Day 16, Farewell To Florida

I'm still in the habit of waking up early because of the dogs. So I'm up and now I'm just waiting for Ash to get up so we can pack the rest of our things in the car. Once we do we'll be on our way back home to Mississippi. I don't imagine the trip will be any more exciting than the one down here, but you never know.

Day 15, Last Day

Awaking early sunday morning with two great danes still hasn't become normal to me. Fortunately and unfortunately it will be the last time - this trip at least - that I will experience that. Ash and I spent the day cleaning up the house and packing our bags. The homeowners were to return around 5 at night. We returned to the Red Barn to buy shirts and things for the people back home. It was crowded. Some of the shirts change color in the sun! Ash got more olives as I sampled more pickles. We returned to the house to check on the doggies, and Once we were satisfied with our belongings we drove to the Tampa airport to pick them up. Which meant we had to yet again cross the Sunshine Skyway. The airport was jammed full of cars waiting for their passengers, but we squeezed in and scooped up ours. We had Tony, Reba, and Kim - a friend of Ash's and related to T&R. On our way back there were two automobile collisions on the Skyway, which backed up traffic for days (not literally, but still) It took much longer to get back to the house than we'd planned. The dogs were of course overjoyed to see T&R back.
After a while Kim wanted to get out of the house, so Ash and I decided to go to the beach to get sand and water as s souveneir. While there we saw the sunset. It was so beautiful. I wish we could've stayed longer, but tomorrow we must return to Mississippi.

Day 14, Crowd At The Beach

We decided to go to the beach again, but this time being Saturday, it was crowded. Children running around, people everywhere. Ash didn't really enjoy herself, but I tried to have fun. I finally got the boogie board to work and I played the heck out of it. It was tough navigating around the small children, at some point a VERY OBNOXIOUS hispanic family parked their chairs and tents directly behind ours. They did all but tell us to leave. They were loud, didn't care if they kicked sand onto us, talked with their mouths full of food. After a short while we left. We returned to the house and I almost immediately fell asleep on the couch. Ash went to pick us up some lunch from Jose's Real Cuban Food, but I was too tired to eat. All the sleep I lost watching the dogs over the last two weeks had finally caught up with me. So we just relaxed the day and watched The Last Airbender on Nicktoons. It's a really good show. I can't wait to see the movie.

Day 13, Superman no here

Well it was friday again, and that meant the hispanic cleaning ladies would be back. So Ash and I took the dogs downstairs and waited. Ash slept (or tried to) on the bed while I watched the Kickassia videos by the Nostalgia Critic (http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/) They're hilarious. I also checked out videos by Linkara (http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/) and Spoony (http://www.spoonyexperiment.com/) Check them out, these guys are awesomely hilarious! Anyway, the cleaners didn't arrive till near 11, but they did a much better job of cleaning, and still I couldn't help but think of Consuela from Family Guy, "Mr. Superman no here." Ash Decided to take me to Red Barn - which is a large indoor flea market. They close aroudn 4 so we didn't really have much time to peruse, but we did find a place with homemade pickles. They were so yummy. I tied a few different kinds, and Ash got some olives stuffed with Habanero cheese. Afterwards, we decided to go to an earlyish dinner at at japanese hibachi we had been trying to go to for a week. It is called Samurai and it is amazing. We had Volcano Roll sushi, beef nagimaki, and of course hibachi rice, veggies, and steak and chicken, Food was great, service was great. Tummy was very pleased. Ash then decided to go see Prince of Persia. It was pretty cool. I never played the game so I don't know how close to the source material the movie was, but I was thoroughly entertained. I recommend it. While we were gone, we set up a doggie-cam to see what the dogs destroy, because they like to eat things.
It was hilarious, The couch was eaten up. And we could see the whole thing. We couldn't stop laughing.

