Robin's Big 5-0

Robin celebrates his 50th birthday today. He is just as fit and fabulous at 50 as he was at 25! Please e-mail, call or send a happy birthday greeting!

How we're celebrating:

• Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Yum!
  
• A happy birthday ad in the local paper with the picture from when he was 25 (don't you love all the trophies in the background? He won 33 of them over the years.)

• 

  Taking a picture of him posing and flexing his muscles, just like one taken when he was 25
  
• 50 red solo cups filled with all sorts of fun items (thanks to all for your great suggestions)!
• A trip to New Zealand (which will be next year due to planning and scheduling)
• Some other things I can't share. ;-)

Happy St. Paddy's

We saw the northern lights last night. Wow, how awesome! Thanks to some recent solar flares and storms, they have been really good. They are forecast to be really good tonight, too. This time, I will be better prepared. Just when I needed them last night, the batteries went out on the camera!

Quote of the day...

"How can you be hungry? I ate more than you did!"

Robin in response to me telling him I was hungry an hour after we ate.

The Maestro

Robin, a.k.a. The Maestro, has gone to town with the new iPad.

He flips this, twists that, shuffles through the other, flicks over there and more ... all in the blink of an eye. Watching him is like watching Lawrence Welk conduct his orchestra. He'll even take it out of my hands to demonstrate how to do something. Amazing!

Top 10 Things Joe's Status Will Get You

Our friend, we'll call him "Joe", gave us airline guest passes for our trip to Florida. Although a very generous gift, we're now wondering if "Joe" really is our friend ... or is he trying to get us off his friend list? Here's what "Joe's" airline status got us:

1. The only window seat on the plane that didn't actually have a window. Go figure, the seat across the aisle had a window.
   
2. A loud, non-stop-crying, obnoxious 3-year-old. My ears are still ringing. How his dad slept through it all is beyond me. It's a miracle no one was hurt or killed.
   
3. Three days to get out of Kodiak. Yes, three days. We were "outranked" by others with more seniority than "Joe." Really? How many people on Kodiak were using guest passes? At least we were at home. (Thanks, "Joe".)
   
4. Another two days to get out of Seattle. Which meant we had time to kill ... so we spent money on an iPad. (Our bank account says thanks, "Joe".)
   
5. The smallest seats on a plane I have ever seen or sat in.
   
6. On the return flight, the last row of seats, which means no reclining for the 6-hour flight. (Thanks again, "Joe".)
   
7. No refreshments, drinks or snacks during the flight east. Come on, how did they mark us?
   
8. Mean flight attendants. They must have once considered "Joe" a friend, too.
9. Sorry, no full cans of soda for you! We'll only give you a cup.
10. We'll have to charge you extra for that overweight bag. It's overweight by 4 ounces, so unless you can take something out....
    

Top 10 Things Learned on Florida Trip

It took more than 4 days to get there, including 3 days of delays due to weather in Kodiak and a day and a half in Seattle, but we made it to Florida for our anniversary trip, hog hunting and seeing Robin's mom. Here is what I learned:

1. AYCE means All You Can Eat
2. It's hard to push a 15-passenger van out of sugar sand (yeah, our friend Bob got it stuck but we eventually got it out ... Robin only ended up with a few bites from fire ants, ouch!). It did take 6 if us, however, digging in some scraps of cow-dunged wood and several tries.
   
3. You can survive a 5-hour red-eye flight with a screaming (and I mean screaming) 3 year old right behind you without killing anyone. (He did not let up, either, not even for 5 minutes!)
4. Wild hawgs have vicious teeth and tusks! They can and do kill pit bulls that some people use to hunt them.
5. You cannot keep red snapper when fishing in Florida at any time of year.
6. Robin's predictions of calm seas continue to follow his usual pattern of accuracy (see previous post: Hangs, cobras and hawks)
7. If you distract the person checking in your grossly overweight coolers with bizarre tales from your trip, they just might forget to a) charge you for the luggage entirely and b) forget about it being overweight
8. You cannot have a wine opener in your carry-on luggage
9. Traveling light, by Robin's definition, means two coolers full of 120 pounds of meat, a wheeled luggage bag weighing 60 pounds, a duffle bag weighing 53 pounds (including a ham and some pork chops), gun case with two guns and three carry-on bags.
10. Pizza restaurants in Florida serve something called a "grinder", although we never did learn what a grinder actually is.
    

Hangs, cobras and hawks

We celebrated our 1 year anniversary with an offshore fishing trip while we were in Florida visiting Robin's mom and he was hunting wild pig.

This time, despite Robin's assurances and predictions of calm seas, I loaded up on the motion sickness pills. Perhaps I overdid it but it was worth it. It certainly wasn't calm! Like 6 foot waves and swells, oh boy.

At the end of the day, we used our nifty new iPad to send an e-mail, typed by yours truly. My e-mail said: "Robin got 3 hangs and 1 cobra. I did not get any hawks, but did catch a bunch of little fish today."

Translations:
Hangs = "hawgs" (wild hogs)
Cobra = cobia (a fish)
Hawks = also "hawgs" (wild hogs)