The Vacation: Thursday
Jul. 20th, 2003 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsHah. We got Internet Access, which is why some of you saw Sunday's entry, finally. I purchased sixty minutes worth of time on T-Mobile Hotspot, which means that I can now go into any Starbucks in the world, in theory, and update my account. I also had to renew my membership at Drizzle and LiveJournal, which cost me a $135 for the six-months. A really strong thanks to all of you who pay for the stories you download; you keep the website up and running.
We also had a really greasy breakfast. As I'm sitting around at the breakfast table, I realize what it is about Florida that bugs me: everybody looks older than I'm used to seeing, and I know why. In Florida, people age fast. It's the sun. In Seattle, people don't get nearly as much sun as they do down here, so they don't get as much skin damage and they don't look as tired. Women Omaha's age who should look like Omaha look tired, worn, with wan faces drawn tight about their chins.
Kouryou-chan is being a beast today. Not sure why, other than that she's probably bored. Being on vacation means sitting in a car a whole lot. I bought a new pair of sunglasses for three bucks because the old pair were just scratched beyond salvage.
Oh, and true story: I heard a young woman trailing her mother about a drug store and she said, "Mom, I can't go college with this nose. I'll look awful." And when I saw her, she had a rather ordinary, if a touch large, nose. Shades of Christina Ricci's Wednesday: "And when they awoke, their old noses had all grown back."
Afterward, I went swimming with Omaha and Kouryou-chan. Kouryou-chan had little waders that kept her head above water and did a wonderful job of learning how to kick with her feet, maneuvering around the pool and learning to dive below the water.
We went back to my mother's apartment, washed up, took a real shower, and then Mom showed up and we went out to dinner, this time to a place called "Joe's Crab Shop." It had a big sign up top advertising "Eat At Joes" and a ton of marketing crap inside: t-shirts with "got crabs?" and a lot of other silly logos. But the crabs were delicious. The music was too loud.
After dinner, we hit the road. We wanted to get three hours out of Ft. Lauderdale before we crashed for the night: Mom's apartment was too small to spend another night and we needed to make up time before we visited Omaha's mother. We did a good 75 MPH most of the way, with cruise control. (Cruise control on this Ford is very steady except in "resume previous speed" mode. If you do that, it floors the accelerator in a scary way until speed is reached.) I ate bad beef jerky. We bought Kouryou-chan new over-the-ear earphones, and they worked like a charm for keeping her occupied until she fell asleep.
We stopped at a place called "The York Inn," in Melbourne, our old haunt. We drove by Omaha's first bar where she worked as a stripper, Bare Assets, lo these many years past and it looked nicely renovated. The gay bar, Saturdays, was gone. The area was completely built up, it used to be just greenery and a few roadside attractions. I usually like to pick mom-n-pops over chains, but I think I'll change that assessment; the York Inn was terrible. Even though the room said "This is a No Smoking Room," it smelled of recent cigarettes, the beds were too hard, and there were damnably few amenities.
Goodnight, all.
We also had a really greasy breakfast. As I'm sitting around at the breakfast table, I realize what it is about Florida that bugs me: everybody looks older than I'm used to seeing, and I know why. In Florida, people age fast. It's the sun. In Seattle, people don't get nearly as much sun as they do down here, so they don't get as much skin damage and they don't look as tired. Women Omaha's age who should look like Omaha look tired, worn, with wan faces drawn tight about their chins.
Kouryou-chan is being a beast today. Not sure why, other than that she's probably bored. Being on vacation means sitting in a car a whole lot. I bought a new pair of sunglasses for three bucks because the old pair were just scratched beyond salvage.
Oh, and true story: I heard a young woman trailing her mother about a drug store and she said, "Mom, I can't go college with this nose. I'll look awful." And when I saw her, she had a rather ordinary, if a touch large, nose. Shades of Christina Ricci's Wednesday: "And when they awoke, their old noses had all grown back."
Afterward, I went swimming with Omaha and Kouryou-chan. Kouryou-chan had little waders that kept her head above water and did a wonderful job of learning how to kick with her feet, maneuvering around the pool and learning to dive below the water.
We went back to my mother's apartment, washed up, took a real shower, and then Mom showed up and we went out to dinner, this time to a place called "Joe's Crab Shop." It had a big sign up top advertising "Eat At Joes" and a ton of marketing crap inside: t-shirts with "got crabs?" and a lot of other silly logos. But the crabs were delicious. The music was too loud.
After dinner, we hit the road. We wanted to get three hours out of Ft. Lauderdale before we crashed for the night: Mom's apartment was too small to spend another night and we needed to make up time before we visited Omaha's mother. We did a good 75 MPH most of the way, with cruise control. (Cruise control on this Ford is very steady except in "resume previous speed" mode. If you do that, it floors the accelerator in a scary way until speed is reached.) I ate bad beef jerky. We bought Kouryou-chan new over-the-ear earphones, and they worked like a charm for keeping her occupied until she fell asleep.
We stopped at a place called "The York Inn," in Melbourne, our old haunt. We drove by Omaha's first bar where she worked as a stripper, Bare Assets, lo these many years past and it looked nicely renovated. The gay bar, Saturdays, was gone. The area was completely built up, it used to be just greenery and a few roadside attractions. I usually like to pick mom-n-pops over chains, but I think I'll change that assessment; the York Inn was terrible. Even though the room said "This is a No Smoking Room," it smelled of recent cigarettes, the beds were too hard, and there were damnably few amenities.
Goodnight, all.
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Date: 2003-07-21 09:20 am (UTC)They're owned by the same group that owns the Rainforest Cafe (I know you have one of those in Seattle) and the Chart House (which you may have eaten at in Melbourne)