Best Idea Ever!!

Just spent a few minutes cranking out the greatest lunch menu ever! Macaroni and Cheese with Kool-aide. It is very hard to top because it's cheaper than water and what kid won't eat Mac-n'-cheese?

But since I am a curious fellow and I like to experiment on my monkeys, I try to mix it up a little now and then. It's hard to mess up the classics and the more variety you can toss at 'em, the less bored they'll get with the cheap stuff.

Last week, I tried leftover breakfast bacon in the Mac and Cheese. I liked it; the kids thought it was poison. But today?

Today, I am a genius.

Macaroni and cheese mixed with Cheetos!! Don't ask me where I come up with this stuff, its like...a gift...or something. Why hasn't anyone ever thought to mix mac and cheese with Cheetos before? It's a perfect fit. They both use the same cheese like powdered substance for "flavor", so it's like adding extra cheese to the mac; plus, you get a little crunch for your munch. It's win-win!!

The kids loved it! Especially Squizzle, who seems to think it is better as war paint.

We had more red vines for dessert, as shown by Bub.

Sorry, Beak.

Kinda gives new meaning to the old saw about "eat it today, wear it tomorrow", don't it?

Lemon Trees

It's alright. I'm cool again. Had to spend a couple days on the IR (that's the "injured reserve" to you non-sports fans), but the swelling has gone back down and the itchy, watery, burning sensations in my eye are diminishing. At least as much as they ever do. But hey, I didn't switch to Geico, and I still just saved myself a lot of money.

If I'd gone to the doc, he'd have charged me a fifty dollar co-pay, and then charged the insurance three hundred dollars for sticking a needle in my eye.

****Editor's Note
If I haven't mentioned it to you before, you want NO PART of that whole "cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye" crap. It's really not worth it. If my blindness is not the direct result of "soap poisoning"(it very well may be), then it is almost surely the fates coming back to bite me for all the times I used the "Cross my heart, mom! Hope to die...." line to get out of trouble I deserved. Needles in the eye hurt. A lot. Trust me. I've had more than a dozen. Whatever punishment a kid is headed for, it is absolutely less painful than a needle to the eye.
****

Shortly after this funtastic time playing pin the needle on my bull's eye, the doc would then tell me to come back in a week to "See where we are at". This would cost me another fifty bucks at which point he would say, "Well it's looking better. I know you still can't see very well, but it's getting better. Come back in two weeks."

Another fifty bucks and I'd be told we were almost ready to talk about transplanting the other eye, and to come back in another week. By then I'd be up to 200 dollars in co-pays in just over a month, and it would be about time to go back into rejection again, thus starting the cycle over again.

It's a lot more cost effective to just accept a day or two of misery (which is STILL better than the shots) and not spend a dime.

Who says health care isn't busted? And no; that does not mean I am in favor of the President's health care reform. Shifting the bill collectors from one bunch of crooks (insurance companies) to another (the government) is not a solution. After all, look at what a fantastic job the boys in Washington did when they took retirement programs over! Can't wait to see what they do to health care...

Anyway, two days later, and I'm no worse off than I was on Monday. I just have fewer debts.

And that's probably a good thing, because it's time to register the van again.

Speaking of throwing good money after bad lemons, do you know what's the difference between our car and my eye?

There's two. First difference? We can't survive with out the car. The eye is optional. Second difference? The eye actually works once in a while.

Allow me a moment to use the Internet to register my disgust.

****Editor's Note
You'd think I was in a bad mood this morning, but I'm not. I'm actually laughing my butt off thinking of all the snide, snarky things I can say about what's annoying me. I got my comedy mojo workin' again! It's been awhile. Enjoy!
****

If there is a bigger lemon in the car buying universe than the Dodge Caravan, I'm sure I would have bought it. But I bought the Caravan, so that is all you need to know about it's reliability. That two ton chunk of metal represents the single worst decision I have ever made in all my life; and that's coming from a guy who chose to cheer for the Chicago Cubs and who is known for occasionally smashing soda cans against his head.

