Done Delaying!
Well, it's taken me long enough to update. This'll probably take me a couple days to type out, too. :P Let's see... Okay, as I'm typing this, it's August 30 and (EDIT OF TODAY) it's now Sept. 21. :P
I wonder how many of you noticed that in one of my last few posts I mentioned going on a five week vacation. The vacation was to visit family I have across the US, but then during that time, I went on a three week road trip to visit more family that's on the OTHER side of the country. Since I live in the middle-ish of the country, the traveling went something like this:
◄►►►♪◄▲◄▼◄
First arrow: airplane ride
Next two: Road trip from California to Florida
Next: From my uncle's house to one of my Mom's friends
Singing 100 bottles of beer on the wall, and my five year old sister took a liking to the word 'beer'
Back to uncle's Going back to CA, visit St. Louis Arch
Last two are just going back to CA...
The airplane ride to CA was uneventful as far as I remember... But the road trip was awesome. 8D The first day was mostly uneventful beautiful. I was able to see the milky in Milky Way; that's not something that I can see, like, ever because there's a street lamp pretty much right outside my bedroom window. We - meaing Fishypaste, one of my brothers (Tin), my youngest sister (Lily), Mom, and me - spent the night at one of my aunts' house who lives in... New Mexico? Yeah, New Mexico. We stayed at her house until 11 AM the next morning. I think we arrived about eight hours earlier - 3 AM, if I recall correctly (which I'm probably not) - and we all conked out until the morning when my aunt started making breakfast. We had homemade breakfast burritoes and I had a couple Pop-Tarts.
She also has two awesomely playful dogs. But, they're large dogs, so my little sister, Lily, was getting freaked out when one of the dogs took a particular liking towards her.
Then we all played Call of Duty (except for Lily).
We stopped at Casa Grande before leaving the state. Casa Grande is a national park and it's a 400-600 year old building that no one really knows the purpose of, just a whole lot of speculation. Well, that was a terrible explanation. -Googles- Oh, it was the US's first archaeological reserve! :D And... Yup. I might post some pictures once I figure out how to get photos off the SD card in my DSi. X v X"
The next day after staying in a hotel for the night, we stopped at a place called the Sun Mart. I got an awesome mug that looks like a rattlesnake. I think that was also the day we saw a big cloud that looked like the Starship Enterprise and passed by a town called Gary. ("You will be passing Gary in 4 miles.") ...It was pretty funny at the time. .__.
The day after was the first day of being in Texas. I'm saying the first day because it took more than a day and a half to get through it. The thing that was seriously strange was I'm sure I saw a replica of the TARDIS from Dr. Who or something.
That thing. ↑
I was joking when I pointed it out to everyone because I said, "Is it just me, or is that an outhouse or the TARDIS?" All I could see of it since it was so far away was that it was a blue rectangle about as tall as a person with something like a light on top. Fishypaste struggled to get to the camera in time, but she wasn't able to get a picture because we were already too far away. It was in the middle of a huge--Uh, what do you call it? A prairie, I think. There was a lot of tall, brown grass, plateaus, mesas, sand, and the whole deserty shebang.
I'm still wondering what it was because of this:
The explanation drawing I made is a masterpiece, right? (I can't draw freehand on the computer. >__>') The one on the left is the outhouse/TARDIS I saw in Texas, and the thing on the right is what most of the outhouses I saw looked like. There were no matches, so I'm still curious as to what that thing was and why it was smack in the middle of a large prairie with no construction going on or any people that I saw nearby.
When night was just starting to fall after our first day of driving through Texas, there were a whole bunch of cool bats flying around. Okay, well, maybe I only saw two or three, but... They were cool. -3-
The second day that we were in Texas was Sunday, so we went to church. Except... we slept in as late as we could before getting shoved (not literally) out of the hotel room, so the only church left that was going to have a mass was a Spanish church. Uh, I may be taking Spanish at school, but it doesn't mean I know more than fifty words off the top of my head.
It was actually a super beautiful church. And, I think I had one of my childhood dreams come true there, too: seeing everyone in the church hold hands with the people in the opposite pews during the Our Father. In the churches I've been to, only younger kids - six or younger - hold hands with anyone, even sometimes standing in the middle of the aisle to be able to have some . I know I did that. But, everyone there was doing that! It was wonderful! The Our Father was my favorite part of the mass for the longest time when I was younger - besides the "Peace be with you" part when you shake everyone's hand - and I'd always wanted to see everyone in the church holding hands with someone else.
