lewis and clark had a journal. you, beth-annie, have a diary.

Friday, December 31, 2004
"YOU, sir, are the most closed-minded ferris wheel operator I have EVER encountered!"
The show from whence the above quote cometh is to be shown syndicationally on the Turner Broadcasting System, commencing the seventeenth of January in the year two thousand and five at eleven o'clock in the morning, central standard time. That, kind sir, is among, like, the bestest news I've heard, like, all week, dude! I mean, SHUT UP! That is so TOTALLY tubular, man!
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Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Itty bitties.
The Iowa State football team won their bowl game last night against Miami of Ohio in what was actually a reasonably exciting game.  Hooray!

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There are no new episodes of Gilmore Girls until January 25.  What depressment.

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Wow.  Thought I had more itty bitty things to say than that.  Ah, well, at least I didn't lie with the plural.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2004
You know, I expect more from Kenmore.
We bought a brand new Sears Kenmore vacuum not that long ago -- recently enough that I've only had to empty the container o' crap once. As I was using it yesterday in preparing our house for our upcoming company, it decided to poop out on me. Specifically, the rotating brush part on the bottom broke so it wouldn't turn, which consequently lead to a belt snapping because IT couldn't turn either and got frictioned to death, which also made a horrid burning rubber smell that, sad to say, isn't even completely gone from our house yet. Blech. But the worst part of this? Sears can only fix our vacuum under warranty if we hand it over to them for about two weeks, which hardly does any good since I need a working vacuum before people come in three days. We could fix it ourselves if they have the part in stock, but the part would cost two-thirds what we paid for the whole vacuum itself when it broke on us after only a few months. No way. With the broken part removed, the attachments part of the vacuum still functions, but the idea of vacuuming almost my whole house with just the attachments is not a happy one. I so did not need this right now.
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Monday, December 20, 2004
DAY SIX: Mon. Nov. 29.

Cruisicism.
After we checked out of our hotel and dropped our luggage at our car, we walked the couple blocks to the beach, just to look around, see the funky lifeguard towers, and experience a bit of the less-crazy daytime Miami Beach.  It was a beautiful, war, sunny day -- exactly the kind of day you expect from Miami.

One of the reasons we stayed in South Beach was because of its proximity to the Port of Miami, so we only had a short drive from there.  Our cruise documents told us our boarding time was 2pm, but we'd done our homework beforehand (isn't the internet a wonderful thing?) and knew that you could in fact board much earlier than that and eat lunch on board while you were waiting for your cabin to be ready.  So we got there about noon, and the whole checking in process was amazingly smooth and quick.  All of a sudden we were on a ship and we didn't know how we had gotten there.  We did a bit of what I imagine is the typical first-time cruisers gawking and made our way up to the buffet for lunch.  Many many choices, which usually leads to taking a little of most everything and stuffing yourself silley.  I can see why everyone always says you gain weight on a cruise.

Our room was ready at 1pm, and lo and behold our luggage was already waiting outside our door (I heard some people didn't get theirs until almost dinnertime).  We poked around in there, read some of the boatload of literature left us (ahem, by "literature," of course, I don't mean Dickens and Hemingway, but the daily "Cruise Compass" newsletter, containing all the day's happenings on board, and many other various infos about cruising, Royal Caribbean, rules and policies on board, the ports of call, excursions, etc.), and just relaxed while watching a little of Spidey 2 on our closed-circuit television (what, like we were gonna watch "What I Like About You?").

