Laura and I have different pets. We have all kinds of crazy pets - three leopard geckos, four ferrets, a fish tank, a dog, and Laura has had rats. I have had a pet for about 5 years that was always my go-to guy when I wanted to show off the collection - Spike the hedgehog. Spike was a handful of prickly cute attitude. If you woke him up, he was fussy and curled up into a ball, but once calmed down he was the perfect gentleman of hedgehogs.

Spike hadn’t been acting quite right lately, and while we had a vet appointment scheduled, it just wasn’t soon enough. I came home from work the day of the vet appointment to find that he had died that day.

Laura had just purchased a new camera lens for Christmas, and we had said on new years day (our fifth anniversary of getting Spike) we were going to get him out and take a bunch of pictures with the new gear. We were tired on new years, and almost didn’t do it, but I really wanted to, so we got him out, gave him a bath, trimmed his nails, and took pictures until he fell asleep, totally exhausted from all the excitement.

That was Tuesday. When we came home from work on Thursday, I went to get him out to take him to the vet and found that he had died.

He will be missed. It took him three of the five years I had him to get him comfortable coming out during the day, but the past few years he’s been coming out during the day, eating, drinking, and running in his wheel all in broad daylight.

1) ‘I could care less.’ It gets the point across, I guess, but what you’re really looking for here is ‘I couldn’t care less. If you could care less, then you have to somewhat care in the first place. If, on the other hand, you couldn’t care less, then you absolutely, positively, don’t give a shit about whatever it is being discussed.

2) ‘Oh, for God sakes’ I’m not really sure where this one came from. It’s not even a matter of not understanding the words that you’re saying, it’s a matter of not even listening to yourself when you talk. Basically, here you’re using an exclamation made up of words that you don’t know. The right thing to say here is ‘for God’s sake’ or ‘Christ’s sake’ or ‘for fuck’s sake.’ Saying ‘for God sakes’ or ‘for (whatever) sakes’ is just plain stupidity.

The thing that is really irritating to me is that both of these are things that are stupid lazy errors. Just listen to the words that you choose and think about it. Do they make sense? No? Then fix it or find another way to say it. Saying something that doesn’t make sense might just get your point across - and that’s OK - but saying it right might just keep you from looking dumb.

Well an icy Sunday made for a really shitty Monday. Well, I guess some of this shit happened on Tuesday, but it was all in the same 24 hour period, so it counts.

I started off a little late. I overslept - which I normally do - so I wound up leaving my house around 8:25. I’m supposed to be at work by 8:30 and I live about 7 minutes away, but as long as I’m here by 8:37 no one cares. As my foot hits the pavement at the top of the concrete porch steps, I immediately lost it and slipped. All of a sudden, my feet were above my head, my head hit two of the steps on the way down, I bruised a rib and banged up my shoulder.

After laying there for a few minutes, I got up, made sure I didn’t tear any clothing or make a big ass mess of myself, and started cleaning the ice off of my car. I couldn’t find my ice scraper, so I had to clean the ice off of my car with a squeegee that I stole from a gas station a few years ago. Needless to say, it didn’t work very well. I found the scraper later, naturally after I didn’t need it anymore.

Work wasn’t bad, actually. It was a pretty uneventful day other than an audit committee meeting, which required very little from me (especially compared to the other various board and trustee meetings that happen this time of year.)

Once I was back at home, I sat down in the bathroom on the closed toilet to take off my shoes, get undressed, and get in the shower. After I took off my shoes, I leaned back and hit my head on the overhead cabinet above the toilet. I’ve lived in this house for over twenty years, and that’s the first time that’s ever happened.

Monday night is the only night with TV shows that I’m really interested in. Thanks to the writer’s strike, two of the three shows I watch are now on hiatus, and Journeyman is the last one on. On my way to the couch to watch Journeyman, I stubbed three toes on the solid wood coffee table.

