Crush Or Flush

Well, okay, you all know that Jason and I met online. So, I'm always into people finding some love online, and while it's never easy, this site sure tries to make it so. Its called "Crush or Flush" and you can meet people, chat and generally get yourself out there. My advice is, as always, take some chances with love. Not with your safety. You don't have to reveal any personal info to people on this site. So, if you're looking for love, click on the word "chat" and start crushing.

Honeymoon day 9 and 10 St Pete!

So, I don't know if I ever said, but this whole honeymoon was really built around 2 races. We thought it would be fun to go to Homestead for the season opener and St Pete, the week after. The rest of everything kinda fell into place after that. The cruise was at a perfect time, the house we stayed in was an awesome gift from someone that Jason barely knows. It was a very generous thing for him to do and it was really great. So, back to the races:

We had been to homestead, and the cruise, and it was time for the race in St. Petersburg. It's a street race there and in the middle is a park, and a baseball field. Jason went down to check things out on Saturday, and I joined him on Sunday. There was a ferris wheel and I think I have my mother's facial expression in this picture.
Jason saw some funny stuff. Like a stop sign on the track, and people sitting in trees to watch. The whole thing was near the strangest looking yacht club ever.


We had grandstand seats, and in front of us there was a giant TV on a truck. It wasn't working. There whole grandstand cheered and jeered when the guy came to fix it, and had quite a bit of trouble at first. The seats were right at a really sharp turn, and we got a lot of action there.

The rain. It rained. A lot. We sat in it. There was no where to run, so why not. We got a little wet, but I was dry again by the time we left. I wish they would have let them run in the rain, but no. So, when the rain stopped the race was on.

We did have good seats. Danica lost it twice right in front of us and forgot she had a reverse gear, and also sadly, while Vitor was doing really well, he got put in the tire barrier right in front of us. I was sad. While it was nothing like his launch this past weekend, it was depressing. We were excited for Graham to win, and after the race we walked back to the buses, they shuttled us to our car, and we went to dinner.

We had seen a restaurant in our driving called Famous Dave's. It was a barbecue place. It was so good. I wrote a long review on their comment card begging them to come to Indiana, and then surprise surprise, we see one coming in just down the street from us. HA HA HA

That's it! Tomorrow, the sponge docks!

Woud You Rather Weekend

Would you rather have to kill Winnie the Pooh or Bambi?

So, if I had to kill a Disney character, these two probably wouldn't be my first choices. It would probably be whoever decided that making endless sequels was a good idea. But, if I had to choose one of these two, it would be Pooh. I'm sorry bear, you were cool in the beginning, but since I've seen you on 5 billion walmart sweatshirts, I've grown weary of you. You are over-marketed. So, bang. Plus, Bambi has big antlers and sharp hooves, and you are the wimpiest bear ever. I wonder what bear meat tastes like? We just had some AWESOME pork chops (oops, Babe isn't Disney).

Honeymoon Day 7 and 8!

Wow! Two days in one post! Only because there isn't too much to say about our last day on the cruise. We were at sea, Jason was in pain, and we had honeymoon package stuff to do! We attended a "cake party" and had some cake with a couple from Scotland whose clothes had been lost by their airline. We received some gross canapes in our room, and for dinner, we were off to the fanciest restaurant on the boat: Le Bistro. It was French. If you know Jason and I, our taste runs more to the barbecue than the haute. But, it was part of our honeymoon package so we went for it. I wore a black dress and when we were seated, I was asked for the first time ever in my life if a white napkin was okay, or if I would prefer to have a black one. Ummm, white was fine, I didn't need to match my dress... So we looked at the menu. There was NOTHING on there that looked good. So, we just went for it. I ordered escargot. You all know what that is, right? Then I also chose duck al'orange, because it sounded palatable. Jason got some cheese thing and a stuffed chicken with those mushrooms that creep me out. The shape and sponginess are repellent. I know people like them but eeeeeeeew. The part I was looking forward to was dessert. I had ordered freedom pudding. Remember when they were re-naming french fries in the capital's cafeteria? At that point Jason's step-mother wanted a torch for Christmas to make creme brulee. Jason thought that was too French and that it should be called freedom pudding. Thus, a legend was born.

