Category: travel

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safe, sound, south

Safe and sound in South Carolina (bonus points for alliteration).

A happy Monday evening to you, folks. My day began early and looks to be ending late – at least when you take timezones into account. Going on eleven here in the SC, and I rolled my butt out of bed at 5am this morning back in sunny California. A couple of flights later and I touched down in the land of Cracker Barrel, Waffle House, and “smoking or non-smoking?” (Funny how you forget the little things.) Got to the hotel around seven and headed right out in search of some sustenance. Hit a local seafood joint the hotel-guy chatted up and wasn’t too disappointed; had scallops and vegetables – I love scallops. Also enjoyed some fermented grains, as travel often demands.

Right now some Pink Floyd is playing. But, not just any Pink Floyd, mind you, no. This is a live performance of their classic Dark Side of the Moon LP for BBC radio in 1972. It’s one of the most widely lauded Floyd bootlegs of the time period because the sound quality is simply amazing, and the live interpretation of the album is inspired, presenting a welcome change to fans who’ve memorized every single note of the storied long-player. It’s making a great hotel room soundtrack for the short time I’ll be awake prior to crashing. Anyway, if you simply have to hear it now, just turn to your friend and mine, Google, and hit this link for tons of win.

Before I get much more into this whole thing (not sure how much more I have in me, actually), I wanted to go ahead and do today’s “In Pictures” bit. If you’ll remember, I’ve chosen to document this week not only with my typical words, but also with images. I know it’s sort of anti-climactic to see only a couple pictures from each day, but really… today was sort of boring to begin with – some eight hours of traveling doesn’t really provide a wide and varied backdrop for composition. Deal.

Here, then, is my Monday… in pictures:

Now that that’s over – what I really wanted to write about tonight.

So, on the plane today I somehow got stuck with a middle-seat (stupid United booking tool isn’t supposed to do that to VIPs like me). Anyway, I had my iPod on for the entire flight, so I wasn’t really interacting with the seatmates to my left and right, nor was I paying much attention to Alvin and the Chipmunks. In fact, between playing Ms. Pac Man and solitaire on the iPod, about the only thing I was doing was looking around the plane, watching people.

At some point during the flight I noticed that of the three seats in front of me, only the guy on the aisle had reclined. This created a little “gap” through which I could see most everything he did. I only mention this because, shortly after recognizing my voyeuristic opportunity, the guy actually began doing something worth watching. Pulling out his handheld PDA, he fired up what looked to be an e-book application, and several lines of large-print easy-to-read (even at my distance) text filled the screen of the device. At first I took notice simply because reading e-books on a PDA is something you don’t see to often, although it’s a use-model the marketing folks at Amazon would likely have us believe is widespread.

Of course, taking my nosiness to the next logical level, I began to read what the guy was reading. It really was quite easy, the text was large and the guy wasn’t making any effort to conceal it (even from the guy seated to his immediate right in alongside him in his row). Pretty soon, certain special words began jumping off the screen and into my eyes: handcuffs, balls, slave, master, chains. Oh… oh…. what the… Yeah, that’s right. Turns out, after following along with the guy as he thumb-scrolled through more than a few paragraphs, I found out he was reading some very hardcore sado-masochistic gay porn. Right there in the airplane, in front of the me, the stewardesses, and God himself – this guy was casually enjoying some totally raunchy gay porn.

Now completely interested, I simultaneously tried to get a better look at the man sitting in front of me enjoying his S&M gay porn on sold-out packed-to-the-gills airplane while also not neglecting to follow along with his chosen time-passing narrative. He was an extremely well-groomed guy, haircut couldn’t have been more than a couple days old because I could still see telltale tanlines under the fresh cut. Asian or Pacific Islander or some mix of both (that matters how, I’m not sure), wearing glasses and dressed all biz-casual in dockers and a button-down long-sleeve shirt.

And, when I say he made no secret of his reading, I’m serious: He even continued reading when the stewardess took and delivered his drink order, PDA screen held in front of him where anyone with eyes close enough could read it. Outwardly, he was a totally regular fellow, the kind of guy you’d sit across the table from in a customer meeting, the kind of guy you’d ask to make sure he had his report to you by noon Friday, pretty unremarkable. Had he not been reading gay torture porn, I’d have been unsurprised to see him browsing an e-book edition of the NY Times or Grisham or playing e-sudoku. But nah… not for my guy, only the hardest-core freaky-freaky for him.