In the middle of Journeyman, the power went off. Kind of. Things like lights and lamps were still getting some power, but major appliances like TV’s, cable boxes, fridges, ovens, et cetera were out. Well I had the iron plugged in to iron work clothes for Tuesday. Silly me had assumed that if things like TVs weren’t getting power, then surely the electricity thirsty iron wouldn’t be working either, right? Wrong. I burned my hand on the iron while the power was out.

Finally I just went to bed. The power came back on around midnight, and so when everything came back to life, I got up and set my alarm clock, which sits on a table just about arms length away from my bed (which is a futon). 6:30 AM, the alarm goes off, and I roll over to snooze it, which I usually do two or three times each morning. As I rolled over to hit the button, I guess the center of gravity of the bed changed. The futon tilted sharply, and I fell out of bed.

So to sum up, in my clumsiness/messiness/general stupidity, I:

Fell down concrete steps, hitting my head
Had to scrape ice off of my car with a squeegee
Hit my head on an overhead cabinet
Stubbed three toes on a coffee table
Burned my hand on the iron while the power was out
Fell out of bed turning off the alarm clock

All in 24 hours.

I am a walking birth defect.

In any good trilogy, the third chapter should totally blow the doors off of the series. I’m going to start by spoiling the ending of this one first, and then telling the story:

On October 4th, 2008, Laura and I are getting married!

Let’s backtrack a little bit now to the Virginia trip.

We arrived in Virginia on Friday, and after landing, picking up the rental car, and heading to the hotel, we sat with Laura’s aunt for lunch. I had already been dealing with the insurance company a lot at this point, with several calls going back and forth between me and the various offices of state farm. My cell phone rang while we were eating, and I recognized the number immediately - I couldn’t get up and leave (that would be suspicious) but I couldn’t exactly take the phone call right there either. I talked to the person on the phone and answered their questions in very general yes/no answers, and was able to pass it off as a call to the insurance company to Laura and her aunt.

In reality, it was the jeweler calling to tell me the the engagement ring I ordered had arrived and I could come get it anytime.

A few days later, Laura winds up having a project at work that involves her staying at work until later in the evening. I talked to her boss, and he said he’d do what he could to keep her there longer so I could pick up the ring without her knowing. Ring picked up, no problems.

The final piece I needed was some free time the next weekend so that I could talk to Laura’s dad about proposing. Laura didn’t have any paid time off, and we were going to be off on Friday the 17th for our trip to Indiana, so with some convincing form Laura’s boss, she decided to work on the Sunday before to make up some of the time. That was just the window I needed - so I talked to her dad, and everything was set.

So all I needed to do was make it 5 days without blowing it. In that five days, my car was getting repaired from the accident in July, so I was driving a rental. Those days were filled with calls to the insurance company - two companies, actually: one for the accident, and one for insuring the ring. They’re both equally worthless, though. I called the car insurance place once or twice a day about the rental that they agreed to pay for. Everyone I talked to there told me that they would authorize the rental car, yet no one ever did it once we got of the phone. I rented and returned the car and the payment still hadn’t been authorized. Finally after calling them and bitching about it, they authorized the rental. Even though I had rented and returned the car already and been in contact with the rental place, a day later the rental car place called me and wanted to know when I was going to pick up the rental car that State Farm was providing. Idiots.

At the same time, I was dealing with our insurance company about insuring the engagement ring - top secret G-14 classified, of course. So I’m on-and-off the phone with David again, still recently frustrated about steering me wrong on the car insurance thing. He tells me that it’s no problem, fax him the appraisal, he’ll take care of it and add it to my folks’ homeowners insurance. I didn’t really want to do that - I wanted to insure the ring independently and not have it tied to my folks homeowners, but he said it would save me some money, so great.