We purchased the hunk of junk just before Peff was born. Waiting until we had to buy was our first mistake. We knew that with four kids, we could no longer smash into the sedan we were driving. We HAD to have a van. I was still working so we figured that having two cars would be a blessing for us (mistake #2). We looked around for a while, studying prices (a good idea), but mostly looking for the most cost effective purchase price.

My hindsight is twenty-twenty, even if my eyesight isn't; so I know now that I should have spent a little more time researching "cost of ownership" issues (mistake #3).

My dad had bought one of the original Caravans while I was in Taiwan on my mission and he owned it for five years. He had the transmission replaced six times. Yet for some reason, we went to the Dodge dealer anyway (mistake #4). I asked about the transmission issues and the salesman assured me with written reports that the trannie problem had been fixed.

Again with the hindsight, but I now realize that they must have fixed the transmission by stealing parts from the electrical, exhaust, and fuel systems.

We have owned this crap car for almost six years. Due to the um...questionable? service record of the Caravan, we were upside down in it almost before we drove it off the lot. Every year that we have owned it, we have had to make major repairs in order for it to pass safety inspection. The average is about $1,100 a year. This time we got off fairly easy. In order to make lemonade, we need:

Two new tires (I'm not kidding when I say that we change the tires on this car more often than we change the oil. I have literally lost count of the flats, blow outs and too worn to pass inspection tires we have replaced. Ten pairs is not an exaggeration. It's been balanced, aligned, rotated, you name it. The Caravan chews up tires like a big leaguer chews Redman.)

Both front end sway bars replaced (fortunately, not as scary as it initially sounded).

New brake light (at least that's cheap).

The emergency brake repaired

We won't count the fact that the bonehead inspector tried to unroll the passenger side power window which will probably never go back up. I missed feeling the breeze, so I'm not too upset, but the kids keep whining about 40 degree temperatures.

Wussies.

At least that won't cause it to fail inspection.

We got lucky and found a guy who will do the sway bars and the emergency brake for under a hundred bucks and the Boss found a couple of slightly used tires for fifty. The brake light is only about three bucks and I can do that myself (unless its the symptomatic result of some early stage, massive electrical system shut down. Don't laugh, it's entirely plausible. I give it even money odds).

If we throw in the fifty bucks to inspect it and the hundred and twenty five to register it; we're talking about three, three and a quarter to drive for another year. And that's getting off easy? Thank heaven our rainyday fund will be able to cover it (for once).

We finally got the heap of scrap paid off this year, but if you add up all the repair costs we've shot into it, we could have bought a brand new Honda or Toyota for less money and now had much, much more to show for it.

The good news is that when we buy a new car, I will feel no compunction whatsoever about not trading this heap in. They wouldn't give me a dime for it anyway. So I'm gonna park it in the drive way, wake up every morning and beat it with a sledgehammer until I can no longer swing. Then I'm gonna light a different part of it on fire each day just so I can pee on the flames (Sorry mom, it had to be written...too funny to pass up!). All my "fat guy aggression" will get channeled into that "quality" piece of...American engineering.

I can't wait!

PS: Speaking of waiting, I'll try to have more vacation up after Beak gets her kids this afternoon and I'll put up a special Saturday edition post tomorrow to make up for missing yesterday.

The Downward Spiral?

It's been a pretty good year so far. It really has; and I feel like our life is turning upward and for the better. It dawned on me as I was typing last night's quick post about "Squizzle and the Paint Chips" that it has been a while since I was frustrated enough to rant and rave and say smart-mouth things (mostly).

While this is a VERY good thing, it has cut down on the funny posts quite a bit. I suppose that the old saw about humor being the stepchild of misery is probably true in my case. But there is something to be said for tranquility, and you may remember that not long ago I promised not to take good times for granted.

Hence my now weeklong project to document our vacation. I realize that this is probably boring most of you to tears, and I apologize if that is the case. But I did intend for this to be a journal of sorts, and heaven forbid that I record the times in my life when I feel blessed instead of put upon. I can't help it if it's not as funny. Rest assured that the bitter, raving, lunatic that is Fatdaddy is lurking just under the surface; waiting for the next disaster to unleash his scathing sarcasm and lethal irony onto the blank screen of my word processor.

Waiting for days like today...

