stacey ewing

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we had to drive home fairly early so that we could get home in time for Tim to play a gig down in Micanopy. We ended up leaving the station wagon in Ft. Myers with Jay- he was going to have it towed over to his mechanic on Monday and he very generously loaned us his truck to drive home so we didn’t have to rent a car.

Turns out it wasn’t the timing belt after all. It was the starter, a related fuse, and some very, very, very, very, very bad, bad, bad, bad, bad spark plugs. So, lucky, lucky, lucky for us, it cost much, much, much, much less than the $800-900 we’d anticipated!

Early this morning, Jay and Lorraine very kindly drove up (little more than halfway) to meet us at Wesley Chapel and trade out cars. We had a nice breakfast and hang with them at the Cracker Barrel before heading back home.

Anyway, Tim and I can’t thank the two of them enough for SUCH a great (and fun!!) holiday and for ALL of their help with our car situation. They both went far out of their way to help us and we know it wasn’t easy getting up that early and driving all the way north to meet us at 8:30am. ouch! Thanks you guys!! <3

So, last night I’m working on Part 3 of our thanksgiving adventure and I feel someone watching me. I look over to find HARRIET(!) sitting at the bottom of the steps. I froze, not wanting to scare her (this is the cat that has lived under the bed upstairs for the last four years) and after a minute she walked into the living room:

then she walked over to the love seat:

climbed up and sat on the arm!!!

She sat there for about 20 minutes until Terrifying Tim emerged from the studio.

Damn, I think Hell just froze over (guess I’d better stock up on some North Face winter gear, heh).

On Friday, Jay had to put in some flight time with the Sheriff’s department so Lorraine, Tim, and I were left to our own devices. We drove out to Gulf Coast Town Center and dropped Tim off at Dick’s Sporting Goods while we browsed books at Borders. about an hour later, Tim met back up with us and we walked (and poor Lorraine hobbled on her crutches), over to Bass Pro Outlets. She and I found some comfortable camping chairs to sit in while we waited on Tim to finish fondling all the hiking/camping gear.

We headed back to the casa so that Tim could nap and Lorraine and I could kill more Nazi Zombies(!) while we waited on Jay to get home from work. Thanks big-big to her cuz Jonathan for taking us up past level 4- boy-boy had our backs! ;)

When Jay got home, he and Lorraine treated us to dinner at one of their fav restaurants, Two Meatballs in the Kitchen. Can I just say, “best calamari, ev-ar??” So flippin’ good! The dark, dark, dark, dark chocolate cake of freakin’ death was totally awesome too! Wish we had a place like that up here!

To work off somma those good eats, we went over to the Bell Tower Shops to walk around, window shop and drool over all the pretties at Williams-Sonoma and J. Jill. Lorraine and I met back up with the guys over at Brookstone (click each for larger view- haha):

and then before security escorted us out:

I tried to take pictures of Jay and Lorraine (again, click for larger):

But the images all blurred out because Tim was standing behind me, making them laugh:

The center was really pretty at night:

Thanksgiving Day was AWESOME! Lorraine spent all day in the kitchen cooking her butt off and set out quite the spread (sorry, we were all too busy stuffing our faces to take pictures). Everything was really yummy!! Rascal was really happy too- getting pieces of turkey that “accidentally” fell off the table when Jay wasn’t looking! ;)

Afterwards, we wadled over to the couches, cradling our “food babies,” and tortured their neighbors for the rest of the afternoon with SingStar karaoke on Jay’s PS3 before moving on to Buzz. Oh man, Buzz was just SO boring because NONE of us are competitive at all… har! ;)

Later that evening, Jay made the HUGEST mistake by showing Lorraine and I how to play Call of Duty 3. Oh yeah! We dominated the game, decimating Nazi Zombies for the rest of the night, until the guys begged us to shut it off. PWNED I say, PWNED! ;)

Definitely thankful for family, friends, health, and happiness.