I fax him the appraisal the next morning (thursday), and call his assistant to confirm that they have received it OK - we were leaving that night and it absolutely had to be insured before we left in case of theft/loss/whatever. I had some questions for her that she needed to run by David, so she said he would call me back. I wound up having a bunch of stuff to do during the day, so David and I wound up playing phone tag for a good part of the day.

Well ultimately, I found out from David that the ring wasn’t really covered because I was giving it to someone who doesn’t live with me. WHAT? I called him back and left him a message expressing my frustration, as this was twice in two weeks that he had completely misled me. So now I have this expensive ring that isn’t insured at all because david fucked me up - again - and I have to leave to go to indiana with the ring, where I will have to leave it alone in the room for at least a day. Great. At this point my dad was a little pissed at david too, and so called him and explained to him how much he’s disappointed us lately, and that we’d be looking for other insurance companies that were more reliable.

David agreed to insure the ring on our homeowners for two weeks or so, until Laura’s dad has a chance to add it to his homeowners insurance, so long as we didn’t ‘officially’ say that I gave Laura the ring until that time. Nothing like a little fraud to go with our engagement.

I have to admit that I’ve been intentionally torturing Laura with the engagement ring. For a couple of months now, I’d flip-flop between ‘I have the ring - really - it’s hidden in the house’ and ‘I can’t afford a wedding and a house - pick one.’ At one point she admitted that she was concerned I was never going to propose - which was exactly what I wanted. Laura knew what ring she was going to get - she has had it picked out for quite a while. The only thing I had was the suprise and the timing, so I really had to keep it under wraps.

So on Saturday morning, her birthday, we were in the hotel in Indiana in between DMB shows. I woke up early and ordered brakfast in bed while she was asleep, and when it came, I set the ring box on the breakfast tray by her food to see when she would notice it. She notices it, and just like that, we’re getting married. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done - Laura is generally who I talk to about pretty much everything, and for months I have been plotting and planning, hiding it from her and not really talking about it.

‘Now that you know - We have so much to talk about. You have no idea. In Virginia, when the insurance company kept calling? That was the jewler telling me the ring was ready.’

‘Really?’

‘And the weekend that Jerry really wanted you to work on Sunday? Jerry was in on that, so I could talk to your dad. And the day you had to stay late rewiring the server room? I picked up the ring that night. And Patrick? He knew about it. In fact, months ago in February when he wanted to go ring shopping for him and Bernard? Yeah, I did that.’

‘Son of a bitch.’

Suddenly we have tons of people to call and planning to do. We spent that morning calling family members and friends (most of whom knew to some extent, especially our friend Patrick, who was my co-conspirator on this from the beginning.)

We went to see DMB again that night (one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time, but naturally the boards bitched about the setlist) and then we came home on Sunday, and had to go visit the various parents / grandparents / aunts / uncles in a sunday night lightning round to show off the ring and tell everyone.

Finally, we came home. I feel like there’s so much more to talk about, but that’s really it. We just came home, and the planning started.

Great. Easy enough. An adjuster calls back and takes a statement from me about what happened and starts telling me about insurance policies and car repairs. She tells me that my deductible is $250 and that my policy doesn’t cover a rental car…

Wait, what? Why do I care what my deductible is or if a car is covered? So I told her the truth - “Let me be frank here. Here’s what I need to know. This accident was her fault. What do I need to do to get my car fixed and get a rental car without having to pay for any of it or have my rates go up?”

“Well you need to call her insurance company then.”

“Well why the fuck didn’t David tell me that before???”

“I don’t know, sir.”

So, now miffed at my insurance guy for leading me astray, I tried to track down her insurance office. Couldn’t find the guy. Forget it - let’s call her. I called her cell number to get contact information. I introduced myself properly and stated my purpose in calling: “Hi, my name is Brian Jenkins, you hit me yesterday. I’m calling to get the number to your claims office as I can’t find any information about it online.”

“Ugh, fine. I know who you are. I filed a claim yesterday and they said they’d be in touch with you Monday.”