The homily wasn't so difficult because the priest also spoke about half of it in English, and the readings were understandable because there was Spanish and then English on the page next to it.
After mass, we went out and ate shaved ice.
So, I'm going to skip the boring details of the rest of what was in the next five or so days.
The very last full day of the road trip's first part - the second part being the way back to CA - we stopped in New Orleans for four to five hours. We first stopped at the tourist building with all the brochures and historical info of the place, and then we went to the Gumbo Shop to eat. But, before we went to the Gumbo Shop (that's what the place is called), Mom parked the van in a parking lot that was next to a fire hydrant that had water squirting out of it like a fountain. Mom let Lily play in it as long as she didn't go into the street. First thing Lily did was go into the street and almost get run over by a bicyclist going 30 MPH or something, but I'm glad he was paying attention, because he stopped short of hitting her.
Gumbo is tasty. :D
There was also a gorgeous church we visited and looked around in. I'll see if I can find out what it's called at some point.
We walked around for a while and went on a boat that went across the Mississippi River because we were thinking maybe we could stop at the zoo before we had to go back on our way. But we were tired and enjoyed the room on the boat that had air conditioning, and it was a free ride, anyway, because we were just on foot and didn't bring our car to the boat or anything. So, it was just a circle trip.
Once we got off and walked for a few more minutes, we came across a big Mardi Gras float being escorted by police cars. There were a bunch of tourists on board it tossing hundreds of the Mardi Gras bead necklaces off the side. Mom says they were obviously tourists because quite a few of them had a camera in one hand and a beer in the other. We stopped to get some frozen yogurt, walked some more, and then got back in the car to continue on to Florida.
That was the last night before arriving in Florida, and Mom was having this marathon of driving through the night and into the morning. I don't remember exactly how long that 'marathon' was, but I sat shotgun all the way to Florida (Fishypaste sat shotgun the way back, and my brother had the back row of seats all to himself) and stayed up with Mom that last night. There was one point when I looked at the GPS's clock - which was really nice to have! - and I thought, Only eight hours to go... and I was already falling asleep. -__-"
Ah, that's right. I also want to mention this one gas stop we made. It's completely irrelevant, but I thought the guy working there was pretty cool. This was a bit past midnight and the last long drive to Florida. We were running short on gas because Mom wasn't trusting any of the other stops we saw because the lights were off and she was saying, "There can be someone hiding in the shadows."
I was just, "Yeah, whatever. Just get some gas."
But, this one stop we came to was super cool because there was a guy working there who really reminded me of Shaggy from Scooby Doo, and he seemed nice, too. He had the peach fuzz goatee and the hair. There was also a moth outside the store that I tried to get a picture of, but every last picture turned out blurry because I couldn't figure out all the settings. They ended up looking something like this:
Van is more functional than one illustrated in picture above.
The leaves and gravel on the ground were clearer than the moth, and I believe that I even somehow got the car in one of the photos.
Anyway, the moth wasn't the highlight of that stop, even though it was awesome. I got a strawberry milkshake, but I was really curious about these boiled peanuts the place was selling. They were in this cart-thing.
Those grey things on the top are lids to the two different sections in it. The actual peanut-holder-thing didn't look as tilted (or sloppily decorated) as my version. Shaggy-dude let me try one of the peanuts, and I wasn't feeling quite so adventurous at the time - more just curious - so I didn't try the spicy ones. It tasted like mashed potatoes and seemed like it was wrapped up in weak yarn. Then I realized I probably should have taken off the shell before eating it. |D Mr. Shaggy laughed when I asked him if you're supposed to eat the shell, so I took that as a "No."
The reason I ended up going back outside was because I noticed that moth, I think, and was busy trying to catch it and/or take a picture of it. Mom ended up buying a CD of Weird Al, some other bands I don't remember, and a Monty Python CD, as well. The Monty Python one had some really funny skits. (Are they called sketches? I saw people calling them that and I got confused.) The album was called "Live! At City Center". 'Course, there was cussing and some inappropriate jokes (the usual PG-13-ish rating), but that's Monty Python for you.