So we are sitting there drinking our free wine and waiting for our free escargot and stuff. Here's a summation:

Escargot are kinda good if you can stop thinking about what you are eating
yuck
yuck
yuck
yuck
HOLY MOLEY It's on fire! (the set the duck aflame at a nearby table)
yuck
yuck
yuck
yuck
Creme Brulee is great!

The end. Overall, I'm sure tons of people enjoy French food. I just happen to know two who don't. It was edible, sure, but it wasn't anything I'd ask for again. Except the creme brulee. Yum.

The next morning we were set to get off of the ship. We had chosen the "express" option, to take our own luggage. It was quick and easy. Customs was a cinch. By 8:45 we were in the car and on our way to: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS!

We arrived there and parked in a huge garage that had ET to help us remember where we parked. As we got out of the car, we realized that the overhead speakers were playing the ET music. That was genius. There were a million moving sidewalks that took us to the "City Walk" a place with restaurants, and a big movie theater, and a sunglasses stand that for some reason I now needed (oops). Then we headed for the part of the park we wanted to see most, Islands of Adventure. Before I go any farther, I want to explain that we had tickets for the Blue Man Group show that evening, and therefore a severely limited time in the park. We would really like to go back for a longer time, like a week. Islands of adventure consists of a bunch of smaller areas that are themed. The first one we went to and my obvious favorite was:


Marvel island.



We got there and the first thing we saw was a gift shop. I got a squished penny with Rogue on it. I am such a dork. We wandered around taking pictures of everything and decided to go on the spiderman ride. The wait was short, and then we got some 3D glasses and got on the ride. It was really cool. I'm pretty sure that the actual real space for the ride was small, but it felt big. Plus, there were effects like water spraying on us, and fire heating up our burnt faces. It was superfun. We looked a little while longer around Marvel Island and since the only other rides were an Incredible Hulk coaster with a long line, and a Storm teacups ride, we moved on through a cartoon island to Jurassic Park.


Talk about cool. There were jeeps and all kinds of props and stuff everywhere. We decided to go on a river ride, and this next part is going to get kinda depressing and soapboxy, so watch out.

So, there we were, standing in line, and Jason and I saw a little lizard. Nothing scary or poisonous, just a little anole or skink, or whatever. We were looking at it, but in front of us in line were this bunch of terrible, low class loud people. You know the type, loud, scantily clad, and annoying. Well, they see the lizard, and they are scared of it. A tiny harmless lizard. One of them tries to kick it with their shoe, and another one "accidentally" stepped on it and killed it. I was really upset. That poor little lizard, just walking along when these unreasonable people kill it. I was almost ready to get out f line, but there was really no way out unless we fought our way through a huge line. So, we stay on, and I'm really upset. The mean people go, and we get on the ride. As we sit down, we see another lizard and another person behind us sees it too. What is their choice? They spit on it. Never have I more wanted to excuse myself from the human race in general. I know I've killed my fair share of bugs etc, but they were so callous. It was awful. As the boat pulled away, I decided to get over it and enjoy the ride. I was able to for a minute, but I'm still upset by those people to this day.

So, soapbox put away. The ride was fun. I knew it was a log flume like ride, but I sure didn't expect it to drop when it did. It was fun. After that, we walked on through the rest of the islands and since we were short on time, we moved on to the actual universal studios park. There we walked through a nickelodeoney area, and made our way to a cool fake street, where there were blues brothers, and singers. A lot of the store fronts were from movies and stuff. It was really cool. There was a guy fake playing the saxophone and a woman who was really singing. Charlotte had told us not to miss The Mummy ride, so we made a beeline.

Even the line for the Mummy was cool. All of the rides we ad gone on had interesting things in the lines, like models of the cars, or other interactive stuff. The ride itself was AWESOME. It went all around and the best part was when we stopped and the ceiling was ON FIRE. It was really good. Then it was time for Blue Man.


The show was different than the ones we had seen previously, I'll write a full review later, but it was really fun, especially the paper part! We tried to go to hard rock cafe for dinner, got terrible service and decided to leave. We made our way to the house we were borrowing and crashed. Whew!

