Category Archives: Travel

Status Quo

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We had a mini-vacation by going to Charlotte for CKC there last week. Hubby had business there too (made the trip useful for him to be able to create appointments since we’d be there.)

It was nice, in some ways. Hard, in many ways. Nice to get home. Not nice to get home.

Home is static. Flooring waiting to be installed. Stuff waiting to get sorted through. Never enough energy for the latter. Never enough help to gain such energy (by shared effort.)

My kitchen is a sore point. My living room is a sore point. My basement “family room” is anything but nice. Junky couch (really a partial couch) and not enough seating for my family unless bringing in kitchen chairs if we watch a movie together.

Anyhow, I’m just tired thinking of it all. Same old, same old. There are other things to do, always. So we live with it all. Going away just makes it more painful to live with again when returning. It’s like a wound, scabbed over, the wound is there, but covered with scab. Going away it seems like the scab falls off, wound healed. Coming back it’s just like the scab was just masquerading as healed, and it’s split wide open with the effort of going back realized.

It helps to write about it. Hopefully my hubby and I can get some things done in the house now that we have no “trip” that’s coming up. If only he’d be able to be motivated. Oh, then there is the long summer grass. It’s getting longer every day. That takes up so much time. I hate grass. It’s the enemy of household renovation, of weekend fun. It’s a slave driver. I’m full of cheerful thoughts today, aren’t I?

Travel for business and baseball

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We are in Tampa, as I have mentioned here – in a hotel that isn’t as nice as the one the night before, but that’s that. Embassy Suites in Tampa by the airport is really, really nice. We are now by the bay and it’s a different kind of place, very Florida and a crash pad.

Separate bedroom is tiny. Living room small, with balcony, cruddy but OK kitchen. The nicest thing here is that the bathroom has obviously been redone. [Now that I've written that I recall walking around the maze of outside corridors yesterday and passing some new appliance boxes in front of a couple of rooms. Dishwasher, Refrigerator, etc.]

There’s also a pullout sleeper couch and two narrow bunks intalled in a niche one on top of the other, of course. Plenty of places to put each of our 6 selves, but the bright spot in dealing with it all is the glass sliding door to the balcony. So many rooms don’t have a balcony, and many that do don’t have anything much worth looking at outside.

In this case there is water that sparkles as the sun moves overhead, it’s low tide, then high tide and the changes that brings. It’s interesting at least. Since it’s the Gulf side of Florida it gets too sunny and hot in the afternoon. Yesterday we got here in the afternoon. It’ll be nice to see the balcony all morning this day.

I have some schooling stuff with me, and that’s slated for this day as well (hubby is here for business, so we wait while he works.) We are also preparing for a birthday at the end of the month when my eldest goes from being a tween to a teen. :eyesroll : There’s some manners information we must all go over and practice again. It’s not just my eldest, he’s not as bad right now as some of the others really … and being stuck in a hotel room it’s not so long before someone is crying, another is sassing, another is screaming, another is … you get the drift.

Yesterday we were at a baseball game and today we go to another. I love baseball, and it was nice last night to sit by my eldest, he’s taking a higher interest in what’s going on in the game. Baby Q was a cutie too, but not interesting in the game, just showing off his toddler self to whomever would watch, particularly the row behind us.

I’m still nursing Baby Q at night and at home during the day every so often. I’ve not nursed this long with my others, it is just right for this one. Of late he’s picked up a new word to refer to me when he wants to nurse, ‘dink’ … so last night at the game he kept pulling at me ‘dink, dink’ … ‘Mama, dink!’ and I didn’t let him but awhile later I didn’t feel so “whatever it was” about it and he nursed and was that cute showoff from then on. Little stinker. :smile:

The hotel we are in (Celebration, FL)

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We are in Fl, the Celebration area around Orlando, in a hotel named the Mona Lisa. (http://www.monalisasuitehotel.com) It is quite nice. We have a 2 bedroom suite (Monet layout) and I can’t tell you through words how nice it is. It’s the most pleasant place we’ve stayed, as far as rooms go. The property is beautiful, it’s just too cool outside to take advantage of the Florida niceties, balconies, pool and such. The hallways and public places are beautiful. The buildings curve in that art-deco way, and there are grand painting and mural paintings in impressionistic styling all over, the area that I saw.