I'm really surprised my siblings didn't wake up before the Lumberjack Song, which was last on the CD, because Mom and I were laughing like crazy. :D ...Oh, yup. They're called sketches. I just looked them up on YouTube. Huh. The embed video thing doesn't seem to be working, so here's a link to a good one. ^^
Somehow, I managed to stay awake the whole time, and got to see an armadillo within the first half hour of sunrise. :D It wasn't roadkill! It was eating bugs or something in a strip of grass off to the side of the highway. It made me happy to see one. :3 Didn't see one again, which made me feel super lucky.
We got to my uncle's, Dan's, house, which was where we were headed to in the first place, and he'd set up the living room at his house so we could sleep there, so I just downright collapsed onto the air mattress there, listening to Dora the Explorer on the TV that Lily is so fond of. There was a dragon eating spaghetti and a magic music box that teaches rocks to sing or something.
So, Uncle Dan also bought us this big box of firecrackers and stuff. There weren't any of those ones that you see for the Fourth, but there were ones that shoot fountains of sparks that go about twenty feet high. :D And lots of sparklers. Lots and lots of sparklers. Oh! Oh! There were these little spark-circle things that spun around and... sparked! It was super cool when I tossed mine on the ground vertically rather than horizontally and it rolled away, giving off sparks. ^^
There were lots of different fireworks that were cool, another one of my favorites being the Killer Bees, which was one of the cylindrical fireworks that are set on the ground, lit, and then fled from. They let off this extremely high pitched whine that got stuck in my head the same way the angry beetle fire alarms do at school. I really liked it for some reason, though, which is really strange since I hate the fire alarm.
We visited my great grandma just about every day that we were there; she's living in a nursing home.
Also, we saw the movie Zookeeper, which I enjoyed quite a bit more than I thought I would, but it was also more of a romantic comedy than I thought it would be, too. I think it will probably be a rental movie. When we parked in front of the movie theater, there was a group of people coming out that were wearing robes, wearing geeky glasses, and holding wands. Well, they just obviously went to see Harry Potter.
Once we got inside, there was a line to go into one theater room that was filling up half the lobby, and it was 10 PM. I'm mentioning the time because all of them were waiting to see the midnight showing of the last movie. .___. Because just about everyone that was going to that theater to watch HP, my family got the entire room to watch Zookeeper to ourselves. I said, "The person who's going to clean this room out is lucky!" since there was only five people.
Then one of us dropped the full jumbo size popcorn bucket on the floor.
I don't remember who it was - it might've been me (Honestly, I really don't recall.) - but I was just, "Wow. I just jinxed the person. >__O' "
So, yup. I enjoyed the movie and the candy Uncle Dan bought us for the movie and--Ah, that's right. I think the first day in Florida (or second. I didn't keep track. v__v) we went to the Ponce de Leon lighthouse. It's all tall and orangey-red and stuff.
That's me being sick at the top of the lighthouse.Thanks to this blog for the reference photo!
I felt really sick by the time I got to the top of the lighthouse, though, so I rushed back down to find a bathroom before I could pass out from the nausea. I'd spent quite a good chunk of time on that metal walkway thing way up by the top, catching the nice breezes. It made me feel a bit less sick to have a cool wind in my face, and what else was awesome about being up there was being able to see the different weather on all the different sides of the lighthouse. Florida can have some pretty whacky weather; beautiful, perfect weather in one spot, and then a pouring wall of blinding rain makes it almost impossible to drive comes out of nowhere. I'm guessing it's tough to drive in, at least. It was difficult for me to see the road at times just as a passenger, and I can't imagine what it would be like to be a driver through weather like that.
When I looked in a mirror in the bathroom stall - I don't know why there was a mirror, but whatever - I looked kinda green. Very pale green, but green. I felt terrible. I needed to throw up, but my body wouldn't let me, which I guess is good, for the sake of the gift shop's business, which had some really cool items, like glass blown dolphins and turtles, mostly for only $13, but some went to 75. Hearing someone barf doesn't really make anyone want to buy souvenirs, I'd think.
I felt better the next day, so that's good, and I'm still alive. |D
My mom took some pictures later on after finding me taking a nap on a bench, and I'm surprised I made it through the photos, and, when I saw the pictures later, I did look genuinely happy. I liked the place, but I just wasn't feeling good. After that, my mom gave me the car keys once I asked to go to the car and take a nap since I needed a rest, so I went to the van, started up the air conditioning - which felt fantastic after being out in the hot humidity, and promptly fell asleep after eating some of those cheap and tasty crackers with the terrible-yummy cheese.
