We’ve been snorkeling all day. Amazing stuff. To describe the experience wouldn’t do it justice. So many brightly colored fish and coral, it was like being on an alien planet. I was very skittish at first but got used to it and ended up even diving to the the bottom to check out strange creatures. Also, no shark attacks on me or my crew.

Another couchsurfer Andrea is here. Coincendently, she lives in Vegas also. She works for the airlines and flies all over the place on her three day weekends. We hit it off famously and are going out to dinner in a few minutes. James and his girlfriend Lee, our hosts, are nice also. They took us out for an authentic Hawaiian meal last night. I liked the food so much I think we might go again tonight.

We made it across the perilous ocean and to the Big Island of Hawaii. I have to briefly write about our crazy Thanksgiving, even though I’m over it. Then I’ll get into our crazy plane trip here.

Crazy Thanksgiving:

My 22 year old cousin is dating a 35 year old guy that her parents don’t approve of. I’ve never met him so I can’t make any judgements on the situation. A week before Thanksgiving she called my mom asking if Bill could come to Thanksgiving dinner. My mom said it was fine as long as it was okay with her parents. Alex never asked her parents and didn’t mention that he was driving from Minneapolis to Chicago with her. As far as they knew, she and Bill were broken up. Alex was supposed to show up around six on Friday (our plans were to have Thanksgiving on Saturday), at ten she still hadn’t called. My mom and I knew what was up, but felt like we shouldn’t butt in. She finally called at ten and told her parents that she was bringing Bill. They went balistic, way over board and were rediculously dramatic. My aunt (her mom) was crying, my uncle (her dad) was really upset and kept asking Alex if she was getting married.

They got off the phone and broke out the scotch. The funniest part of this whole exchange was that the whole time the tv was on in the background. TNT was showing the movie Titanic. As this was all going on, the part where the ship is sinking and people are screaming and bodies are falling into the icy water was the backdrop to my uncle’s angry statements and my aunt’s hysterical sobs.

Alex came to the house. There was more serious discussion. My aunt said that she couldn’t stay for Thanksgiving and needed to go home to “feel safe”. They would be leaving in the morning. She didn’t want to drive back to Minneapolis with Alex to decorate her new apartment like they had planned. No one thought she was serious.

The next morning they got up insanely early, took the furniture that they had brought for Alex out of their car and put it in hers. My aunt said had to make the sweet potatoes and the stuffing before she left. We still thought she was bluffing and just wanted us to talk her out of leaving. She wasn’t. After she made the food she had promised to make, they got in the car to make the eight hour drive back to Cleveland.

A Thanksgiving of nine was now a Thanksgiving of seven. We were expecting my sister, her husband and my niece later in the day. My sister had a doctor’s appointment in regards to her difficult pregnancy and then they would come straight to the house. An hour after my aunt and uncle left we got a call from my sister that her doctor had sent her to the emergency room. She and the baby would be fine, but she had to go and get a shot to stop the labor that she had been in prematurely for weeks.

Now a Thanksgiving of nine was now a Thanksgiving of four, two of the four being vegetarians. After a few hours they released my sister on strict orders for bed rest. We packed up Thanksgiving dinner in boxes and made the hour drive to their house. The problem was my sister was still in pain and not able to eat and my brother-in-law and niece ate at the hospital. My mom made a turkey sandwich, I ate some mushrooms and cheese and crackers as we all sat around the kitchen table laughing and saying “Happy Thanksgiving”.

After a short while my sister was in so much pain that her husband took her back to the emergency room. She staying in the hospital for a few days. We watched Samantha my niece for a few hours until a neighbor came to pick her up.

Crazy Plane Trip:

Andy has been following the website hitch 50 since we heard about it on day four of their trip. My mom heard them mentioned on a radio station in Chicago and thought we would be interested. These two guys had a plan to visit 50 state capitals in 50 days with only the help of random real time and internet strangers. We emailed them a few times offering them a ride when they got around Nevada. When they came through they were going to take us up on it, but we had made the last minute plans to go to Chicago. We haven’t been able to check the site in a few days to see where they were or if they were able to make it to there last stop, Honolulu.

