CHSthird

You know most holidays have a nice snappy greeting. Merry Christmas or Happy Whatever. I guess for me I just wish everyone a thankful Memorial Day.

I was driving down the road today as one of the local stations was playing Memorial Day appropriate music when I heard the Tim McGraw song above. Now I’ve heard it plenty of times before, but today it just gave me goosebumps and a tear in my eye.

Now some people will think country music is kind of hokey or something, but it definitely has the power to stir something inside of you. I still get goose bumps every time I hear Alan Jackson sing “Where were you?”

I am now going to go back to cooking, eating and laughing with family and friends. I am thankful that for most people Memorial Day is just about the beginning of summer but thoughtful for those that know it as something much deeper.

I was reading an article the other day about Matt Green who is walking across the US. It had a link to his blog.

I ended up reading the whole blog up to date.  It is amazing to read his story as it tells story after story about the kindness and goodness of people. It is also a story about preconceptions in a way. Many people may think he is homeless or troubled and help him out for that reason.  The people that have helped hm by giving him a place to stay or a bite to eat come from all sorts of different backgrounds and ages.

It has been a wonderful story of the good that still exists.

In remarkable contrast to the other blog I have been reading. I discovered the blog while following the Tonya Craft case. I was interested in this case for a number of reasons mostly geographical. The trial was held at the court house in Ringgold which was just a few miles from our former shack. The judge shared law offices with the opposing counsel in my divorce proceedings. one of the prosecutors coached my son in soccer and attended the same church as we did.

I would hate to believe that people who are supposed to be upholding and enforcing the law and seeking justice would railroad innocent people.

I guess its just a mixed bag of a world we live in.

Our next stop was Roatan, Honduras. The good news was we had a late morning arrival. After the complete lack of food from the prior’s day trip to hell, we decided to come up with a different plan. You can hang a little breakfast request on door and they will deliver you anything off a basic continental breakfast. (more…)

Before you go on a cruise, part of the fun is what shore excursions you decide to take. When looking at the choices for Belize, I knew there was no way I would get the ground bound spouse to take a zip line tour. So remembering my young days of floating down the Guadalupe River in Texas in an inner tube with a large quantity of beer in an attached tube, I attempted to convince her that cave tubing was the way to go. When I informed her it started early in the morning and it involved over an hour bus ride each way, I was promptly shot down. After much crying on my part, which mostly consisted of “it’s the only thing I want to do, come on baby!”, she finally relented.

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So we sailed on Sunday. Monday was a sea day where we avoided the sun and hung out in the casino with some success.

We met our table mates who were a very nice couple from Canada celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. The whole eating with some one you do not know every night is a little bit frightening and we felt very blessed to have them as ours.

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So Friday night we headed to Atlanta to stay at our heavily discounted digs, the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. Like I said in an earlier post we only had to pay $29.83 due to a Priceline promotion we received when we booked the cruise. Of course it cost $27 plus tip to valet park the car , still a deal though.

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We just arrived back home from our cruise. It was wonderful to get away and I’ll write a lot about it later, but I wanted to post some pictures in the gallery.

They can be found here.

I will be adding more through the week.

I am currently unable to hear out of my left ear, due to my ears never having popped on the flight home. Quite irritating actually.

I will give one actual piece of travel advice though. We upgraded to first class on American Airlines on both our flights for $90 each, each way. That may sound like a lot but when you do they allow you to each carry on two bags at no charge. Since we had 4 bags it would have cost us $100 just for luggage. Throw in the free beverages on the way down and it didn’t cost us that much more. The other nice thing is when you fly First Class your bags are last on first off, saving you from playing luggage roulette for who knows how long.