“I see, good. I’d like to have the number just in case I need to follow up, though.”

“Fine. I’ll need to call you back with it.”

And then she hung up on me. She called me back with the number and then I started my ride on the insurance claim spiral of death. That’s the last I’ve heard from her, but I have had to deal with her insurance company up until the 16th, when I had to call them for hopefully the last time.

In the midst of all of this bullshitting, Laura and I were getting things ready and packing to go on the first of two mini-vacations. The first, August 3rd-6th, was to Virginia/Washington DC, where a friend of Laura’s was getting married. The wedding was in Virginia, but we had decided that we wanted to sightsee in DC, so we rented a car. As fate would have it, we were the only ones out of our group of people that went who decided to rent a car, so we did a bit of chauffeuring. Not really a big deal.

So we spent the weekend in Virginia for the wedding and related festivities, which were great. Everything started on Friday, when there was a pre-wedding cocktail hour for the out of town guests, so we got to socialize for a little bit with everyone before ‘the big day.’ The wedding itself was in a really nice, new, catholic church, which was nicer than any local church I can think of around here. The reception was probably the nicest (read: most expensive) I’ve ever been to, with a 5 course served meal consisting of all kinds of fancy stuff.

Sunday we all went into Washington DC - all of us being Laura, myself, Laura’s little sister, dad, and aunt - for a day of sightseeing. While I like all of the people involved in this adventure, it was seriously the most physically and mentally exhausting day I’ve had in a long time. We were out and about all day, and there was pretty consistent bickering, so by the end of the day I was totally wiped out. Laura dictated where we went - after all, it was OUR car, we were going to make sure we went to see what we wanted to. The first stop was a national park that I can’t remember the name of. The park is partially on a river, with one side of the river being Virginia, and the other being Maryland. There was a neat photo op at the park, as the view of the water and the horizon was great. Eventually those pictures will be up on my flickr account.

Next stop: the Washington Mall. We went to two of the Smithsonian buildings: the air and space museum, and the museum of natural history. The air and space museum was hosting the ‘national treasures’ exhibit while another museum was closed for renovations, so we also went through that and saw a bunch of neat stuff, including the R2D2 and C3PO costumes, the kermit the frog puppet, a mister rogers sweater, the seinfeld puffy shirt, and the signpost from the set of Mash. Next we went to the natural history museum, pretty much only to see the Hope Diamond. To get to the hope diamond, you had to go through their rock, gem, and mineral exhibit, which I thought was pretty great solely because I was a rock nerd as a kid. Again, neat pictures.

While driving to our next destination, my sister called me, wanting me to fix the cable. Her, Laura, and I had a ten minute fuss about it before Kelly hung up on me, right after I said “Kelly, I’m in Washington. I’m six states away. What do you want me to do about it?”

Anyway, the last stop for our evening of sightseeing was visiting the monuments at night. I don’t remember everything we did, but I know we went to the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the WWII memorial, the Vietnam memorial. Maybe others as well, but I just don’t remember. Again, Laura the budding photographer took some really great pictures. After that we returned to the hotel and packed it up for our flight home.

The flight home, much like the flight there, was pretty uneventful. The planes were absolutely the smallest planes I’ve ever been on - each row was two seats on one side of the aisle, and one seat on the other. There was no legroom at all and I had to hunch over to walk without hitting my head on the ceiling. My back, legs, and butt all hurt like hell at the end of the flight. No more american airlines ‘connection’ flights for me.

Virginia was neat, washington was neat, and everything about the wedding and surroudings was wonderful, but when you get right down to it, there’s no place like home.

Let’s start from the beginning, I guess. The week of July 23rd sucked for me. Sucked alot. In ten years of working where I work, it’s probably the worst straight week I’ve ever had. I’ve had bad days and bad runs of days, but something about this week in particular really was just shitty. People at the top were fighting about stupid crap all week. Egos were clashing - and when I say egos, I mean the kind of giant bullshit self important egos that can alter the earth’s gravitational pull and effect the rotation of the moon. Since shit runs downhill, it wound up dragging my boss and our office into it, really tanking morale for at least myself and her. This went on pretty much all week about shit that was so unimportant I don’t think I can remember all the details.

