24 hours. That is how much time I spent driving and riding in a car over break (that's just traveling time that doesn't include little drives around town). I left here amongst the snow flakes on Tuesday morning around 11am. The snow did not impact my driving as it wasn't sticking and the only place I hit some heavier snow only lasted for about three or four minutes. I arrived at Cathy's place around 1:15pm or so. I preceded to watch the movie "Finding Neverland" while waiting for Jacqueline to get home and for William's dad to pick him up. I finished the movie and we packed up the car and headed out the door around 4:30pm. The drive down to Orlando was fairly uneventful and we arrived in Orlando around 12:30am.
The next day (Wednesday) was spent just laying around the house enjoying break. My uncle Johnny and his wife came into town for thanksgiving and stayed at my parents house too. They got in around 7pm on Wednesday. I spent part of the day hanging out with Clancy, atleast when he wasn't sleeping. He is still doing fairly well but having Casey around you can definitely see his age coming through. He and Casey seemed to get along fairly well. Clancy laid down the law pretty quick and let Casey know he was the boss and Casey listened.
Thursday morning my dad woke me up at 7:15 to get up and get ready to go play golf as our tee time was at 8am. We ate and headed out the door and met my Uncle Butch and my cousin Chris at the pro shop. After paying we headed out on the course. We played like crap as normal so nothing overly unusual there. Only interesting things of note here were when I hit a ball in the water near the bank of the pond and my dad told me to step out on the sand patch so I did and I quickly found that it wasn't very stable and I sank about shin deep and when I yanked my legs out they flung sand and mud all over the place including the golf cart and my dad. The other thing of note is that on one of my shots on the 17th hole I almost hit a passing golf cart which was pretty funny. After the game of golf we returned and I changed my sandy, muddy pants and sat down to watch the Falcons game, which they won. After the game we had thanksgiving dinner which included me, my parents, my uncle Johnny, his wife, my Uncle Butch and Aunt Rita, my cousin Chris and his daughter Marissa, Cathy, and Jacqueline. Dinner was great and after words Jacqueline and Marissa insisted everyone go out on the back porch to watch a play they had made up. The play ended up as mostly a disaster as they kept screwing up so we kept giving them a hard time. After a while everyone went home and we headed to bed.
Friday morning I was woke up at 9am to get ready to hit the road to head up to Atlanta. An hour and half later we were out the door. We arrived in Atlanta around 6pm dropped Casey off at Petsmart to stay the night and a chunk of the following day. From there we went and checked into the hotel and then went to dinner at the spaghetti Warehouse. After eating we headed back the the hotel as we had an early wake up call coming on Saturday morning.
Saturday morning did start early as I was woken up at 6:30am. After Cathy got her shower and the rest of us got ready we headed down stairs around 7:30am to get some breakfast. At a little past 8am we headed out again making our wake to Penske so my dad could rent a large truck to empty the storage unit with. After getting the truck we headed over to the storage unit to begin taking everything out of there and moving it into the truck. After a few minor items we began to take the phone booth out which probably weighs close to 700lbs or so and as we began to move it up the ramp to put it in the truck the weight shifted and it lost placed and fell to the ground with a fairly big bang. Luckily though it seems to have made it through the fall just fine. My dad at this point figured it was probably a good idea to go hire some people to come help us. So he hopped in the car and drove off as Cathy and I started pulling a bunch of the boxes out of the storage room. After about 15 minutes or so my dad returned with some guys he picked up at a bus stop. With their help we easily got the phone booth on the truck and even loading the rest of the stuff on the truck was a snap after that and we were finished by noon. Just before finishing William was dropped off by his step-mother so he could go with us to the aquarium. So after seeing my dad off we headed into downtown. We arrived in downtown a little after 1pm and parked in the Aquarium parking deck and since we were hungry we decided to walk over to to the CNN building to get something to eat in the food court there. Around 2:15 we left the food court and headed back to the Aquarium since our tickets where for 3pm. We got in line and waited for about 20 minutes before being let into the Aquarium.
