Here we go again . . .

It appears that I’m posting on a monthly basis now, not daily when I started this almost 11 years ago. At that time, I had energy. I had an unlimited supply of words that were eager to escape from my brain. Now that I’m older I find that the words don’t come as easily and there are fewer to choose from. You would think that at my advanced age conjuring up coherent sentences would be less complex considering the depleted supply of words available. But, it snot.

Many interesting things have happened in the past month but I’m not going to bore you with a chronological narration to share everything mainly because I can’t remember stuff like I used to. That was the advantage of posting every day – it was fresh news. Easy to remember stuff.

The main event for us, me and my Bride, is our upcoming trip to cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Seattle through the Panama Canal to celebrate our 55th anniversary. I’m pretty sure it’s our 55th. If it’s not I suspect I’m in for a world of hurt. Thankfully, I think the thrill of making that trip will ease the pain of being wrong. If I’m wrong, but I’m not.

I’m sure.

Another exciting bit of news is the progress on Diane’s “new” home. It’s actually in the city limits of St. Helens so we can legally get a library card for nothing. Couldn’t do that previously because our current home is in the county.

The “new” home is Diane’s Mom’s old home with a few updates. To accommodate the updates we totally emptied the house and had a crew install LVP flooring everywhere. No more carpeting except where Diane wants to roll out a throw rug or four. She loves those things. She also had me rip out all the counter tops in the kitchen and both bathrooms so another crew could install the quartz replacements she ordered.

Since that’s all done now the only thing remaining is to paint selected walls/rooms then populate the house with only the things she want to keep, or the new things she wants to buy. That’s what’s going to make it new for her. She’s taking it slow with her decisions, savoring the process and I totally understand.

Another significant event is the addition to our family of two new Grand Sons. Yup. Our daughter, Jennifer, and her first husband, Daniel, after raising three children to adulthood, went out and adopted 3-year-old Jasper and Almost-2-year-old Siah. Everyone is very happy. Even the older siblings. Everyone is extremely happy. These are the ‘guys’ with their new older brother, Jeran, and happy ‘new’ dad, Daniel …

The most recent event is our adventure with airplanes, rental cars, and a cruise ship. At this precise moment in time the airplane portion is mostly complete, we’re working on the rental car piece at this time, and are currently anticipating the cruise ship.

First, the airplane … it involved an early morning ride from PDX to SEA yesterday where we boarded our second flight of the day at 0815 bound for FLL. Our trip started at 0400 and ended at about 1400. At that time we immediately shifted into Rental Car mode.

Getting to FLL was child’s play compared to the interminable wait to obtain a vehicle for getting to Weston, Florida, our final stop of the day. This effort took 2 full hours, standing in a Disneyland-like line in a huge room that didn’t have even one chair to sit in. Diane stood in the line while I did the hard part of guarding the suitcases. This is close to the end of my guard duty. Diane is standing just to the right of the big pole. It took her about 1.5 hours to get that far. Wore me out.

“Ha!” you probably said. “You should have stood in the line and let your lovely bride guard the suitcases!” To that, I retort, “I offered but she declined. At first I thought it was simply to make me look bad but finally decided that she was just tired of sitting after that 5+ hour flight. Since she had the window seat she wasn’t allowed to get up and wander around the plane at all. That’s an old airplane rule that I read somewhere … “Passenger in window seats are not allowed to leave their seat at any time during the flight and will be the last passengers allowed to leave the plane after landing no matter what condition their bladder and/or bowels are in.” That’s on page 17 of the passenger’s rule book. This is true. Honest.

Finally, she got to the counter and obtained our transportation. It was interesting the way we got the vehicle. Once in the garage area, an agent pointed us to the Small SUV row of vehicles and told us to take the one we wanted. After sitting in a few of them, Diane chose a Nissan Rogue Sport. It’s gray. She really likes it.

As we checked out with the gate guard, he noted the vehicle we had, noted our point of origin, then said, “St. Helens, huh? My old rival high school,” he said. “I went to Parkrose!”

Interesting. Here we are, on the opposite of the USA and one of the first people we encounter went to Parkrose High School. Go figure. It really is a small world we inhabit.

By now you surely figured out that FLL is Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Our destination for the night was 1775 Bonaventure Blvd, Weston, Floria. That’s about 20 miles west of FLL and why we needed a vehicle.

Diane drove to our condo like she’d done it a hundred times before. We hurked the overweight suitcases to our abode, went out for some food at a local Publix market, cooked some of it for dinner, then went to bed.

We landed 24 hours ago and already had a meal and a long night of rest.

Now we must go out and see what’s going on in FLL.

Here’s the first place we went …

This was a necessary stop to obtain enough food to survive until Sunday when we board the cruise ship Eurodam and head south through the Bermuda Triangle…

If you haven’t visited the Fort Lauderdale area, I had a photo of Google Maps Diane sent me but I can’t find it. You’ll have to look it up yourself. Oh, wait! That link is for the place we’re staying. This link is for the water photos. Personally, I’m stunned by the amount of water just laying around in the area. It’s everywhere. Check out Weston, Florida on Google Maps.

Lastly is a photo I took yesterday, on our way from the airport to our condo. My impression is that this one cloud, in all of this huge sky, chose to block the sun from shining on us. Another possibility is that this one cloud chose to keep the sun from shining in our eyes and blinding us.