Say “Cheese!”

I just returned from Wisconsin. “Why go to Wisconsin?”, you may ask. Was it for the cheese? No, not for the cheese, although there is a lot of cheese to be had there, in fact, the Cheese Castle is one of the first sights to greet you after you enter WI from Illinois. I would’ve added a picture of said Cheese Castle, if I could’ve remembered how to access the photo. But, I digress… the reason for my trip to America’s Dairyland was because Bailey accepted a job with Kimberly-Clark in Neenah WI, and she and I drove her car, loaded with every item of hers that we could possibly squeeze into it, from Baltimore to her new apartment in Appleton, WI.

I’d never actually driven any further west than Pittsburgh so the trip was interesting, at least intermittently. The following are some of the things that I learned…. things that you don’t learn when you just fly over places on your way to somewhere else.

1) There are fireworks stores in every state, at the state line, on both sides of the line. I’ve learned that this is because, while it is illegal to buy fireworks in most states if you live there, it is not illegal to buy them in a neighboring state. All you have to do is flash your out-of-state license and you can buy all the fireworks you want, which you can then take back to your home state. I’m pretty sure that most states have laws prohibiting the possession of fireworks, but hey, you’re on your own there. The exception to this rule seems to be Wisconsin. There are fireworks stores all over the state, not just at the border!

2) Ohio is a much wider state than you might think.

3) The Ohio Turnpike (aka I-80) has pretty nice rest areas. Granted, they are all exactly alike, but they’re clean, big, and most importantly, they all have 24hr Starbucks!

4) The speed limit in Ohio is 70!

5) Aside from the rest areas, the only other thing that you will see while driving through Ohio on the turnpike is fields. Lots and lots of fields. Big, flat fields…. and a smattering of trees. Don’t go for the sight seeing, you’ll just be disappointed.

6) Ohio’s turnpike could really stand to be repaved. It’s pretty bad.

7) I wish we’d sprung for satellite radio when we bought Bailey’s car. I can only stand hearing “Call Me Maybe” so many times in one hour.

8) Indiana has disappointing rest areas. Gloria Jean’s Coffee, not Starbucks.

9) Indiana is, thankfully, not as wide as Ohio.

10) Indiana has a better paved turnpike than Ohio, and a 70mph speed limit.

11) An iTrip thingy for playing your iPod through the car radio is a great invention.

12) The RV/Motor Home Hall of Fame is visible from the highway in Elkhart, Indiana. There were 2 cars and 1 RV in the parking lot when we drove past. Based on the inordinate number of RVs we saw on the road in IN, I would have thought that it would be a bigger attraction.

13) Illinois has terrible rest areas. Pee in Indiana.

14) The Midwest is even flatter than I imagined.

15) There is no “Welcome to Illinois” sign on I-94. There is, however, a “Welcome to Chicago” sign. Close enough…. I guess that if you don’t know that you’re in Illinois when you enter Chicago, the other sign would just confuse you.

16) There is no good time to drive through Chicago. However, since you’re just inching along on the interstate, you can really appreciate the Chicago skyline. I mean reeaallly appreciate it,…. every inch of it. You won’t miss a thing.

17) I need to update, and add to, the songs on my iPod’s playlist.

18) Once you get into Wisconsin you see lots of trees again, but it’s still pretty flat.

19) Living in an urban area for 30 years has affected the way I am inclined pronounce names. Helpful hint: people who live in the town of Waukesha, WI call it “WAH- kah- shaw”, not “wah- KEE-sha”.

20) Appleton, WI is a Mecca of restaurant chains.

21) The Fox River Mall in Appleton is huge….1,210,000 sq. ft.! It also appears to double as the only entertainment the area.

22) The people in Wisconsin are very friendly!

23) At least half of the male population of Appleton looks like they might have played on the offensive line for the University of Wisconsin at some point in their lives.

24) One quarter of the women in Appleton look like they may have played alongside them.

25) You can buy your beer and wine at Walmart in WI…. as long as your taste runs to Miller Lite and Sutter Home.

26) Did I mention that the people in Wisconsin are very friendly?

