This is Flori-D'oh
We had a happy time in Florida and are now back in the Tama. Presents given and received, foods eaten, and beaches flopped down upon. It's all good.
Even the people-watching, especially the people watching which is one of my favorite past times. We saw a trans person on the beach, out and proud and cute. I got to see a guy stomping along the beach paths with a small cheap birdcage strung on a shoulder strap loudly proclaiming he was taking his lizard for a walk. There were assorted oddities of dress and hair that I inwardly giggled over or admired the boldness of the wearer.
But the majority of the people watching happened on the gambling boat. My kids said that one of the big things they wanted to do was the booze cruise, the floating casino that goes beyond the three mile international waters line and you drink and gamble. It didn't go quite like they anticipated.
I enjoyed it. But I am no gambler. I've worked too hard for what money I have and cannot enjoy fruitlessly blowing it. The closest to real gambling I've ever done was when I was pregnant with my son 30 years ago and I'd get off work from the USO. We only had one car in Germany so I'd have to cool my heels on base and wait for Jim to show up. I have a special change purse filled with nickels and would go have a ginger ale while playing the nickel slots in the officer's club.
Didn't gamble this trip at all. Not even the penny slots. I experienced some low level seasickness once we got into international waters that made going into the casino part and the dining room hard. I'd been having some sort of stomach bug the entire trip. I was on tenterhooks of nervousness because Jim's odd pal who had taken our cats was visiting, T-Bone or my nickname for him Mr. Steak. I worried for no reason, Mr. Steak behaved admirably, only tossing out one or two low level creepy remarks instead of huge nasty things about sexual matters every time Jim's back was turned. But it might just be that my daughter and I were never alone with him and gave him zero opportunity.
The boat, oh the boat was filled with drunk people behaving bizarrely that I had fun watching from my perch on the back sun deck. One of the funniest things happened towards the end of the cruise when a very wasted young man started singing along with the songs, getting stuck on Toto's "Africa" I made a silly joke out of one of the song lyrics and he asked me to marry him. I laughed and told him I was too old and too damn feisty.
The only really awful part of the trip was a misunderstanding between my daughter and the AirBnB host. She's gotten her dates mixed up and the last full day we thought we would be there the landlord showed up at 3pm having a literal cow because he said we were supposed to have been out by noon that day. He was right. We ended up scrambling to find a hotel that would take all of us and the dog. Turned out not to be so hard. We found a hotel suite big enough that would take a dog just down the road.
Flying back the next morning started out poorly with the Delta ticket agent hassling us over our baggage, our tickets, our onward tickets, accusing me of yelling at her when I very slightly raised my voice. I realized pretty quickly we were dealing with someone that should never be in customer service - an officious older lady of my age using whatever little bit of power she had to frustrate us at every step of the way, right down to refusing to assign us seats and refusing to check us in for the international leg of the trip. Once I realized what it was I was dealing with I bypassed her and went to the gate agent to get seat assignments and check in for the second flight too. People like that should only be allowed positions where they do not deal with the general public. Real life Patty and Selma.
Even the people-watching, especially the people watching which is one of my favorite past times. We saw a trans person on the beach, out and proud and cute. I got to see a guy stomping along the beach paths with a small cheap birdcage strung on a shoulder strap loudly proclaiming he was taking his lizard for a walk. There were assorted oddities of dress and hair that I inwardly giggled over or admired the boldness of the wearer.
But the majority of the people watching happened on the gambling boat. My kids said that one of the big things they wanted to do was the booze cruise, the floating casino that goes beyond the three mile international waters line and you drink and gamble. It didn't go quite like they anticipated.
I enjoyed it. But I am no gambler. I've worked too hard for what money I have and cannot enjoy fruitlessly blowing it. The closest to real gambling I've ever done was when I was pregnant with my son 30 years ago and I'd get off work from the USO. We only had one car in Germany so I'd have to cool my heels on base and wait for Jim to show up. I have a special change purse filled with nickels and would go have a ginger ale while playing the nickel slots in the officer's club.
Didn't gamble this trip at all. Not even the penny slots. I experienced some low level seasickness once we got into international waters that made going into the casino part and the dining room hard. I'd been having some sort of stomach bug the entire trip. I was on tenterhooks of nervousness because Jim's odd pal who had taken our cats was visiting, T-Bone or my nickname for him Mr. Steak. I worried for no reason, Mr. Steak behaved admirably, only tossing out one or two low level creepy remarks instead of huge nasty things about sexual matters every time Jim's back was turned. But it might just be that my daughter and I were never alone with him and gave him zero opportunity.
The boat, oh the boat was filled with drunk people behaving bizarrely that I had fun watching from my perch on the back sun deck. One of the funniest things happened towards the end of the cruise when a very wasted young man started singing along with the songs, getting stuck on Toto's "Africa" I made a silly joke out of one of the song lyrics and he asked me to marry him. I laughed and told him I was too old and too damn feisty.
The only really awful part of the trip was a misunderstanding between my daughter and the AirBnB host. She's gotten her dates mixed up and the last full day we thought we would be there the landlord showed up at 3pm having a literal cow because he said we were supposed to have been out by noon that day. He was right. We ended up scrambling to find a hotel that would take all of us and the dog. Turned out not to be so hard. We found a hotel suite big enough that would take a dog just down the road.
Flying back the next morning started out poorly with the Delta ticket agent hassling us over our baggage, our tickets, our onward tickets, accusing me of yelling at her when I very slightly raised my voice. I realized pretty quickly we were dealing with someone that should never be in customer service - an officious older lady of my age using whatever little bit of power she had to frustrate us at every step of the way, right down to refusing to assign us seats and refusing to check us in for the international leg of the trip. Once I realized what it was I was dealing with I bypassed her and went to the gate agent to get seat assignments and check in for the second flight too. People like that should only be allowed positions where they do not deal with the general public. Real life Patty and Selma.
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