Usually, I can hit the little magnifying glass on the bottom of my screen, blow things up to 150% and can see enough to type just fine. This morning, I woke up with the worst eye day I've had in years. My good eye was glued shut and it took a good half hour with hot water and towels just to get it open. It is all puffed up so that I'm even squintier (is that a word?) than usual and I can't see nothin'. I had to type this on Word with size 16 font and the screen blown up to 250, and I'm still having a heck of a time seeing what I'm doing. So typos and bad syntax probably abound. Sorry.

I can't really see the kids, but I can sure as heck hear them. Someone turned the "whine" dial up to 11 and it's starting to annoy me...A LOT!!! I'm still fighting that headache I wrote about last night, so the piercing tattle-tale voices of four year olds is causing my face to melt like that guy at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". On the good side, maybe my eyeballs will fall out like that dude's did, and I can get them replaced. Anyway, if you are a parent, you'll understand what I am talking about when I say that I have reached the point where the more they whine and complain to me, the less sympathetic I am likely to become.

I made scrambled eggs, they wanted cereal. I turned on Spongebob, they wanted to watch Max and Ruby. I put Squizzle in his chair, he wants to play on the floor. I want them to get dressed, they want to run around all day in their pajamas...

OK, I may give in to them on that one. But for the rest of it, I say tough tukas. It's a Fatdaddy way or the highway kinda day. Be obedient or be toast. I'm ready to go mythical on these runts.

"Look out, Odysseus, here comes the Cyclops!!!"

Wait a second. I don't like the way that one turned out for the cyclops. Bad example. Where's that $%#@ delete key...?

Anyway, IF I can get everyone settled back down and IF I can get my eye issues worked out enough to review pictures and IF I still have thirty seconds this afternoon, I'll try to put up more on the vacation.

In the mean time, I'm going to take some asprin and think happy thoughts. I'd just as soon mornings like this become the exception rather than the rule. Otherwise, I'll start running out of FedEx envelopes again.

Did You Live Under Power Lines as a Kid?

Here's an emergency post from the "Wow-I-never-thought-I'd-have-to-say-that-to-one-of-my-kids" department.

Just got home from the grocery store. While at Wal-mart, we had done a little pipe-dreaming in the paint section on the off chance that we can do a little improvement in the upstairs bathroom. We looked at a few different colors and then went about our grocery shopping. Squizzle felt that he had been pushed about as far as he was willing to go and by the time we got him through the line and out to the van, he was, as my father likes to say, "a bear with a sore butt".

Excedrin headache number twelve was blooming at the base of my shriveled brain stem and this bear was feeling a little chapped himself. The boss buckled him in and in an effort to keep him from splitting my skull, handed him some spare papers from her pocket. The boy got quiet and by the time we got home, he was silent.

We pulled into the drive, got out of the car and started to bring in the groceries. I was just opening the tailgate when I hear Haggis say "Squizzles, why are you eating paint chips?"

It seems one of the papers the Boss gave him to keep him quiet was one of the sample paint cards. The boy felt that it was pretty good eatin'.

All I can do is shake my head. As if the boy didn't have enough challenges in the brain department with me as his old man.

Chew away, Squizzle. Just stay out from under those powerlines.

What's Bub Doing?

Me(finishing my vacation post for this morning): Hey Peff, what's Bub up to?
Peff (Playing Lego Batman): I think he's dead.
Me:Huh?
Peff:He was playin' with me, but now he's out.
Me: Yeah...I guess you could say that. Where's the camera?

Away From the Things of Man Day 2-Mardi Gras and Dinner

Well, that weekend shot by like it came out of a rifle, didn't it? The "jet lag" caught up with the Boss and I on Saturday night and we slept right through the alarm on Sunday morning. Oops. I do now have significantly more energy to face the horde this morning though and I need it. The Angels have been into everything and they have been playing the divide and conquer game to perfection.

Let's say I needed to change and dress Squizzle but the diapers are downstairs. I took him down and trusted that the quality cartoon entertainment was enough to prevent disasters. As usual, I am mistaken. Bub finds the package of cookies left on the counter from making the girl's lunches. Reaggers and Peff pile all the couch cushions and pillows onto the living room floor and pull the dinning room chairs into the living room to serve as "tent poles" for their "Fort".

