Florida Day Two - Settling In

I made waffles! I had been craving waffles, talking about waffles, living all things waffles for the last week or so. I had seen no waffles. Then, then today I made them. And ate them. And, you know what? Not all that good. Never mind that it took a while to get used to this machine again, but they just were not all that wonderful. I will deny this, of course, but it's true.

In the back yard, we got the tent set up so that it could air out, and spread its filthy musky smell for the world. Katherine tried to take a picture of an Ibis. She was making a loud terrifying noise that she later told me was her Ibis call to make it look over. Obviously the bird had know idea what kind of monster had been let loose, an flew away to safety. Ibis call? Fail.

We wiped down the tent to clean it off. Soapy water, was used. Then, as it dried, we headed off to the library.

The Port Charlotte library is a magical one – mostly because of its book sale. The books they sell here are ones you'd actually want to read. For fifty cents I picked up Lost World (the Jurassic Park sequel I'd been thinking of, since reading the first back in Japan), and another Crichton book – Congo. It, like Lost World, was a terrible movie, but I'm led to believe the books are much better. State of Fear also found its way into my bag. I also grabbed the latest two issues of Wired magazine (a quarter each – I almost bought each for full price in airports over the last few months.)

In the library we connected to wifi, and sent off all the emails that needed sending. Got in touch with the world back home, let them know we were alive. I checked the Kennedy Space Centre webpage to see if there were any rocket launches, but there were not. Not until mid August. This is both good and bad. Bad, because I won't see a launch. Good because they're annoying to get to, and plan for, and then have them canceled. So on and so forth.

The prices for Universal Studios, however, gave pause. The price of a week is close to that of a day. We'll now have to plan how long we want to spend there. Two parks, two days each, I imagine? Three nights in motels – two drive back on the final night. For the ten/twenty dollar difference in price, that should be fine. It also seems that there are some twenty dollar motels out that way. But when to go? Not over a weekend – motels cost more. Perhaps Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday? But as it's only Tuesday now that will be some time before we go. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday still remain. There's always the drive to the Floria Keys, but doing that on a weekend seems foolish too. Best to save that until the next Thursday after Universal in case we need to sleep down there.

So much to do, so seemingly little time – we could spend weeks here, pausing our road trip almost indefinitely. The desire to be lazy grows and grows.

I found a store that sells Ukuleles, but they're over priced, ninety dollars rather than the sixty or seventy it should be. Should I just get it? The internet says it's a good instrument. Would I notice those thirty bucks? It's hard for me to make the plunge knowing I'm being screwed. Perhaps a bigger city would have it cheaper, but where will I find a bigger city? Our next stops out of here are for the creepy southern states as featured in True Blood, and if what I'm led to believe is correct, those areas are full of evil, devilish monsters!

We headed back to Wal-Mart, and picked up some more food, and card games. Yatzee: Hands Down, and Sorry Revenge (both pretty good, but not Monopoly good) and then Uno. Which we played, and realized sucked for some reason. The reason? There were only red and yellow cards. Some jerk had switched the two packs inside for the same ones. Annoying though it was, it was also kinda funny.

Though it means we'll have to return.

I was planning on heading back that way for the Best Buy, as I need some new memory for my camera. I'm down to three hundred frames remaining, and that just wont do. No sir, that won't do at all.

On the tent, the silicon sealant was sprayed. We'd then let that dry, and test to see if it was magically waterproof yet. On the other hand, why test for water now, as the sky gets dark, best to leave that for morning. The washing machine was set to wash, and the dish washer was enabled as well.

Come morning there would be clean dishes, clean clothes, and a dry tent.

At least one of those three anyway.