By 3:15 we were already (gasp!) participating in an on-board activity.  Relax, it was only a tour of the ship designed for first-time cruisers (that is, the tour was, not the ship.  Designed for first-time cruisers, I mean).  It ended up being helpful for finding our way around later -- I mean, the ship is pretty big, holding 2500 passengers and all -- and was a good introduction to the whole thing.  We walked around on our own a bit after that before heading back to our room to prepare for that mandatory activity, the Muster Drill.  We didn't know what all we'd have to do for the drill, so we didn't bring our camera, but in retrospect we wished we had.  A few hundred people sitting around a lounge in bright orange life jackets was quite a sight, and one we would've loved to save for all posterity.  Oh, well.  Turns out we didn't do much besides put on our life jackets, check in at our muster station (which for us wasn't even outside by the lifeboats), and sit there until everyone else on the ship had checked in at their muster stations.

[yay, now we won't die!]

We rid ourselves of the bulky orange fashion statements (you know they have whistles attached?  That realization was one of quite a few Titanic moments I had) and went out to the promenade deck -- an outdoor walkway that goes all the way around the ship, and is apparently not a feature of a lot of cruise ships, which is a shame -- for the ship's embarkation.  We started out moving so slowly we couldn't tell exactly when we even started.  I was surprised there weren't more people out there, especially where we were at the front of the ship, but I guess some people don't care about that sort of thing -- unlike the couple next to us, who were multi-tasking by talking to their kids back home on their cell phone at the same time as they were videoing the process of setting sail, which if you ask me was kind of pointless since we were moving so slowly.

We dressed for dinner (we had chosen the early seating -- 6:00 -- because we felt 8:30 was just too long to wait to eat dinner) and made our way to our dining room.  Every couple at our table for eight showed up (yeah, that wouldn't happen again), and they all seemed to be around our age (mid-20s to  around 30, I'd say), and one couple was from Mexico and spoke very little English, which made communication a little hard.   I have a feeling that factored into their decision to not come back, and it seems to me that Royal Caribbean would have done better to seat them with people they could actually converse with rather than people their age.  I was quite impressed with our Romanian waiter, though, who seemed to speak fluent Spanish. The seas seemed to be a bit rocky that evening, with very noticeable pitching of the ship back and forth at times.  I wouldn't say it made me seasick, because I never felt on the verge of... losing anything, but I would say it made me kind of uncomfortable.  After dinner I took motion sickness tablet and after about an hour definitely felt better.  (And, luckily, the ship's movement that night proved to be the exception rather than the rule, and I didn't have to take any more of the medication until the first day we were at Universal Orlando.)

After dinner we went to the 9pm showtime (a.k.a. the one for the early dinner seating) for "The Beat Goes On," starring The Royal Caribbean Singers And Dancers.  It actually wasn't bad.  No plot or anything, just singing and dancing numbers to various songs from the '60s, '70s and '80s.  This proved to be the best of all the main nightly entertainment throughout the cruise, which was kind of a shame.  Personally, I'd much rather see a real play or musical for at least one of the nights.  THAT would be REAL entertainment.  Anyway.

We explored a bit more after that and especially spent some time outside (which would become my favorite thing to do on board), enjoying the reflection of the moonlight on the sea, guessing that those lights we saw in the distance were probably Freeport, Bahamas (they were, in fact), watching the ship move through the water, and just experiencing the surreality of it all -- we were, like, in the middle of the ocean.  Dude.  That is the freakyweirdest, most awesome thing.  I loved it (I know, big shock there).  It was also VERY windy, especially in certain areas that I guess were situated just right so they had a very wind-tunnely effect.  There was one spot on the front sort of corner of the promenade deck where the wind was so strong we could literally barely make any forward progress walking.  But, man, was it fun!

PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!
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Yes, life does go on, even in the midst of the Trip-o-logue.
What did we spend this weekend doing?  In between (or among, I suppose) exhausting Christmas shopping, exhausting Christmas Cantata rehearsal, even more exhausting Christmas Cantata performances, and even exhausting bowling (some friends of ours asked us to fill in for their absent-this-week league partners), we did a bunch of exhausting yard work.  That's right, I said yard work.  In 25-degree weather and snow.  Because what was good enough for us to leave until next year to deal with is not necessarily good enough to sell our house to someone else.  Poo on that.