27) Unlike Baltimore, there is no humidity in Wisconsin. When it’s 85 degrees outside, it actually feels like it’s 85 degrees outside. (Yes, it’s true…. The mercury did actually hit 85 while we were there. The very friendly people of WI were all abuzz.)

28) You can buy fresh cheese curds at Walmart. I did not try them, but I have been told that they are a salty form of cheese that the friendly people of Wisconsin enjoy with their beer.

Those are just a few of the things that I learned on our trip.
I also learned that Bailey and I can coexist very nicely, and enjoy each others company, for 6 days straight, pretty much 24/7. (I did have the foresight to book us separate hotel rooms while we were in Appleton though, so we did have some time apart. I’m no dummy!)
She doesn’t start her new job until June 18, but because of a trip that Steve and I have planned for next week, last week was the only time that I could drive out there with her. We both flew back to Baltimore yesterday and then she will fly back to WI next weekend.
I know that she will do really well out there. I know that she will have a ton of friends out there in no time. I know that she has a great job with a wonderful company. But, I also know that this means that she is really and truly “launched”. She is really leaving the nest, and while she will still have some (okay, a lot!) of her stuff here, this will eventually stop being “home” for her and become her “parents’ house”. And I know that I am really really really going to miss her.

 

In the dark about light bulbs

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old lady, I would like to know; why is it so damn difficult to buy a light bulb these days? I remember a time when you just walked into the store, picked up a 75 watt light bulb, paid the cashier a couple of cents for it, then you went home, screwed it in and Ta-Da! …. There was light! It only took one person to change a light bulb, and that person didn’t even have to be of average intelligence. Of course, you did have to walk to the store, in a blizzard, up hill, both directions…

I spent an hour at the Loewe’s this morning, buying a couple of light bulbs. Most of that hour was spent trying to decide which bulb to buy to replace one that had burned out in the 3-light chandelier over our breakfast table. I know that the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, that haven’t changed much since Edison invented them, are not energy-efficient. I know that fluorescent bulbs are a better choice, and I have been making an attempt to incorporate them into my home lighting plan. I don’t mind spending more money for light bulbs that are more efficient, especially because they last so much longer, which means I’m not changing bulbs every few weeks. As long as the light comes on as soon as I throw the switch, and I don’t have to look at a swirly, squiggly bulb in a fixture that was meant to incorporate a decorative bulb into the design, I’m happy to go green.
Compact fluorescent design has come a long way in the last few years, and I can usually find a fluorescent bulb that meets my needs without sacrificing my sense of aesthetics. The problem is that now fluorescents have come SO far that I am overwhelmed by my options. How many lumens do I want? Where do I want the light to fall on the white-light color spectrum? Soft light? Neutral light? Daylight? Let’s think this through: I need a round, frosted bulb, with a globe that’s about the size of a baseball, for the breakfast room chandelier. Good news, that size and shape is readily available in a fluorescent option! My breakfast room chandelier can be environmentally friendly! Now, what color do I want the light to be? I pick up a package which claims that the enclosed bulb will cast a “soft” light. Hhhmmm… we spend a lot of time at that table. I’d like the light to be flattering when Steve and I are sitting around after dinner, finishing our wine and catching up on each others days. This is where we have most of our face-to-face time, and I like to give my face every advantage. While “soft” white sounds like a good choice, the package also tells me that “soft” light falls in the warm, golden part of the “white” color spectrum. Yellow and gold are not good colors for me. Would a golden-white light make me look jaundiced? That would not be good. I generally look better in cool tones. The “daylight” bulb falls into the cool blue part of the “white” color spectrum, but daylight can be really harsh. Harsh is bad. In fact, harsh is probably worse than jaundiced. That leaves the “neutral” part of the “white” color spectrum. Yes, yes… I know that I am over-thinking this whole thing, but I have enough life-experience to know that proper lighting is key in helping to minimize how much life one appears to have experienced. Okay, “neutral” white it is. I pick up three of those bulbs planning to replace all three bulbs in the fixture at the same time so that they will all be eco-friendly, fluorescents. I am feeling oh-so–green as I put them into my cart. (That would be “green” in an environmentally friendly way, not green in a “greenish-white part of the color spectrum” way.)
As I push my cart down the aisle toward the checkout, I catch sight of a package of fluorescent bulbs with the word “DIMMABLE!!” emblazoned across the front. Shit. I forgot about “dimmability”. Fluorescent bulbs are generally not compatible with dimmer switches. This is information that I have gleaned from reading many, many compact fluorescent bulb packages during previous light-bulb shopping odysseys. Most of the lights in my house, including the breakfast room chandelier, are on dimmer switches. Dimmer switches are also excellent tools for “life-experience minimization”, and I use them whenever possible. Thanks to the modern miracle of dimmer switches, it’s possible to read the newspaper at the breakfast room table, and then to enjoy dinner at that very same table, under much more flattering lighting conditions.
I pull one of the fluorescent light bulbs out my cart, a light bulb that it has taken me 20 minutes of painstaking, soul-searching, deliberation and comparison to choose. I put on my reading glasses, and stand there, in the harsh unforgiving, non-dimmable, overhead fluorescent lights of the big box hardware store, reading all of the fine print on the packaging, searching for some indication that the bulb in my hand is dimmable. The package does not say “dimmable”, nor does it say “non-dimmable”. I have no idea if anything bad will happen to my chandelier, or to the light bulbs, if I try to dim non-dimmable bulbs. Screw it, dimmable is non-negotiable. I put those three, neutral-white, long-lasting, eco-friendly, fluorescent bulbs back on the shelf where I got them, and replace them in my cart with three old-fashioned, short-lived, environmentally unfriendly, incandescent bulbs that only come in one color: “dimmable-white”, and I continue down the aisle to the checkout.

