Here we go again!

Hi, gang, welcome back!

So i'm just going along, minding my own business, and around the end of April my mother writes an email telling about her aches and pains and also a few health problems my father is having. then my sister Kris writes me and our brother saying, we ought to seriously think about visiting more often now that our parents are getting up there in years, and my brother Bud immediately announces he's coming down with his wife and daughter for a visit! Right away i start getting pressure to come down too. Mother says she already has too many pictures of "everybody but me" so i should come down too, while Bud is there. The ostensible occasion is the graduation from high school of her youngest grandchild, Natalie. Natalie's brother Charley and sister Laura announce they are coming to Florida too for Natalie's graduation. I missed seeing Laura on my last visit some 15 months ago so that really clinched it for me, and besides we're not very busy at work. On the downside is that i may not have enought paid time off coming, it takes me 2 years to save up enough time to make a trip worthwhile, having always prefered fewer but longer visits over shorter visits more often. And to top it off, another CAD draftsman at work announced his health is bad and he's going to retire, which he did last Friday. Still, i talked myself into it and the bosses were willing, even if i have to take a few days without pay (our bookkeeper will sometimes allow one to borrow vacations days from the future, which is the way i put it on my timesheets).

This trip, starting in only 2 weeks, seems very impulsive. Normally i do more planning than this, and for the most part even my spontaneous moments are well planned! I decided right away that i would go down by greyhound bus again, they require only a 7-day advance notice to save about half, so i got a round-trip ticket for $140, leaving Wen's'day 16May @ 820p from Chillicothe OH and arriving in Ft. Pierce FL @ 1230a Friday 18May: 28 hours on the bus!

My friend Dave at the office, however, couldn't take me to Chillicothe on Wen's'day, so i managed to corrale another friend, from the Lions Club, who got me to the bus stop on time to check in, and after Lion Jeannie and I had dinner at Wendy's right across the street, i got on the bus and it departed on time