The main things we needed to do were getting rid of ugly dead stuff (easy enough but still time-consuming), putting edgers in the ground between the front flower bed and the lawn, and putting down a whole lot of nice-looking cedar mulch over the dirt in the flower beds and along our driveway.  After trying myself to dig into the hard, half-frozen ground on Friday, I gave up and determined that it was impossible.  But when Josh tried on Saturday, ta da!  This is what we have men around for.  ;-)  So we got the edgers in, and after not finding any mulch at Menards this time of year, we were forced to go to Home Depot, where it thankfully did still exist.  Unfortunately, it was stored outside and was thus also partially frozen, which made much of what we bought unusable until we can get it thawed out.  But, what we could use we put down, and I have to say it all looks much better than it did.  The only thing I wish (besides that I wish we'd done it this summer/fall), is that anywhere was still selling outdoor plants so that we could have gotten a nice little evergreen bush of some sort to plant on each side of our side door.  But, NOOOOOOO, it's too cold for all that now... stinking garden stores, what do they know?  If I can still dig into the ground, I want to be able to still plant something, dagnabbit!

So, not only was it very cold work, but the nature of it basically amounted to me doing squats and toe-touches all afternoon, which meant that yesterday (and today, though to a lesser extent) my leg muscles -- ev-er-y sin-gle one of them -- were so sore that any transitition between sitting and standing caused me excruiciating pain, and pretty much any other kind of movement (or even just standing, as for the two Cantata performaces) caused me mild to moderate pain.  But, hey, our yard looks moderately beter.  Everything's a trade-off.
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Thursday, December 16, 2004
DAY FIVE: Sun. Nov. 28.

Eclecticism.
Today had a little of everything: seaQuest stuff, breathtaking natural phenomena, disc golf, traffic jams, and Miami Beach nightlife (I use that term loosely). We drove from our hotel in St. Petersburg to Lakeland (between Tampa and Orlando), home of a few additional filming locations for seaQuest, including the pretty-cool-in-and-of-itself Frank-Lloyd-Wright-designed Annie Pfeiffer Chapel on the Florida Southern College campus. As we walked around campus (which was much more meshed with the surrounding community than Eckerd College had been, thankfully), we walked past an orange tree with actual oranges growing on it (I wanted one, but I resisted the urge). And we learned that Lakeland is very aptly named -- there are few streets that go straight through the town, because there are all these little lakes scattered all over that get in the way (actually, we noticed the same thing in other Florida cities, like St. Petersburg and Orlando). It makes it somewhat confusing and frustrating to try to get around -- especially when you don't have a decent map (for some reason AAA doesn't make maps of Lakeland, go figure) -- but also added a scenic charm to the town.

From there we drove through Orlando to Blue Spring State Park just northeast of the metro area. I don't think I've ever been to a spring before, and it was kind of like paradise. The water was so GREEN, the trees were so GREEN, everything was just GREEN. It was an absolutely perfect day for a walk through the jungle-type foliage along the river to the spring, and the only thing that would have made it better is if we had been able to see a manatee, which winter there between about November and March. I think the unseasonably warm fall kept them from needing to take refuge there yet. Manatees are one of my absolute favorite animals, and I've never seen on in person, even at an aquarium. To see one actually in nature would have been a real thrill. Oh, well.

[blue spring head, complete with a few divers]

We drove southeast to the Cape Canaveral area to disc golf in Rockledge, where we played a few holes with a very talkative fellow for whom it was his home course.  He informed us that it was one of the oldest disc golf courses in Florida, and the first to be recognized by the PDGA.  Who knew?  Unfortunately we were kind of playing to beat the sunset a bit (that would become a running theme with the disc golfing on this trip), so we couldn't take the time to just enjoy ourselves as much as I wish we had.  Josh also had an interesting encounter with a palm tree that ate his discs, which you'll have to read on the photo page.  Ha.