As for the story, I was actually able to pick up quite a bit of the plot: A man has been captured and made a sexual slave to several other men. He is kept chained up and is renamed “Nancy” by his captors (I’m being entirely serious right now, this is exactly what the story said). He is a heterosexual male, but his new masters make him do homosexual acts as part of his enslavement (which, in an entirely shocking twist, he eventually learns to enjoy). In addition to “attaching” him to various medieval-themed torture devices (chains, collars, weights, etc.), the “masters” give “Nancy” daily hormone injection shots so that he’ll grow breasts. The writing was really rudimentary, all action, to-the-point and brief to a fault. For your benefit, I won’t go into any more detail here, but rest assured it was about as exploitative and explicit as it could be (maybe that’s the only flavor this literature comes in, who knows).

I was just in awe of homeboy – straight-up reading it right out in the open…

And guys, I wanted sooo bad to snap a picture of the guy reading his gay S&M smut for today’s “In Pictures,” but the BlackBerry doesn’t provide a way to snap pictures without an accompanying faux-shutter “click” sound that’s fairly audible to those in close proximity. I doubt the S&M guy would’ve heard or suspected, but it was bound to look odd to the guys sitting right and left of me. So, I chickened out – but I swear every word of the story is true. Funny what people dig, you know? You just never can tell…

(And… Kerry, if they don’t block me today, I consider it a blank check for the future).

Goodnight from the dirty south friends, I’ll have a bowl of grits ‘n’ cheese for you tomorrow AM.

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starting our own “thing”


Bad news this threatening-to-rain Wednesday evening, folks: For the first day in a while, I’m not really in a huge writing mood.

I’m not quite sure what this might mean for today’s entry yet, but clearly it doesn’t bode well. Lately it seems like I’ve no shortage of things to write about or work on here at the blog, and I seem to be sailing through even the most voluminous entries with ease (note: voluminous != good, necessarily). I guess it had to dry up at some point, maybe tonight’s the night. I guess it could be good prep for the bumpiness that’ll likely lie ahead as we travel the next couple weeks.

All day at work today I kept catching glimpses of the little weatherbar plugin in my Firefox window, which was saying it was going to rain tomorrow (60% chance). That, and the fact that the lawn was overdue for a cut, meant I was out mowing right after work today so I could beat the showers. I hate mowing right after work, it’s like coming home from work to do more work – and I hate doing work after work. Actually, that’s not entirely true – because I sometimes enjoy working after work (as long as it’s not on work stuff), I just need time to decompress, to transition from “work” to “home.” Usually, I get this time with a Newsweek magazine (I haven’t always been as learned) in the crapper – the one place and activity where I’m unlikely to get interrupted. Locked there in my stinky little coffin reading about politics or the Middle East (Newsweek has a huge hardon for both), I transition. Anyway, I’ve gone off topic… what I meant to say was that I mowed, and sweat, and subsequently showered. Now I clean with greenish fingernails, typing.

Today I booked our Thanksgiving trip back to Florida. Usually, this would be a Christmas trip… but we decided that this was the year we’d start instituting our own “family” Christmas traditions. After all, we are some kinda family or something of our own now – I think. It feels odd, really, because we’ve been going to Florida for Christmas nearly every year since we moved here to California (save the very first year, when we were simply to destitute to do so). In fact, spending Christmas in warm, sunny Florida with Sharaun’s family and our friends has become a tradition I look forward to. A while ago, however, Sharaun and I both agreed that we’d like to start doing “our own” Christmas thing eventually – and this year seemed like a good time to start.

Originally, my motivation was Keaton turning two – and now requiring a full-fare ticket for the round trip flights. But, that really doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, as we’ll still be going to Florida at some point (or several points) during the year. So, I guess it just comes down to wanting our own thing. Anyway, we’ve sort of traded off holidays – and we’re headed back this year for Thanksgiving instead. Actually, we’ve invited my family down here for Christmas this year… so who knows, maybe that’ll turn out to be part of our “thing.” Or, maybe we won’t have a “thing,” and will be nomadic Christmas transients instead… that could be a “thing.” What the heck am I on about?