Well anyhow, for whatever reason I was working a little late on Friday the 27th. I got a phonecall from someone in my office who was driving home - apparently, two other people from our office were pulled over to the side of the road with what looked like car troubles. The person who called me passed it too quick and wasn’t able to stop, so she called me to make sure that I pay attention when I’m leaving to see everything is OK.

A little bit later, I leave. I’m passing the area where they’re supposed to be pulled over, and I see a silver truck I don’t recognize. It looks like things are pretty much under control, so I just continue on. I go home, get Laura, and we leave to go get dinner.

We’re driving down Hampton, and it’s raining. Not a lot, but still raining. As we near the intersection where we’re going to be making a left, someone who isn’t paying any attention pulls out of a little side street and makes a left turn into the lane that I’m driving in. I see her coming and try to move, and it helps a little bit, but ultimately she hits the rear driver side corner of my car and sends me spinning into oncoming traffic. I saw her coming towards me, which was good, as I started to move out of the way, but I just didn’t make it in time. Had I not seen her coming, she would have hit my driver’s side door and put me in the hospital.

For the folks playing the home game, this is what we call ‘Karma.’ Had I stopped to check on Elaine, whose car was broken down, that gal would have hit some other chump when she wasn’t paying attention.

Anyway, my car seems drivable, so I pull into the parking lot of a nearby bank. She pulls in as well, and immediately comes up to exchange information. I start writing down my info, and Laura calls the police. It turns out that this driver is an out of state driver from Texas driving a rental car. On top of it, she was totally pushy and impatient trying to get away from the scene of the accident that she caused - hey, sorry if you’re inconvenienced by this, maybe next time you should watch what the fuck you’re doing.

Checking out the cars, I don’t seem to be in too bad of a condition. Ghetto but drivable. The bumper is totally screwed. It’s two thirds of the way ripped off the back of my car, and I have some visible body damage to the driver’s side rear quarter panel. Our friendly accident causing pain in the ass fully documented and detailed the damage to my vehicle by taking some cell phone camera pictures of my car from a bad angle at a distance of about 20 feet away. Just in case I try to screw her insurance company or something.

Turns out that she doesn’t have proof of insurance. According to her you don’t get insurance cards in texas, you get a window clingy that shows you are insured. She also didn’t have the contact information of her insurance agent, but left me her cell phone number that I could call if I have problems. Fucking sweet.

She bitched and bitched that she had to wait for the cops, because she was busy busy and didn’t have time for this. The cops finally got there (and pulled into the lot in such a way that it blocked both of our cars in.) Cop gets out, takes statements from both of us, and tells impatient bitch that she’s free to go, and that she (the officer) will verify the accident was bitch’s fault if I need her to. Great. That’s at least promising. So then the gal gets back in her car and looks impatient waiting for the cop to move her car. What do I do? I walk over to the police car and start asking questions - after all, I’ve never been in a situation like this before and I have lots of questions about how all of this works. Naturally, our Texan friend looks visibly upset that we’re keeping her there, and makes mean mean faces at me. I think at one point she may have even honked, but I don’t remember.

That’s how we do it in Texas.

We genuinely lucked out on the weather. It was a little overcast, but stayed generally dry for most of the day. We snorkeled in the morning and took some neat underwater pictures using disposable waterproof cameras. Not everyone was having such a great time snorkeling - we kind of inadvertently split into two groups while we were in the water, and Steve got a little burned out on snorkeling, so he went back up to land and had a few beers while we wrapped up in the water.

