Arubian Nights

So, here I am in Aruba trying to come up with something clever to blog about because I now have the capacity and I am failing miserably. There's really nothing interesting to report - all Kate and I have been doing is sitting on the beach, soaking up the sun and going to bed early. In short, it's been pretty great. We are now on leg 2 of our honeymoon. We are staying at the Marriot Surf Club in Aruba which is a pretty ridiculous property. We have a two bedroom "villa." We need the second room to accomodate our egos and to store our innertubes. That's right; we bought innertubes. Why? BECAUSE THEY HAVE A FUCKING LAZY RIVER AT THIS PLACE!!!!!!!!! OMG!!!! It really is awesome. We have spent a good deal of time on said river already and I plan to hit up again this afternoon. The room is quite a bit nicer than our place in Cancun. There is a giant whirlpool tub that I can actually fit into comfortably and we have two balconies with a view of the pool and ocean. It doesn't suck.

However, on the other hand, the service is not nearly as good as it was in Cancun. There is a crazy chair reservation system here that involves a "chair tag" and even when you tag your chair, you can't leave for more than two hours (not that I have any desire to do that but I just like the idea that people who would otherwise just throw your belongings on the ground would somehow be deterred by a tag attached to the chair). We're also required to wear bracelets at the pool to indicate that we are legitimate guests of the resort rather than interlopers. The color of the bracelet is apparently changed on a weekly basis so you can not steal/borrow a bracelet from someone who has stayed here and then have an authorized pool party. To continue with the Cancun comparison, the prices do not seem to be nearly as reasonable here. The price of a single beer AT THE GROCERY STORE was about $3. We are avoiding restaurants and continuing on our crusade to eat like children (pb&j, mac n cheese, pizza, etc.).

We have a few days left in paradise and then we head back to the states on Friday and Saturday we're going to the Ohio State-Navy football game. Our lives continue to not suck.

Hola de Mexico

Kate got a passport. All is well and I am writing from the lobby of our hotel in Cancun. We spent the day lounging by the pool and getting super tan. Kate claims I'm burnt but she's full of shit.

Speed Bumps

Yesterday mroning, as we were getting our shit together to organize ourselves for Cancun, Kate can't find her passport. No big deal. It's gotta be here somewhere, right? Nope. It doesn't have to be here somewhere. After searching through every bag three times, searching through our "important stuff" receptacles about 8 times, we conclude that the passport does NOT have to be here somewhere. No big deal. It must have gotten packed along with our other stuff back in AA. We can call the storage facility, ask them to look for it and overnight it to us so that we don't have to drive 3.5 hours each way to root through the boxes ourselves. I call Kristie, the woman who had helped facilitate our move, and explain the situation. She is more than accomodating and actually suggested that she personally do the searching and overnight the passport WHEN she finds it before we mentioned it. Great. She tells us it is going to take a bit of time to get into "the vault" (as it's apparently called...probably just to make us feel more secure about leaving all of our possessions in the custody of strangers) and that there is a $32 fee to open it after it has been sealed. No big deal. Certainly, my time is worth more than $5/hr. So, in the mean time, we are anxiously awaiting her phone call all afternoon ahd hoping that she finds it in time to overnight it so that it arrives here Friday. We're also calling the State Department and exploring every possible avenue on the internet. The new passport card is only for land and sea travel - that's out. Kate calls the passport service line and can't talk to a human. The next available appointment in Detroit is on August 27 - that doesn't work for us. We're also quadrupling checking all our bags, searching all the nooks and crannies of the car and Kate is spending a lot of time crying and feeling stupid. Around 2:30 PM, our hearts fill with hope when the phone rings. It's Kristie. YAY!!!!

"Thomas, guess what I have in my hand."

"I hope it's a passport."

"It is! Is your wife Katherine Anne?"

"Um, sort of..."

I'm now realizing what has happened. Kate is no longer Katherine Anne... Kristie has found Kate's old passport. The one that has been made obsolete this summer when Kate changed her name and received a new passport.

When I explained what happened, I felt like I had shit in Kristie's sundae. Despite the ridiculousness we had already put her through, Kristie agreed to go back and look again. No dice. She said she looked through all the boxes we thought it might be in and even in some that there was no earthly way the passport would have ended up there. No dice.

Whatever. We're not giving up. We are on the internet and considering using a Passport Expediting service that is almost certainly a scam. Who cares if we suffer identity theft? WE'RE GOING TO CANCUN!!!!!

I decide to the call the Passport Service Line myself and see if I have better luck than Kate. After going through the phone tree a little bit, I hit zero because nothing is working and I wasn't sure if Kate had tried this method. By some miracle, I'm connected to an actual person after a short wait. I explain the situation and am told that she can send an emergency notification to the Detroit agency (we are given a level 2 status on the emergency scale out of 5 with 1 being a life or death emergency) and if they are able to, they will fit us in.

We assemble all the documentation that we think we need and then realize Kate is going to have to get new passport photos taken. We rush out to AAA at 4:50 and are just in time. We get the pictures taken (possibly not Kate's greatest portrait but we were very happy to have gotten there in time) and as we exit, they lock the doors behind us.