It still only takes one person to change a light bulb, it just takes her a lot longer to choose the damn bulb, and it makes her cranky. Thank goodness we now have those new-fangled automobiles to get us back and forth to the store.

 

Me, Myself and Irene

If you know me at all, or even if you’ve only read some of my blogs, this is something that you may have discerned about me: I am not an “outdoorsy” kinda’ girl. No, really, it’s true. My idea of “roughing it” would be staying at a Motel 6. Thank God, I’ve never actually had to stay at a Motel 6, but before this past week, I would have said that I was fairly certain that anyplace that employs a spokesman with a down-home, NASCAR-esque accent, who’s promising that they’ll “leave the light on” for me, would not have been the kind of place that I’d have gone out of my way to stay at. That was before I met Irene.

Irene blew into town with a lot of fanfare. Beach towns evacuated before her arrival. Local TV newscasters gave her arrival more airtime that Entertainment Tonight gave to Beyonce’s baby bump. I was encouraged when I heard that our power company, BGE, was acting proactively. They had recruited linemen from power companies in other areas who arrived here the day before Irene blew into town. They were all poised and ready to start working to restore power in Maryland as soon as that bitch Irene moved on. I was confident that any electric interruption would just be a hiccup. I’m such a naive dolt.

Our power went out at 12:30 Saturday night, just minutes after I returned home from a great evening spent with high school friends, in Lancaster. I have to pat myself on the back for having the foresight to take a shower that night, as soon as the power went out, while the water in the water heater was still hot because when we woke up Sunday morning there was still no electricity, and the water in the tank was barely tepid. Sadly, the Starbucks across the street was also without power. Businesses, houses, everything nearby, seemed to be affected. It took my intrepid husband 40 minutes to return home with a couple of venti coffees so that we could start our day. If this power-issue was going to affect my daily caffeine intake, it was definitely NOT looking like a hiccup. Shit.

Steve had a flight to Texas that evening for an interview the next day. No problem, I could handle a little darkness. Besides, I was sure that the power would be back soon. Hell, we live a block off a major road, Charles Street, it has a route number for god’s sake! Surely the power would be back by morning… right? Fast forward to Monday morning…. Starbucks, the Charles Street corridor and I are still power-free, and I am out on my porch boiling water on the burner of the gas grill to make coffee. Shit.

