Monday 27 Feb 06

Florida weather is finally warming up. My mother works 4 hours today volunteering at a thrift shop for a hospice, so she drags me along and i go shopping at the stores in the area. At Big Lots i find, incredibly, another bottle of a nice shampoo that i bought here on my last trip 2 years ago. i left it behind when i went back home but mom & dad don't remember finishing it off and were getting weary of my constant worrying over where the bottle might be. Hey, call me Monk! Welcome to my world of obsessive-compulsive behavior! A poor abandoned bottle of shampoo bugs me! I mailed my computer down here, it should be in tomorrow...but i also mailed down here a 15 lb box of post-its and a 10 lb box of playing cards just so i could have some of the things i obsess over without having to carry them on the bus! (both boxes had a few other things in there, like my complete beatles cd collection, fun to play while reading their biography, and the box set of a tv show, Nowhere Man, and my digital camera).

I was looking for a 50th-birthday present for my sister, my mother was suggesting a bottle of wine, but i found a nice fired-clay pot with a half dozen little cacti in it at Kmart. i wanted to pay for it with travellers checks--remember travellers checks?--but the cashier was too new to know how to process them. she got a supervisor who told her to get my drivers licence and write it on the check...but unfortunately i had left my licence back at the house! the trainee cashier eventually used my mother's licence number and accepted the checks. i'm pretty sure her supervisor would have sent me away, even tho the checks were already made out to Kmart and countersigned, which i think would have ruined them even if i came back later with my i.d. i thanked the cashier for trusting me and she said, "i could tell you're honest, you're with your mother!" incidently, one of my travellers checks jammed the check-stamping machine, and the cashier had to reboot her cash register!

i finally got to visit with my sister for a family birthday party, with her parents, in-laws, only daughter still at home, and me. She had a celebration the previous weekend with her daughter, a "Girls Only Weekend," and then through this coming weekend she will be with some girlfriends as part of her husband's birthday present: he bought the girlfriends' plane tickets down here. so i really won't get to see much of Kris until next week. her birthday cake was the chocolatiest cake i ever had. i could not find any cake in it, it was all fudge and frosting! nobody could finish a piece! i like chocolate but it was too much even for me. Kris got Mother and Mother-in-law to take some home but we don't think anyone will eat any of it!

Sunday 26 Feb 06

Saturday and Sunday here in Florida it has rained. Yesterday it got to 61° but with 25mph wind gusts the Dreaded Wind Chill Factor made it feel a lot chillier. So far I've been wearing the jacket i brought with me. I understand it will start warming up now, to the 80's by the weekend.

Saturday 25 Feb 06

My parents and i get home from the Ft. Pierce bus station around 345am, and i am weary and feeling grimy. i forgot to put a toothbrush in my carry-on. i get sleep in the bus, i even remembered to bring a pillow, but somehow it doesn't seem the restful kind of sleep, so i sleep the sleep of the dead once i get in bed.

my father always need some help on his computers so he always looks forward to my visits. one computer problem i solved instantly (the best kind of problem!), the same problem on another computer took a few minutes but was uncomplicated.

Mother and i go the community club house to return video tapes to the lending library and work on her jigsaw puzzle she leaves there spread out for anyone to help with. we walk back home and she decides it is not raining any more so we should go ahead and go the greek festival being held in a tent this weekend by a greek orthodox church.

i later get to tease her about her having no future as a weather forcaster as it rains buckets while we're driving there. we have authentic gyros for dinner, i have a Mythos greek beer, we watch some of the children of the church do greek dances while the rain outside is coming down in droves and the runoff is leaving big puddles inside the tent. at one point i'm watching 2 fantastic-looking greek young ladies walk by--one of them really named "Helen" according to her nametag--then i look around and there is an hispanic young man watching them too and he comes over to me and asks, "do you speak hispanic?" and i say no and he says, "in hispanic we would say, 'Mamacita!'"

so this vacation is already taking on an international flair!

Friday 24 Feb 06

As i said, the trip was uneventful...until we got to Columbia, South Carolina. just a few miles short of that bus station, my fellow travellers in the back of the bus alerted the driver that it was filling with smoke! we pull off to the side of I-77 and all get out. a S.C. Dept. of Transportation employee pulls up within minutes. the driver gets a fire extinguisher and sprays it on something in the engine, and also between the rear set of tires. more pickup trucks trucks show up. a fire engine comes out. taxis come out and take a few passengers off to their final destination, but one guy i'm talking to lives in Columbia but can't afford a 7-mile taxi trip: he just the day before got out of Virginia jail. we wait by the side of the road for 2 hours!

finally a loaner bus arrives just to take us into Columbia, but there we have to wait for another greyhound bus to come from Charlotte, N.C., to replace ours. it finally gets there and we leave Columbia 4 hours late. about 15 of us have missed all our connecting buses. my schedule is in ruins. i was supposed to change buses in Jacksonville, Florida, at 530pm, but that bus was long gone by the time we got there at 845pm. not too long a wait, however, the next bus leaves at 915pm.

unfortunately, greyhound no longer runs a west coast route and an east coast route; all Florida buses now go thru Jacksonville to Orlando to all points south. so now the nice straight 4-hour trip from Jacksonville to Ft. Pierce on I-95 "Alligator Alley" is a thing of the past, Orlando is 'way out of the way. where once my schedule had hour-long layovers in Walterboro, Jacksonville, and Orlando, now all 3 are reduced to 1/2-hours. i spent the layover at the Walterboro McDonald's to get something to eat, so i didn't get a smoke, and i hardly had enough time for a bathroom break and a smoke at either Jacksonville or Orlando. we get on the 1215am bus out of Orlando instead of the original 1030pm bus, and i get in to Ft. Pierce just a little before 3am, 2-1/2 hours late! my father not being a night person, asking him to stay up that late to come get me is a big thing! (my mother is better at staying up late.)

Thursday 23 Feb 06

Today is the day i leave Ohio for sunny Florida. i was trying to finish up a project at work and didnt even take a lunch break, but i'm not sure it is finished to the boss' satisfaction, yet it is 3pm and i have to leave for the last few hours of packing and closing the house...and also get a bath before boarding a greyhound bus for the 28 hour trip.

dave and barb take me to Chillicothe to catch the bus. it arrives and departs on time, and i am off! the trip so far is uneventful (the crying baby on the bus notwithstanding!)