Shortly thereafter, Kate leaves to drive to AA to spend the night with a friend (thank you, friend) so she can be in Detroit in the morning to hover outside the Passport Agency all day in case they call. If not, we still have the option of going to the storage facility and ripping through all the boxes. (You'll notice that Kate went alone to Michigan....I didn't lose my passport and I'm a bad husband.)

This morning, as I'm typing up this fantastic blog entry, Kate calls me. She's calling to say that she got her passport, right? No. Well, then surely she's calling to tell me that she's on her way to the Agency to get her passport. Nope. The agency has not called yet. Kate doesn't know what to do - wants to cry. I tell Kate I'll call the Passport service line and ask them WTF is going on? This is not my forte but I call and manage to speak to a person again. I explain the situation and am told that there is nothing else they can do for us. I'm told that Kate will receive a call if someone with an appointment cancels or doesn't show up. I ask if there's anything else that can be done or if there is a direct number for Detroit that I can call. There's no direct phone number to the Detroit agency I'm told. Can you transfer me to someone in Detroit? No. I'm essentially told that there are no phones in Metro Detroit. Wonderful.

I call Kate back to tell her the bad news. She hasn't been inside the agency yet because they don't allow cell phones in the building and she didn't want to miss the call or just leave her phone sitting on the sidewalk in Downtown Detroit. I suggest that she wait for M (with whom she stayed and who works in Detroit) to take her lunch break and have her hold her cell phone while she goes to cry in the lobby until someone takes pity on her. And if that doesn't work, she still has the option of ripping up the contents of our storage unit. As I'm saying all this, Kate gets a phone call from a Michigan number. It's the Passport Agency! And they didn't just call to torment her! They're willing to see her!!!!

So, last I heard she was going to the agency to meet with someone and I can see no reason why they won't be able to accommodate her.

But, if not....

Anyone want to go to Cancun/Aruba with me?

I'm not good at blogging...

I knew this would happen. I was far too bold to start a blog. It's just not in my blood. I'm not insightful. I don't put things in perspective. I don't blog. But, I'll try again.

So, fun as it was, I think Operation: Double Brothers has died. Daniel and I will continue to make jokes but PENO appears to be the clear victor. Either Daniel will marry Kate's half sister and we'll settle for being 1.5 brothers (which doesn't sound nearly as cool and at this point, there are also legal and moral concerns about launching that mission) or the dream will die. It appears that Chris and PENO are bordering upon serious with their Facebook profiles both admitting to their relationship. Shit got official. I'm mostly just tired of pretending to be opposed to Chris' relationship and thinking of ways that I can twist things to make PENO look sinister. I'm not that creative...ultimately, I'm just lazy. Perhaps if something especially entertaining happens and I'm feeling ambitious, I will write another update on the operation. Initially, Operation: Double Brothers was just a way for me to start a blog without feeling like it was a pointless endeavor focusing on the inane details of my life. Unfortunately, it appears that it is inevitable that ODB will either become just that or cease to exist altogether.

So, anyway, on to the inane details of my life:

The wife and I packed up our apartment (and by packed up our apartment, I mean we watched two dudes put all of our shit in boxes and load them on to a truck) and moved out yesterday. We are currently enjoying our "pre-retirement" in the booming metropolis of Middletown, OH. Plans for the next week: non-existent. Things are going pretty well. In our time here so far, we have had two out of two meals prepared for us (both of which were delicious), had a freshly remodeled room prepared for us, and got to sleep as late as we wanted this morning. We've been promised ribs for dinner and there is talk of a game of golf. Our lives don't suck.

After this week, things get a bit more exciting. A week from today, Kate and I leave on our "official" honeymoon. Immediately after the wedding, we went to West Virginia for three days but being the spoiled children that we are, that wasn't good enough. We will be going on a two week trip to Cancun and Aruba. We somehow tricked two different groups of people into providing our lodging for this trip so the cost to us is minimal. Our agenda in the Caribbean will consist of sleeping, drinking tropical cocktails as we look at/swim in turquoise waters, eating, repeat. Our lives don't suck.

When we return from that trip, we will enjoy another period of pre-retirement in and around Cincinnati, OH (featuring a trip to Columbus to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes play American Football) before we depart on the mother of all road trips. We are packing up the car and heading west........for six weeks. Again, our lives don't suck. However, after that, something closer resembling reality will kick in.

Our itinerary for the trip:
Chicago
Minneapolis
Black Hills, S.D./Mount Rushmore
Yellowstone National Park
Glacier National Park
Seattle
Vancouver
Portland
San Francisco
Yosemite National Park
Palm Springs
Las Vegas
Zion National Park
Salt Lake City
Denver
Kansas City
St. Louis
Memphis
New Orleans
Nashville
Cincinnati

We are travelling through something like 26 states and driving over 8000 miles. My only concern is what the hell we are going to talk about in the car for so damn long. It's going to be EPIC. We are talking about chronicling our adventure in someway.....perhaps through blogging. So, there is the potential for lots of pictures and details of our trip in the future so that you can live vicariously through us. Needless to say, we're really excited.