A little too single minded

O, I know I've been a little single minded and probably boring, with my long posts about the honeymoon. Not that they're going to stop mind you, I'm just going to try to pepper in some more stuff. See? New feature today. There is also new garden news, good news, and this weekend is the 500! So, I promise more, okay? But, still, hold on for more honeymoon.

Would you Rather Weekend

It's a new feature! HOLEY BAZOLEY! Every weekend, I'll post (and answer) a "would you rather" situation. Your job, dear reader, is to do the same. So! The inaugural would you rather weekend comes from a book I bought:

Would you rather eat a cactus or a handful of pebbles?

First, I assumed that the cactus was the same size as the handful of pebbles. Even if it was bigger, I think, I'd still go with the cactus. Because, I could chew up each of the spines on their own and so maybe it wouldn't poke me as much. Plus, cactus is an actual edible thing, whereas pebbles, unless you are a chicken, aren't. Yum cactus. So, what would you rather?

Honeymoon Day 6 Grand Cayman

So after our day of crisping in the sun in Cozumel, we were scheduled to make a second stop in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. When we got up, we heard all kinds on instructions. There was no dock here big enough for our boat. That explained why when I looked at the satellite view on google maps, I didn't see one, yet I saw big cruise ships out on the water. So, to get to land, we had to take a boat. Most of the other cruise ships just dropped a couple of their life boats and used those, but we were different. We used a boat shuttle service that was based at the island.

Jason and I didn't have to be on a boat for a little while, so we went to breakfast at "The Summer Palace" It was beautiful and the service was great too. It made me disappointed that we hadn't been there earlier. We had a nice breakfast and then got ready to go on our next excursion, the 7 mile beach break.

It. was. raining. It was raining when we were on the boat, and as we boarded the buses to go to the beach the skies opened up into a big storm. I was majorly disappointed. We all sat on those buses looking at the rain. Finally it started to let up. The guides said that it would be a great day now, but I didn't by it. I thought, ugh, no beach today, sitting on a bus instead. But, they were right! It cleared up and turned into a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky for the entire time. We got us some rum punch, a chair on the beach and an umbrella to keep some of the sun off of our sunburned backs.

We decided to go into the water and it was LOVELY! We found all kinds of pieces of coral on the bottom, and picked them up with our toes to take them home. The water was clear and nice, and it was a lot less crowded than the day before. I got out of the water because I wanted to read, and a few minutes later, Jason came up and asked if I wanted to snorkel. I was surprised, because he'd had more difficulty the previous day than I had, and I thought that he would never want to snorkel again. I wasn't too keen on it at the beginning, but Jason talked me into it, and boy am I ever glad he did. We got out there and there were all kinds of fish! The water was perfectly clear all the way to the bottom and we saw tons of stuff. One of the first things we saw was this little octopus. I wish I had a picture. He was exactly the same color as the sand beneath him, and you could only find him when he moved. That was cool too. He would put all of his arms together, and then when he'd reached his destination, spread them all back out. That was, by far, the best thing we saw when we were snorkeling.

Jason would have me mention that I saw a fish in a hole. Not only did I see said fish in said hole in the coral, I yelled this fact out though my snorkel. One of my endless talents no doubt. In my defense, it WAS really cool, and I felt the need to let Jason know about it.

We only had so long at the beach, so we got dried off and dressed and piled back onto the buses. This time I had a bag full of rocks. We were hungry so we decided to eat at this place called "Breezes" It was so good. We had conch fritters, then I had a whitefish sandwich and Jason had coconut shrimp. It was by far the best meal we had on the whole cruise. We were impressed. After that, we went shopping.

I wanted something from Grand Cayman that really said island to me. I was looking for some artwork, but I never did find it. Instead I got a really pretty silk tablecloth, and some rocks. Honestly? I really like the rocks. We looked all around and ended up in a little store that had sand for a floor. There, Jason found some hot sauces, and we heard a song that will never go away.

It was a rum cake! A rum cake!

Yeah.

We saw a lot of overpriced stuff, a lot of jewelry. I had mine, so I wasn't that interested. We had our picture taken in front of some stingrays. At one point, we were walking down the street and poof! Chickens! There was a mother hen and a whole bunch of really cute chicks! We also saw a policeman in Grand Cayman. This time he didn't have a gun. He had a GIANT Doberman pincher. It was a really pretty dog, but the policeman didn't look like he wanted us to pet it. We wandered around until it was, sadly, time to get back on the boat.
Why do I look scared? That's a giant shower. I was afraid it would turn on at any moment.