I set Squizzle down and try to wipe pink crumbs off Bub's face, while Peff and Squizzle decide that this is an excellent time to sample Squizzle's favorite delicacy; red licorice. Ever see what a one year old does with a piece of red licorice? He looks like a Picasso clown. I was so irritated that I threw him into the tub without taking a picture first. DOH!!!!

I now have the "fort" picked up, Squizzle washed off and in his chair, and the rest of the runts are dressed and upstairs fighting over the toy Nerf guns. I might get a minute to finish up Day 2.

Uh-hu. Here goes...

After lunch, we could go check out our rooms, and I have to say that for a inside (no window) room on a boat, it was not bad. It was clean; much bigger than I was expecting and didn't feel very claustrophobic at all.





The bathroom was a little on the small side but very clean and all the fixtures were working. Frankly it was a step up from the joint we stayed at in Houston; even if it was a little (OK a lot) smaller. I started thinking about how many rooms there were on the boat, and what a logistical nightmare the plumbing must be. Trying to cram all those pipes for every bathroom, plus the electrical for each room, air conditioning, not to mention all the space needed for normal boat operations...I bet there isn't three square inches of wasted space on a boat like that.

They had a behind the scenes tour of the boat that I thought would have been really cool to take, but it was seventy bucks a pop. I might have a curious nature, but I'm way too cheap to blow that kind of cash on a walking tour. Besides, they did have a TV channel in the room that was devoted to all kinds of trivia about how the ship worked. It showed the engine rooms (very cool), the electrical generators (enough juice to light up West Jordan), and the desalination plant. They also used waste heat from the generators to heat the water, so it was pretty much impossible to run out of hot water. Some very interesting info.

One of the other channels had information about the boat's navigation, like position, speed, wind direction, course, and ocean depth. I tried to get pics in the morning and before bed that would show where we were, or if the wind was blowing really hard or if the water was extra deep. I thought it might be like a kind of passengers log.


We got unpacked and then headed up to the Mardi Gras party that Coke was throwing for our group. We got cokes and hors d'oeuvres (What an asinine way to spell a word) and they tossed cheap plastic beads at us. The Boss and I hunted down as many strands as we could because, hey...Free treats for the girls!!! I also got to wear a ridiculous foil "snitch" hat.

They played a scavenger hunt game but we didn't come close to winning. The food was good and it was fun to watch others make dopes of themselves.

When it was over, we went to dinner in the dining room. I had a duck salad (really good; it was cold, smoked duck and tasted a little like ham), a tasty steak with garlic mashed potatoes and curried carrots, and Blackforest cake for dessert.

The Boss had broccoli cheese soup (she said it was OK but more broccoli than cheese which is actually an unforgivable sin) BBQ ribs, and cheesecake for dessert. The cheesecake was a real disappointment, apparently. Almost everyone at the table ordered it and not one person finished their piece. It had a funny taste that no one was very impressed with. The one thing that the Boss was looking most forward too, and they blew it. Oh well. Overall, dinner was a thumbs up from me and a neutral from the Boss. We said our goodnights, and went to bed, but not before I caught the tail end of the US whooping up on the Fins in Hockey. We also found that our room steward, in a Carnival cruise tradition, had done a turndown service, leaving mints, a schedule for the next day's activities, and a towl animal. The first night it was this sealion with sunglasses

It was not a bad way to spend a day. And I enjoyed every second of it.

Pictures of the Ecstacy, Leaving the Pier

Pictures of Galveston Harbor

This is the loading area for the boat. They had two huge tanker trucks pulled up in here pumping deisel when we were getting on the ship via the ramp you can see in the distance. I don't even want to think about the fuel bill for this beastie!


From the roof of the boat looking forward. Doesn't seem that high up until you look at the pictures of the ship from ground level. The wind was really whipping up here.

Away From the Things of Man-Day 2, Boarding

Reaggers and Bub are back this morning, and thanks to parent/teacher conferences, the girls are home as well.

Moe just came down from bed and asked me, "Are these kids this noisy every morning?"

I just laughed at her.

