Abbie's Real Life Blog

We returned on Sunday afternoon from our Florida vacation, but here it is a few days later and I’m still not recovered.  I often feel this way after a vacation, any vacation, that I should have just stayed home for a few days if I wanted to relax, because with the traveling I usually feel more sapped of strength by the end of it than I did before it started.

It doesn’t help that we returned to a world of leaking washing machines, satellite tv repairmen who break more than they fix, regular workdays and wedding shoots and pictures-owed-to-people, weedy yards and neighbors with expectations, impending graduations and intrastate moves, new jobs, etc. etc. etc.  There’s a lot going on right now.

But the vacation was nice, and it was great that we went.  We left on Tuesday, June 2, and arrived in Orlando around 9:00pm, I think.  Tracy’s parents don’t live very far from the airport, which is nice.  Tracy’s new house in Kansas City won’t be terribly far from the airport either, which is a big plus since we’re currently at least two hours from an airport.  (Unless we want to fly to Memphis.  Columbia’s airport only flies to Memphis.  That may not make sense to you, but it has proved to be a very popular option.  Previously, the airport only had flights to St. Louis, but it didn’t make much sense to spend that much time & money flying a dinky little plane to St. Louis when you can drive there in a couple of hours for much less.  Memphis is a much longer drive, and is a hub for different airlines than St. Louis, which means less stops overall.  Personally, I think they should add a couple of flights to Chicago in there too.)

The beach is only about thirty minutes from Orlando, especially the part of Orlando where Tracy’s parents live.  Cocoa Beach is the closest, but our beachside hotel was in Indialantic, about half an hour south of Cocoa Beach in a fairly residential area.  We left early on Wednesday and were checked into the hotel and on the beach before lunchtime.  We spent most of Wednesday sitting in the sun, swimming, and reading… which turned out to be a good use of time, because it rained a lot during the rest of our beach time.  It poured on Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon, but we did get to swim both mornings.  We spent the rainy time on Thursday shopping in Melbourne and Cocoa Beach, and then ate veggie burgers, fried pickles (we’d never had those before, but they were AWESOME), and fun blender cocktails at an oceanside restaurant on Thursday night before returning home to take a nice long walk on the beach.  On Friday, we just ended up leaving before lunchtime while it rained, and we stopped in Cocoa for lunch at a vegetarian & Bavarian restaurant (half the menu was vegetarian, and the other half was Bavarian… very weird!  But interesting, and the food was good.)

Tracy’s sister and her wife came in on Friday night to hang out for the weekend.  We went up to Mount Dora on Saturday for more shopping, and then they stayed most of Sunday while we left fairly early in the day.  I guess I wished we could have made a later flight to hang out with them more, but then it was nice to get home to Columbia early enough that we could unpack and unwind before the week started.

It’s been a short but long week since then.  Tracy is a couple of weeks away from moving to Kansas City, so the house is really starting to look empty as she’s taken a lot of stuff there already.  She decided to spend most of this week out there so that she could get cable & internet hooked up, do some errands, and get some stuff done so that she can start her job right away on July 1 (the hospital requires a physical and some different tests).  Since she’s been gone, it’s like a little glimpse of what life will be like for me after her move.  If this is any indication, apparently I’ll spend a lot of time sleeping.

Yes, we left last week after realizing that the washing machine is leaking… not good!  I want to do some laundry but I still haven’t called to get a repairman out to look at it.  Maybe I will end up having to visit the laundromat or my mother’s house over the weekend.

In addition, we had the satellite tv technician out on Monday to change us over to their new HD dish and receiver… which I failed to note would not work my existing TiVO, a major problem!  My TiVO is seven years old, but it works and I hate pushing aside working technology for such a stupid reason as the HD receiver.  I don’t even have HDTV, and I won’t get it until the television I have (which is at least 9 years old) breaks down completely.  This adherence to outdated entertainment technology is the exact opposite of my feelings towards outdated computer technology… I will update a computer even if the parts I’m replacing are in perfect working condition.  But I use my computer for work, not just for entertainment, and I need the power.  I need my nice computer monitor to do photography work, but I don’t have a problem with non-HDTV for pure entertainment.

Anyway, now I have to decide if I’m going to stick with the satellite television and get a receiver that has a DVR attached, or if I’m going to cancel the satellite and go with cable so that I can continue to use my old TiVO.  I haven’t decided yet, because both sound like expensive propositions.  Urgh.

In the meantime, why care about HDTV when you can get lots of entertainment in tiny little YouTube video boxes?

I can’t get this song out of my head. It probably doesn’t help that I keep listening to this song, but I just love it.