This morning we woke up at three thirty am and took a flight to LA. In LA we were hoping that no one would sit by us so we could stretch out, but at the last second a blond, short haired, girl with ripped jeans and a humorous smile sat down. She seemed nice and we started talking. A minute or so later a guy walked up and kissed her on the forehead. He had a blueish t-shirt on with “Scotty” in large, black helvetica letters on the front. I poked Andy, wide eyed and pointed saying, “No way”. Scotty and Fiddy were on the plane. He looked so tired, I don’t think he was really comprehending the scenario. I’m assuming he thought his girlfriend told us about their escapades and we were just saying hi. He left and we didn’t see him again. As tired as he looked, I’m surprised he was even upright for that long. We talked to Scotty’s girlfriend Teresa on and off for the whole five hour flight. They’re coming to Hilo, where we are, on the second and renting a big house until the ninth. We’re invited to stay if there’s room or camp in the back yard or hang out and drink macadamia nut liquor. What a bizarre set of circumstances!

On the big island

We connected with our host James last night, got a good nights sleep and just had breakfast. I wonder what the day will bring?

stick element
Originally uploaded by cindigodotcom.

I forgot to post this when we got back from Laughlin. Someone drew a picture of our Honda Element on the wall in front of the space we were parked in at the hotel. We couldn’t figure out the scenario where that would happen. I thought it would have been funny to recreate it when we parked somewhere else and then pretend I had no idea where it came from. But, I told Andy therefore ruining my devious plan.

We’re back from Chicago. Right now we’re re packing to fly to Hawaii at 6 am tomorrow. I have Thanksgiving tales that I may update from the *Harrah’s Diamond Room while the men watch football.

*Diamond Lounges are places that are available to players that achieve Diamond status. All the Harrahs properties have one. That status is attained by keeping a certain number of points on your players card per year. You accrue points based on how much money you put through the machine. In the Diamond Lounges there are free drinks, huge tvs, puffy chairs and greasy, bad for you snacks. Someone asked me….so that’s what the Diamond Room/Lounge is.

For Novabella and Andy:

My phone is dead. I bought a charger and it isn’t working. Everything is closed today. I’m getting a new charger tomorrow.

It seems like I’ve been doing nothing but cavorting around the country, watching tv. Some may be horrified, some jealous. I’m not quite sure where I stand on the issue.

We made it to Chicago last night. Andy went to Green Bay today to spend some time with his family.

I was helping my mom move a few pieces of heavy furniture. I crouched down to move a power strip that was in the way of a desk and sat down on a terra cotta bowl of cactus. I yelled “YEOUCH!” and jumped up. My mom and I laughed.

It’s tuesday morning, seven twenty three am. Sometimes when I drink too much Red Bull, with or without vodka, I get up insanely early the next morning. I try to avoid both poisons but sometimes they are just too delicious to resist. Yesterday, the Red Bull happened to be with vodka. In fact an impressive amount. I’m sitting at the Starbucks in the Aladin hotel under a speaker playing Motown music too early and too loudly. The line for coffee is all the way out the door and onto the casino floor. What are these crazy people doing up so early?

Vlad the Russian Oracle is in town so we stayed with him last night so he could drive us to the airport. I was going to write about all of our escapades, but I think they’re only interesting in the moment and the retelling would be pretty dull. It was a night of laughing, story telling and drinking among friends. Although I think I called my mom at one point to ask about overdosing on children’s aspirin when I was two or three. This came up because we were drinking “the aspirin drink”. Orange flavored vodka and Red Bull tastes pretty much like liquid St. Joeseph chewables.