My day was filled with small frustrations that were magnified by the fact that there didn’t look like there was any light at the end of the tunnel, if you’ll pardon the pun. For instance, while I could disconnect the garage doors from the electric openers so that I could open and close the doors manually, I couldn’t make the damn door in front of “my” car stay open. It went up, but it wouldn’t STAY up, it just rolled right back down and there was no one home but me and the cat. Stupid cat. He isn’t tall enough to either drive the car out of the garage while I hold the door up or to hold the door open while I drive the car out. I could get the door in front of my beloved Z3 to stay up, but I needed to go out and find ice to try to salvage the perishables in the fridge, so I wanted to take a cooler. The Z isn’t big enough to put a decent size cooler in, and so my only other option was the Ford F-150. Great. Well, at least I’d be able to just run right over any trees in that had fallen across the road. So… I hopped into the big-ass truck and headed off in search ice. I couldn’t find ice for sale anywhere within a 5 mile radius of my house. Shit.

On Monday afternoon, one of my neighbors mentioned that he had found a place in Timonium that had gas powered generators for sale, and that he had just bought one for the very reasonable,(I think), price of $750. Hot damn! Not only do I have a credit card, I have a big-ass F-150 pick-up truck! And so I headed off to Timonium to buy myself a generator! The guys there are happy to load my brand new Generac 5500 generator into the bed of my big-ass truck, and I drive home secure in the knowledge that we have gas cans in the garage, and plenty of heavy-duty extension cords. Hot damn, I’m gonna have refrigeration, lights, maybe even a cell phone charger up and running real soon! Better yet, in the morning I’m going to have COFFEE! I am very excited! I have handled this all by myself! I am totally capable of being independent! I can handle a crisis on my own! Yay, Me!! 45 minutes later I return home with a 200lb generator in the back of my big-ass F-150 pick-up truck and…. no way to get it out of the truck all by myself. Shit.

Tuesday morning dawns. Still no power. Steve’s flight home from Texas the night before had been delayed, but he had finally arrived home around 3am. Since at that point I was planning on making him set up the generator, I went on the Starbucks run. (Lucky for me, the Starbucks across the street was finally back up and running!) I had all good intentions of setting up the generator myself, the day before, and I’d have done just that, really I would have, it if I could have gotten it out of the truck, but since I couldn’t, and since Steve had just spent 24 hours in a town with electricity, and a hotel room with a hot shower, I thought it was only fair that he set the damn thing up. Don’t judge me, okay? I told you that I am not good at roughing it, and by this point I had not had a shower in more than 50 hours, and I’d had to boil water so that I could wash dishes, (wash dishes by hand, mind you!), and I’d had to make coffee on the GRILL for God’s sake, AND I’d had to dig all kinds of gross cat food and god-knows-what out of the garbage disposal so that the sink would drain. I was not a happy camper.

Fast forward: the generator got hooked up. We had extension cords running in through the windows to power the fridge, battery and cell phone chargers, a couple of lamps, and the cat’s water fountain, (hey, he’s old, it makes him happy and he’s our “only child” still at home, so even if he isn’t tall enough to be helpful with the garage doors, we indulge him, ok?), and most importantly: the coffee maker! Life with a generator was still a lot like camping, but it wasn’t quite so much like camping in a cave. Four hours after we got the whole thing set up and running, the power came back on.

Fast forward a few days farther: I realized that many of my friends weren’t lucky enough to get their power back as quickly as we did. The 60 hours or so that we were out was nothing compared to the 6 and 7 days that others were out. I am thankful that we got ours back as quickly as we did. I am also thankful that we have public water and sewer, so even though we didn’t have hot water, at least we HAD water! We could flush our toilets, brush our teeth, make coffee on the grill, etc.

Last evening, about 60 hours after our power came back on, just after I’d fed the cat, and was in the process of making dinner, the freakin’ power went out again. Really? Are you kidding me? WTF? I called BGE. The recorded voice informed me that the power would be back on in about 3 hours. Steve went out to the garage, fired up the generator, ran some extension cords into the house to power a few important electrical appliances, (yes, the cat’s fountain WAS on that list), and life went on. Dinner, clean up after dinner, digging cat food and god-knows-what out of the garbage disposal so that the sink would drain, and another evening spent waiting for the power to come back, cursing BGE, and contemplating how f***king much I HATE camping. God help me, I want to go to a Motel 6, or ANYWHERE where they promise that they’ll leave the light on for me!

 

Restart Current Game?

