Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Florida Part 1

Getting to Florida was interesting but once we were there... well, it continued to be interesting.

When I met up with Kara at the airport Mary Zane was sitting with her... apparently MZ missed her flight and had to take a later flight. I was happy... I thought she missed her earlier Southwest flight and just switched her ticket. Not so much... she missed her Air Tran flight and all the later Air Tran flights were full and they could only offer standby... which would have been fine if she didn't HAVE to be at the wedding. Oh did I mention, she was officiating. So.... she kind of had to be there. I feel that I have to mention she has NEVER missed a flight before... out of many many flights, never missed a flight. Never.

The 3 of us got on the plane and proceeded to bounce our way from Baltimore to Orlando. There may have been 10 minutes when that plane wasn't rocking.

Finally we arrive at Orlando, get to the rental car place and get our Ford Focus... only they upgraded us to a PT Cruiser. Ok, cool... this should be fun!

If you own a PT Cruiser, please don't read the next sentences. It was not cool... we started a list of things we do not like about PT Cruisers. For instance, there is no hatchback release in the car or outside the car... you have to use the key. So if you happen to stop somewhere, like a bank, and someone, say the driver, has to get into her bag in the hatchback... you have to stop the car, get out, key open the hatchback, do your thing, close the hatchback and then get back in and start the car up. Sounds easy enough but do it a few times and it's quite a pain. Oh and the child safety lock was engaged and we couldn't figure out how to disengage it... so someone had to let the backseat rider out each and every time. It's amazing how quickly you can forget to get that person. Oh and the screaming 4 horsepower... we LOVED that. I mean it literally took at least 45 seconds to go from 0 to 55. There are some blue hairs in FL that are still cursing our PT. I could go on and on but I digress... back to the story!

We got to Nick's parents house for the rehearsal a tad bit late... after we got lost only feet from their front door... yeah, that takes talent. Regardless, we got there. Immediately we jumped into 'what can we do' mode. There was still quite a bit of things to get done... as with any wedding!

We do that for a few hours and then head to the hotel to check in and decompress before the rehearsal dinner get together.

At the rehearsal dinner someone mentions they are about to launch to the space shuttle... naturally I thought we would watch it on the TV bolted to the ceiling... but alas, we are in FL only mere miles from Cape Canaveral... we can watch it live! The natives figured out where we needed to be standing for the best view and we stood there and watched the sky go from pitch black to a brilliant pink and purple and then a blast of fire through the sky. It was very cool to be standing there watching the space shuttle live.

Once back inside the 3 old farts took off for bed. I mean hell, we made it to 9:30... longer than each of us thought we would!

Kara and I were sharing a room and Mary Zane was far away down the other end of the hall... a stroke of luck she should still be thanking her lucky stars for. Kara and I finally settled down to get some sleep (only after finishing our wedding assignment... yep, there were take home projects!) around 10:30/11. Not 15 minutes after we lay down and JUST as we are starting to fall out does the loudest, rowdiest group of people I have ever heard, start walking down our hallway. Then they stop, what sounds like right out side our door... even better, they enter the room next to us. Just a paper thin wall away there is a ludicrous amount of shrieking and yelling, rap battles taking place and WWF body slamming going on.

I do my best to fall asleep... to no avail. I am going to have to be that person. At this point I think Kara is sleeping so I quietly call the front desk and ask them to tell the room to quiet down. As soon as I hang up I hear a muffled, exasperated "thank you" from Kara. Now we can commiserate together. For another 5-10 minutes the noise gets no better... it may have even gotten worse. I am gathering my nerve to go beat down the door and be the old fuddy duddy. I look out the peep hole to see if I can spot them coming and going from the room and who do I see but Rose and Nick! I open the door just in time to hear Rose say "the entire hotel is complaining about you guys! You have to be quiet" Nick looks over at me and says "Oh God, you 2 are next to these guys??" Apparently Nick, nice well mannered Nick, has some extremely rambunctious (and I won't use the words I really want to use to describe them since Nick is a good friend) friends. At this point, genius at the door to the loud room is saying "I am sorry, I am not the one making the noise" Oh. I. Lost. It. "Are you in the room? Then you are part of the problem! I just want to sleep... I get one night away from my son and this is what I get stuck with???" and SLAM. Now there may have been an expletive that came out... I can neither confirm nor deny. Also, in my defense, that door was a heck of a lot lighter than I thought it was... so it made a much louder sound than I was anticipating. Whatever, it shut them up long enough for Nick to convince them the cops were on their way and they had to leave the hotel. It worked. They all filed out and went to some local guys house. Can I ask this... WHY WOULDN'T THEY HAVE GONE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE? Why would you risk angering an entire hotel and putting your friends (the bride and groom at that) in an awkward situation when you could just as easily go to some stand alone house and make all the noise in the world?

Regardless... I have now slammed the door on Nick and Rose inadvertently (for which I am still sorry guys!) and my blood pressure was through the roof. Kara and I spend another half hour calming ourselves down so we can get some sleep.

Not 5 minutes after we closed our eyes to fall asleep do we get a light knocking on our door. It is a older Spanish woman from the other wedding party staying on the fourth floor... she apologizes profusely when a very bleary eyed me answers the door. I grimace and close the door. 10 minutes later... same knocking. Different person, same wedding. I grimace harder and close the door. 10 minutes later... same knocking. I fling the door open and stand in the hallway... "You have to be kidding me, can I help you with something?" The same Spanish woman from earlier is at my door with other members of the wedding party. Apparently they are mistaking our door for one of their doors... before you ask, YES, they do have numbers on them... I don't know why they can't see that. The response I got to my exasperated question... "So sorry, the father of the bride and her grandmother were in a horrible accident on the way home from the wedding." Well now don't I feel like a schmuck... I apologize and close the door yet again. I turn to Kara and tell her what a schmuck I feel like but that I also think they should go to the hospital and stop knocking on our door! Another half hour of some lame lifetime movie to zone us out and we FINALLY fall asleep.

Now when we were going to bed at 11 I had every confidence that one of us would wake up at a decent time... we both have one year olds and are constitutionally incapable of sleeping in. However, now that it is 1:30 in the morning I feel it is necessary to set an alarm... which we do... for 8 am. I kid you not when I tell you that at 7:30 in the morning we hear the same knocking on our door... I jump out of bed and see the same Spanish woman standing in the hallway. Seriously, are we on candid camera? Sadly, no. She just got the wrong room again. I throw the door closed and flop back in bed. By this time it's too late... we are up and have started our day.

It's going to be a great day though... because we are watching Rose and Nick get married! Stay tuned for the rest of the story!!!

5 comments:

The Townleys said...

Is it wrong that Rob and I are sitting here laughing our heads off at the Spanish woman incident?

KaraB said...

You so politely glazed over the part where we had to tie name tags on the stems of like 80 pears, except that about 78 of the pears had NO STEMS. I love you, Rose. I do. Which is why all the pears had name tags on them. Nevermind that some were beautiful Harry and David pears, and some were beat up Wal-Mart pears.

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain! Your hubby probably had a more restful night than you, ironically! Sometimes life just isn't fair.

asuthrngrl said...

Ok....I was already laughing hysterically enough to make my family look at me weird, but then I read Kara's comment above and now I just have to pee! I swear Jess you cannot leave the house without some weird stuff following you around!

kathi said...

Un.freakin'.believable! I was thinking going into the story of the hotel about my episode with the drunken party on our trip to San Antonio, but girl, yours topped mine a hundred fold.
Poor, poor thing! And I typed that with a straight face. :)