Honeymoon

First entry in the honeymoon week blog. Jon and I went to Disney World for a week to eat well, be completely entertained and come back completely exhausted. All three were accomplished.

Day 1: Our flight was out at 6:30a. Add in a 45 minute drive to the airport, parking at long term parking and shuttling to the commuter terminal and you get a wake up time of 3:30a. Yeah.

Rewind one day. I wanted to get some things checked off of my work list before leaving, namely a million and one thank you notes and reports entered into the database on the meetings I'd had over the last month. I spent all of Sunday working. Thankfully I'd packed a week before (excited!), so I didn't have to stress. My pile of mail grew and grew on the counter as the day wore on. After 4 hours of writing the date (June 1) on the top of the notes, I realized it was rent day. So I asked Jon to take care of the rent. I saw him get out the checkbook, steal an envelope off of my desk and I stopped paying attention. And I worked for 4 more hours on writing thank notes.

That evening, Jon asked me to follow him to the car dealer so he could drop off his car for a tune up while we were gone. On the way there, I stopped at the UPS store, to which I have a key for after hours entry, and dropped the mail in the outgoing box.

Jump forward to June 2nd at 4:30 a.m. We're loading up the car and finishing our last minute chores before locking up. I asked Jon if he had taken care of the rent, just to be sure, and he said, yes, he had put it on the pile of mail. Um, hold up. You didn't walk it down to the drop box in the next building over? It wasn't labeled, no stamps. You have to be kidding me. Does that sound like "taking care of the rent?!" Shit. It's now sitting in the outgoing box at the UPS store.

4:55a: I run to the drop box and put a new rent check in it. Then, we drive to the UPS store on the way to the airport. The mailbox is a 3.5 foot box on wheels with a locked back. While Jon flipped it upside down and shook, I stuck my hand in the opening pulling out every envelope I could reach until I got the rent check. We flipped the box upright, refilled it with the real mail and hand shredded the old rent check. I think we broke 14 federal laws and it was all probably caught on tape. Way to start the vacay . . .

The flights were relatively uneventful. I had called our hotel a few days earlier, The Shades of Green, a military hotel on Disney property, and asked for a shuttle rec. They gave me the number to Fleetwood Limousine, so I had made a reservation. The guy told me to call when we landed and they'd tell us where to meet our driver. So we land, I call, the guy says, call me back when you get your luggage. OK . . . We trek down to baggage pick up. We haven't even gotten to the luggage level when my cell phone starts ringing. It's the limo service guy - have you gotten your bags yet? Um, chill out my friend. I'll call you. So we wait and wait, the usual. Finally get our bags and call the guy. He says our driver is sitting in a holding lot and will pull up momentarily at a certain marked parking spot. OK. So we haul our stuff down a floor, find the limo pick up point and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. I call back the limo guy and he says, hmm, he'll call our driver and call me back. Another 5 minutes goes by and he calls back and says, "Hi, it's me," when I answer the phone. I didn't realize we knew each other. Oh, she's not actually at the airport, but left when we said we had our bags. It'll be a few more minutes. OK, so we've now been waiting for about 45 minutes. And it's a steam bath outside.

Finally, our limo pulls up and a large middle-aged black woman gets out wearing a white, ribbed long sleeve tee with lacing up the front, too tight pants and hair sticking in every direction. The first thing she says is, "Am I too late?" and started laughing. She pops the trunk and watches us toss our bags in, then hops in and blasts the A/C as high as it will go. She starts talking, in almost understandable English, and doesn't stop. I tune out, Jon tries to be polite. We both get quiet (we've been up since 3:30a) and stare out the window about halfway into the ride. And the driver says, "I'm bored. I need to be entertained. You're not talking to me enough." Are you serious?! Wow, good recommendation Shades of Green.

We finally get into our room and talk about going to downtown Disney for dinner, make it to the lobby and decide we're starving and have to eat now. So we ate a nice Italian meal in the hotel, crawled into bed and called it our first night.

Don't worry, there's more to come!