I woke up again when rain started tapping on the car's roof, and after I moved from the driver's seat to the passenger's, I saw my family dashing over to the van, brochures over their heads since the umbrellas had been left in the trunk. By the time they were just halfway to the car, the rain was a downpour. I feel safe saying that it was funny to watch them, because everyone was laughing once they got in, anyway, including Lily.
That rain was an example of the Florida-weather I just mentioned. Once we were about three miles away from the lighthouse, all was sunny and perfect.
I also mentioned visiting one of Mom's friends. He lives two or three hours away from Dan's house, but after being told, "The next stop is only seven hours away" for about a week, two or three was like, "Oh, really? That's all?" A couple hours and one drunk guy crossing the middle of a busy intersection later, we were there. We watched the new Tron, a couple other movies, ate some birthday cake - Mom's friend has two sons and two daughters - of the younger son's, and then went to bed around 2 AM, I believe. One of the sons was about my age and the other was a bit older than Fishypaste. Frank is the younger and Stan is the older.
Yes, these are all fake names that I'm giving you, thanks for noticing. :D
The next day, I played Halo with his sons. A lot. And the two daughters loved my DSi. It's all Buzz Lightyear-y.
Halo was fun because apparently I'm really awesome at the sword matches where we're supposed to slaughter each other with energy swords. But, I suck at everything else. ^^d Especially rocket matches, where everyone has only rocket launchers with unlimited ammo.
Mom brought us to this place called Coral Castle the second day there, and her friend had left for a business trip; he's a super nice guy, but it was too bad I only really got to meet him for about... six hours. I think. Or maybe it was four or less. He left for the business trip before anyone woke up the next morning. Alright, let's see... Coral Castle... Okay, so while we were going to Coral Castle, which I thought would be this colorful place since it was made of coral, we - 'we' now meaning the two sons and also the previous 'we', since the mom had taken the girls to one of their aunt's birthday parties - were confronted by a person that I now call the Plant Lady. I'll try to make a genuinely amusing (and fairly accurate) comic about her soon.
Not my picture.
As you can see, Coral Castle isn't all that colorful. The grey rock stuff is the coral. In that area of Florida, it turns out, pretty much all of the ground is that coral stuff. It's totally ancient and super heavy. The guy who made the place made it all by himself, and no one knows how. Once I got past my disappointment, I really enjoyed the place. There were big lizards everywhere (Sadly, they're not native to the state.) and some of the formations of coral the guy made were sweet, too. You see that crescent moon/wrench back there? That's part of a group of sculptures Edward Leedskalnin, the architect and builder of the place, made of our solar system's planets.
The next day, we all went on an air boat ride and saw a ton of alligators, cool birds, plywood-tasting fish the gators eat called gator gar, and turtles. Can't draw you any beautiful renditions of them like all the other drawings in this entry because I'm not on the computer with the tablet and Photoshop currently. (Yay, time lapse!)
After the air boat ride, we went to a restaurant - I feel bad for forgetting what it was, but it was a great place - where apparently my little sister shared her birthday with the waitress. It was the exact same day! Not the same year, but the waitress thought it was really cool nonetheless. She wanted to know how old Lily was because Lily was doing some math problems or something in one of the many workbooks Mom's given her to work on. I don't recall how her birth date came up, but it did, and the waitress was cool.
Then we all went to the beach. Fishypaste, Frank, and I chucked lots of sand and seaweed at each other. Lily stayed on the shore with Mom and Stan was reading a book on a towel nearby them.
I'm used to the cold CA water that has constant waves that get pretty tall, curl, and then splash onto the shore. The beach we went to with Stan and Frank was weird 'cause that's not what it was like in Florida at all. The water was warm, and the waves were more like lumps of water that moved towards the shore in a sort of line. The water is also way more clear; Fishypaste spotted a crab that was drifting through the water a few feet down, which would have been impossible in California, or at least the beaches I've gone to. Plus, there were turtle nests on the shore with yellow caution tape roping off those areas.
A storm rolled in after we'd only been there for about an hour, though, so we had to leave. Mom made us rinse off the sand and get to the car as fast as we could which wasn't that fast and right when the last seat belt was clicked, the first drop of rain fell. It was pretty impressive.Now I'm ending the post 'cause I'm getting a too long post warning. Part 2 coming soon.