Inside our room looks out over the pool area, tons of light in all three rooms. Good looking heavy white out drapes cover the windows. The walls and ceiling are a nice texture, no wallpaper in sight, all edges nicely finished. Flat beige-yellow carpet, no ugly design. Beds have big nice headboards covered in a striped fabric, very nice, with good firm mattresses and lovely white duvet covered feather/down comforters. The furniture is dark and modern-ish bushed SS accents. There are flat-screened TV’s in both bedrooms and one in the living room. Some HD channels too. The space is large. Entryway is very large and tiled, and flows to bathroom on the right, and bedroom next to that, then living area ahead to the left and kitchen directly to the left, with the master bedroom suite further to the left off of the living room. Master bathroom is large with a stand alone tub, and a separate glassed in shower.

The sinks in the bathrooms are rectangular undermounts, very chic. Tall arching faucets grace every sink. The kitchen sink is a super deep stainless steel rectangular one. Solid surface counters. Nice couch, leather-like. Chairs that match in each room. The only “art” inside the room is a painting over the couch. Elsewhere there are mirrors, so it’s the simplisticness of nice walls and windows with views and minimalistic furniture that meld into an overall style of very “Florida Impressionistic-Neo-Art-Deco-meets-Mid-Century-Modern” — I like it very much.

There is a washer/dryer combo unit in a closet. Wow! I was going to use it, but I can’t get it opened now. I looked at it earlier this morning, and now it’s shut and seemingly locked or stuck shut. I have no idea how that happened, or if it’s common or what.

This isn’t the cheapest place to stay, but it’s not too bad, “pricelined” it. For the sort of space it is, it’s well worth the price. I’d love to stay here again, just plan on what I need to bring to cook/eat in the room. They have lots of stuff, I just need a few more things from home to be fully comfortable. This is much more spacious than the first apartment my hubby and I shared when we got married. It’s a very “live-able space” in how much room there is and how the layout is, though I’m not into apartment living anymore, much prefer a house in a moreso country setting. Anyhow …

This was just a quick trip to FL for a meeting hubby had to attend. Last minute, in a way. This is by far the nicest we’ve stayed at. Second on the list are two Embassy Suites, one in Charlotte, NC that opened in the summer of 2007, we were there quite by accident in August while doing some minor-league baseball trips; and one in the Crystal City area around Washington D.C. Both were classic Embassy Suites, but had moreso modern styling in the rooms, with that NC one being the very first time we REALLY saw an HD tv show, an MLB game in HD. It sold me hard and fast on HD. That hotel is sort of a spa hotel, in the middle of sort of nowhere. The D.C. one we stayed in on the way home from a PA/NY (Sept. 2008) it employs a sort of Washintonian-Political-Mid-Century-Modernism style. No flat screen tv’s there, but everything else was fairly nice.

Those hotels have wonderful breakfasts, but I was not impressed with the restaurant in Washington, high priced and nothing much I’d like to eat on the menu, so we go take-out for dinner after we arrived. The NC place I don’t remember what we did, that’s a blur due to the type of trip, and I had a 2-3 month old baby at the time as well.

Where we are today, from how I understand it the restaurant on site isn’t what we’d frequent with 4 children, pricier than we’d normally do. One reason we like Embassy Suites is that immense cooked-to-order breakfast that comes with the room. It’s give and take. This hotel where we are now has excellent everything, except for food choices. Food can be obtained elsewhere satisfactorily. So I don’t mind.