Before I go, today’s the day the new “You Decide Friday” poll closes, so cast those last votes and let me know what I have to write about tomorrow night. Oh, and I promise I didn’t upvote anything… if you’re curious about the ungamed results, “When we used to go hoboing” has six legit ones, while “The first time I got a girl to take her pants off” has a mere two which are “real.” The other two each have zero… which means that… duuude… eight people? I spend way yonder too much time on this thing…

I dunno what to do with that… maybe write about hoboing? Maybe not. Maybe both… but that’s a stretch. What do you think?

Either way, here the poll again. What are you waiting for, g’head, do it:

[poll=2]

Well, turns out I didn’t have any issues filling this page with stuff again. Guess I was wrong about that. Goodnight.

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panic, scatter, a complete halt


Heeyyyy guys. How’s it going? Me, OK.

Monday, and an important one at that: The first day I’ve worn shorts to work since the cold and rain came so many months ago. I know that, here in California, we don’t have Winter that bad at all, but the temperatures still dip enough to make me want jeans… and that’s no small feat, since I generally hate wearing jeans. So, today, with the forecast actually calling for less sun than we had over the glorious weekend, I pulled on a pair of my favorite shortpants (olive green cargo style, probably went out of fashion a year ago, if they were ever in at all). I always feel a little unprofessional the first week or so when I make that Springtime transition from jeans to shorts. I can’t help it, really.

Problem is, my sawmill likes to think of me as some kind of lower-level management (I dunno, they just asked me one day if I wanted to be a manager… and I figured I did, so I did), and, in my mind, shorts just don’t fit the position. It’s an internal struggle, to be sure, so much so that it’s one I’ve had out publicly here before. I just feel like I should probably dress the part more, but my years sweating through humid Florida summers ingrained in me the virtues of shorts and flip-flops. So, I concede the flip-flops and get to feel at least a little more professional. It’s the best I can do, work… the best I can do. Don’t ask me for much more, ’cause I’m ridin’ that line pretty tight right now as it is.

Speaking of work… we’re coming’ up some some travel here soon, first off to Oregon for a quick working daytrip, then across the country to South Carolina for a couple more days work, and finally to Mexico for a weeklong family vacation (psst, the last one is the one I’m most excited about… in case you hadn’t guessed). Then, once back, it’ll be time to make a trip to China and Taiwan again, looking like a two-week run. And, I swear people, I am going to find a way back to Germany for Oktoberfest again this year… I’m bound and determined to make that a yearly pilgrimage. In fact, one of the 2007 alum sent out an e-mail blast today in attempt to rally the troops… and my mouth starting watering for that fresh Bavarian bier as I sat in my cube reading it. I just gotta get back.

Speaking of speaking of work… today around 4:45pm the place went “dark.” Not dark like literally dark, the lights still worked, but what didn’t was the phone and and network. The whole place, thousands of employees who sit in cubicles, each one of them either on a conference-call style meeting on the phone, or working on e-mail off the network. When the lines were cut, we were all blowing in the breeze. People began to stand up at their desks, rubbing bleary eyes as they flinch at the natural light, prairie-dogging over their cube walls to peer around the floor at what others were doing. “Your phone go down?,” you’d hear. “Yeah, yours too?,” would come the reply. “It’s the whole site, the whole thing is down,” someone chimed in. More heads appear, bones creaking as folks rose, muscles unused for hours working off memory and instinct.

Soon, people began to walk the aisles in search of other humans, almost like a renaissance of cognition. We gathered in small clusters, making humming sounds in our throats to comfort each other, banging on hard surfaces to make primitive rhythms, cracking knuckles as we waited for the familiar “pings” of new e-mails to chime in the distance, for the phones to ring. “What do we do?,” some asked? “I can’t be expected to do work with my hands, for God’s sake,” others lamented… peering at the skin on their baby-smooth fingers, hilariously useless for anything save typing. We called other sites on cellphones, Oregon first: “You guys have phone and internet up there? Oh… you do? OK… Well, we’re totally down here. Yeah. Dead. We have nothing.” Some called across the state, others called their families, still some their therapists.

And, thus began the exodus. I waited for nearly a minute in the right-turn lane to leave the parking lot, everyone filing past in their automobiles, looks of confusion and muted happiness on their faces as they drove – their faces gratefully buried into cellphones, once again suckling from the comfortable teat of technology. Having never worked a day in my life without e-mail or internet, it’s hard for me to imagine how it happened back in the day. People must’ve written with pens and pencils, talked in person in around tables in meeting rooms, licked stamps, read memos – something. Today, you cut the wire and it’s like you kicked the anthill of the modern worker. Panic, scatter, a complete halt.

