2nd Illiteracy Anniversary

Well, to introduce this posting I have to give you some back story. Short story: A lot of people gave me crap about not updating my blog even though I left the link to the blog up as an away message. Long Story: Same as the short story but the same people used the 2nd anniversary of my last blog as an excuse to go drinking, so small win there. I wouldn't mind having something of mine be a holiday of sorts with drinking involved. I foster irresponsibility and I like it! But aside from that I recently got back from a vacation, though I'm not gonna say where.... *cough cough Pineapples, *cough cough Coconuts, and it made me feel that I really should spoil the mood and write a new blog.

So here it is. Ta Da! How sad would that be if it just ended there? And for all of you who just read that and thought "Not too sad" I will find you! And make you Rue! Yes, I will make that delicious Louisiana foodstuff, and all will be merry! But to make this blog also worth reading I'm including two stories that found their way to Facebook that I had wanted to post here, and also a new story, about my vacation, at the bottom. I hope they make you smile.

 Story 1: Ode to driving: So I had a crazy moment on the roadway yesterday, I'm driving along, "tired" from the festivities of the night before. Ahead of me is a pickup truck with a couple mattresses stacked in the back, and I notice this because they are not tied down and a part of me is very wary of beltway-crap-not-tied-down shenanigans. And then it happens, I look away at someone walking on the side of the street and when I look back the mattresses are no longer in the truck and with lightning fast reflexes I swerve wildly, screaming, to avoid the massive obstacles and certain destruction! Feeling my heart race as I nearly miss doom in the form of a bedspread I manage to get the car heading straight again. Now, that is what "I" saw happen. Here is what ACTUALLY happened. As I turned to look at the person on the side of the road the truck with the mattresses I had been following turned down a side street to reveal that in front of it, was another DIFFERENT pickup truck, which, no surprise, had NO mattresses in the back. So here when I looked back and didn't see mattresses I, instead of oh I don't know LOOKING, instead believed them to be bouncing towards me and swerved. I swerved to miss an invisible mattress. So everyone else in the world just saw a guy driving a jeep lose it for awhile to miss NOTHING. And the moral of this story is: Always keep your eye on the road otherwise you might risk hitting a whole lot of NOTHING. Fin'

 Story 2: Squirrels: Odd event this morning. I got in my Jeep, which still had the sunroof top open from yesterday, and saw both my sun visors were down and my mirror was askew. So I think to myself "Did someone get in here and root around?" But nothing was gone and literally that was the only disturbance in the car. So I'm driving along the beltway, thinking this over in my head when I look down and see an open bag of nuts from last night sitting in my cup holder and I think "Huh, maybe it was squirrels", which would make sense if they hopped in going for the nuts and knocked the visors and mirror. Mystery solved I keep driving. And then I think, "But how did they get out? That sunroof is pretty high. Maybe it WAS someone trying to steal stuff. But that still doesn't explain the skewed rear view mirror like the squirrel solution. ....Unless... the squirrel... never made it out." And it was at this thought that I lost it. Freaking out on the beltway, hearing noises in the back of the car, imagining a squirrel making a frantic run up my head to leap for safety. Long story short made it to work without a squirrel on my face, but just in case some people in the parking garage may have seen my yelling and clapping my hands like a crazy person at an apparently empty car with the doors open for awhile.

 New Story: Also known as Story 3, or possibly Story Zero, you decide: A night in Hawaii. (okay yea I just told you where the vacation was, but it would have been weird to keep calling it *cough "insert fruit here" ...On reflection I should have phrased that better, but onward and upward!

 So let me set the scene, when you arrive in Hawaii you are effectively traveling back in time, almost like using a Delorean, but more like an airplane but probably about the same amount of leg room and available movies (not a Fan of United Airlines. For being called United it is apparently sized for Pygmies or for shipping children around and they charge for everything. NO ONE should have to PAY to watch "Horrible Bosses 2". NO ONE!) So you arrive and you have traveled back, in our case, six hours. Now EVERYONE is losing time, so when you are going to bed you want to sleep at 4 in the afternoon and you want to wake up at 2 in the morning. Jet Lag. It Happens. TO EVERYONE. And if you think it doesn't happen to you then you are an insomniac or possibly a Pygmie and flying United is awesome for you and you really like the movie Horrible Bosses 1 and couldn't wait for the sequel. Fail YOU. But that is your cross to bear.