Overall, Grand Cayman was way better than Cozumel. The people were nicer, you weren't afraid you were going to get mugged. It was like paradise. I know we only saw the most touristy part of the entire island, but I sure wouldn't mind going back.

We got to watch a beautiful sunset as we were leaving grand Cayman. It was the prefect day.
That night we ate at one of the bigger restaurants on the boat called "Indigo" it was good, but evidently not too memorable, as I have no clue what I had to eat. Oops! We saw a second city improv and sketch comedy show that night. They were funny, but not as good as I hoped, with the second city name on there. We also went up to 80's night and were entertained by funny costumes and a cover band that was actually, really good.

The bands on the boat were strange. They had a 3 man kinda reggae band on the pool deck every day, and every night they had another cover band in the main lobby area. They were STRANGE. We heard Johnny Cash, The Beatles, and strangely the BeeGees.

What we didn't know yet was that Jason had incurred some serious sunburn from our two days in a row of snorkeling. I was red, but he had blisters. It really caused him a lot of pain for the rest of the trip. I felt awful, because there was nothing I could do. Okay, I did do something to him. One of the blisters popped. I was worried about infection. So I went down to the ship's doctor, (who could offer virtually nothing for sunburn, but was willing to charge us $75 to look) and got some bandaids and alcohol swabs. Did you know that Jason can jump 3 feet straight up off the bed from his stomach if you put alcohol on his sunburn? Yeah. He can. I don't think he'll ever forgive me.

Onward! To our last day!

Honeymoon Day 5 Cozumel

After our first day at sea, we had managed to get our sea legs, but were soon to be rid of them as we were arriving in Cozumel at 7am. As we wandered off the boat, our camera lens fogged up, so I don't have a good picture of the strange giant parrot that greeted us on the dock. No, I don't mean some kind of exotic bird, I mean some poor crew member in a carpet suit. There was also a vaguely multi-ethnic woman dressed as a Mexican. They seemed to be holding the boat there with a big rope.

We had an excursion booked that would be a Jeep trip to a beach for some snorkeling, and lunch. On the way we were to see some ruins and other fun stuff. So we got there early, and when we get off of the boat, we had no choice but to walk into a big shopping complex. Here there were about 8 million jewelry stores. There was also this great big perch that looked like later would have a real parrot. Most everything was closed, so we wandered a while and then sat to wait. Jason saw this kid on a tiny bike selling newspapers.

Our tour group got together and went up some stairs to another level of jewelry shops. It seemed apparent that we were going to wait some more and some of the shops were open. We went into the closest and were looking at all of the stuff when a ring caught my eye. I liked it but the guy wanted $375 for it. Nothing doing. I gave it back and we tried to walk out. No big. But the guy stops us and begs to make a deal . We tell him that we would pay $100 and he acts insulted. We go to walk out and he offers $275, we say no and negotiate it until he says $175 and it's a deal. We never meant to haggle this and it worked out anyway. I'll post some pictures of the beautiful ring, when I get some. So with a new piece of Mexican jewelry, we make our way back to the group.

We know we are going to be split up into groups of 4 and on the walk to the jeeps we meet up with another couple. Turns out that they are from Indiana too! Ha! So we agree to pair up, and have our one and only celebrity sighting of the trip. Turns out that Morgan Freeman owns one of those little jewelry shops. Who knew?

We get our instructions. Someone is going to lead the group. If he goes fast, we go fast. If he goes slow, we go slow. If he runs over a Mexican, we don't run over the same Mexican. After this complicated lesson we are off! Jason drove us there in a Jeep that was possibly missing some gears and really obviously missing some maintenance. It was a pretty drive, other than the Mexican policeman that I saw holding a machine gun. eek. I'm not breaking the law, I swear.

We drove to a national park type place and first, we saw some alligators. They were big. We also saw some crabs in there and some neat rotted trees. There was a big tower to climb and we could see the alligator tracks in there.