Day 12, Live Gators

I awoke to let the dogs do their doodie. Again I plopped down on the sofa. That was when the dumb dog of the two brought over a chew bone and placed it on my chest. She then proceded to chew it and bit into my chest. I screamed in pain so loud that it scared both dogs who went running down the hall and woke Ash.
It was a while before the dogs would come near me again.
That afternoon, Ash wanted to check out the local mall. That afternoon we went to the mall. It wasn't much different than you'd expect a mall to look like. In the food court we had lunch. We ate at a cajun fusion restaurant/kiosk. Ash had burbon chicken and some spaghetti from the next door sbarro, while I had burbon chicken tacos. They were amazingly delicious. Afterwards we looked through a few stores, but didn't buy anything.
We returned home to find that once again, the dogs hadn't destroyed anything. We felt safe that we would be able to go play minigolf later. A few miles away from where we were staying, there was a place called Smuggler's Cove. It was a small, pirate-themed minigolf course. Complete with a shipwreck and treasure chests. But that's not all. The many waterfalls and makeshift rivers all converge at a pool housing more than a dozen live alligators. Talk about a water hazard. We played a round, each getting at least one hole-in-one. It was a fun hour and as the sun set, the game ended. I won by five strokes. (I play real golf usually, but I love minigolf) I would've liked to have seen more unique obstacles than just rocks and dips, but it was a fun course.
Afterwards we returned home to discover that the dogs ate the couch.

Day 11, Iron Man

The dogs woke me up early to take them out. Early morning Duty. Afterwards, I laid down on the sofa because I was tired. I spent eh morning watching TV. It was around noon when Ash got up. We hadn't had much of a plan for what to do that day. Eventually we thought we'd go play mini golf. We then thought we'd eat lunch at a Japanese restaurant nearby. However, we wound up doing neither. The restaurant was closed by the time we got there, so we back tracked and found one of the few restaurants open. For some reason almost every restaurant is closed between 2:30 and 4:30. It's ridiculous. We found a little hole in the wall Chinese place called Lucky Star which had great food. We were the only customers at the time. And the service was very prompt. We had appetizers of fried wontons with sweet chili sauce. With our orders we also received egg drop soup and egg rolls. Ash had sweet n sour chicken and also ordered Mongolian Chicken for both of us. I had Mongolian beef. Best mongolian beef ever. Afterwards we returned to the house to find. Nothing. The dogs hadn't destroyed anything. We decided to wait until later to go to a movie. Ash and I were going to see Iron Man 2.
It was awesome! I recommend it to everyone. Lots of action and awesomeness. That night after the movie, I again slept with the dogs.

Day 10, Mote

While attempting to wake up early. I found it difficult to keep Ash awake in the morning. Eventually we went to Sarasota for the third time. This time, however, we went to the Mote Aquarium and Marine Research Laboratory. On the way, we got a little lost and passed the aquarium going both ways. One way we wound up turning around in St. Armand's Circle, and the other way we went through down town Sarasota. Eventually we realized where we needed to go and we found the aquarium.
The aquarium wasn't very large but still quite big. They had all kinds of fish as well as jellyfish, octopi, squid, sharks, and stingrays. We spent a long time going through and looking at all the different creatures. Then we had lunch at a diner located near the sharks. The burgers were awesome! And they had pepsi! I like pepsi and Ash likes coke; our relationship is complicated (not really ;P)
After eating at the diner, we went through he gift shop where it seemed that Ash broke their computers. Seriously, when she went to check out, the system went down. Eventually we got everything settled and then we walked to the manatee exhibit. They also had sea turtles and dolphins there. The manatee's were camera shy and wouldn't come close, but the turtles were more than happy to pose.
THe aquarium was about to cose, so we decided to go back to the house. This time we were fully expecting to find stuff destroyed. We were right. The dog ate a plant. It was a fake tree, but the dog ate the basket and the foam base. It was everywhere.
That night, the dogs wanted me to sleep in the bed with them. They are bigger than me and I don't want them to eat me, so I complied. I was afraid, but eventually fell asleep under the two 200 lb dogs.