Mood: satisfied
Quote: "I never tell the truth."
I wonder how many of you noticed that in one of my last few posts I mentioned going on a five week vacation. The vacation was to visit family I have across the US, but then during that time, I went on a three week road trip to visit more family that's on the OTHER side of the country. Since I live in the middle-ish of the country, the traveling went something like this:
◄►►►♪◄▲◄▼◄
First arrow: airplane ride
Next two: Road trip from California to Florida
Next: From my uncle's house to one of my Mom's friends
Singing 100 bottles of beer on the wall, and my five year old sister took a liking to the word 'beer'
Back to uncle's Going back to CA, visit St. Louis Arch
Last two are just going back to CA...
The airplane ride to CA was uneventful as far as I remember... But the road trip was awesome. 8D The first day was mostly uneventful beautiful. I was able to see the milky in Milky Way; that's not something that I can see, like, ever because there's a street lamp pretty much right outside my bedroom window. We - meaing Fishypaste, one of my brothers (Tin), my youngest sister (Lily), Mom, and me - spent the night at one of my aunts' house who lives in... New Mexico? Yeah, New Mexico. We stayed at her house until 11 AM the next morning. I think we arrived about eight hours earlier - 3 AM, if I recall correctly (which I'm probably not) - and we all conked out until the morning when my aunt started making breakfast. We had homemade breakfast burritoes and I had a couple Pop-Tarts.
She also has two awesomely playful dogs. But, they're large dogs, so my little sister, Lily, was getting freaked out when one of the dogs took a particular liking towards her.
Then we all played Call of Duty (except for Lily).
We stopped at Casa Grande before leaving the state. Casa Grande is a national park and it's a 400-600 year old building that no one really knows the purpose of, just a whole lot of speculation. Well, that was a terrible explanation. -Googles- Oh, it was the US's first archaeological reserve! :D And... Yup. I might post some pictures once I figure out how to get photos off the SD card in my DSi. X v X"
The next day after staying in a hotel for the night, we stopped at a place called the Sun Mart. I got an awesome mug that looks like a rattlesnake. I think that was also the day we saw a big cloud that looked like the Starship Enterprise and passed by a town called Gary. ("You will be passing Gary in 4 miles.") ...It was pretty funny at the time. .__.
The day after was the first day of being in Texas. I'm saying the first day because it took more than a day and a half to get through it. The thing that was seriously strange was I'm sure I saw a replica of the TARDIS from Dr. Who or something.
That thing. ↑
I was joking when I pointed it out to everyone because I said, "Is it just me, or is that an outhouse or the TARDIS?" All I could see of it since it was so far away was that it was a blue rectangle about as tall as a person with something like a light on top. Fishypaste struggled to get to the camera in time, but she wasn't able to get a picture because we were already too far away. It was in the middle of a huge--Uh, what do you call it? A prairie, I think. There was a lot of tall, brown grass, plateaus, mesas, sand, and the whole deserty shebang.
I'm still wondering what it was because of this:
The explanation drawing I made is a masterpiece, right? (I can't draw freehand on the computer. >__>') The one on the left is the outhouse/TARDIS I saw in Texas, and the thing on the right is what most of the outhouses I saw looked like. There were no matches, so I'm still curious as to what that thing was and why it was smack in the middle of a large prairie with no construction going on or any people that I saw nearby.
When night was just starting to fall after our first day of driving through Texas, there were a whole bunch of cool bats flying around. Okay, well, maybe I only saw two or three, but... They were cool. -3-
The second day that we were in Texas was Sunday, so we went to church. Except... we slept in as late as we could before getting shoved (not literally) out of the hotel room, so the only church left that was going to have a mass was a Spanish church. Uh, I may be taking Spanish at school, but it doesn't mean I know more than fifty words off the top of my head.
It was actually a super beautiful church. And, I think I had one of my childhood dreams come true there, too: seeing everyone in the church hold hands with the people in the opposite pews during the Our Father. In the churches I've been to, only younger kids - six or younger - hold hands with anyone, even sometimes standing in the middle of the aisle to be able to have some . I know I did that. But, everyone there was doing that! It was wonderful! The Our Father was my favorite part of the mass for the longest time when I was younger - besides the "Peace be with you" part when you shake everyone's hand - and I'd always wanted to see everyone in the church holding hands with someone else.
