We took a wonderful trip to Florida. We spent 8 days gone from my gorgeous little puppy dog. Thankfully we had a sitter to watch him and the house. In fact, we never leave home without that.
The trip was great! We spent the first 4 nights at the Disney Resort in Vero Beach…which actually turned out to be the town of Orchid. Once we left there (after securing the shuttle tickets I already blogged about) we headed to Valrico, which is just outside of Tampa. There we stayed with my dad and his lovely family. It was a cool trip. We spent the day at the Tampa aquarium and again had a great time. The best part of the 2nd part of the trip was just spending time with my dad. It means a lot to me to be able to do that. On top of that, I met my grandmother for the very first time. Sweet lady. Don’t know if she’s interested in adding another grandchild to her list of grandchildren, but I think the meeting went well
The drive home was decent. It took 13 hours, which with the 1 hour time difference added up to only 12 hours. And that included stopping to get the oil changed and stopping at the local grocery store just 10 minutes from the house.
While in Valrico, Kathy, my dad’s wife made some awesome spaghetti. I actually got to eat on twice thanx to lots of leftovers. They are really gracious people to open their home to us and allow us to upset their normal routine. Family is great.
On our 13 hour drive home, things were a bit uneventful. It wasn’t until Atlanta until we got ice on the roads. It was icy on the side of the roads all the way from Atlanta to 30 miles north of Birmingham. The driveway was a little icy coming up to the garage but we made it. Tigger has settled in nicely to having mom and dad home.
We only have about 3 weeks before we go do this all over again. As mentioned in an earlier blog, we got shuttle tickets for the 5th to the last launch. It’s a night launch and we’ll be down there for 4 days just to make sure we give them time to delay the launch a couple of times. We didn’t get the causeway tickets that we really wanted, but we got visitor center tickets and it should be every bit as impressive as I have dreamed it to be.
If anyone reading this is interested in watching a shuttle launch (not on TV), you have to sign up for the launch updates on the Kennedy Space Center website at http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/?ic_campID=4&ic_pkw=GH_STS130_Jan09 and click on the link for receiving launch event update emails. They will notify you 24 hours before the tickets go on sale. You will need multiple computers to give you the best chance of getting tickets. The causeway tickets which are closest to the launch site, sell out in about 6 minutes. You cannot use extra tabs on your browser to get multiple entries. That will only delay your entry into the ticket booth. What you need is friends, lots and lots of friends with computers to also try to snag you tickets. I had 5 computers working for me and only got into the causeway ticket booth once. There was only 1 ticket left and since I needed 2, it kicked me out. The next viewing site sold out in 30 minutes. That’s where my tickets are for. We’re going to try again at the next launch, and the next, and the next until we get causeway tickets. If you are serious about getting tickets, I might be willing to use my computer and time to help you snag tickets. Just let me know.
Oh, once I get pics of the animals from the Tampa Aquarium downloaded to the computer, I’ll post them here. We got a couple of really impressive shots. So please check back often.
Thanks for your time tonight.
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