While we still had a teensy bit of daylight left (that time after the sun's set but before it really gets dark), we crossed the inlet (or whatever it's called) to the barrier island containing Cocoa Beach and a few other towns and had a nice drive -- the island was sometimes narrow enough to see water in the distance on both sides of the car.  Here's where we saw a lot of hurricane damage, usually taking the form of roof damage (lots of tarps covering gaping holes) and knocked over or bown out signs for businesses.  Quite a few of the beachfront hotels were closed, and a lot of the businesses that were open had makeshift banners for signs or to proclaim that they were, in fact, open for business.

After getting on I-95 to go south to Miami, we hit a MAJOR traffic jam, which was bad enough that we were actually sitting still for a lot of the time.  We figured there was a major accident up ahead somewhere, based on the way in which we were moving/not moving and the fact that traffic the other direction was perfectly fine, so we hunkered down and tried to see as much of the movie Elf as we could on the mounted DVD screen in the minivan in front of us (the next exit, as luck would have it, was about eight miles away).  To this day we have no idea what caused the stoppage in traffic, because we never came upon any accident scene or anything else that could have obviously caused it.  Traffic did start moving again, but still wasn't even going the speed limit, and at times slowed down enough to make us nervous that something similar might happen again, so when the opportunity presented itself we hopped on over to the Florida Turnpike, which went to the same place and we figured would be less popular since it was a toll road.  As we got on, the ticket-giver told us to expect traffic delays (uh oh...), but thankfully none ever materialized.

[miami beach.  another one of my favorites, not that this one really had anything to do with my photo-taking ability. kudos this time go to the architect, methinks.]

We drove around Miami Beach a little bit, just looking at stuff, and then dragged our luggage four blocks from a parking garage to our hotel in South Beach (every cool place to stay has a downside), and as we hadn't managed to eat supper yet (um, it was about 11:30pm), walked past some of the restaurants near our hotel looking at the menus posted outside to see if anything struck our fancy, and ate out on the sidewalk at Zula Lounge in these huge arm chairs.  Josh wasn't really hungry, so he just got a drink while I had the scrumptious Mango Chicken, which I found out after I'd already ordered my own drink came with a free glass of wine.  Okay, sure.  So after a very tall mixed drink and half glass of wine each, by the time we walked back to our hotel after midnight, we were a bit tipsy -- more than I've ever felt before, though that's not saying a whole lot.  The scary thing, as Josh pointed out, was that we were both probably within the legal limit to drive, though we definitely felt somewhat impaired.  I think we pretty much went straight to bed after that.

seaQuest photos.
Regular photos.
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Tuesday, December 14, 2004
DAY FOUR:  Sat. Nov. 27.

Get used to seaQuest.
Sorry, but it's true.  This was a very seaQuesty day, and you have been warned.  Luckily, that also means there's not nearly as much to write about, because I have no intention of boring you with every detail of those shenanigans.  I've also conveniently created separate photo pages for SQ photos (plus captures from the show for comparison) and non-SQ photos.  Now, before we start in, please remember:  my sanity should absolutely be questioned.  I will accept nothing less.

We went to Eckerd College for our first SQ location, and after a nerve-wracking couple of seconds at the campus entrance where there was unexpectedly a guard in a booth -- who thankfully just smiled and waved at us as we drove in -- we made our visit brief as I was a little paranoid that someone would come upon us and ask us what we were doing, which, believe me, I was not prepared to answer.  Luckily the place was pretty much deserted as it was Thanksgiving weekend.

From there we drove across a few bridges to the island that is Fort De Soto Park, which would be a nice place to spend time if we had had time to spend any time there.  But we didn't.  Still a nice drive, though.  Then it was back to downtown to the St. Petersburg Coliseum, at which I paid the $4 admission to a gem and bead show so I could go in for five minutes and take pictures of what once doubled as Buddy's Smoke House.  Uh, yeah, that felt a little weird: lots of people (who knew so many people would actually pay money to go to a gem and bead show?), and not a one of them was taking pictures.  Except me.  I had that funky-catchy Buddy's music in my head the whole time, though, which was nice (sorry to those of you who won't get that inside reference).