The homily wasn't so difficult because the priest also spoke about half of it in English, and the readings were understandable because there was Spanish and then English on the page next to it.
After mass, we went out and ate shaved ice.
So, I'm going to skip the boring details of the rest of what was in the next five or so days.
The very last full day of the road trip's first part - the second part being the way back to CA - we stopped in New Orleans for four to five hours. We first stopped at the tourist building with all the brochures and historical info of the place, and then we went to the Gumbo Shop to eat. But, before we went to the Gumbo Shop (that's what the place is called), Mom parked the van in a parking lot that was next to a fire hydrant that had water squirting out of it like a fountain. Mom let Lily play in it as long as she didn't go into the street. First thing Lily did was go into the street and almost get run over by a bicyclist going 30 MPH or something, but I'm glad he was paying attention, because he stopped short of hitting her.
Gumbo is tasty. :D
There was also a gorgeous church we visited and looked around in. I'll see if I can find out what it's called at some point.
We walked around for a while and went on a boat that went across the Mississippi River because we were thinking maybe we could stop at the zoo before we had to go back on our way. But we were tired and enjoyed the room on the boat that had air conditioning, and it was a free ride, anyway, because we were just on foot and didn't bring our car to the boat or anything. So, it was just a circle trip.
Once we got off and walked for a few more minutes, we came across a big Mardi Gras float being escorted by police cars. There were a bunch of tourists on board it tossing hundreds of the Mardi Gras bead necklaces off the side. Mom says they were obviously tourists because quite a few of them had a camera in one hand and a beer in the other. We stopped to get some frozen yogurt, walked some more, and then got back in the car to continue on to Florida.
That was the last night before arriving in Florida, and Mom was having this marathon of driving through the night and into the morning. I don't remember exactly how long that 'marathon' was, but I sat shotgun all the way to Florida (Fishypaste sat shotgun the way back, and my brother had the back row of seats all to himself) and stayed up with Mom that last night. There was one point when I looked at the GPS's clock - which was really nice to have! - and I thought, Only eight hours to go... and I was already falling asleep. -__-"
Ah, that's right. I also want to mention this one gas stop we made. It's completely irrelevant, but I thought the guy working there was pretty cool. This was a bit past midnight and the last long drive to Florida. We were running short on gas because Mom wasn't trusting any of the other stops we saw because the lights were off and she was saying, "There can be someone hiding in the shadows."
I was just, "Yeah, whatever. Just get some gas."
But, this one stop we came to was super cool because there was a guy working there who really reminded me of Shaggy from Scooby Doo, and he seemed nice, too. He had the peach fuzz goatee and the hair. There was also a moth outside the store that I tried to get a picture of, but every last picture turned out blurry because I couldn't figure out all the settings. They ended up looking something like this:
Van is more functional than one illustrated in picture above.
The leaves and gravel on the ground were clearer than the moth, and I believe that I even somehow got the car in one of the photos.
Anyway, the moth wasn't the highlight of that stop, even though it was awesome. I got a strawberry milkshake, but I was really curious about these boiled peanuts the place was selling. They were in this cart-thing.
Those grey things on the top are lids to the two different sections in it. The actual peanut-holder-thing didn't look as tilted (or sloppily decorated) as my version. Shaggy-dude let me try one of the peanuts, and I wasn't feeling quite so adventurous at the time - more just curious - so I didn't try the spicy ones. It tasted like mashed potatoes and seemed like it was wrapped up in weak yarn. Then I realized I probably should have taken off the shell before eating it. |D Mr. Shaggy laughed when I asked him if you're supposed to eat the shell, so I took that as a "No."
The reason I ended up going back outside was because I noticed that moth, I think, and was busy trying to catch it and/or take a picture of it. Mom ended up buying a CD of Weird Al, some other bands I don't remember, and a Monty Python CD, as well. The Monty Python one had some really funny skits. (Are they called sketches? I saw people calling them that and I got confused.) The album was called "Live! At City Center". 'Course, there was cussing and some inappropriate jokes (the usual PG-13-ish rating), but that's Monty Python for you.