A Short Trip and Weather

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We’re going to FL for a couple of days, hubby has work there. I hope to get something in order for pictures (sorting, burning to discs, uploading, etc. Editing video … ) while we are there, since I won’t be at home with all the distractions … it’ll be a maybe, of course, since other things distract me in hotels. :rolleyes:

Seem to be a cold spell has hit down there too, so not totally a thaw out for us. It gets warm-ish here at some point most days, but not all the time. Like it was mostly in the 40′s yesterday for highs, and the mornings have been in the low 20′s. This morning it was 23 on our front porch. I got a new toy at Staples yesterday. A cute little weather system on clearance. It has a wireless sensor, and on the main unit you can see readings for temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and heat index and dew point, moon phase, time, and the temp/humidity can be shown for inside the house, and any remote sensors, which we only have one of, but there can be more, apparently, I’ll have to see if they are available online.

I’ve wanted a weather system for many years, this isn’t my ideal, but it’s better than something more expensive possibly, it was cheap enough, the cost was about the same as our outside temperature this morning, in dollars.

The sort of thing I want is closer to $1000 and is very much more professional and reliable and useful. I want to have readings and measurements of where I live, and have computer use of the data too. I want all the normal things, temp, humidity, pressure, wind, rain, etc.

So my new toy gives me some of that, a limited scale, but exactly the sort of thing that will please me some. The main unit is very pretty, it’s a tall slim stand that is very smooth and sleek. It’s very modern in a sensible sort of way. Minimalistic and Modern? Anyhow it’s plastic, but looks metal and glass-like, in a way, with a lovely display underneath that smooth glassy exterior.

When we get home I’ll be able to see minimal and maximum temps, for one. I’ll clear that before we leave so it’ll be fresher data.

I don’t know what we’ll do in FL, mostly be in the hotel while hubby works, it’s more a road trip for the sake of staying together and going somewhere else just cause we can. :smile:

Our Trip – Stop 2

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We are now in the Princeton, NJ area, not exactly, but sort of. No reason except for centrality of where hubbies appointments are the rest of the week.

From Williamsport we drove to Easton, PA, where I was born and lived until I was 7 years old, when we moved to Williamsport.

I saw the house that was my first dwelling. The street was crowded with cars on both sides, parked, really strange at just a few minutes past 5pm, to us. The street is a One-Way street now, it sure wasn’t when I lived there and wasn’t some years ago when my hubby was in the area and went to take a few pictures for me. Anyhow, the house was unremarkable, as usual. A typical ugly Easton, PA duplex house. Well, not ugly, just plain.

There exist nicer looking duplexes, obviously from an earlier era, further to the east towards Easton, with where we had lived being on the outer western edge of Easton. Down the street from my old house is where I went to school. Across from that was the playground that was flooded by the fire department in Winter for Ice Skating fun. Both no longer exist.

There are really ugly newer than my era houses where Liberty School was located, and the playground is a playground (actually retains the lovely Liberty name) but it’s a modern to-code sort of playground, just looks so different to what I remember, of course, seeing as my memory is from pre-1973.

So many of the streets in that area are One-Way now. All those years ago, in the late 60′s, my brother was crossing our street to a friends house and a person turned onto our street speeding fastly, and hit him and caused my brother to be changed forever. It would be impossible for a car to do that today, as the traffic flows the other direction only now. FWIW. It’s so very crowded too. It just doesn’t seem that someone would want to speed down that street.

I was disgusted to see my beloved Dixie Cup building so run down. I hadn’t thought of ever checking up on it online, but it was long abandoned and looking so needing to be reduced to rubble. Most all the windows broken, and just aged and abandoned. It was a lovely living symbol when I was living there, yes, all those years ago. The Easton of my early childhood memory is barely there. It’s sad. But I don’t feel as sad about it as I do Williamsport, which I see improving, and me missing the life that I once had, the promise it had, and how I lost it when having to move. My sisters have different ideas, no doubt, as my eldest had spent her entire life in Easton and moving from there was as bad in a way for her as moving from Williamsport was for me. For my other two sisters the moves weren’t good either, I just don’t know how much either affected either one.

I’ll be trying to put together a few things about visiting some historic sites in NJ; Easton, PA; and NY City. That’s my agenda for the next few days, figuring out what to do.

It was nice driving from Williamsport to Easton today. The Pocano’s are so nice, I’d forgotten that we’d be driving that way, and it was a surprise treat. Hubby hadn’t been in that area ever, so it was new to him so a treat too.