After turning in all of the snorkeling gear, we went for a float down the freshwater river that is part of the park. Kind of like the ‘lazy river’ at waterparks, except in a really awesome natural setting. It was fresh, cold water, surrounded by jungle and forest on both sides. Probably the best part of the day for me, I think.

After that we ate lunch at one of the cafes. Right as we got there it started storming, and that afternoon was probably the heaviest it rained all week. We sat at a table on the second floor, and there was a mariachi band playing. As we sat there eating, a worker was taking another family to a table in the same area we were in. The woman in charge of this group of people, who could be best defined as tequila BOOM BOOM!’s angry, wrinkled, meth addicted mother, yelled at the person escorting them the entire time. “Don’t put us by that loud music there! I don’t want to have to listen to all that racket. Keep us away from that loud music!”

Steve’s guess is that the trailer park princess just didn’t want to be by the music so that her kids could hear her hollering at them.

The rest of the week was spent either at the resort, or in the nearby town of Playa del Carmen. Playa del Carmen, or at least the part we went to, was pretty much several city blocks of little merchant shops - the ‘merchant vultures’ that overprice everything and then haggle with you for 20 minutes about the price.

It seems like the bullshit inflation with the vultures has gone way up. When we were there in 2001, if something was $100 at one of these shops, you could usually talk them down to about $50. This time around, it was way worse. I bought some onyx turtles with mother of pearl shell decorations, and places were asking like $120, and we were able to talk them down to $35 to $40, depending on the size of the turtle. Chris’s husband Matt was especially good at talking people down. I bought a mexican opal necklace for Laura that the vulture asked $250 for - we talked him down to $70.

I guess that’s kind of a viscous circle. Tourists try to haggle with merchants. Merchants see tourists are trying to talk them down and jack up the price a little bit so that they can still get their ‘base’ price for something. As tourists realized that they’re getting screwed, they haggle even harder knowing that they can get the price down to that ‘base’ price. As merchants see this happening, they bump the prices even higher. So prices get higher and higher all the time, and people still talk them down to the base price. Seems like a lot of work for nothing - an ‘honest’ merchant could make a killing setting up a shop that sold things at the ‘base’ price with no haggling. Something just seems fishy about picking up an item in a shop and having the guy say ‘don’t look at price tag, I cut you nice deal.’

I could talk forever with different stories of fighting with the merchants, but you get the gist of it. The only other one that’s worth telling is about Steve. As you walk down the streets, merchants try to pull you into the stores. “More stuff, better prices!” Well Steve walked with a little 6-pack can cooler and drank as we shopped. There was one guy that was pretty honest with my ‘drunk’ brother - ‘You come in, I rip you off! Take your money! You like cuban cigars? No? Cuban girls?? Cuban boys???’

My last vacation tale: At the hotel, there was a painter who came and painted at the resort every few days. He painted with spray paint. He had 12 or so colors of paint, and could make really neat stuff just spray painting and texturing with a pallet knife or piece of newspaper. When he was done, he would get a can of the paint, and ‘dry’ the painting by spraying the spray paint over a lighter, shooting out a big flame to flash-dry the painting. I bought a bunch of these - when you hold them up over a light, you can see all of the different layers and coloring, and it’s almost iridescent at times.

Finally: Pictures of all of this - the painting, the snorkeling trip, the resort, the town, my dad’s bandaged head - are all available at my Flickr account for everyone to see. You can find them here:

flickr.com/photos/jenkinsbp/sets/

The food wasn’t bad, I guess. It wasn’t anything really superb, and I think the fact that we were a table of eight (a huge group comparatively - most groups were no more than three or four) really flustered and confused our waiter, who spoke very little english. Asking for a diet soda got me a glass of cold seltzer water, apparently the code word for what I wanted is “coke light.”

Monday night after dinner, we sat at the bar for another few rounds. Most everyone left, except for Steve, Craig, and myself. We drank, and drank, and then the bar closed. After that, we went to the rooms, where the maid stocks the fridge every day with some sodas, some waters, and 4 beers. We gathered up the beers from all of the rooms, and then drank them.