Was a good day, I enjoyed the collapse of technology. Goodnight.

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they weren’t that far off


Well, it’s 8pm on Wednesday night and I’ll be leaving for the airport in about 30min to retrieve my wife and daughter. At long last, our family reunited. Sharaun’s feeling better, but not 100%. She called from Chicago during her layover, and I heard Keaton in the background playing in a rocking chair. Taking a suggestion from a friend more thoughtful than I, I stopped off after getting a haircut today to pick up a mylar Backyardigans “Happy Birthday’ balloon which I’ll use as a welcome home prop for Keaton at the airport. I didn’t get anything for Sharaun, I hope that’s OK (that’s OK, right blog?). Anyway, I wrote just a tiny bit upon getting home from work today (I split a little early for lack of concentration). Here it is, be warned: I took license.

It’s been a thousand years or more since I bedded the woman under the sun.

I remember it fondly because our communal joy was used as the basis as a new religion, the point-infinity of zero-time in which the people of that world consider consciousness to have begun. As trees thrashed in the soil, our wrestling drove up mountains, broken and shattered peaks looming around us in the midst of our eternal ecstasy. Our fantastic perspiration dotted the firmament with a flood of salty oceans and seas. Living beings sprang forth from the union of our flesh, animals winged and legged sprouting where we brushed, budding from the rich loam of our combined corpus, pushing through that single-skin and living, breathing. The sound of our tryst established the pantheon of world-language, each rumbling low and trilling high adding depth and soul to spoken word, the genesis of communication.

Each coordinated push of our bodies establishing the regular cadence of time, the cradle of eternity, the friction of our motion warming the surface of the world and giving life to all manner of plant and flower. Beauty bloomed around us, tickling our ticklish bits as it pushed through to touch our flesh and bend to the sun of our union. The fluid results of our strained efforts being the Philosopher’s Stone, that golden egg from which all base and divine sprang and will one day return – Aqua Vitae. As breath filled the first lungs ever to breathe, some of those infant-beings glimpsed our culminating love and the imprint of that God-Union was burned red-hot into their consciousness, destined to be collectively passed down and re-interpreted throughout time, understood and misunderstood by the legacy human froth spilled foaming from our joy.

They called it the Big Bang, and they weren’t that far off.

How’s that for blasphemy? Goodnight and happy Lent.

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laundry coup aside


Tuesday night and my wife and daughter are still not home.

Sharaun came down with the dreaded influenza on what was to be her last day in Florida, and she was knocked onto the couch as her parents traded days off work to help take care of baby Keaton. Luckily, her flight was a free voucher-based one, allowing her to essentially infinitely push it back until she’s feeling up to the long solo flight with the baby on her lap. Well, I say infinitely, but in actuality she’ll have to make it home shortly before midnight tomorrow night, when Keaton officially turns two and goes from a free lap-child to a paying passenger.

That’s the other bit of sadness on my part for wife and child not being here as planned: I’ll be missing most of her actual birthday. Not a big deal, but still stinks that I can’t wake up and tell her “happy birthday!” (Guess I could do that Thursday, she’d really never know.)

My head is sleepy-thick right now, I had a tiring day at work and wanted nothing more than to take a quick hour-ish nap before the Democratic debate started. Unfortunately it didn’t work out, and I at best got a few closed-eyed moments while a familiar episode of Andy Griffith played quietly in the background. The only other noise was the whirring of the washing machine, an appliance I had to reacquaint myself with this afternoon, lest I be forced to realize the nightmare of going into work not wearing pants. Honestly, and somewhat shamefully, it’s been a good amount of time since I’ve actually done laundry. Not that it’s all that hard, or difficult to recall in terms of methodology, but it’s just something I’m rusty at – and realizing that made me remember how it used to be living alone. I decided I’m much happier now as a married man.

Not solely for the laundry or anything, but, y’know… whatever…

Although I must admit, as a guy who hardly ever does laundry, I still seem to do it a lot more efficiently than our family’s primary laundry-doer. Heck I did the whole overflowing bin’s worth tonight, and managed to fold and put it away. Maybe I should take over the role? Execute a laundry coup, perhaps, a hostile takeover of that noisy little room. I don’t mind the task at all.

Anyway, folding Keaton’s little socks and shirts and jeans makes me miss her so much. And, laundry coup aside, I these little socks sure do wont for some little feet to fill them up and run around the house with them on… don’t they? She calls it “La-la-lee-la.” Boo!

