Motel Life Continues

As I mentioned earlier, when we arrived here at our Motel away from Home we noticed (yet weren't surprised) to find a police presence in the parking lot. An unfortunate sign of our times seems to be that that wonderful safe haven for travelers, once known as Motels, has since then turned into hovels for those on the dole.

And what a shame because motels once gave me a feeling of nostalgia. I used to associate them with visions of families traveling in their huge gas guzzling cars complete with home-made ham salad sandwiches, a bunch of cranky kids, and a tired mom.

Not so much anymore.

After putting up with the screaming antics of one of the regulars here, and being awakened at midnight by slamming doors and yelling on the floor above us, I was horrified to hear on the local news that the body found in one of the rooms here the day we arrived was the result of a homicide. And I sucked in my breath when the news station zoomed in on the finger print dust smeared door, and I saw the room number. It was one off from ours. It took a bit of deduction before I finally figured out that the room in question was directly behind us. We front the courtyard and that room borders the parking lot. Anyway, the news continued to say that the young lady (24 years old) put up quite a fight and the family is distraught. She'd apparently been there with a boyfriend who has yet to be questioned and we've heard nothing further on the matter.

I guess this explains why we found the business card of a homicide detective in our door. I have to wonder if they even bothered to find out who checked out of our room right before we checked in.

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So on a lighter note.

Sitting in a motel room all day long is claustrophobic and just plain weird.

Wilbur strikes a Pit Bull Frog pose in front of the TV while we watch Turner and Hootch (I kid you not!).

I couldn't take sitting around any more and finally said, "ENOUGH!" and took Junior to Doggy Day Care for a half day while I did some running around and then we were off to the Dog Park to kill time before picking up Hans from work.

The end result of six hours of play time.

Ditto for today which also included an especially intense 15 minute tug of war with another dog.

That's a brand new Hedge Hog lying beside the little man.

He has not performed a squeakerectomy on it.

He must be tired.

Tomorrow we finally get to move back onto our Knotty Cat with her newly painted and very pretty bottom.

Honestly, I can't wait!!

 

Together again, finally.

I just realized I have no pictures of our Knotty Cat in her new home so you'll just have to suffer with pictures of Wilbur during his two week stay at Doggy Day Care.








King of the mountain.

Wilbur does this at every park.

Finally after two weeks apart, Hans, Wilbur, and I are together again aboard the Knotty Cat.

I picked Wilbur up the day after I arrived back at the boat, and the both of us picked Hans up at the airport on Saturday.

All I can say is, I'm surprised I'm not still frantically circling the airport in search of Delta Blue # 2 Arrivals in search of Hans, and I hate airports! I think I really hate Tampa International Airport the most.

I have no sense of direction and GPS can only help so much. But when one follows the signs to an airport and arrives at a fork in the road, one should be given more choices at said fork than, 'Short Term Parking' (on the left) and 'Car Rental Returns' on the right.

Like how about 'Departures' and 'Arrivals'??? Where the hell are they???

All I knew was, I wasn't looking to park, and I was not returning a rental car.

Of course I took the wrong fork and before I knew it I was exiting the airport and entering the Twilight Zone. Now, normally the voice on my GPS is that of a very calm English lady but even she became a bit hysterical at this turn of events and in addition to shouting 'Recalculating! Recalculating!' she implored me to 'Turn Left' Turn Left' ! even though that would have had me making a sharp turn into the guard rails of a major highway. Unfortunately our GPS is over four years old and it's very apparent that some major road work has been done in the area since then and our old girl couldn't handle it. I also became a bit hysterical and told her to shut the hell up but she wouldn't. We are no longer speaking to each other

I ended up pulling a very iffy U-Turn and zipped off once again toward the airport only this time I approached from the North instead of the South and I prayed the signage from this direction might be better.

It was not and I ended up in a short term parking garage. By now I had Hans on the phone and even though he was the one who'd suffered through an interminable flight across the pond with no knee room whatsoever, a huge line through customs that caused him to be late for a connecting flight, and then a missed flight in Atlanta because he couldn't print his boarding pass in France (where they'd originally tried to send him to Helsinki!), I was the one having a hissy fit. Poor Wilbur wondered why he had to be yanked out of Doggy Care Care where life is 'all about the pitty' only to find himself trapped in the back seat of a vehicle while his mama screamed at an invisible woman.

Thankfully as I shot out of the short term parking garage an attendant assured me I wasn't the first person this has happened to. She then pointed me in the right direction.

I finally found Hans (who by now probably wished he'd taken that damn flight to Helsinki), and for some reason he insisted on taking over the driver's seat. Little Miss Prissy Voice loved this and in a sweet cooing voice, talked him all the way home without a hitch. Bitch!

Hans was supposed to start work yesterday but the owner of the company, after leaving France for the USA, found herself stuck in Rome and would be arriving a day late. Something about a broken windshield wiper on the plane and there was no mechanic available with the proper training to fix it. I personally think that GPS's are trying to take over the world. I bet somewhere out there, a pilot is still wondering how the hell he ended up in Rome when he thought he had the plane pointed towards Atlanta.

I only hope he doesn't tell anyone that a strange voice told him where to go.

