BootsnAll Travel Network



Bienvenidos a Miami

Yesterday was a great day, not least because I got to leave work four and a half hours early. Kelly arrived!!! What originally started off as a week-long stay in London eventually was extended into a three week stint that ended when she flew into Miami yesterday afternoon.

As usual, I tracked her flight on Google Earth all morning at work, this time remembering not to panic when the little plane dive bombed-into the middle of the Atlantic. It did eventually reemerge, and when she was just flying over the water off Florida’s northeast coast I grabbed my keys and headed for Miami.

I’d never been to Miami International before, apart from when my friends and I somehow accidentally ended up there a week or so ago in an attempt to find a restaurant in Little Havana. That place is nuts! The traffic wasn’t so bad getting there, but once I was on site it was a little bit intimidating. The roads were narrow and people were cutting in and out like mad, swerving around tourists and taxis and doing 50 in 10 MPH zones. I’ve adapted my driving habits to survive the gauntlet that is my daily commute, but I felt lucky to be alive and my car in one piece when I finally parked my car in the nosebleeds of one of the massive garages.

I quite like airports. I just think it’s really interesting knowing that everyone there is off to somewhere new, and could be going anywhere in the world. I’d love to just go up to random strangers and ask where they’re going and why. In Orlando it’s fun to see all the families with little kids toting around bags of Disney merchandise and decked out in lime green Mickey Mouse t-shirts and hats with big mouse ears attached. I thought Miami might be like that, full of vacationers excited to be flying in from some cold, far off place to warm, tropical Miami. It wasn’t really like that at all, unfortunately. As I waited behind the long glass wall at the international arrivals lounge looking out for Kelly, there were lots of grim-looking people filing by. During the half hour or so I waited there were some happy scenes, though. Several people, having recognized familiar faces standing with me in the crowd behind the glass, would start to wave and hurry on ahead to meet whoever it was waiting for them on the other side. It was really sweet, and it made me so excited for when I’d see Kelly walking through the doors from the customs hall.

When it was finally my turn for a happy reunion, we hiked back to where I’d parked and we navigated back through the craziness of the airport roads and made it back to my place. Not one to let me down, Kelly had brought back with her the world’s largest supply of trashy British celebrity magazines. All in all, probably fifty bucks’ worth! I was in heaven…all the Closer, Heat and Grazia I could ever want. Finally, I can satisfy my curiosity about the state of Chantelle and Preston’s marriage and see how distressingly thin Posh is these days. For a guilty pleasure I don’t think I feel nearly as guilty about reading this stuff as I probably should.

Today it’s back to work while Kelly chills with the kitties at mine, and then it’s off to Orlando tonight for a weekend of Halloween fun and shenanigans. Hopefully not quite as fun as last year! 🙂 It’s kind of hard not to have a great time when you’re dressed up in costume, though. And this year’s should be good. After much thought and consideration I’ve decided to go as Madonna. Not the cone-breasted Madonna of decades past mind you, but the modern mature, Kabbalah-loving, roller-disco dancing, baby snatching Madonna that we know and love today. I’m quite excited about this one, people. I’ve got my little David Bandu packed away in my suitcase already, and he is ready for some fun times this weekend. I’m trying to convince Kelly she should go as Vicky Pollard, but she’s afraid nobody here will get it. I would. Is that not enough? It would make’a me laugh. Hard.

So the past couple of days we finally had a taste of autumn weather down here and it was gorgeous. I woke up and stepped onto my patio and felt chilly air for the first time since…I can’t even remember. The much-anticipated cold front that had dumped huge amounts of snow up north finally pushed its way down here. We certainly didn’t get anything even remotely close to what I would consider “cold” weather, but we did get two days of mornings in the 60’s and beautifully sunny days with highs only in the mid 70’s. I finally understood why so many people would want to come here for the winter. Today it’s back to the sticky, warm norm, but if winter turns out to be anything like the last few days then I’m in for a real treat. Not exactly your typical winter weather, but I’ll take it! I heard someone in the office say the other day that winters down here are our reward for making it through the summers. I think it was reward enough to not have any major storms, but if we get gorgeous weather on top, so much the better!

One random last thing. Have you ever thought about all the random photographs you might be in from other people’s family vacations? You know, when you’re walking by and you realize that you’ve walked in to someone’s photograph. I’ve sometimes thought about how many dozens or hundreds of photos there might be floating around out there with me in the background and how cool it would be to see some of them. Well, quite randomly, part of this dream came true for me recently! I’m sure you all are familiar with YouTube, a site with millions of video clips ranging from full-length TV episodes to short clips of people picking their noses. You can find just about anything there.

During an afternoon of boredom recently I was doing random searches trying to find anything to entertain myself. I found video clips of kids trying to light fresh produce on fire in the town where I was born, a music video filmed along Acton’s High Street and eventually I even found clips someone had recorded from this year’s Possum Festival in Wausau. That just goes to show that you really can find anything on YouTube. So I was watching the handful of clips, enjoying the amusement of seeing the same sights I’d seen in August from someone else’s vantage point, when I thought how funny it would be to see someone I knew in this person’s video. Then, lo and behold, literally two seconds later I saw myself walk in front of the person’s camera! It was kind of weird to see myself in some stranger’s YouTube video. In this case it was completely harmless, but it does make me wonder just what else could be out there in cyber space that I have no idea about! With camera and video phones so prevalent there’s nowhere to hide! Not that I ever do anything untoward or embarrassing that I might not want to the world to see. 😉 So go forth and search YouTube for a concert you went to recently, or the name of a street you frequently walk down…you just might find yourself passing by in the distance, staring off into space as you wait for the bus or picking your nose in the background of someone’s cherished family video.



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