I Need Another Day

I need another day!

Just one. Just one more day after today, to do nothing but relax, kick back, and enjoy Florida. I need to destress, and hang out, and spend time with family. I just need one more day.

I don't have another day. I fly out tomorrow. Tomorrow night – but because I'm flying out of Miami I still need to leave around one or two in the afternoon. That's not enough time to really do much of anything, other than pack, repack, and pack some more.

And that's what I did today as well.

Clothing – great, lots of clothing. Nothing like winter clothing to really screw up your packing. Thanks winter clothing, thanks for being so small and easy to transport. Curses. Big thermals, hoodies, ponchos, all that fun stuff taking up lots of room. And then there's the books. So many books.

But this time I'm only taking books I can part with. If a book goes into my bag, odds are it's being chucked or traded away somewhere along the way. Nothing will give me more incentive to finally read Lord of the Rings more than knowing with each book I finish, I will have less and less gear in my pack to take care of later on.

At first I thought, take lots of magazines, that way you wont have to read and use up your books so fast. Now I think the other way – take no magazines, just motor through those books and be done with it. Nothing like having an empty pack to make you feel good about travel.

Pack, repack. Boba Fett hoodie, you're awesome – but you're taking up some serious room! I love you though, just don't start to piss me off.

What's that? Off to lunch?

My parents took me to a restaurant with a patio overlooking the bay. It was nice, it was lovely, and if you had the lunch time special it was cheap. Sure most of the meals were a good fifteen to twenty bucks – hey they cater to the elderly here, so too expensive is a terrifying thing. And sure a half burger is eight bucks. But – if you order the lunch time special burger, it's just five dollars, and you get a plate of fries. This I ordered.

What was the lunch time special burger? It was a one pound cheeseburger. Look I thought it was a misprint. In what world would someone pay eight dollars for a half of a half pound burger (a quarter pound of meat, if you will) when a full one pounds of meat is available for the price of five? It didn't make sense. I thought it was a misprint.

How was I to know?! How was I to know?! America – I should never second guess you.

So there in front of me sat a pound of meat. My father ate his as if it were nothing. I don't know how he does these things. He doesn't eat all that much normally – his stomach should be small – puny. But no. I was shamed.

I prevailed in the end. Good for me. The chicken wings were probably a bad thing to order. And let me tell you, I've never had a chicken wing dripping in butter before. Seriously, what's going on here? If it's not covered in salt, it's been drown in butter. I'm going to spare the rest of America here, and assume these types of shenanigans only go on in Florida. There you go America, you are spared from the ridiculousity, unless I learn otherwise. And ohh, I will. You watch out.

A lady one table over took a picture of me and my parents for us, and then I discovered the zoom and crop function on the camera (which lets you save new pictures, without losing the original.) With that image cropped, it was off to wal-mart. Hey, for thirty cents, and about ten seconds, I wanted a copy of that pic to take around with me.

While there, I also made my parents a Merry Christmas picture with text, and a border, and all that. Sure the image quality out of those instant Kodak machines isn't the best – but man, you can't argue with the fun of using them, and the instantaneous rewards for your minimal effort.

And then, that was that. Unpack, pack, unpack, pack – and we'll call it a day, shall we?

Two games of Cribbage with my father, and two games of Yahtzee (I finally won a game – no scratching for me, and I completed both the top with bonus – throwing a Yahtzee on my final roll. Wicked awesome. We'll not discuss the cribbage scores.) and that was that, time for bed. Tomorrow would mark the beginning of a whole new chapter of adventure.