grooms Dinner boat

It was a lot of fun cruising the river and seeing how the other half lives ;).  While we were on board, I received a “code red” alert on my phone.  It said they there was a mandatory evacuation in Zone A.  Where do you think we live?  Yup, right in zone A.  Good thing we were already evacuated.  At least we could drink away our worries at a nice dinner party :).

The next day we went to the wedding.  They had the ceremony outside

Sweating Mom and Dad

Here is mom and dad, hoping the bride doesn’t chicken out and not show up.  They would have hated getting all dressed up for nothing ;).

Beautiful Bride and Handsome Groom

The lovely couple saying “I Do”

Dancing Bride and Groom

Their first dance, aaaahhhh.

Mom Dad and little sister

And the rest of the family.  Aren’t they just cute as a button?  Notice the large beer sitting on the table.  That belongs to dad, so relived all went well and the day was almost over ;).

The wedding was great.  Good friends, toe tappin music, great food and lets not forget the  

Congrats to the Bride and Groom!

The Tuesday before the hurricane hit and a day before we left, we started scrambling to get packed, get the condo, hopefully, some what flood proof, and to help our neighbor get his boat out of the water.  The only good thing about a hurricane is you have a lot of time to prepare.  It’s not like a tornado when a siren goes off and you have 5 minutes to get yourself down in the basement or to be blown to Oz like Dorothy.

We brought in our patio furniture and put it in our living room.  The cat thought that was great fun.  Now he had a really high perch to sit on and watch the “Florida mice”.

Thanks dad!

The whole day we had the TV on looking for updates on the hurricane.  Here is the American Model’s path for the storm

American model

Here is the European Model

European model, right over us

Either way, looks like we are screwed :(.

While packing for what could be an extended stay up north, I also packed my favorite shorts and t-shirts…just in case I had nothing to come home to.  Plus I took all my underwear, cause you just never know ;).

Then I went thru our files and pulled things like, the car title, our ss cards, our passports, info on the boat, birth and death certificates, Gary’s service papers…all the things I thought I couldn’t live without and would be hard to replace.

Then we picked up anything on the floor we wanted to save.  We took all Gary’s tools that were on the floor

Gary’s Tools

and put them on the kitchen counter tops.  I went thru my pots and pans and pulled my favorites out and put them on the counter tops.  I went thru the bedrooms and we pulled up the bed spreads and piled what ever we wanted to keep on top of the beds

Favorite laundry basket 😉

Of course the cat, big help that he always is, was chillin on the couch

One Cool Kat

What’s the matter?  Why are you guys running around?  Isn’t it time for nap???

So after I finished packing the clothes and important papers, I thought, what else do I want that I can take with me now, that I would miss if I never saw it again.  I already had all my pictures and most of our important documents scanned to an external hard drive.  I did that all before we moved on the boat and just continued the practice after we bought the condo.  So what did I take?  I took my favorite coffee mug

Mug from the Minnesota Resonance

That mug is older than my kids!  I’ve had it for a really long time and I didn’t want to lose it.

Then I grabbed

Ahhhhh

Gary gave me this when we were dating!  How could I leave that behind?  Gary asked me what the heck I was I doing?  I said I am packing as if I’ll have nothing to come home to.  You should take what ever you think you’ll miss.  So what does he grab?

Snooozle

He has had this little fuzzy thing for a long time.  When you squeeze it, it makes noises.  He squeezes it almost every time he walks past it…..Snooozle!  Of course he grabbed manly things like his guns and ammo.  You never know when the zombie apocalypse could happen.

We finished up pretty late in the day and by then our neighbor got home from work and he wanted Gary to help him get his boat off his lift and onto his trailer

Neighbor’s Go Fast Boat

After they put it on his trailer, he tucked it under our car port

Boat tied tight

After we had left he did a spidy web of lines to hold it in place.

As far as Gary and I were concerned, we were as ready as we could be.  I spotted this guy just chilling waiting for the big blow though

Mr. Frog

Hopefully he’ll still be there when we get home.