Oh, and before I go, something interesting: Sharaun says Keaton’s recent st-st-st-stuttering stint has all but disappeared since they’ve been in Florida.

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ch-ch-ch-ch-changes


Hi Tuesday. Back to work today, fresh of my latest trip on ship-sick. Felt OK, the busyness of the day working to keep my mind from dwelling on how I felt, letting me instead be washed away in the stress and decisions of my daily eight-hour farce. I suppose that means I have to go back tomorrow, so I will. Today, I went a little mad near the end there (sorry about breaking the no-cussing streak, blame Art). Let’s do this.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫
♫ Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers… ♫

Just within the past few days, Keaton has begun stuttering. At first, I thought this was utterly cute. She’s always done some amount of stammering or word-repetition at the beginning of her phrases, and I’d always chalked that up to her knowing she wanted to form a long string of words, but needing some extra time to process what she wanted to say and buying it through repetition. This recent stuff though, this is different. All of the sudden at my folks’ place in Oregon last week, she started getting really hung up on her ‘W’ lead-words. “Where’d the doggy go daddy?” turned into, Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-where’d the doggy go daddy?” With the ‘W’ sound repeated an almost comical amount of times. Actually, with the ‘W’ sound repeated a downright comical amount of times.

“W-w-w-w-w-wan-wan-wan-w-w-w-wan-wanna use the potty” began to replace the previously smooth and fluid “Wanna use the potty.” Again, the amount of repetition on the lead word was so prominent I figured she must be doing it on purpose as a reaction to the giggles we initially reacted with.

Within just the past forty-eight hours, though, she’s branched out from just ‘W’ words and now hangs up on all sorts of words. She draws out initial words too, like, “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii wanna bite daddy’s cheese,” or “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmy babydoll is sleeping.” Still, I saw no reason for concern, and figured it was some sort of normal speech pattern per development. Sharaun, however, was a little more prudent, deciding she didn’t like the new Keaton-speech and doing some online research. Here’s what the sage internet has to say about toddler stuttering:

Many children go through a developmental stage of speech disfluency that’s often confused with true stuttering. This normal disfluency does disappear over time without need for treatment.

Children with true stuttering tend to repeat syllables four or more times (a-a-a-a-as opposed to once or twice for normal disfluency). They mmmmmay also occasionally prolong sounds.

Hmmm… sounds like our Keaton…

Children with stuttering show signs of reacting to their stuttering — blinking the eyes, looking to the side, raising the pitch of the voice.

Oh yeah, blinking eyes, screwing up her face, seemingly looking into space for the words: check, check, and check. Hmmm….

True stuttering is frequent — at least 3 percent of the child’s speech. While normal disfluency is especially noticeable when the child is tired, anxious, or excited, true stuttering is noticeable most of the time.

Well, as long as the internet is still an infallible source of information and a viable method of self-diagnosis, I’m convinced: Our baby may have a legitimate stuttering problem. The doctor on the internet said we should alert our pediatrician, so that’s what we’ll do.

Still, I secretly think it’s cute, and am not really too concerned. Call me naive.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫

Tomorrow I’m dropping Sharaun and Keaton off at the airport bright and early so they can catch a flight to Florida to see Keaton’s brand new cousin, baby Hobson (blog-style congratulations to Aunt Breck and Uncle Doug). After that, I’ll be on my own for five whole days. Cast back into the shadowy realm of bachelorhood (well, minus all the wild stripper-pole parties I used to throw in my true bachelor past, ahem). On my own for meals, clean boxers, sexual gratification (nothing much new there), bedtimes and waketimes, and whether or not I have to don knickers on the weekend. My barnburning plans include the cleaning jag I’ve outlined here before, and completely eschewing the television in favor of the iPod. In some ways I’m looking forward to the time, but in reality I think I’ll start to miss my girls right-quick.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫

Has anyone ever heard an old fable, or story, or Mother Goose or… something… about a man, or king, or maybe it was a pauper, who woke up one morning to a solid-gold reflection of himself in the mirror? Yeah, I figured not, because I just made that up. But today was my solid-gold day. I was untouchable. I walked on water. I touched souls. The heart-hardened wept open-mouthed as babes for tit.

