LordBodak's Journal: Quarter in Review (1)

Geez, I've been a slacker. It's been a pretty quiet fall though, except for two trips which I'll talk about in here.

In October was the trip to St. Croix for L & C's "wedding" (hard to call it a wedding since they got married before leaving for Iraq, but this was the big planned event). Pictures are here, and I guess the gallery titles will eliminate any guesses on what the L & C stand for. The trip was great, even though I was sick throughout (taking antibiotics until I left and then getting another batch of antibiotics after my return). If I had it to do over again, I would've stayed the whole week with everybody.

St. Croix is gorgeous. Rum is cheaper than milk, most of the restaurants serve drinks in plastic cups because they don't care if you take it with you when you leave and most don't seem to care if you sit down with one from another restaurant. The hotel location is beautiful. It's not the nicest hotel in the world, but I'm not terribly picky about hotels either. As long as it's clean, comfortable, and everything works, I'm happy; I don't go on vacation to spend all my time in my room, so I don't need anything more than that. Being on a Cay (or Key for us uncivilized mainlanders), ferry service is the only access to the hotel, and regular service only runs til midnight. After midnight, you have to call the front desk and they send it over.

Getting used to the mindset down there took a little while. Nothing happens quickly, so you have to learn to relax and not expect service to be exceptional. Once you get used to that, the people are pleasant and we didn't have any issues. Which is good, because their gun laws leave much to be desired.

So the weekend... everyone flew in Saturday, except part of Chris's family that got stuck in San Juan for the night. We all went out for dinner and drinks and found our way back to the hotel around midnight, then a few of us were up talking til who knows when.

Sunday we went grocery shopping to pick up a few things to help save money instead of having to eat out, which was especially helpful for the people staying the whole week. Then we went on a sunset cruise (pictures are at the link above), highlighted by free rum punch and the chance for Lizzy to throw Chris overboard. Following that, a long dinner and again heading back to the hotel around midnight.

Monday was a mostly free day for everyone except the ladies in the wedding party (who spent most of the day getting ready for the wedding, which was at sunset. I took the chance to tour the fort in Christiansted (again, pictures at the link above).

The wedding was beautiful; we were worried about the weather since it rained early in the day and looked like it was going to rain again, but it held out. The ceremony was followed by a long dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in town (real glasses for our drinks!).

Tuesday I came back, unfortunately. I would go back in a second.

As for other news on Chris & Lizzy, they are safe and sound overseas. Three months in they were asked to go from Iraq to Afghanistan and they accepted.

I'm going to split this up into multiple parts, so I'll end this one here.