The solitaire app on my iPad has an option called “restart current game”. You know how when you’ve played a game to the point where you can’t go any further, but at one point during the game you had to make the choice to play one black 5 instead of another one, but you keep thinking, hhhhmmmm, maybe if I’d played the other black 5, I could have won this game. No problem, hit the “restart current game” button and see how it plays out. How cool would it be to have that option in real life? Uh….. Very cool!

What if I’d decided to stay in school long enough to get my BA? What if I’d decided to get a “real” job? Could I have actually had a “career”? What would my life be like now? Would I be happier than I am now, or would I be less satisfied with my life? I don’t really deal well with stress and pressure, so I always thought that I’d made the right decision, but now I feel like maybe I really missed out on something. It might have been an ulcer or a nervous breakdown, or even a Xanax addition, but it might have been something amazing, fulfilling and fabulous.

Of course, there are things that I wouldn’t want to play differently in this theoretical replay. I’d want to still marry the same guy; I really can’t imagine spending my life with someone else. I would definitely have to make sure to give birth to the same three amazing children, because they are definitely my best work, so that would be yet another reason to play the same marriage card. That would also mean that I’d have to remember to conceive them at the exact same times as I did in my current game so that the exact same sperm would meet the exact same egg, resulting in the exact same baby. Wow, now THAT’s a lot of pressure!

In retrospect, I guess that’s why the “restart” option only works in the game of solitaire; too many other people, too many variables. I’ll bet that if there’s an iPad app for the game of “Life”, it probably doesn’t have the “restart current game” option. Maybe I should just stop playing solitaire on my iPad and play the hand I’ve been dealt with the decisions I’ve made so far in this current game of Life. After all, it’s a pretty good hand, and there are still plenty of decisions to be made!

Sent from my iPad

 

Ready, Set, Stay!

Last week I felt pretty confident that I knew where life was leading us. I felt like our path was set, the way was clear. In other words, I felt like I knew what the heck was going on with our lives. Steve had been talking to a company in Dallas for a couple of months; he liked them, they liked him. Everything was on track for our imminent relocation… right up until the moment that it wasn’t.
How annoying!
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not upset because we aren’t moving to Dallas. While it seems like a nice place, (I’m told that there are serious tax advantages to living there, and it IS the home of Neiman Marcus after all!), I’m truly not crushed that we are not about to become Texans. The landscape is really, really flat out there, and I hear that the summers are brutal, so that’s no great loss. No, what really ticks me off, is that just when I thought that maybe, just maybe, I knew what to expect… BAM!! Someone pulled the rug right out from under me.
Oh yes, that’s right… It’s all about ME! Okay, it’s not really all about me, but since this is MY blog, I’m making it all about me. If Steve ever wants his feelings about a subject shared with the whole world, he’ll write his own blog. I am not going to presume to speak for him.
Hey, look at that, I just might be a little bit less egocentric than my rants might lead you to believe. But then again, I’m narcissistic enough to call your attention to it, so maybe not….
Now, where was I? Oh right… I was ranting about how annoyed I am…
I was prepared for Steve to be starting a new job, in another city, in the next few weeks. I was prepared to be traveling back and forth between here and there for several months until we settled on a place in Dallas. I’d even bought myself a really adorable polka-dotted, hard-side carry-on that fits perfectly in the overhead compartment, and I bothered to sign up for a frequent flyer card for American Airlines, (the only carrier that flies direct from BWI to DFW), which means that now I’ve subjected myself to a whole slew of new junk mail for pre-approved credit cards. Alright, I’ll admit that chances are pretty good that the suitcase will still get some serious use, and I’ll probably fly on American Airlines at some point too, but I’m ranting, and I don’t feel like being rational, dammit! Besides, those credit card applications are a huge waste of paper and they all have to be shredded so I can’t even recycle them.
I had started thinking about which pieces of furniture would make the move to Texas and which would stay in our condo in Baltimore. Which cars would we take, which cars would we keep here, and how was our ailing, 16-year-old cat going to handle the move? Would he be considerate enough to die peacefully in his sleep before we moved, or would he wait and die during the trip, probably somewhere in Louisiana after 12 hours of piteous yowling? (He is not a good traveler.) Would I be able to incorporate cowboy boots into my wardrobe, and if I did would anyone even appreciate that I was doing it to be ironic?
All kidding, sarcasm, and snotty-nosed brat comments aside, the reason for this rant is just this simple; I had mentally prepared myself to be uprooted after living in the same town for 30 years, and to be transplanted to an unfamiliar place. I’d gotten got my mind around the fact that I was going to have to make new friends and learn my way around a new city. I had visualized it, I had made peace with it, and I was ready to take that leap. I was prepared to make it an adventure. That was not an easy place to get myself to, but I DID get there, and I resent the hell out of the fact that I’m going to have to get myself to that place all over again.