"Come on, guys! Let's go up to my room and play the 'quiet game'!" she said.

Bless her innocent heart! Good luck with that one, kiddo. I admire your spunk. Let me know how it turns out.

Alright, back to warm memories. I'll need them today, as we woke up to half a foot of white stuff on the lawn.




I swear I was standing on a pier this week in 90 degree weather.

Now I will say this for the hotel we stayed at. The office chair was like a perpetual motion machine. I sat down and gave it my customary spin and honestly, I haven't spun that much since me and Uncle B tried to make ourselves barf on the teacups at disneyworld ten years ago. That was one well packed set of bearings. If nothing else, they get high marks for free spinning office chairs.

We slept pretty well, and had no problem getting dressed and ready to go to breakfast before the eight thirty alarm even went off. We went down to the cafe and used our "cup'ns" for breakfast. I had an apple danish, orange juice, and because I was in the South; biscuits and gravy. Not bad, but the gravy was in serious need of Tabasco and salt.

The Boss had french toast, hash browns and OJ. We had a nice little chat with the manager who was a Rockets fan, and so I had to tease her a bit because I was wearing my Jazz hat.

We went for a little walk around the hotel but it was dang windy and the Boss forgot her jacket, so we beat a hasty retreat back to the room to make sure we were ready to go. We sat in the lobby for a bit and then the buses showed up to take us to Galveston. There were perhaps a hundred people in our group; a third from Utah and Colorado, and the rest from Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. We loaded up the buses, and I fired up the camera.

Since we live in the huge bowl that is the Salt Lake Valley, our kids have no idea how flat the rest of the country is. I pulled out the camera and started snapping away to give them an idea of Houston geography. Flat, flat, flat. Real, live, horizons. And of course the obligatory shots of the stilt houses along the Galveston coast.








****Editors Note
Hey Blogger people: Do you folks realize what a pain in the rump your picture upload system is? Its taken me six months to figure out how to put a picture in the middle of a post, and I still can't get them to line up the way I want. Not to mention the five minute wait for EVERY download. What the crap is wrong with "Click and Point"?
****

We got to Galveston and saw the boat. I saw it first on the camera because it was still way too far for my bad eyes to make out. But the Boss worked out a nice system of taking pictures with the zoom lens and then I could see what she was talking about on the camera display. It was a neat little trick that we used most of the vacation.




By the way, see if you can guess which of the following pictures I took!

We got to the terminal and got our luggage to the porters while we began the long process of check-in, clearing security, and boarding. Most of that process is done in a no camera zone, so I didn't get many pictures, but I do have one funny story.






We had been very worried about our paperwork, particularly mine. I haven't been able to drive for several years and my license expired long ago. I hadn't ever needed ID for anything so I did not have one of the state issued ID cards.

We knew we were already on thin ice because we were sailing on birth certificates instead of passports. It turns out that you can ONLY do this if you are leaving and re-entering the US from the same port. But since we didn't have a passport, we had to make sure that all the other ducks were in a row. The old Fatdaddy luck kicked in and my ID card did not make it through the mail in time so all I had was the temporary paper ID and my birth certificate.

The travel agent told us we would be fine, but I know how my luck is so I had visions of waving to my wife as she sailed to Mexico, while I slept on a bench in the customs office of Galveston.

When we got to the check-in desk (after nearly an hour of wandering past various checkpoints and security stations) they looked at my papers and handed me my boarding pass. They looked at the Boss's papers and said something to the effect that since some of her ID had her maiden name and some of it her married name, she might have to provide extra ID to get back in to the country. Lucky for us the Boss had such ID, and it was not a problem. But I found it utterly hilarious that after all the worry over my ID, it was the Boss's that raised eyebrows.

We finally got on the boat around noon, but the rooms were not ready until one thirty. We went to the Lido deck where a reggae band was playing, and lunch was being served. I saved us a table while the Boss went to get us something to eat. I snapped a pic with my camera phone and sent it to Uncle T, who texted back that I was a jerk, but he wanted me to have fun anyway.

The Boss came back with Mongolian BBQ (which wasn't bad), goat cheese and mushroom pizza (which was probably the tastiest thing we ate all week), and big tall glasses of the previously saluted lemonade.




