Trip to Ft. Myers Blog Options

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I incurred some unexpected expenses prior to my trip to Ft. Myers to see Vince in concert and decided to make some adjustments to accommodate for this.

I started my plans early, snagged a nice room at a Holiday Inn Express in he area in early Dec. I recall viewing several dates for this on Hotwire with my original intention being to stay more than day in this relaxing area of Fl. I did not find out until 12/24, when I was sent an email to review my trip. Found out that in error, I made this reservation for 12/24 instead of 1/24. The calendar that I was viewing must have reset as I explored my options and though, very unlike myself, did not check and verify info of my confirmation for this! OOOPS! Luckily, I decided to only stay one night and only lost one day of paying for a room, instead of two.

I had wanted to rent a car for this, but changed my mind the last week. Sad to say that someone rear-ended me that did not have insurance and I now have to litigate to get them to pay for damages. Though the car is perfectly drivable, I now refer to it as my Ghetto or redneck mobile. The right side fender is quite noticeably damaged as well as part of the side of the trunk which has gap in it. My car is white, had to find some heavy duty white tape to apply to the gap in the trunk to assure that water does not go into the trunk when it rains. Having a 12 year old Prisim, I only had PIP and liability insurance. LOl, quite challenging to maintain a sense of dignity driving around town like that.

I am so psyched about this concert, and am convinced that I can make a go of it in my ghettomobile. Thinking now that I was a bit too confident about this. Ever try to pretend that you are invisible for 150 miles? LOL!

(Going to break this blog down into a few short parts so that it is not such a long read) Will add to this a bit later today.

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Ft. Myers Blog (part 2)

Shortly after getting into the ghetomobile, I am thanking the Lord for such a beautiful balmy day, perfect temp of about 78, clear skies and sunny. Additionally asked the Lord to get me there safely and if it was not too much trouble, could you see that I do not say something stupid to Vince when I meet him.

Proceed with driving, the windows down, feeling so grateful for our weather, while so many are shoveling snow now. Fast forward to almost 100 miles up the road when I decided to stop at Cracker Barrel to eat lunch. I pulled in, caught a glimpse of myself in he rear view mirror and immediately took out my hairbrush. Hmmm, need a bigger mirror, not much happening here in the way of correction. In retrospect, you can only ask so much of a hairbrush. The 100 miles of driving a 70 mph has resulted in my already to thick hair looking like a 80's hairband quaff with a redneck interpretation and some moonshine Viagraish styling gel. I tried to do something, anything with it in he ladies room. I tried to get this one piece sticking out on the top of my crown to behave, even tried to use some water to tame it. However, I only succeeded in now accomplishing the "Alfalfa" signature look from Spanky and Our Gang.

My need to touch up my makeup revealed that I forgot my mascara. Generally speaking, heterosexual women will forget that they left their kids in the car and ignition running sooner than forgetting their mascara. At least their is time for the emergency stop to remedy this before the concert, PHEW!

Once seated for my lunch, I requested ice tea, no sugar and may I have that asap, please? The nice waiter said, yes ma'am, do you prefer Splenda or Sweet and Low? I said, no thanks, just regular ice tea, no sweetner at all. The polite silence immediately resulted in the minor epiphany that oh yeah, that's right, outside of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, ice tea without sugar is the South's equivalent to farting in church! As I looked up from the menu, I was able to espy an otherwise seemingly nice group of the apparently retired women's auxiliary of The First Tabernacle church of somewhere staring at me. I now find myself trying to send them a subliminal message that I do not normally look like this and that older people usually love me. A quick further assessment of the judgements that I was facing revealed that they all had the same hairdo and same 1/2 o 3/4 of Aquanet hairspray application, which of course, means that they all share the same politics and opinions, have an overabundance of the "safe" beige color theme in their homes, and in their day, made sure that the first Tues. of every month at 7 pm that there marital (ahem) obligations were fulfilled. (LOL)

I was reminded that I could never live life on the road. There is something about traveling that makes me have the appetite of a lumberjack. I think I ate more at that one meal, then I did all week. Seriously, who goes to Cracker Barrel and is only able to eat a salad? Or should I say that if they exist, I don't want to meet them. Now the lil' old ladies fared much better. I think they took home with them enough to sustain life for at least another two days. If I could be even remotely convinced that the waiter had the ability to advise Vince of the amount of food that I ate, he surely would have secured a $50 tip.