Is This Thing On?

Yes! I'm back, had a lot of extraneous activity for a bit, there, but I need to write some stuff down before I completely forget about it. So, let me talk about our trip to Florida over the MLK week-end. Some of us (but not me) get that Monday off, so we decided we would go and visit my fiance's grandmother in Daytona Beach. He hadn't seen her in roughly twenty years, which is a long story, but we figured it was about time. Since we are about eight hours away by car, we decided to drive.

Sightings from the road:

There is a Welcome Center in South Carolina that is smack dab in the MIDDLE of the state. There is NO WAY that the Welcome Center is welcoming anyone who hasn't been in the state for at least a couple of hours. My thought was they are welcoming all the incoming paratroopers, or the crash-landing aliens.

Speaking of South Carolina, I finally laid eyes on South of the Border. There are signs for this thing all the way into North Carolina along I-95, but I had never actually seen this monstrosity of tourism. The worst part is that we didn't have time to stop. I want to visit the monstrosity! Maybe some other time. I hear they have ashtrays with pictures of Elvis on the bottom that even the non-smokers can't resist buying.

So, we made it to "Florida," or so they claim. It was between 30 and 40 degrees almost the entire time we were there, including the day we spent walking around outside in St. Augustine. Probably the most humorous part of this is that the Floridians apologized for the weather. Then the day we left (naturally) it was in the 70s. I know this, because everyone we met told us. "It's nice today!" "It's in the 70s! Too bad it's windy." I have never heard people talk about the weather this much. Something in the water, maybe.

We had a good time with granny. She had cancer in her throat some time ago, so doesn't speak above a whisper, and eats through a tube. All the same, she seems to have boundless energy and practically leapt around her home, cooking us so much food I thought I was going to go into food coma every time we ate. The problem with having someone cook for you that can't eat is that there is absolutely no tolerance for leftovers. She's a good cook, however, and everything was really delicious. We played penny-ante poker, and while we had our lucky moments, I believe she would have cleaned us out if we had stayed longer.