Below please find the actual photo that sits unblinkingly on my sawmill’s badge. Note the lethargic smile, crooked nose, and fucking hair. It was taken some eight years ago now, and I’ve worn it around my neck five days a week for those long years like a sinner’s millstone. While this is, in what I hope would be anyone’s opinion and not just my own, a spectacularly awful picture of me, it’s constantly displayed on my chest in miniature contrast to my real face just a foot above it.

I like to think I see something better than that in the mirror each morning, and usually I do (changing that pitiful post-college hairstyle really opened up new avenues for me, how on earth did I ever pull tail with that gel-back?). In actuality it’s likely not that far off the mark. They got the underlying concept right.

I hate that picture. Hate.

So imagine my apoplectic joy when, this morning, smiling back at me in that reflective glass, I saw instead an Adonis of an alpha-male, chiseled face sculpted from shining polished gold. I took avenue-wide strides all the way to work, stepping from cloud to cloud and smiling down on creation from my appointed place in the Heavens. I called lightnings with my fingers, distilled the entirety of human consciousness into my hands and cast it to the wind as worthless. I was amazing.

When I got home at 6pm, the chump from the badge was back, only he was eight years older and balder. I berated him, tore him down layer by putrid layer and tried to rebuild him again in all the gilt perfection of twelve hours prior. Resisting my efforts, he slithered back into decline, rusting in real-time, biodegrading on a hook in the backyard.

It’s not over.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫
♫ Pretty soon you’re gonna get a little older… ♫

To those of you who were lucky today and didn’t even know it – Goodnight and sweet dreams.

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margarita fever-dreams


Sorry so long between entries folks, lots has happened. Keaton can do long division, Sharaun now detests untidiness, and I’m now 100% bald. Nah… I’m just screwin’ with ya. Not much happened at all: A trip back from Oregon and a day spend on the couch in misery yesterday. Why? I’m sick.

Being sick, the Monday I had planned was ruined. No waking up early to get Springtime fertilizer and spreading it on the lawn, no pulling weeds, no time in the sun. Instead I spent the whole day laid up on the couch alternating between freezing and boiling with a pounding headache and more snot than brains in my head. I started feeling bad when I woke up Sunday in Oregon, our last day there, it was worse yesterday, and I’m cautiously optimistic I’m on the mend today.

Yesterday, in a brief flicker of feeling-OK, I decided to amass the tax documents and do our 2007 taxes. The past few years, I’ve developed a strategy: Use the online H&R Block tool to rip through the process as quickly as humanly possible, trying hard to not be anal or stressed about it. Then, when I’m done, I close the whole tool and wait one day. Going back that next day, I do a very cursory review… just an eyeball to see if things look semi-right, no number-matching or data-checking or anything wise like that. Then, I press “file.” Simple as that. Taxes are a mystery to me anyway, I always think I understand what’s going to happen each year, and each year I get surprised. I guess I just don’t have a head for numbers when it comes to finance. Hell, I guess I just plain don’t have a head for numbers, period. But, we ended up getting some money back this year – which is a good thing in one way, and a bad thing in another because I’d rather not loan the government my dosh. Either way, we’re done for this year.

Speaking of windfall, we’ve managed to pre-spend some of that tax money already by way of booking tickets for an April vacation in Mexico. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to actually buy airfare for Keaton, and it hurt just as much as I thought it would. We’ll be spending a full week somewhere south of Cancun, splitting the cost of a two-sided “lockout” timeshare thing with a coworker of mine and his family. The price was decent, and the accommodations are brand new and look fantastic. Plus, since we’ll both be bringing our broods along, we plan to work out an alternating babysitting scheme that gives the husband-and-wife duets some time away from kid-duty. I’m just excited about the carnitas, swim-up bar, and sunshine. Bring it on.

And, on a funny logistically-related note, the US government says that Keaton needs to have a passport to travel. I used epassportphoto.com to whip up some pictures of her for the application, and Sharaun and I will have to both tote her down to the post office so she can give the requisite fingerprints, pint of blood, hair sample, and get her “not a terrorist” tattoo. It’s a pain in the butt, is what I’m attempting to sarcastically say, to have to “pose” my two-year-old daughter for a passport photo and whatnot. What’s she gonna do anyway, score a key and smuggle it back in her baby dolls? Doubtful.

Anyway, I just wrote this entry to get something up here for Tuesday, as I couldn’t stand to go nearly a week without a post. I have the best of intentions to also have something ready to auto-post at midnight tonight as Wednesday’s entry, so, we’ll see about that. Until then, see ya.