But for this story to work you have to understand, you get there, you are tired, yet you will wake up in the middle of the night at the drop of a hat because your body wants to. And the place is STRANGE. The big Island is NOT like the bikini clad tropical oasis of the movies. The Big Island has different tropical zones which consist of 1) Tropical Oasis with people throwing Coconuts with Straws at you, 2) Lava Pits, and 3) Jurassic Park Horror Story. I don't name it, I just read what's on the sign. So our resort was in what I lovingly call 3) Jurrasic Park Horror Story. Now don't get me wrong, the Resort is gorgeous, but it is built on an old Lava flow and everything there is planted, so if you look out past the hotel resort wall it turns into a wasteland of broken rock and twisted trees where in the Mind's Eye the sounds of wolf howls, breaking underbrush, and the roar of wild beasts permeate the night air. Or at least it might to someone who just got off a 12 hour flight, has had minimal sleep, and who just watched Horrible Bosses 2 for the third time. So this is the setting for these scene. Remember it.

 Now our first day there was great, we woke up nice and early, got massages in Tiki Huts suspended over Koi Ponds, had a delightful Brunch, took a lengthy walk along the beach, had a delicious Sushi Diner with Saki, swam, snorkeled, saw a rainbow, Pet a Unicorn yada yada yada NOW, fast forward to that night. It had been a glorious day and I fell into a fitful sleep with no worries on my mind and a bit of an Alcohol Buzz going. And then, some of you may know where this is going if you read back over the day's events, and no I did not get woken by an angry Unicorn (that was Day 2), ..and then, I woke up. My tummy a Grumblin. Well to say 'A Grumblin' gives the impression of Keebler elves making a slightly kookie batch of cookies (for a play on words). It was more like that Unicorn had kicked me in the sack. My stomach HURT. I woke up more than a little unhappy. You guessed it. Food Poisoning. And so, I made haste, to the little boys room to make some very grown up sounds. 

Now remember the scene I set up for you at the beginning? Jurrasic Park scary landscape just arrived on a plane tired but can't sleep? Now image that, but I will add a detail. This was a very kid friendly resort. So, there were kids in all the neighboring rooms who were tired, but likely awake, and likely a little freaked out never having been to Hawaii and finding it to be a mysterious rocky land. And then, at the wee hours of the morning, being the only ones awake cause mom and dad took their sleep pills, they start to hear screaming. Or as I like to call it, "The Call of the Dinosaur". Needless to say the noises I made were at best, unholy, and at worst along the lines of a Mongoose possessed by the Devil. I can just imagine the kids huddled under their blankets wondering what in the HELL was making that noise in this Jurrasic wasteland and then just when they get up enough courage to go wake mom and dad and ask..... the noise stops (at the point round 1 was over for me). And so no one believes them when they say what they heard. "Get Back to bed you rap scallion!" their parents yell, because their parents are apparently 75 and not up on modern terminology and lingo. And so the child goes back to bed....and I get up again. And the screech emanates again through the halls as the vicious Raptor takes down it's prey, obviously someone who was just out for a walk (man these kids in my imagination have vivid imaginations!) And so these kids go running again to their parents seeking aid only for the silence to occur again! "Off with Ye!" the adults cry (now apparently turned into pirates) and the child must again return to bed, eyes wide with fright, as they wait to hear more, but all they hear the rest of the night (Meg went and got me some Immodium, thank God for that all night Hotel Manager) is the tossing, turning and ill fevered grunting coming from...somewhere in the night!

 Needless to say my first night did not go so well, but I take small solace in the fact that I probably scared the poop out of some people's kids I will never meet. Welcome to Hawaii, now KNOW FEAR! They're parents will thank me later when their kids abscond from all future beach vacations saving them thousands. And that was how I set the bar nice and low in Hawaii, and it was all uphill from there.

 Hope you all enjoyed this blog I will try to keep it regular like Bran Muffins.

 Fin! (see it ended on A Hawaii Pun. Get it? Snorkeling? Fin? Okay I may have gotten too much sun....)