Finally, we ran out of beer. We called the front desk for room service (24 hour room service is part of the all inclusive package) to have them send us a 6 pack. No such luck - last call for liquor service to the rooms is 11:30, and it was well past that. 5 minutes later, as we’re getting ready to call it a night, the front desk calls back to tell us that if we’re looking for booze, the discotheque is open until 2 AM and has beer. So in a decision that some would call desperation, we decided to go close down the discotheque. It wasn’t hard to do - we were about the only non-employees in the place, and we sat at a table and drank beer until they closed.

Tuesday, needless to say, was not an especially good day. We were originally going to go snorkeling at Xel-Ha, but when we woke up the weather was pretty crappy, so we pushed it back a day or two. We got up and went to breakfast, which didn’t go real well given that… well, you understand. So I opted to spend most of the day in the room. The weather wasn’t cooperating, and I just felt like shit, so I had a ‘day of rest.’ I still think I got off light - Craig wasn’t just hung over, he was actually sick with a fever. Ma Jenkins had the full Jenkins Pharmaceuticals collection with her (she takes it everywhere) and had some antibiotics and other assorted drugs for him, and he was out and about in time for Wednesday’s Xel-Ha trip.

I spent pretty much all of tuesday in the room watching television, mostly spanish language television with english subtitles. Watched most of galaxy quest, but then it started storming and disrupted the satellite signal. And that’s pretty much it. Later in the day I felt well enough to eat, but laid off of the alcohol for the next few days.

What is “shitter yahtzee”, you ask? And what does it have to do with any of this? Well technically, shitter yahtzee is handheld electronic yahtzee game that helps pass the time when, well… you understand. Became quite acquainted with the shitter yahtzee on tuesday. But the beauty of it is that it can be more than that. It isn’t necessarily limited to being a yahtzee game, it could be a nintendo ds or one of those little handheld blackjack games. When you get right down to it, it can essentially be any little device or game you can use to occupy yourself when…

Well, you understand.

Tequila Boom Boom is a shitty drink, but Tequila BOOM BOOM! is a person. From Texas. And he’s an asshole, so I guess it all works out.

We left memorial day weekend to go to Mexico - more specifically, Playa Del Carmen - for our ‘last’ family vacation. The way see it, everyone has graduated, and this was pretty much our last chance to all get time off together before we all start moving out and starting our own families and lives. So there were eight of us - two to a room: Mom & Dad. Kelly & Craig, Christine & Matt, and me and Steve.

So, we flew to Mexico Saturday afternoon, got settled in at the hotel that night, and spent a week on vacation.

Saturday we check in at the resort, put up our things, and go for dinner and some drinks. Dinner was pretty good - this place did a really good job with their buffet style restaurants (not so much on the specialty restaurants, but more on that later.) After sweating two or three gallons getting used to the heat (yeah, even at night) and eating, we went to the resort bar to check out the drinking arrangements.

Me and steve walk up to the bar (pretty much everyone else went to bed) and before I could even order anything, an obviously drunk and slightly primate looking guy comes up and shouts real loud to me ‘YOU! AMIGO! YOU GOTTA DO A TEQUILA BOOM BOOM WITH ME!’

I don’t drink tequila, so naturally I don’t know what a tequila boom boom is. So I say what any like-minded person would say - ‘Sure, I’ll have one… but what the fuck is a tequila boom boom?’

‘Oh well it’s tequila and sprite and something something DUDE’

Well what the hell, order me one. I waited for a minute or two, and he was still at the bar fucking around, so I just walked away. He probably forgot about it. He has this really great habit of calling everyone AMIGO while he’s in mexico. The patrons, his friends, the bartenders, et cetera. He always talks really loudly, treats all of the staff with a bad attitude, and walks around like he owns the place.