Normally when I use the laptop at the kitchen table, I pull a chair up on either side of me- one for Sarah and one for Mort. Well, tonight, I have a bunch of papers from work on the chair Sarah usually sits on.

She walked around my chair for about 20 minutes, whining and crying because she wanted to sit next to me but Mort was in the other chair. OMG, you’d think that it was the end of the freakin’ world for this cat. ::rolling eyes::

Finally he jumped down to go use the loo and she stole his seat. When he came back, he was annoyed to find that she was monopolizing prime real estate. He jumped up anyway causing her to squeak and squawk (no hissing) before finally moving over and settling for an uneasy truce.

Hey, who doesn’t want to hang out with Stacey in front of the laptop on a Friday night??

On Wednesday, right after work, Tim and I loaded up the car and hit the road, driving south on I-75 to Ft. Myers. The plan was to spend Thanksgiving with my brother, Jay, and his girlfriend, Lorraine.

We’d anticipated heavy traffic on the interstate but certainly didn’t plan on the ’stop-go-stop-go-stop-go-stop-friggin-go’ traffic that turned 40 miles into nearly two hours. *well, suuurprise!* There were more than a few moments when flipping a u-turn across the “grassy knoll” and heading home almost became a reality, but we soldiered on and eventually traffic eased up a little bit once we passed Zephyrhills.

We stopped in a nameless armpit of a town south of Z-hillz for gas and ::shudder:: fast food (since we’d skipped dinner to get on the road as soon as possible). We were in and out of there as fast as we could possibly could, since the “local color” was out en force, whoopin’ it up for the holiday- doing donuts in the McD parking lot with giaganticon 4-wheeled trucks emblazoned with stars-n-bars (niiiice).

We’d planned on arriving there by 10ish but the way things were progressing (or not), our arrival would be delayed to around the same time Jay got off duty at 11pm, which was fine.

TOTALLY bored about 35 miles outside of Ft. Myers and with a strong need to entertain myself, I started to annoy Tim by calling out the remaining mileage every time we passed a mile marker. Not too long after I called out “20!” the car made a LOUD popping noise.

Stacey: What was that??!

Tim: Did you hear that??!

Stacey: Was that the Timing Belt?? Did the timing belt just blow on my gorram station wagon??!

(the car starts to decelerate)

Tim: Sounds Like…

Stacey: I thought Ford just checked our engine!

Tim: Yeah, well if this trucker over here in our blind spot doesn’t let us over, this situation could get pretty interesting…

Stacey: Define Interesting…

Tim: Oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die?

Stacey: Just get us to the side of the road…

Tim (deftly threading the needle between two semis): That part will happen pretty definitely…

It was only approx. 38 degrees out and LUCKILY Tim was fully outfitted in his warm North Face hiking fleece and Keen hiking shoes, so he was able to hike a half mile to figure out which mile marker we were closest too (I’d forgotten which one we’d passed in all the excitement). He called the marker number in to Jay, who in turn very kindly called dispatch and had them send a wrecker.

The wrecker, with tow lights flashing, Jay, with his FWC lights flashing, and Lorraine, with her hazard lights flashing, all showed up at the same time! Lorraine loaded us up and took us back to their place while Jay and the tow truck driver followed. Upon arrival, the boys helped the tow truck guy unload the car into a parking space outside the building and it wasn’t long before we were all hanging out in the living room having a good laugh about the whole situation. So what if our 4.5 hour drive turned into 7.5 hours, we were finally at our destination!! :D

Yeah, yeah…whatever. I’ve got a “Thanksgiving Update” in my bloggity-blog drafts folder for “all y’alls” (with a few pictures too!) that I’ll try to post before the weekend.

Meanwhile, I am SO digging this crazy song today (rss’ers, y’all will prolly have to click through for the widget). It sounds great in ye olde headphones and has been easy to work to.

Thanks big-big to my ’supplier,’ C.S. for the new juice- I LUH-HUH-HUUUVE it! ;D