I'm Back...

Barbara is at a Nurse Practitioners conference in Orlando. We left last Friday morning to spend a few days at the beach before her conference started, and did not have internet access. Her conference started yesterday, and I came home Tuesday night.

The bad part about being gone is that work doesn't stop while you are away, it just piles up. Yesterday I left the house at 6:15 am and didn't get home until after 9:30 pm and was too tired to blog. So, it has been a week since my last post...

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Going into the Sweet 16, all of my Final 4 and Elite 8 teams were still playing. So far tonight, I am 0 for 2, and as I write, Ohio State is getting blown out....WVU however, is rolling through the NIT...

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We had an early morning flight last Friday from DFW to Orlando - at least it was scheduled for early in the morning. We left the house at 5 am to get to the airport in plenty of time for our 6:30 flight, which ended up being delayed for over 3 hours. Our plan had been to get to the beach in Bradenton a little after noon, but it was not to be.

We finally got to Orlinedo at about 12:45 pm and stepped off the plane into what looked like a refugee camp. There were so many people waiting at the gate, sitting on the floor or wherever they could find a space, that they had to clear a lane for us to walk through.

It was probably a combination of our delayed flight and the fact that we were arriving on the weekend of Spring Break at one of the world's biggest tourist destinations, but it took another 2 hours to get our luggage, get our rental car, and get on the road towards the beach. At least I hoped we could find the road towards the beach - the car rental place was out of maps.

We eventually found our way, via a busy toll road - again long lines to pay for the privelege of driving on the highway that led towards our destination - to Interstate 4. It just happens that Disney World and Universal Studios both have multiple exits from I4 and we had the opportunity to spend more time with a few hundred of our newest 'friends' as they lined up to get into the resorts.

Eventually, we got past the resorts and headed down the road, and finally got to Bradenton a little before 6. Bradenton Beach is on Anna Maria Island, on the Gulf Coast, and is not a big Spring Break destination. It was a really relaxing long weekend and a great place for a belated anniversary celebration.