I'm really surprised my siblings didn't wake up before the Lumberjack Song, which was last on the CD, because Mom and I were laughing like crazy. :D ...Oh, yup. They're called sketches. I just looked them up on YouTube. Huh. The embed video thing doesn't seem to be working, so here's a link to a good one. ^^
Somehow, I managed to stay awake the whole time, and got to see an armadillo within the first half hour of sunrise. :D It wasn't roadkill! It was eating bugs or something in a strip of grass off to the side of the highway. It made me happy to see one. :3 Didn't see one again, which made me feel super lucky.
We got to my uncle's, Dan's, house, which was where we were headed to in the first place, and he'd set up the living room at his house so we could sleep there, so I just downright collapsed onto the air mattress there, listening to Dora the Explorer on the TV that Lily is so fond of. There was a dragon eating spaghetti and a magic music box that teaches rocks to sing or something.
So, Uncle Dan also bought us this big box of firecrackers and stuff. There weren't any of those ones that you see for the Fourth, but there were ones that shoot fountains of sparks that go about twenty feet high. :D And lots of sparklers. Lots and lots of sparklers. Oh! Oh! There were these little spark-circle things that spun around and... sparked! It was super cool when I tossed mine on the ground vertically rather than horizontally and it rolled away, giving off sparks. ^^
There were lots of different fireworks that were cool, another one of my favorites being the Killer Bees, which was one of the cylindrical fireworks that are set on the ground, lit, and then fled from. They let off this extremely high pitched whine that got stuck in my head the same way the angry beetle fire alarms do at school. I really liked it for some reason, though, which is really strange since I hate the fire alarm.
We visited my great grandma just about every day that we were there; she's living in a nursing home.
Also, we saw the movie Zookeeper, which I enjoyed quite a bit more than I thought I would, but it was also more of a romantic comedy than I thought it would be, too. I think it will probably be a rental movie. When we parked in front of the movie theater, there was a group of people coming out that were wearing robes, wearing geeky glasses, and holding wands. Well, they just obviously went to see Harry Potter.
Once we got inside, there was a line to go into one theater room that was filling up half the lobby, and it was 10 PM. I'm mentioning the time because all of them were waiting to see the midnight showing of the last movie. .___. Because just about everyone that was going to that theater to watch HP, my family got the entire room to watch Zookeeper to ourselves. I said, "The person who's going to clean this room out is lucky!" since there was only five people.
Then one of us dropped the full jumbo size popcorn bucket on the floor.
I don't remember who it was - it might've been me (Honestly, I really don't recall.) - but I was just, "Wow. I just jinxed the person. >__O' "
So, yup. I enjoyed the movie and the candy Uncle Dan bought us for the movie and--Ah, that's right. I think the first day in Florida (or second. I didn't keep track. v__v) we went to the Ponce de Leon lighthouse. It's all tall and orangey-red and stuff.
That's me being sick at the top of the lighthouse.Thanks to this blog for the reference photo!
I felt really sick by the time I got to the top of the lighthouse, though, so I rushed back down to find a bathroom before I could pass out from the nausea. I'd spent quite a good chunk of time on that metal walkway thing way up by the top, catching the nice breezes. It made me feel a bit less sick to have a cool wind in my face, and what else was awesome about being up there was being able to see the different weather on all the different sides of the lighthouse. Florida can have some pretty whacky weather; beautiful, perfect weather in one spot, and then a pouring wall of blinding rain makes it almost impossible to drive comes out of nowhere. I'm guessing it's tough to drive in, at least. It was difficult for me to see the road at times just as a passenger, and I can't imagine what it would be like to be a driver through weather like that.
When I looked in a mirror in the bathroom stall - I don't know why there was a mirror, but whatever - I looked kinda green. Very pale green, but green. I felt terrible. I needed to throw up, but my body wouldn't let me, which I guess is good, for the sake of the gift shop's business, which had some really cool items, like glass blown dolphins and turtles, mostly for only $13, but some went to 75. Hearing someone barf doesn't really make anyone want to buy souvenirs, I'd think.
I felt better the next day, so that's good, and I'm still alive. |D
My mom took some pictures later on after finding me taking a nap on a bench, and I'm surprised I made it through the photos, and, when I saw the pictures later, I did look genuinely happy. I liked the place, but I just wasn't feeling good. After that, my mom gave me the car keys once I asked to go to the car and take a nap since I needed a rest, so I went to the van, started up the air conditioning - which felt fantastic after being out in the hot humidity, and promptly fell asleep after eating some of those cheap and tasty crackers with the terrible-yummy cheese.
