Vacation - Part One

Let's start at the very beginning. Apparently, it's a very good place to start....according to Rodgers and Hammerstein at least. (Let's hear it for the nuns!!!)

Anyway...since this vacation was fairly long and eventful, I'm not even going to TRY to capture it all in one entry. That means you are all in for a TREAT! Well, at least you're in for several entries that describe my vacation.

In my last post, before jetting off to Florida, I was writing from home having recently completed a TON of yard work and was about to begin cleaning the house. Well, I cleaned the house from top to bottom, and it looked FABULOUS. I took a 'cleaning break' in order to meet Jim (and Scooter) at Jim's office for lunch. They had a 'bring your dog to work day' which turned out to be a big success. Scooter was a hit, and everyone fell in love with him. Of COURSE! Thankfully, all the excitement exhausted him, so once we got home he collapsed on the couch, which allowed me to finish cleaning without a little canine constantly begging me for attention.
When Jim got home from work he was VERY excited about the house being cleaned.
I'm a good cleaner, what can I say?
We had dinner, (I'm pretty sure we went to the Grille, since we weren't going to be there on Friday night) came home and watched a bit of TV before going to bed.
On Wednesday morning we got up, ate breakfast, and started packing. Once we were all packed we loaded up the car, including Scooter and all his stuff (which was a lot of stuff) and brought him over to Jim's parent's house. He was THRILLED to be in a new place and Jim's parents were very excited to have him there. We said goodbye (totes sad) and then began phase two of our travel for the day. When we were leaving, Scooter followed us to the door and stood there with a very confused look on his face. When we talked to Jim's mom the next day, she informed us that he sat at the door crying for 10 minutes after we left, but after that brief period of mourning, he was totally fine. Nice.
From Jim's parent's house, we drove to my sister's house (where we were going to be leaving my car for the week) and then she drove us to the train. Since we were travelling on the day before Thanksgiving (not to mention the fact that we were depending on the train to get us to the airport) we allowed ourselves PLENTY of time. Long story short ("Too late!" - Oh, that never gets old. Wait...yes it does.) we ended up sitting at our gate, all ready to board with 4 hours to spare.
Awesome.

Actually, it all worked out so well it was really odd. We had to take 3 different trains (Red Line to the Green Line to the Blue Line) and we didn't wait more than 10 minutes at any place...unheard of. When we arrived at the airport terminal, it was practically deserted. We tried to do the self check-in, but we were too early. Say WHAT?!? Rather than stand there waiting for the self check-in to work, we decided to just stand in line. We stood in line, (behind about 5 people) checked our bags and went to the security check point. That part always makes me really nervous. I have no reason to be nervous, but I find it all so odd and uncomfortable. There you are, standing in the middle of the airport and you're asked to take off your shoes, belt, watch, and everything else that could possibly be considered 'suspicious', leaving you standing there in your socks praying that you don't make the metal detectors flip out when you walk through them. And don't even get me started on the body cavity search!! Yowch.
Kidding.
Jim and I made it through security without incident but for some unknown reason, our carry on bag was too suspicious to get through and needed to be thoroughly searched. I think it's because it's black - but that's just my opinion.
Some security guy took it to a table, went through it looking at every item, and even swabbing some of Jim's lip balm to be sure it didn't contain explosives. What?!?!? Better safe than sorry, I suppose.
Once our bag was cleared, we made our way to the gate and began the long, long, wait.

More tomorrow......