Thanks for letting me vent! I feel much better now that that’s off my chest.

 

Well, damn… THAT was a short 12 months!

March 12th marked the one year anniversary of the sale of Black & Decker to Stanleyworks, and the beginning of our “retirement test drive.” The plan was for Steve to take a year off to relax and work on his golf game. We planned do a lot of traveling, see the places that we’d talked for years about visiting, and basically just spend more time alone together than we had since becoming parents 26 years ago.

The good news is:
1) Steve’s golf game is better than it’s ever been!
2) We’ve crisscrossed North America from Seattle to Miami and from San Diego to Montreal, with visits to several cities in between. We’ve been on three different continents, and a couple of island nations.
3) We still like each other, even after spending all that time alone together. Phew!

The bad news is:
Time flies when you’re having fun, and the year has flown by already.

The headhunters have been calling for the last several weeks now with information about CFO positions that they hope that Steve will consider. Some of the companies have interested him, most have not. I am fairly certain though that within the next few weeks, decisions will be made and our life is going to take another big turn.

There will be a new city to explore, a house in Baltimore to be sold, new people to meet, housing decisions to be made, and perhaps the scariest thing of all: packing up a big house. A house that I had planned to live in for a long, long time. A house with a lot of storage space. A house that allowed me to let my pack-rat tendencies run wild. Oy vey. The next few months are going to be a challenge.

 

Aaaaahhhhhh…..Tropical Paradise!

I have visited the most amazing place! It is a tropical paradise that I never wanted to leave….. never ever ever! The Maldives is, far and away, my new favorite place in the whole wide world!

When you and I, (okay,I!), last spoke, I was in the Dubai airport, in the middle of the night, awaiting our 3:25AM flight to Male. Our flight was slightly delayed, according to our pilot, due to some kind of issue over Oman. (Oman? Wow, I am now flying over countries that I previously would have been hard pressed to locate on a map.) Anyway… After a 3 1/2 hour flight, we arrived in Male at 8:30AM local time. Not surprisingly, the Male airport is not huge, but it is pretty efficient. Immigration went smoothly, customs… not so much. Apparently it is illegal to bring alcohol into the Maldives, and the bottle of vodka that I had purchased when we arrived in Dubai for our in room use, was spotted in my suitcase when it went through the Xray machine. They were very nice about it though. I just had to relinquish it. No fines, no jail time! They even offered to hold it for me and I could reclaim it on my way out of the country. It was 3/4 of a $17 bottle of Stoli Silver, (vodka is cheap in the duty-free store in Dubai!), so I declined the reclamation offer.
After my little run-in with the authorities, I was happy to see the representatives from our resort, waiting to whisk us onto a boat (a 50′ yacht, no less!) that would deliver us to our little piece of heavenly, tropical paradise!
After boarding the yacht, we were given chilled towels and bottles of cold water while we waited for another couple, who had come in on our flight, to join us. Then we spent the next hour, up on the fly bridge, zipping through the Indian Ocean, past immense yachts and other intriguing-looking resorts. Lovely! Our arrival at the resort’s dock was heralded by the banging of a big bronze gong, and we were greeted by a receiving line composed of the entire resort management team, and our villa host, Imran.
A few words about our resort….
The impetus for this whole trip was that I have often told Steve that my dream vacation would be go somewhere tropical, somewhere where we could stay “in a hut out over the water”. The kind of place you see on the cover of travel magazines. I was not especially picky about which tropical paradise it was, just so long as I got to stay “in a hut over the water”. (I do occasionally try to not to be too terribly high maintenance!) Steve did the research, decided that the Maldives was the best locale, and then he came up with a list of resorts for me to choose from. I decided on the One and Only Reethi Rah resort because the arrangement of the huts, (they call them “water villas”!), seemed to offer the most privacy. After all, who wants to travel halfway around the world only to find that the German nudists in the hut next door are in your line of vision every time you step out onto your porch to enjoy the scenery. Because of the way the piers here are configured, from our villa we only see the German nudists next door when they’re splashing around in the lagoon. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of privacy!
Back to the travelogue…
Our villa host, (other places would call him a butler), Imran, led us to a golf cart, (or “buggy” in the local parlance), and gave us a quick tour around the island. He explained that our villa was not ready yet, but said that he would be taking us to a beach villa where we could relax, order lunch, swim, whatever…, until our villa was ready for us. We did all of those things, and were napping in a hammock when Imran returned to take us to our villa.