I woke up again when rain started tapping on the car's roof, and after I moved from the driver's seat to the passenger's, I saw my family dashing over to the van, brochures over their heads since the umbrellas had been left in the trunk. By the time they were just halfway to the car, the rain was a downpour. I feel safe saying that it was funny to watch them, because everyone was laughing once they got in, anyway, including Lily.
That rain was an example of the Florida-weather I just mentioned. Once we were about three miles away from the lighthouse, all was sunny and perfect.
I also mentioned visiting one of Mom's friends. He lives two or three hours away from Dan's house, but after being told, "The next stop is only seven hours away" for about a week, two or three was like, "Oh, really? That's all?" A couple hours and one drunk guy crossing the middle of a busy intersection later, we were there. We watched the new Tron, a couple other movies, ate some birthday cake - Mom's friend has two sons and two daughters - of the younger son's, and then went to bed around 2 AM, I believe. One of the sons was about my age and the other was a bit older than Fishypaste. Frank is the younger and Stan is the older.
Yes, these are all fake names that I'm giving you, thanks for noticing. :D
The next day, I played Halo with his sons. A lot. And the two daughters loved my DSi. It's all Buzz Lightyear-y.
Halo was fun because apparently I'm really awesome at the sword matches where we're supposed to slaughter each other with energy swords. But, I suck at everything else. ^^d Especially rocket matches, where everyone has only rocket launchers with unlimited ammo.
Mom brought us to this place called Coral Castle the second day there, and her friend had left for a business trip; he's a super nice guy, but it was too bad I only really got to meet him for about... six hours. I think. Or maybe it was four or less. He left for the business trip before anyone woke up the next morning. Alright, let's see... Coral Castle... Okay, so while we were going to Coral Castle, which I thought would be this colorful place since it was made of coral, we - 'we' now meaning the two sons and also the previous 'we', since the mom had taken the girls to one of their aunt's birthday parties - were confronted by a person that I now call the Plant Lady. I'll try to make a genuinely amusing (and fairly accurate) comic about her soon.
Not my picture.
As you can see, Coral Castle isn't all that colorful. The grey rock stuff is the coral. In that area of Florida, it turns out, pretty much all of the ground is that coral stuff. It's totally ancient and super heavy. The guy who made the place made it all by himself, and no one knows how. Once I got past my disappointment, I really enjoyed the place. There were big lizards everywhere (Sadly, they're not native to the state.) and some of the formations of coral the guy made were sweet, too. You see that crescent moon/wrench back there? That's part of a group of sculptures Edward Leedskalnin, the architect and builder of the place, made of our solar system's planets.
The next day, we all went on an air boat ride and saw a ton of alligators, cool birds, plywood-tasting fish the gators eat called gator gar, and turtles. Can't draw you any beautiful renditions of them like all the other drawings in this entry because I'm not on the computer with the tablet and Photoshop currently. (Yay, time lapse!)
After the air boat ride, we went to a restaurant - I feel bad for forgetting what it was, but it was a great place - where apparently my little sister shared her birthday with the waitress. It was the exact same day! Not the same year, but the waitress thought it was really cool nonetheless. She wanted to know how old Lily was because Lily was doing some math problems or something in one of the many workbooks Mom's given her to work on. I don't recall how her birth date came up, but it did, and the waitress was cool.
Then we all went to the beach. Fishypaste, Frank, and I chucked lots of sand and seaweed at each other. Lily stayed on the shore with Mom and Stan was reading a book on a towel nearby them.
I'm used to the cold CA water that has constant waves that get pretty tall, curl, and then splash onto the shore. The beach we went to with Stan and Frank was weird 'cause that's not what it was like in Florida at all. The water was warm, and the waves were more like lumps of water that moved towards the shore in a sort of line. The water is also way more clear; Fishypaste spotted a crab that was drifting through the water a few feet down, which would have been impossible in California, or at least the beaches I've gone to. Plus, there were turtle nests on the shore with yellow caution tape roping off those areas.
A storm rolled in after we'd only been there for about an hour, though, so we had to leave. Mom made us rinse off the sand and get to the car as fast as we could which wasn't that fast and right when the last seat belt was clicked, the first drop of rain fell. It was pretty impressive.Now I'm ending the post 'cause I'm getting a too long post warning. Part 2 coming soon.
Mood: satisfied
Quote: "I never tell the truth."