Sunday, May 18, 2008

Busy week

KAP photo today at Middles Beach.

It's been a busy week!

Elaine is off the island for a couple of weeks. She left in the wee hours Thursday morning (after a series of adventures/mis-adventures) to go spend some time with our daughter and granddaughter and to co-host a baby shower for one of her best friends from grad school.

Her adventure started when she tried to do an on-line baggage check (Spirit Air charges extra for checked luggage but it's cheaper if you do the check-in on-line). She got this really weird itinerary with a couple of impossible connections and ended in Washington, D.C. What the heck? After nearly an hour on hold and then getting cut off, she drove up to the airport to talk to a Spirit agent. No one at the counter. She left a big note with her cell number. about halfway home from the airport (fortunately it's only ten minutes away) the Spirit agent calls her. Back to the airport (fortunately it's only ten minutes away and since she was only halfway home, it was only five minutes back). Seems Spirit CANCELED - as in it is no longer on their schedule - the Thursday afternoon flight she had a confirmed reservation on. They canceled it without even telling the local station staff - let alone any passengers. The first the local station agents heard about the cancellation was when passengers came up and said, "What the hell?"

They managed to get her on the 2:30 am flight Thursday morning but that pushed all our preparations up 12 hours.

So it's 12:30 in the morning. The alarm goes off and Elaine says, "what's that for?" Uh, you're leaving... Oh, yeah.

So we get everything, including a still sleepy Elaine, in the car and start for the airport. Something isn't right. You bet. We have a flat tire. So at 1:00 am we're changing a tire. We got her to the airport four minutes before boarding started. How much time do you need anyway? We got her on the plane without further adventures.

When I got up in the morning, the spare was about half flat. I spent half an hour pumping up the car tire with my bicycle tire pump. It's really quick on my bike but not so much so on the car. Then off to la tienda de gomas (tire store) to get a new tire and get the spare fixed.

This weekend I'm back to being alone in the bar. How quickly I've forgotten all my little tricks to getting everything - dishes, dogs run, dogs fed on time, bar stocked, Government hassles, etc., plus any fun stuff like snorkeling - done! And I didn't fully realize how much I depend on Elaine's help until last night when 20+ people slammed me all at once at quarter til eight. Personally, I miss her every minute. Last night I REALLY missed her.

And for those of you who have been reading this blog all along, since last year when Elaine was still in Michigan alone and I was here alone, I promise not to whine (too much) about how much I miss her. Suffice it to say, this is like deja vu all over again.

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