After lunch, we wandered around the boat taking pictures of the harbor, our boat, other boats, and a dry dock (Peff liked that one). I think that I'll post those on a seperate post below this one since they are sight seeing pics and don't require much explanaton.

Soon it was time to muster for the safety drills though thankfully we didn't have to actually put on life jackets or do life boat drills. Beak said that when she and Uncle C went to Alaska on their cruise they had to do all that stuff, and it took forever. We didn't have to do all that, but going to the muster station meant that I didn't get to watch us pull away from the dock. But as my sea-faring grandfather would say, it was "Anchors Aweigh!"

Away From the Things of Man-Day 1

Alrighty then...I got my notebook out, my photo album up in another window, and I don't have Reaggers or Bub today. Squizzle is still sleeping (hallelujah!) and Peff is glued to the Lego Batman controls. So settle in for a nice long post.

Last Tuesday, I got done with class at 8:30, took the train to West Jordan and had Aunt M and Uncle J bring me home. The house was mostly picked up, but we still had to get everybody packed and all the last minute details worked out. By the time the kids were in bed and the Boss and I could get to work it was nearly 10. We finished packing at about 1 A.M, then had to print off the "permission to treat" forms, schedules, maps and phone numbers for who would have the kids and when.

It is at this point that I will once again give credit and thanks to those brave souls who were willing to increase their usual workload by five so that the Boss and I could do this. The Boss's sister, Aunt J and her husband Uncle D get thanks and love for accepting the difficult task of getting the kids to school and back each day, and housing them from Wednesday to Friday and then again Sunday night until we got home.

Aunt M and Aunt Beak took the kids for the weekend, in spite of the fact that it was Beak's anniversary on Sunday. If I had known that, I would have found alternative lodgings for my brood. Coming from a man who once bought a toilet snake for his anniversary and spent the day trying to remove the comb and two hot wheels cars that Peff had flushed down the toilet, I can say that Beak deserved better for her anniversary than keeping Destroying Angels from burning her house to the snowline.

While I'm on the subject, thanks to Uncles C and J for fixing a home repair problem while we were gone that had been bugging me for a while. You guys rock.

Also, My mother and Uncle T spent time with Squizzle and Peff on Friday and for that I thank them also. The Boss's Mother went with Haggis (AKA the Eldest) to her young women's "new beginnings night", while my Mom took Moe to her mother-daughter activity on Friday, and to numerous family members were in attendance at Haggis's last basketball game on Wednesday. Thank you all.

For a reward, each of the previously mentioned Aunts will receive from the Cozumel Fairy a bottle of real Vanilla extract and a bracelet. All the Uncles will receive a copy of my two favorite photos from the trip(get your minds out of the gutter! It ain't what you're thinking!...Sort of).

Back to the trip. We finally got to bed at about two or two thirty and since we had an eight A.M. flight, we had to be at the airport no later than six. So it was back up at five, marched the kids to the van and filled it with enough bags to make Paris Hilton blush (or whatever it is she does if she ever feels shame). We said family prayer and then dumped the kids on Aunt J while Uncle D took us to the airport.

We cleared security much faster than anticipated although part of that was due to the fact that I had to take my belt off. This meant they really didn't need a metal detector or even one of those fancy "strip search" machines, 'cause my drawers about fell off and they could have done a visual.

****Editor;s Note
I can think of so many airport security jokes right here that they have all just lodged together into one giant traffic jam of thoughts best left unspoken. So feel free to invent your own and insert it here.
****

In spite of the fairly dense (for Salt Lake anyway) fog, our plane to Denver left pretty close to on time. Thanks to on-line early check in, we had a boarding number in the twenties so we could pretty much pick where we wanted to sit. I thought it would be nice to have more leg room by sitting up front, but all it really meant was no table tray and a nasty sense of claustrophobia from staring at a wall for the whole trip. The flight was smooth and the landing smoother. We had an hour to kill in Enver (still can't find a "d" in that city)so we grabbed a bite to eat (Mmmm...Airport Nachos for breakfast!) and made fun of the weirdos who inevitably inhabit Airport Terminal lobbies.