Later on, as me and Steve sat on the beach drinking and bullshitting, we saw him passed out in the sand.

Sunday morning, me and Steve wake up and head down to the breakfast buffet. Everything was all inclusive, so all we had to pay for was tips and souvenirs. It’s raining. It rained pretty much every day, with varying intensity. Some days had severe thunderstorms, some days just had clouds and sprinkles, but every day had at least some rain.

Let’s go ahead and set the pace for this whole week right now: We meet up with Dad while we’re walking to the breakfast buffet, and we have to go down some steps. There are steps - about 3 of them - and there’s a little ramp that the bellboys use for moving luggage carts. So it’s raining, and you’re wearing sandals, and you come to some steps and a ramp. What do you do?

Well, if you’re my dad you take the ramp. Don’t ask why; I still don’t know. He walks down the ramp, and when he gets to the bottom he slips. It was as quick as a flash, but it was absolutely the longest flash you’ve ever experienced. It’s like in a drama or crime show when someone important gets shot and you watch him fall to the ground in slow motion, unable to do anything.

Anyway, next thing we know, his feet are in the air, his ass is on the ground, and the momentum smacks his head right into the concrete. We help him up and he’s bleeding pretty much everywhere. After helping him to the hotel infirmary (he swore he was fine, but we took him anyway) he had to get three stitches.

My dad had to get stitches in mexico. Three of them. And honest to god, he had to get these stitches in a little dark room that I wouldn’t have been comfortable eating lunch in.

The rest of the day he couldn’t get his head wet, which is really a bummer for him seeing as he loves the ocean.

There’s more vacation stories coming, but here’s some food for thought in the interim: The “doctor” told him that after that day, he could swim in the ocean but couldn’t get his head wet in the hotel pool. Think about that - kind gross, isn’t it?

It’s sad - he’s the first pet that I’ve ever had to put to sleep. I never had pets as a kid, so this was the first time. He’s been riddled with health problems for quite some time now. When we first adopted him, he had an enlarged spleen and was always a little, uh, explosive when it came to the litterbox.

Recently, we took him to the vet as it seemed like he was losing weight and his litterbox problems seemed to be getting much worse. The vet put him on some medicines, including an antibiotic, prednizone, and pepcid ac. She also determined that he probably had insulinoma, which was basically a tumor on his pancreas resulting in critically low blood sugar. He had a few low sugar crashes, and we had to snap him out of it with karo syrup more than once, but otherwise he seemed like he was getting better. The medicine worked great and within a few days his litterbox issues were under control.

But then the bizarre happened - a week after the vet visit, he suddenly became totally paralyzed in his rear legs, also meaning that he had no bladder/bowel control. We moved him to the pet carrier where we could keep him from hurting himself (the ferret cage is multi-leveled and over 6 feet tall) and took him back to the vet. She said that there could be half a dozen different things that could be causing it, but at long as he was acting like our ferret (stealing tennis balls and try to run away) we should continue to work with him. We did - for a long time, he would still steal tennis balls from us, and try to run away, scooting his little ferrity ass behind him as he tried to run.

We had to clean him up about 3 or so times per day, and give him some clean bedding each time, but he was doing OK. I left for our family vacation to Mexico the last week of May, and Laura took care of him while I was gone. When I came back I could tell something was different. Not only had he lost a huge amount of weight - he was seriously nothing but skin and bones - but he was weakening, he was tired, and he wasn’t happy. We couldn’t get him to eat his food, eat his treats, or even steal a tennis ball, and that’s how we knew it was time. A few days later we took him out to the vet and had the little fella put to sleep.

It was sad, but it was time to do it, and everyone knew it.

This picture is the reason why Laura was able to convince me to adopt Rascal & Kylie:

Come on, look at the melon on that guy! It’s huge! Not to mention the ferrett pot belly… Rascal was our gentle giant - you didn’t have a choice - you HAD to like him!