I know that I had said that I wanted a “hut”, but Steve went ahead and booked us a “Grand Water Villa, (with pool)”. (Hhhhhmmmmm…maybe I’m higher maintenance than I’m willing to admit?) 2600 sq. feet of thatch-roofed “hut”, covered terraces, sunning hammocks, AND an adorable, freshwater infinity pool, all on stilts above the crystal clear, turquoise water of a lagoon, which by the way, is easily accessed from the steps off of our lower sunning terrace.
I told Steve that it feels like “Survivor-The Luxury Edition”! We have a hollow length of bamboo marked “Messages” hanging on our outer gate, kind of like “Tree Mail”. I guess that’s just in case our phones should stop working AND our wi-fi goes down.
Every evening we tick off items on a breakfast menu that we’d like to have delivered the next morning, we specify the delivery time, we roll the paper up, put it in a woven grass tube, and hang it on our gate. The next morning breakfast shows up right on schedule. Sweet! I’m pretty sure that even Jeff Probst doesn’t have it this good!

 

Dubai airport: the city that never sleeps

The Dubai airport is a hoppin’ place at 2AM! I’m used to BWI, an airport that basically closes after 9:30PM. The only people you’ll find at BWI at 2AM are the passengers from the 9:00 United flight who are still standing around the luggage carousel, waiting for their bags to arrive.
Our flight from Dubai to Male, (where the airport in the Maldives is located), is scheduled to take off at 3:25AM. Looking at the departures and arrivals boards, it is obvious that flights are coming and going through here, quite literally, 24/7. We are in the Emirates Air terminal. To give you some idea of how big this terminal is; we are leaving out of Gate 226, and yes, there were gates numbered 1-225, and there are gates 227-235. The departures level is chock full of shopping opportunities. There are multiple Duty Free stores where you can purchase wine, liquor, Cuban cigars, perfumes, etc. You might decide to try have your makeup done at the full service MAC cosmetics store, they seemed to be doing quite a few makeovers when I wandered past there. Maybe you’d like to peruse the Swiss watches, there are several watch and jewelry shops to chose from. Of course there are all the usual airport-type stores, electronics, luggage, newsstands, dining options, etc. The place is more like a mall than an airport, and all of this is going on at 2:30 in the morning. Amazing!

 

Dubai, part 2

I had two items on my agenda for this trip to Dubai:
The first was to go out into the desert in an SUV, and race over the dunes, aka “dune bashing”.
The second was to take a helicopter tour over the city.
Done, and done!

The wonderfully capable concierge at our hotel arranged both excursions for us with just a few phone calls. Usually the dune bashing is done in conjunction with a whole “desert adventure”. They take a whole bunch of people out, in several cars, you race over some dunes and then they take you to a camp in the desert where you partake in a “traditional Arabian experience”, complete with a barbecue and a henna tattoo to remember the fun. No thank you. I just wanna race through the desert. I don’t want a tourist experience with a bunch of strangers. Definitely not our thing!
I got just what I wanted! A driver picked us up in a Toyota Landcruiser which was outfitted with an auxiliary roll cage, (safety first!), and drove us an hour out of town, to the desert, and then took us racing over the dunes for about a half hour! Excellent adventure, sans the staged authenticity. Perfect!