Until recently I’ve hated the taste of orange flavoring, soda, tea, orange creamsicles…yuck, yuck and yuck. Although regular oranges, the fruit and juice we’re always good. Ever since I’ve been taking Lexapro my tastes in food seems to be changing. Liking orange flavoring was one unexpected change. Right now I’m drinking a grande hot tea with one bag of orange spice and one bag of mint. Anyway, we were thinking that going to the hospital and having to take charcoal, or whatever happened, I don’t remember, effected my affection for the flavor of baby aspirin. I must have liked the taste at one point to have eaten the whole bottle. I hope I didn’t leave a too slurry or dumb message on her voice mail.

Now, after telling you that I wasn’t going to recount, I’m going to recount:

We also hung out at the open bar in the middle of the Paris casino. It brought back good memories of our wedding. At the time we had a bunch of comp at Paris so we took our friends out for some after wedding cocktails. I loved sitting in the middle of everything in my pretty dress and my “wedding hat” as I like to call it. My normal state of being is pretty low key, but when I feel like being a charming ham, I really get into it. In fact I remember my mom telling me when we went to the hospital for the aspirin incident that I was having a grand old time being the center of attention. Do you think aspirin could be considered a gateway drug?

I’m getting a little woozy. I’m becoming tired and am still a little drunk. Unfortunately, after closing the hotel room door, looking at the number and repeating it in my head several times, visualizing it and vowing not to forget it, I have forgotten it. I will call my sleeping husband to guide me back upstairs and into the shower.

P.S. Cindigo, remember that you moved the car from the Paris parking lot to the Aladin parking lot on the 5th floor next to the elevators. Not that I don’t trust your powers of recollection or anything. I’m just saying.

I’m watching The One. It seems to be some sort of awesomely bad si-fi matrix-y movie. It’s horrible and I love it. Heavy metal techno/rock riffs, slow motion and physically impossible violence by people wearing clompy black boots and leather clothes. I couldn’t ask for a better Saturday night on the puffy couch.

*edit* It wasn’t as awesomly bad as I had hoped. Too much action, not enough campy sci fi.

We’re back from Laughlin. I know, you didn’t even realize that we we’re gone. We’ve taken over Troy and Heather’s living room. It’s turned into a huge nest of blankets, pillows, clothes, open boxes from ebay and a huge sexy backpack (Don’t worry, we’ll clean it all up before you guys get home). There is a football game on the huge tv and another football game streaming on the laptop. It’s like a dream come true I tell you. <—no sarcasm font available.

This morning I felt like I had something in my eye. I called Andy away from the Bears and asked him to look and try to see if there was anything. He said, “ooooohhh you have a big sty on the corner of your eye”. I let go of my lids made some disparaging joke about falling apart and went upstairs to look for myself. I went to the bathroom mirror, pulled down my bottom lid, smiled and went back downstairs. “Andy”, I said while containing giggles, “It’s really weird, but I have another sty in the exact same place in my other eye too”. I sat in front of him, put my face in his and pulled both of my bottom lids down. He looked perplexed. I said, “they kind of look like tear ducts don’t they?” He was appropriately embarrassed, and tried to save face by saying that I have unusually large tear ducts. The only tear ducts I’ve seen are mine and Andy’s so I can’t really say if mine are abnormally large or not. The sample size just isn’t big enough.

This incident makes up for me loosing at Scrabble yesterday by something like 40 points while all the while believing that I had the game wrapped up. I put down the last tile ready to celebrate and high five my creative and high scoring word usage. Andy stated the scores and I thought he was messing with me. I was like “ha ha, very funny”. He looked at me confused and then with the tone of voice you take when a child does something unbearbly cute and rediculous said, “You really thought you won didn’t you?”

Cursis.

My head is hurting and my lips need glossing. Let’s not even talk about the state of my hair. Oh what a disheveled night of board games and overdoses of sugar. Decadently magical.