We ate lunch at the St. Petersburg Pier (where there was also mucho SQ stuff), and actually decided to try to do the Segway tour, since it was something Josh really wanted to do and he was being such a good sport about all my seaQuest stuff.  Unfortunately, the tour was full when we checked (oh, so that's why they said you should reserve it in advance), so that was out.  Some other time.  We shopped, relaxed by the water, watched fisherpeople and birds, and walked around the beach/park right next to the pier.

We had dinner on the waterfront patio at Jackson's Bistro on Harbour Island in downtown Tampa, with a view of the city that couldn't be beat.  Mmmmm... pretty lights...

Yeah, that was pretty much it.

Enter the seaQuest-free zone.
Enter seaQuest City, if you dare.
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Decisions.  Sometimes you have to make them.
And sometimes you have to make them within a few weeks, which sounds like a long time if you're talking about what toppings to order on your pizza, but not very long if you're talking about a major, life-changing decision.  One that would require boxes, large amounts of money and property changing hands, and a complete loss of free time (and probably sanity) over the next couple months.  But... when it was all said and done, Ed would be a happier guy than he is now.  So we shall see.  We could be facing a change of Epic proportions.  Hopefully there's a nice Lutheran church in Madison with a couple of bell choir spots open.
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Monday, December 13, 2004
Fair warning...
When we started our trip we had for our digital camera a 16 MB card, a 64 MB card, and a 128 MB memory card, each one holding roughly that number of pictures at the quality at which we were taking them.  About two days into our trip we realized we were going to be in trouble if we didn't buy more memory (a lot of which was the fault of the 765 bazzillion seaQuest pictures I wanted to take).  So we found an outrageous deal on a 256 MB card, and we used every single bit of space we had, and then some (we transferred some of the less important ones onto our not-always-reliable laptop toward the end so we had more room).  Point being, that translates into around 550 photos, which is a lot to choose from to share with everyone.  I'll try to use restraint, but you may be experiencing photo overload over the next couple weeks.  If you get sick of it, let me know and I can maybe take a break from the Trip-o-Logue for a few days.  (You'll also get sick of seeing our ugly mugs, because after our two-week road trip to California etc. in 2002 in which I realized we only had one picture of the two of us out of the whole thing, I resolved before this trip to take many, many more.)

DAY THREE:  Fri. Nov. 26.
We woke up in St. Augustine Beach, which was no big surprise as that's where we had gone to bed.  First things first:  we must go to the beach, as I'm the ocean girl that I am.  So we did.  It wasn't what it probably sounds like, though, since it was a chilly morning and the water's really only warm enough for swimming in the summer.  We experimented with our new dinky tabletop mini-tripod taking pictures of ourselves (ugly mug pic #1, found on this page of photos).

Next up was the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum, which was my first opportunity to climb to the top of a lighthouse, after years of wanting to do so.  219 steps and a bit of heavy breathing later -- though honestly I didn't get as winded as I expected to... I had more of a problem with the height and increased steepness of the steps right toward the top -- we were rewarded with a very memorable view, and a real appreciation for the keepers who carried 50-lb. buckets of oil up those stairs every night once upon a time.

The Castillo de San Marcos was our next victim.  Otherwise known as an old Spanish fort.  And I mean OLD, as in 1672 OLD.  All kinds of neat history, dungeons, cannons, an 18th century artillery demonstration, fun stuff.

[one of my favorite shots from our entire trip. i adore it.]