Upon entering the aquarium we decided to go see the 3D movie first in the Aquariums 4D theater. So we headed up there got your tickets for the movie (which were kind of pointless as we never used them or even showed them to anyone) and waited for a few minutes before they let us in. Once in they had a little pre-show with this guy that told us a little trivia and asked a couple questions. After a few minutes we headed into the theater and watched the movie which was about a 15 minute movie which was mostly about keeping the ocean clean. Though the special effects were cool with the sprays of water, gusts of wind, things brushing against your head and legs, and of course the bubbles. After leaving the movie we headed down starting going through the Aquarium itself. We started with the "Georgia Explorer" which was mostly for kids though they had some smaller tanks in there with some smaller fish and a sea turtle. They also had places where you could pet stingrays, different kind of crabs, and starfish. From there we headed off to the "River Scout" area which is mostly freshwater fish and animals and I think it is also were the Japanese Spider Crabs, which are the biggest crabs I have ever seen, were located. Next we went into the "Cold Water Quest" which was mostly cold water fish and animals, such as sea lions, seals, pengiuns, and of course the Beluga Whales which were really cool to watch as they would swim around and flip around each other in the water even one went to the bottom and started scratching its back. Jacqueline started complaining she was thirsty so we went and bought some bottled water before heading over to the "Tropical Diver" section which is as it says topical fish. One of the best parts there was the jelly fish as they were just fun to stand there and watch. The other really cool part was the coral reef one which had its own generated waves that would move through every couple a minutes, this tank even stretching over your head a little bit. Last we headed over to the "Ocean Voyager" where the big fish were at. You head in there passing some smaller windows before finally entering the 100 foot long underwater tunnel that goes inside the huge tanks. The two Whale Sharks swam over a couple times as we slowly made our way through the tunnel. Along with the Whale Sharks we saw, Hammerhead Sharks, Goliath Groupers, Sawfish, and some other weird looking fish. After the tunnel we made our way around and came up to this screen with moving fish on it that you could touch and it would bring up facts about the fish you touched on. After playing with that for a few minutes we made our way around the huge viewing area. This had a whole wall basically of glass (I would say about 40 feet tall and 80 feet wide) to view into the tank. They had areas where you could sit and stand to watch so we decided to sit down and watch for a little while and Cathy took some pictures. After sitting there for several minutes we got up and made our way into the gift shop. Cathy and William got some Christmas gifts for people while I got a new hat for myself. After buying that stuff we headed out of the Aquarium and back to the car. We were hungry so after leaving the Aquarium we stopped at a Johnny Rockets and got something to eat. After eating we went and picked up Casey from Petsmart and hit the road back to Charlotte around 8:30pm. We arrived back in Charlotte around midnight that night. William and I stayed up for a little bit playing PSP against each other. Then around 3pm we decided to head to bed. This is when I basically locked myself in Jacquelines room. I went in her room to get my stuff to brush my teeth and closed the door behind me not realizing there wasn't a doorknob on the door anymore. So after struggling to get out for about 20 minutes Cathy walks out with the door knob and uses it to opens the door and then gives it to me. So finally just before 4am I was able to get in bed.
On Sunday I woke up around 10:45am and went downstairs. Pretty much just sat around and played a game of Phase 10 which I finished last in thanks to a bunch of bad hands. Finally around 2:30pm I hit the road to come back to Asheville. On the way back I gave Tim a call since I had actually told him I was going to call him when we got back to Charlotte on Saturday but since we returned late on Saturday I waited till Sunday to call him. I also called Carlos to make fun of him for Florida's 34-7 victory of his Florida State Seminoles the day before. I arrived back on campus around 5pm and unpacked and did some studying trying to prepare for the next two weeks. Last week of regular classes are this week and exams are next week. December 9th probably wont get here soon enough.
|| Vespere Hesperian 11:00 PM