The next day, a driver picked us up and took us out to the helipad at the Atlantis Palm Jumeirah. We booked a private helicopter tour. You do have to pay for all four seats in the helicopter, but you ARE assured a window seat! I actually sat next to the pilot, which was very cool since it was my first time in a helicopter! I took a ton of pictures, but either my iPad lacks the capability to send pix to my blog site or, and this is waaaay more likely, I lack the technical skills to figure out how to transfer them. I plan to post pix from my laptop when we get home.

The rest of our time in Dubai was spent relaxing poolside, or on the beach. I can now add the Persian Gulf, (or theArabian Sea as they prefer to call it in Dubai!), to the list of bodies of water that I have been in! On to the Maldives, and the Indian Ocean!

You may be wondering why I have not mentioned any shopping. If you know anything at all about me, you know that its one of my favorite past-times. And after all, what would a trip to Dubai be without some SERIOUS retail therapy? Well, my incredibly insightful and thoughtful husband planned ahead. On our way home from the Maldives, we will be stopping in Dubai again. Two days earmarked specifically for shopping. We will be staying at a hotel that is on the metro line and convenient to the Mall of the Emirates, and a lot of other great shopping opportunities. After all, we were going to have to come home through Dubai anyway. No need to haul purchases from Dubai to the Maldives and then home! Does he know how to plan a trip, or what? Yep, he’s pretty amazing!

 

Dubai, part 1 (I finally figured out how to get it to post!)

I’d just like to start off this blog about Dubai by saying, “WOW! ”
This place is like no place I’ve ever seen, but it’s also like a lot of different places that I’ve seen.
The weather is like winter-time Miami at it’s best: temps in the 70’s, lovely breezes, palm trees swaying in said breezes.
The beach is a combo of places: warm water like Costa Rica, helpful and solicitous beach boys like the Ritz Carlton in Naples, and fine white sand like the best beaches in NJ, (yes, I said New Jersey! Ya’ wanna’ make something of it? South Jersey has some damn fine sand!).
The skyline is a real conglomeration… I’ve seen buildings here that look like: the
Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, condo buildings in City Center Las Vegas, buildings on the Bund in Shanghai, buildings that look like a cross between
the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building and/or whole lot of other buildings
that make me think, “hhhmmmm…. Where have I seen that building before?”

If I had to guess, I would say that 15% of the entire skyline is under construction. There are constructions cranes everywhere, which reminds me of China, (but without
the bamboo scaffolding). The construction cranes also remind me of Las Vegas, but
here in Dubai, the construction has not ground to a halt.

Anyway….. here’s the (sorta’) condensed version of our trip so far:
It turns out that it’s a 12 hour and 40 minute flight from Dulles to Dubai. Not as bad
as I was afraid it it might be, but long enough. Thank you God, for business class
seats that fold out flat, especially since we took off at 10:21PM! I slept for about 5 of
Q those hours and then got caught up on movies and tv shows for the remainder.
When we landed in Dubai it was 8:15PM, (the NEXT day, thank you very much!), and by the time we got thru immigration, baggage claim, and customs, it was 9:30.

If you read my previous blog about the differences between when I travel with Steve vs. when I travel with Bailey, you won’t be surprised when I tell you that after we came through customs, our limo driver was waiting to whisk to our hotel.
We are staying at the One and Only Royal Mirage while we are in Dubai, and it is an amazing property! Okay, maybe the fact that Steve reserved the best suite on the property is coloring my opinion, but even still…
WOW! My goal is to post some pix of our suite, and the 30 pounds, (ok, maybe only 20 pounds), of chocolates, fruit and chocolate covered fruits, that were waiting for us in our suite, but we’ll have to see how technologically savvy I can be after drinking 21 year old scotch in honor of today being Bailey’s 21st birthday! (Truthfully, I’m just hoping that my sentence structure is holding up and that my typos are not TOO terribly atrocious on this post as my OTC sleeping pills kick in, on top of the aforementioned 21 year old scotch.)
Okay… Before I completely pass out, I’ll end this post with the promise that I shall post again, with a story about tomorrows’s adventure: dune buggy riding in the desert; aka: Dune Bashing!
Unfortunately, I am having issues with both posting pix, AND posting this blog. here’s hoping the blog posts, I’ll work on the pix when I am a tad less affected by Unisom and scotch!
Xoxo