This weekend is Emily’s family reunion at Lake Brownwood. Right now I am sitting in the motel room (it’s actually more like a cabin at a church camp, but resembles a motel room) and I am connected to the wifi connection that they broadcast here at the park. Some say I am addicted to being online, which is why I take my laptop everywhere. I would disagree with this statement though, because as soon as I can afford the surgery to implant a wifi transmitter in my brain with an image projector that I can see through the back of my eye, I won’t need a laptop anymore. So obviously, I am not addicted.
www.fortnerroundup.com
We are sitting at the airport on Kauai, awaiting a flight to Honolulu. Its only a 30 min flight, then a 1.5 hour lay-over, and a First-Class flight from Honolulu to LAX. From there we have a 2.5 hour lay-over and then a 3 hour flight home from LAX to DFW.
The trip has been very fun. I will be uploading photos, some here and some on my Photo-Reflect site, in a couple of days. Watch for them.
I haven’t blogged in 3 days because we’ve been busy 
– also I realized after my last post that I had forgotten my CF Card reader at home, so I can’t upload any of the photos I have been taking until I get back to Grapevine.
Yesterday we went on a helicopter ride with the company Blue Hawaiian Helicopter Tours, and that was probably the most fun I have had since we’ve been here. We flew all over the Kauai Island and saw many waterfalls and canyons on the island. Our pilot’s name was Dean and he was quite informative of the historic details of the island.
Last night we went to a Luau at Smith’s Tropical Paradise. They had many varieties of birds and plants at this wildlife preservation location, and they served great food. At the end of the night, they finished off with a show of Hula dancers from Hawaii with some traditional Chinese, Japanese, Tahitian, Samoan, and New Zea-land dances mixed in.
Today we go to a 1-hour Time Share “information gathering” session where they will try and sell us a time share. It’s doubtful we will get anything… it is nice here, but the prices on everything around the hotel are so expensive, it almost makes it not worth it.
Sitting by the pool with a Rum and Coke right now. We leave this evening for Kauai where we will spend the rest of our time here. Nice weather outside today, this hotel has open doors in all the hallways and a bar in the lobby with an entire open wall to the pool outside.
It’s 5am here right now, but it is 10am at home. We went to bed early last night because to us it seemed like midnight when we landed in Honolulu, even though it was only 7pm local time. We were in bed by 8:30pm and I woke up a few minutes ago because I got plenty of sleep already. In a couple of hours we leave to go visit Pearl Harbor. I am looking forward to that itself, just not excited about the crowd that I am sure will be there. Pictures to come of that tomorrow…
We left today at 1:30pm Dallas time, headed to Hawaii for a vacation week. Right now we are sitting in the Admirals’ Club at LAX Airport, awaiting a connection flight from LA to Honolulu. Our connection is about 2 hours from now.
I’ll be updating this blog on our trip status and with photos. Stay tuned…
So much for my “daily updates”….
Today is Tuesday, and I usually go to Boomer Jack’s Bar & Grill after work with work friends, for Buffalo Wings and beer. So that is the plan tonight.
Emily and I bought a 2005 Ford Escape on ebay last weekend. We put a deposit down and booked a flight, and we leave Friday night to fly to Fort Lauderdale, FL to pick it up. We’ll get there late that night, so we will pickup the truck Saturday morning and hit to road for our 20-hour trek back to TX. ROAD TRIP!
I’ve spent the last week working in Norwich, CT. We were sent up here, a few people from my job, to learn a new account that is being transitioned from this site back to Dallas. So we can up to each learn our seperate parts of the account to take back and train others to get ready for the Dallas roll-out, some time in last July.
Last night we went to a local micro-brewery and had some chicken wings. It was a nice little town, about 30 min from where we stayed. I wish I had known about this place earlier in the week and I would have taken some photos. Next time I come back, I might try and do that.
The brewery we ate at is www.willibrew.com
Norwich is a nice place, but I am ready to come home. The weather here is weird…middle of June and the past 2 days it has been around 60 degrees each morning. And I didn’t bring any long-sleeve shirts, LOL. Next month some of the folks up here are coming to Texas for some other training. I am gonna be amused to see how they like Texas weather.
We went to NO over the weekend, my main purpose was to go down to the 9th Ward and shoot some photos of the Katrina devistation down there, which hasn’t really been cleaned up yet. I should be uploading my photos tonight or tomorrow, you can find them on www.deepellumphotos.com
Most of the damage to the 9th Ward area looks just like torn-down houses that haven’t been kept up…except that it is extire streets of them. You can’t really tell that it was flood damage much at all except for the metal and chain link fences that are all rusted out. Other than that, it could have been any rural area in Tornado Alley from Texas to Kansas.
Friday night we went to dinner at this cool new place in the city. Cochan was the name, I couldn’t find a website for them, but here is an article on the exact dish I ordered, LOL. Afterwards we walked over to Pat O’Briens and took in some Piano Bar action, but it was pretty full and we didn’t stay long. It is a nice scene though, second time I have been there, and I still wanna go back again.
On Saturday we went down to the French Quarter and walked around for a while. We ate lunch at Central Grocery and had Muffalettas. They were quite tasty, though I doubt they are “the original” as they claim to be. However, it was definately lunch-money well spent. Check this link for more details.
Next time I go to NO, I plan to take about a day and just walk the streets of the city, Bourbon Street, the French Quarter, all of it, just taking photos. It is a great place with a very scenic view.