This little voice is begging me to take him back to his little friends at Day Care.

Our Crazy Lives

A couple of weeks ago we no sooner got our Knotty Cat settled in our marina, than Hans and I fled the state for two weeks; Hans flew to France and I flew back home. Wilbur (that lucky dog and I mean that literally) found himself in Doggy Day Care.

Hans' new job is based in France and he will be the U.S. connection so he had to go over there for two very intensive weeks of training. I had to go back home and take care of some family business.

I guarantee you Wilbur had more fun than either of us.

How do I know this? Because the Day Care called me every two days with updates on Wilbur's state of mind, the state of his sensitive tummy, and how much fun he was having with all the other dogs.

I arrived home (the Knotty Cat is now home) yesterday, picked up a much thinner (thanks to many zoomie sessions at Day Care and they sent home the photos to prove it) Wilbur today, and the little man and I will pick Hans up at the airport tomorrow.



Hans and Wilbur are so smug. We were on the very last leg of our journey.


















Hmmm, Wilbur is giving our new stomping grounds the sniff test.



He approves.














Wilbur celebrated our arriving safely and on time by sharing with us, his infamous Frog Pose.













After being in Day Care for two weeks, this is what's been on the boat with me today.


I'm not kidding when I say I don't think he's gone to the bathroom once.



He's either in a coma or just too damned tired to care.

Dumb and Dumber Strike Again.

I feel like we've been out in the middle of nowhere forever.

We left Roanoke Island (at the Inner Banks) yesterday and headed south west in the Pamlico Sound in our attempt to get back to the Intracoastal. The Pamlico really is a huge body of water and we only saw maybe three boats all day long.

About half way through the day we were thrilled to spot our first dolphins. One actually jumped completely out of the water which is something we've never seen. After that we had two of them follow very closely on our port stern and they would emerge from the water perfectly synchronized, go under, come up again... all the while with big smiles of welcome on their faces. This went on for a while and then they disappeared.

Once again we were able to sail all day with north east winds at 15-20 while using the jib, and then finally at around 6 PM we anchored in a very marshy Juniper Bay.

We've been wondering why no one else has chosen this passage on their jouney south and I think it's because if the winds aren't perfect it would be a pretty crappy crossing.

We need to keep this in mind if we ever do this again.

This brings us to a Dumb and Dumber update.

This trip will not take two weeks like we'd originally thought.

No, it will take at least three! How on earth could we be so far off?

Mostly because when you're in the Intracoastal you're at the mercy of bridges that are only open until 7 PM, and some of them only open on the hour. On our first day in the waterway we arrived at a bridge seven minutes after it closed and of course it was an hourly one. I ended up making us lunch while we waited for the next opening. It's also pretty winding and you can only motor so fast. The winding then adds miles to the overall distance and then the next thing you know you've added another week to your trip!

I wasn't a happy camper at that WTF discovery mostly because this means Wilbur will be in Doggy Day Care for another week. I've been calling and checking on him and of course he's having fun playing with his friends all day long but it still bothers me. I also found out they had a Halloween Party for the dogs last week and Wilbur didn't have a costume. It reminded me of the poor kids who used to have to sit in the school office during their class party because their crazy religious parents thought Halloween was evil. I only hope he won't be scarred by this lack of planning on our part and end up in therapy. He's very sensitive.

Our anchor held very nicely during the night and with steady winds we didn't swing around at all. I was worried that it would get hung up on a stump or tree branch but even though it was covered in a lot of heavy gunk the anchor came up smoothly.

We hope to exit the Pamlico later this afternoon as we head into the Neuse River. We will then be at Merrimon which is at the mouth of the next run of the Intracoastal. I only hope if we end up at a marina with 'free' WiFi, that it actually works!

Doggy Day Care and a Sewing Project Hold Up.

When we deliver our Knotty Cat to Florida next month we plan on leaving Wilbur behind.


For anyone who reads this blog and knows how much we love our dog, I'm sure this is a bit of a shock. However, we're going to fly right back home and I refuse to stick my baby into the belly of a plane. Hans thinks I'm nuts and stated that Wilbur would be just fine, and then actually dared to roll his eyes when I said Wilbur was far too sensitive to survive such a trip.


However he changed his mind when I told him that the crate we'd need to buy, along with the cost of Wilbur's flight, would be right around the same amount as boarding him at Doggy Day Care.


So off we went to Doggy Day Care to see if our boy 'plays well with others', and would therefore be accepted as a boarder.


Wilbur passed, and believe me that experience will have its own post.


As for my stalled project. The crib I was sewing for The Bumfuzzles has hit the skids. In the middle of the sewing of this crib I called our local West Marine to ask them if they had six packages of 12 sets of brass grommets I would need to complete this job.


They didn't. And they said it might take them as long as two weeks to get them. So the Bumfuzzles found a site that said not only did they have them, they'd send them to me right away.


The package arrived on Friday and contained a grand total of six grommets!!! Not six packages of twelve, but six grommets!!!


I kid you not.


So until the grommets arrive there's not much I can do but I feel so bad because I know the Bumfuzzles would have liked to have their crib 'yesterday'!! Not next week.












C'mon. Do you really think this little boy wouldn't be able to get along with others??