Then we saw the ruins. They had told us not to expect much, but the story behind the tiny thing (a lot more was under the sand) was interesting. If hurricane force winds started to blow, the thing would whistle to warn the people! That was so cool! We then drove to our snorkel site. We parked the Jeeps and walked to a big beach with gorgeous water and soft sand. We all got our equipment on, and after not enough instruction, we went out into the very rough water.

It was hard to swim in all of that, but we struggled out to a coral reef. There were way too many people way to close together. For people who had never snorkeled before, it was extra difficult. We managed to see some cool things. I saw a tiny fish that was black with electric blue spots. The coral was also neat. There were huge purple fans that swayed with the aforementioned rough water. It really was grueling. It was hard to swim and confusing with so many people. I held a stranger's hand. I think it was a girl. We both did it, and then realized at the same time that it wasn't who we were reaching for. We did eventually make it back in, a lot of people had to be rescued by jet skis and stuff. I can't overstate how had it was to swim.

When we got in, we had a lunch that was pretty good. We drove back, this time the wife of the other couple driving. Turns out they like top gear too. Ha! We had a little time to look around some more, and we should have gone in to one shop that we didn't. They were selling luchador masks. Hee Hee!

We were walking back to the boat, and I wanted to see what was going to be on that big perch stick thing. There were 4 parrots. The guy let me hold one, like normal at first, but then he turned her on her back, and I held her like a baby! It was cool. We got Danica a tiny shirt from the Cozumel humane society and got back on the boat.

We were both toast. Suburned doesn't even begin to cover it. We had some dinner at the Japanese Steakhouse on the boat, called Teppenyaki (I really have no clue if that's spelled correctly). We had to eat there! Our first date was at a Japanese steakhouse, plus that's just really good food to eat. It wasn't as good as our favorite Kabuto, but it was good. They served warm edamame and we didn't realize for a while that they wanted you to shell the beans before eating them. Extra roughage for us, yay. Then we went to see a strange show called "Sea Legs" it was a showgirls/acrobat show and it was so hokey it was hilarious. We went up to spinnaker again for 70's night and then crashed. The next day was Grand Cayman!

Honeymoon Day 3 (and 4) Part 2

So after we are out at sea, it was time to go to our first dinner. We ended up at a place that was open 24 hours and served all kind of fried bad for you stuff. The potato skins were really just wedge fires with all kinds of stuff on them, but they were good!

You see, our boat had all kinds of different restaurants that we can go to anytime we want. It was really nice. This place and Mambo's overlooked the lobby like area of the boat, and in the lobby there was a really cool ceiling treatment with all kinds of glass icicles hanging. There was also a Chihuly! I love his work, and he's so entertaining too.

After dinner we stopped by the nightclub in the boat, and it's a really cool place that was never as full as it should be. It had beds! A bunch of kinda Moroccan style beds all around the edge of the room. There was music and big TVs and a bowling alley (more later on bowling)

We hung out in a bed for a while and then went back to the cabin to hang out in a different bed. We were TIRED. The thing is, they didn't clip some clip on the underneath of the bed. So, the 2 twin beds that made our full size bed kept sliding apart. So, every couple of hours I'd wake up to find that I was sleeping in a space hammock created by the sheets. They finally fixed this. After a good night's sleep , we spent our next day at sea.

On our first whole day at sea we took time to sit out on the deck and read, and Jason ran around with the ipod. My first honeymoon book was Poltergeist by Kat Richardson. I enjoyed it, but it was kinda slow and difficult to understand, as I had not read the first book (this was the second in the series).
For dinner that night we went to Mambo's. It was tex-mex style. I had fajitas and Jason had these seafood skewers things that were awesomely delicious. That was probably the best restaurant on the boat. After there we headed up for a 50's style night at the big "Spinnaker Lounge". We saw some dancers and listened to some songs then we were pooped and wanted to get some sleep in preparations for our day in Cozumel!

It rang! (kinda)

So......


I have a new car!

I had to kick some hiney on the phone with capital one, but I got things done and we got a check! The one pictured isn't mine, but it's the right color. I'll post some of mine when it stops raining and I get it clean. Its so purple. I love it. Its fun to drive and so far, good on gas. I think the whole thing might be over-ish.