We wandered around the main downtown shopping area of narrow, brick-paved streets, which seemed in part genuinely historic and in part overtly touristy. Didn't buy much, but that wasn't necessarily the point. Then we made our way a bit farther afield past some historic houses and such we didn't care to pay to go inside and finally to the Lightner Museum, which we did care to pay to go inside. The museum, which houses mostly a personal collection of... stuff... from a really rich guy -- stuff ranging from gorgeous to hideous to weird to amazing -- was a very posh, exclusive hotel in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and I actually found the old photographs and history of the hotel scattered around the building more fascinating than most of the museum collections themselves. It was oddness to stand in a room and look at photos of it from the 1920s when it was a Turkish bath or even a ginormous swimming pool with all these grayish people in swimming caps and funny-looking bathing suits.

[courtyard at the lightner museum.]

Back to downtown we went, and ate some supper to kill time until it got dark so we could see the Nights of Lights decorations in the Plaza de la Constiution -- basically just a zillion Christmas lights everywhere, but very pretty in person, if not the kind of thing that turns out very well in photographs.

We left St. Augustine and headed toward Tampa, but took a slight detour on the way to stop and see the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse near Daytona Beach, just because Bethy wanted to.  Got to St. Petersburg for the night at 10:50pm.  The end.  Ish.

Additional photos, of course (if you didn't find them already).
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Friday, December 10, 2004
DAY TWO: Thu. Nov. 25.

- FRESH BEEF JERKY -
- ALSO BUFFALO JERKY -
- JERKY HERE -
- REALLY GOOD -
Five states in one day: Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida. We drove from just before 8am (CST) to just after midnight (EST), stopping for a Thanksgiving dinner at a Cracker Barrel in 'Bama (there seemed to be one at every single exit in the South -- no exaggeration), and to drive through Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta. Quite lovely and barely enough daylight to see it, as you can see in the picture below. Spent the night in St. Augustine Beach. Again, not much happened as we were driving all day, so it makes for a nice short entry for you to have to read and a nice easy one for me to make. Yeah, that'll all change with the next day. For now, enjoy.

Alabama. I made Josh pull over (well, actually, turn around and drive back and then turn around again and then pull over) so I could take this shot. I found it very picturesque, especially with the row of evenly-spaced trees in the mid-ground (would that be the correct term?).

Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, at dusk -- which it turns out was actually a nice time to be there, because it was light enough to be able to see things, but dark enough for the lights to be all twinkly and pretty.
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Thursday, December 09, 2004
Sure, it was fun, but at what cost?
The cost of my probably-irreplacable Pasadena golf disc, that's what cost.  It decided to run away from me to live in Sarasota, FL for a spell, and I suppose I can hardly blame it.  It's a nice town.  Nice weather.  Palms.  Mmmmm... palms... (no, I can't explain my obsession with them, so don't ask).

As you can probably tell, we're back in the land of the freezing temperatures and leafless trees now (durn shame, is what it is), and we left the midwest at just the right time, it would seem, as it was cold and rainy and snowy while we were gone -- as forshadowed by the weather on the day we left, which was... cold and rainy and snowy.

So here's the beginning of the Trip-O-Logue, which will be mercifully short both because not much happened and I'm too busy playing my two-week catch-up with the internet, TV shows, and just life in general.  There's not a hint of Christmas in our house yet, we still have 95% of our shopping left to do, and we have mucho company coming starting in just a couple of short weeks.  Uff da.

DAY ONE:  Wed. Nov. 24.
This day can be summed up by one photo:

Take one part Chicago traffic, add the day before Thanksgiving, and then throw in a snowstorm for good measure, and you get one heck of a traffic jam. We passed a digital traffic sign at Half Day Road that said travel time to downtown via I-94 was 172 minutes, something that would typically be more in the vicinity of 45 minutes. It took us FOUR hours to get through the metro area (a.k.a. off the Chicago inset in our atlas), and that was starting from Libertyville, not Wisconsin. We crashed for the night about 11:45 in Paducah, KY. Exciting, no?
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