We saw the New Mexico Lobos basketball team on their way to play at Air Force and if I had known then all the nice things their coach was going to say about my BYU team, I'd have returned the favor for old JT. Jerks.

One other thing I noticed about the Denver Airport...it is in the middle of NOWHERE! I've seen more crowded neighborhoods in the heart of the Bonneville Salt Flats. It has to be a two hour drive from the airport to anywhere in Colorado worth visiting. Not that we had to go anywhere there, I'm just sayin'...

For some reason that I'm still trying to figure out, I picked the same seat for the flight from Denver to Houston. Never again.

By the time we landed at Hobby Airport, I had a cramp in my ribcage (ever had one of those? Avoid it if at all possible) from squeezing and twisting my frame away from the wall. I was already not looking forward to flying home.

The good news was that it was pretty clear most of the way, and even with my lousy eyes, I got to see some pretty cool geography. Thanks to the cramped conditions and the newness of flying again (it has been about ten years since I flew anywhere), I left my camera in my bag and didn't get any pictures.

Houston was flat and cool and much less humid than I expected. I could learn to dig Houston in February. May through September would probably kill me, but February is very nice. The Boss was thankful she had worn a jacket.

We got our luggage and then due to the size of our group we had to wait for about forty minutes to get on the hotel shuttle. It was worth it though when the driver got out and looked like he could have been Ossie Davis's twin (Another Joe Vs Volcano reference). I wanted to tell him I was shopping for clothes or better yet, that we were "off to the Pierre" but I am one hundred percent certain he would have had no idea what I was talking about. Oh well. I thought it was a good omen anyway.

We got to our hotel and found that they had lost our reservations. Something to do with them not completing a name change the way our travel agent had requested. All they had left was a room with twin beds and a "spectacular" view of the airport runway. I suppose it was better than sleeping in a broom closet but for a hotel chain with such a hoity-toity reputation, I was expecting a LOT more.

I won't name names, but we'll say that if and when a certain famous (notorious?) daughter of the founder takes over, I imagine things will get a lot worse. The shower wasn't working quite right, the shower curtains were too short to keep water from flooding the bathroom floor, and from the tile damage it had been that way for a while. The TV was a high def flat screen, but it looked like someone had let their cat use it as a scratching post. Had we been spending our vacation there...we wouldn't have. Motel 6 can and does do better. But it was free so I mostly kept my mouth shut. Thank heaven that this is the only complaining I have to do about the whole week. One night in a mediocre hotel room is far from the worst thing that's happened to us in the last few years.

That night, we had a buffet style kick off dinner with the obligatory open bar. In retrospect I have to ask, is drinking the only form of fun "adults" are looking for while on vacation? No wonder people think you can't get a drink in Utah.

There was plenty of Coke and Sprite for us teetotalers and more than plenty of food. There was a Tex-Mex version of a Cesar salad that had the spiciest dressing I've ever tasted. The Boss and I had a fun time watching as unsuspecting people would sit down, try a bite of salad, chew for a moment and then have flames shoot out their ears. It happened over and over again. Very funny.

There were chicken enchiladas, rice, beans, and both steak and chicken fajita fixin's. None of it was even close to as spicey as the salad dressing. Cake and cookies rounded out the menu.

After dinner, they had a quick run through of what would be happening in the morning, when to be ready to board the bus, and what we'd need to do to get on the boat. Then they went around the room and had each winner introduce themselves, where they were from and tell their most funny/ memorable McDonald's moment.

The Boss scored some of the best laughs of the night when she told the group about how we met at McD's sixteen years ago when she was a swing manager and I joined as crew fresh off my mission. Now we were married, had five kids, and she was still the Boss (everyone laughed, but no one found this funnier than me). We also got big cheers when it was discovered that this was our first trip without kids since Haggis was born almost thirteen years ago. More than one person thought that this made us more deserving to go than the Boss's sales success.

We had to be in the hotel lobby and ready to leave by 10:30 and knowing we'd want breakfast (for which we had free coupons or as Texans call 'em... "cup'ns") we decided to turn in early and in spite of the lullaby of landing aircraft, we were asleep by 10 P.M.