Happy New Year to All!

Well, I guess it's been quite a while since I've posted anything here. I can't say that I've been busy and that's why I haven't posted, because that's not true. Fact is, I just haven't had much of interest to post.

We are now back in Florida. We left Beverly on Sunday, Jan. 4th, in our Odyssey van, which was packed to the ceiling with "stuff" (ya gotta have stuff, right?). We brought along an invited guest, my sister-in-law, who will be staying with us until January 17th.

The trip was uneventful, except for a couple of "minor" problems at the hotels we stayed at. On Sunday night we arrived at a Red Roof Inn in Aberdeen, MD. Upon checking into our rooms, my sister-in-law discovered that there were no pillows on her bed, and the TV remote was missing. A quick call to the front desk brought Linda, the night manager, with the pillows and the remote. Linda is a rotund young lady (about 300 lbs rotund), and by the time she arrived at the room, which was about 75 steps from the front office, she was huffing and puffing and not smiling! I bet Linda is the reason why this particular Inn does not offer a "continental breakfast" - it would never see the light of day.

Night #2 brought us to another Red Roof Inn, this one in Savannah, GA. Apparently, when I made the reservation on-line, I entered the wrong inn number, so when we arrived, they didn't have a reservation for us. Fortunately, there were rooms available, just not what we had reserved. They wanted to put us up on the 2nd floor, but I told them that I was traveling with two 60-something women who were tired and cranky, and there was no way I was telling them they had to climb up to the second floor before they could relax. Plus the fact that I was not looking forward to trucking all the bags up a flight of stairs. Sooooo, the desk clerk relented and put us on the first floor. After getting settled, I went down to the vending area to get a bucket of ice for our evening libations, only to discover that the ice machine was not working. When I brought this to the attention of the desk clerk, she directed me to the ice machine on the second floor, in a tone that said "If you had taken the rooms I first assigned, you would have a working ice machine!".

When we were finally ready to "hit the hay", we found cat hairs on our pillows and sheets!! We were so tired and ready to sleep that we just picked them off the pillows and sheets and climbed into our bed. My sister-in-law had no apparent problems with her room this time.

So now we are in sunny, warm Florida. The temperature here upon our arrival was in the low 80's, no humidity, with a very pleasant breeze. Today, we went out to breakfast and then drove our guest around the area, did a bit of shopping (mostly for groceries), then we went to the clubhouse for a pizza party. The cost of the pizza party was $5/person, and included beer and wine (all you wanted), and pizza (also all you wanted, until it was gone). Nice being retired, eh?

Now that we are in Florida, I'm guessing that I will have more time to write, although I may not have anything exciting to write about, unless you consider trips to Home Depot and Lowes to be exciting!?! At any rate, keep checking back for new posts.