I’m sitting in a blue, ergonomic office chair in front of a long rectangular, gray laminate desk. We just bought a new (to us) 2004 Honda Element. We were so sure we weren’t buying today, we didn’t bring the checkbook. My husband is driving back to home base right now to get it. Doesn’t the last statement sound much better than, we forgot the checkbook and our new insurance cards?

The Element is silvery gray, our least favorite of all the colors, but since we really we not wanting to buy today, we got a great deal. It’s an empowering feeling to make a silly low ball offer because you just don’t care and have the sales guys play like they’re going back to talk to their manager and every time coming back with prices creeping towards the silly low ball offer. At one time, these exchanges gave me headaches and anxiety. Maybe it’s getting older, getting a little more cash, Lexapro, or just having dealt with this stuff before, but I feel pretty relaxed.

Today we went to REI and bought a very sexy backpacking tent, some poofy high tech sleeping mats and a few other outdoorsy things. Andy set up the tent in the back yard. I’m considering sleeping out there tonight.

I was going to write about our experiences with used car salesmen where hilarity ensues, but it’s really not that funny. This first one was somewhat amusing with the tag team sales guys practically grabbing our ankles to stop us from leaving without buying a car. We had tried every polite way to leave and they just didn’t want to let us go. They used every cliche used car salesman trick in the book. We have decided on the Honda Element. Once we went inside and saw how the seats folded to the sides, the room and how much junk we can carry around, we couldn’t look at anything else.

Other than that, I’ve got nothing to say. I’ve really been wanting to write something interesting. I think about things. I write it in my mind. Then, it never seems to get in between my brain and the screen. Does anyone have any topics I could expand on? I’m pretty good at telling stories. Have any burning questions you want answered? Facets of our journeys or histories you want to hear more of? Anyone…..anyone?

Mostly for the last few days we’ve been looking at cars then coming back to home base to sink into the fluffy couch and watch tv and maybe play a board game with Team Sweezy. I’ve thrown in a few gym and yoga days and Andy’s playing hockey right now. It’s nice to not be in motion for a little while. Really, with the shock of the Britney and K-Fed split, how can I expect myself to do much more?

We’ve booked our tickets to Hawaii for November 28th to December 13th. So any family members that may be reading this from the Sacramento faction, we should be there for Christmas sometime around the twentieth. I think. As you may have gathered by now, our plans are never really set in stone.

We made it to Vegas. This morning we went to Radio Shack and bought the replacement cord I needed for power to my laptop. The internet jones I was starting to feel was intense. We’re staying at Chez Sweezy. Heather and Troy are out to dinner. We’re taking advantage of their huge HD TV and the cushy couches. We found the car we want at autotrader, but are going to look around a little more. Even though we think the Honda Element is a weird looking thing, it’s a pretty ingenious vehicle. Even if we do like it, and it’s towable, it might be too heavy for our little home on wheels. There’s a limited list of vehicles that can be towed with out doing some horrendous thing to the transmission…or something. That stuff is Andy’s department.

I haven’t felt much inspiration for writing lately. What can I say? That paragraph above, I wrote yesterday. Today was all about going to the gym in the morning for a bizarre weight lifting aerobic class. Then hanging out with Troy, Heather and Andy watching football in the living room. All of us on our separate laptops. Andy went to play hockey with his Vegas team and then out to the pub afterwards. He’s called me a few times and is having fun playing pool right now. Finn the adolescent kitten scratched a brag worthy gash into the side of my shin while running by me in terror. He had gotten a Whole Foods bag stuck around his midsection while innocently inspecting it. We watched a horrible yet comforting chick flick calledLucky 7 while Troy tried to extricate a virus that had infected his computer through the “adult” section of Myspace. What you say? There is no adult section in Myspace? Hmmmmm.

We’re really not doing anything blog worthy, but we’re having a good time in the real world.

We’re in Flagstaff Arizona on the way to Vegas. I broke the power cord to my lap top so I’m not able to check my email. We’ll be in Vegas tonight.