Rather than fly Alicia to Houston to join me there the other weekend, we decided to use my American Airlines voucher to go to Miami this weekend. (It expires March 30.) I figured we could use Marriott points for a hotel and find a reasonable rental car.

Unfortunately, there aren't any reasonable rental cars in Miami (at least not at the airport), and I discovered I don't have enough Marriott points even for one night. Most decent hotels cost over $100 a night, and even Motel 6 costs $85 this time of year. Makes for an expensive "free" trip!

So we started developing Plan B. Alicia's cousin who lives in Ft. Lauderdale is arriving today from Colombia, but Alicia and her sister were unable to reach him by phone. My frantic research indicated that the more reasonable hotels are north of Ft. Lauderdale, and that a train runs up through the coastal cities, which would mean a couple of trains and a taxi to get from the airport to a hotel near the beach.

My niece Laura is expecting her first child. Yesterday afternoon my sister Martha called to let us know that they were leaving for the hospital. Last night Alicia called to see how it was going. Laura was still waiting. Alicia gave me the phone to talk to Martha, and I mentioned the trip to Miami and the issues. Martha said, "Oh, maybe you can stay with Hernando! He's got a big house and lives alone."

Hernando is her brother-in-law. When Martha and Gilberto lived in Miami 25-35 years ago, Hernando lived with them. He's a nice guy. Once in the 1970s when I had an overnight layover at MIA (too short to bother going to Martha's to sleep), he went to the airport to keep me company. It was nice to have someone to talk to and to look after my luggage if I went to the restroom.

We hung up, and a few minutes later Hernando called. He sounded delighted to host us, and mentioned that he has a spare car we could use, as long as I could drive stick. I laughed and told Alicia, "He even has a car for visitors!"

So this evening Hernando will pick us up at MIA, and we'll spend the weekend at his house, with a little white car to get us around for sightseeing and shopping. No worries about money, hotel bedbugs, or rental car fees.

I discovered this song when I loaded my mp3 player with Colombian music and hit the hotel treadmill. It's great fun, and very lively. I wish they played this kind of music at my gym.

Décimas

I'm not actually lonely, but being away from Alicia for two weeks made this song from Fonseca come to life. It's not a favorite of mine, but it's got a cool chorus.

Rather than use the treadmill, I took a long walk yesterday down to the Galleria and around it a few times. The way down there is along the edge of 610, crossing a couple of major intersections and giving the Zone d'Erotica a wide berth. The mall is not a great place to walk on weekends. Shoppers don't move at much of a pace.

Well, I forgot my phone data cable, so I can't show you my White House pictures nor my paper coffee cup and sugar packet with the seal of the President of the United States. We were in the Eisenhower Building for our meeting Monday but didn't get to tour the White House. Not because of sequestration but because Sunday and Monday are Family Days for the First Family and they need their privacy.

I haven't felt much like posting for a couple of weeks. Stress is happening:

I misread a Star Trek-related comment on @promisesunshine's post about her awesome new mixer. Hence the title. The misread gave me a couple of moments of sheer mental bliss.

Ahh...

Living in Tampa in an old house means worrying about the huge trees overhanging the roof. On Saturday morning an arborist knocked on my door. He turned out to be far more reasonable than the previous bid I had gotten, so I hired him to take care of a couple of limbs on one tree. That was all I could afford for the moment.

The dude was a character. He climbed up into the tree with a ladder, then scrambled around rigging ropes, all the time talking out loud to himself and his brother-in-law (who was on the ground waiting patiently for something to do).

Alicia wanted me to keep an eye on him, so I dug out my bow saw and loppers and started to disassemble a grove of saplings out by the road. I figured I'd leave the trunks until I got a chainsaw, but the arborist's assistant came over and levelled them for me with his. He told me they were camphor trees and make a nice shade tree, so I left the tallest one standing.

After the tree guys left, I worked on another tree that had grown up against the house. The arborist told me it was normally used as a hedge or shrub, but had gotten out of hand. I think it needs topping off, but by the time I got done cutting off the limbs nearest the house, it looked even weirder than before. Oh, well. We'll wait and see what it does and work on it again later.

I climbed onto the garage roof and raked off several years' accumulation of leaves and branches. It was a huge volume of detritus. The layer closest to the shingles was already decayed to humus. (Or is it hummus?)

Alicia in the meantime swept the driveway and walk clear of leaves. She made several huge piles that I had to haul to the back of the property to where I'm creating The Mother of All Compost Piles.

By the time we were done, the pile of limbs by the curb was over six feet high, tightly packed, and about eight feet long. We're allowed four cubic yards of gardening trash a week. This is a little more than that.

And I have no pictures posted of all this. Maybe tonight I'll remember to upload them.

Other stuff that happened on the long weekend:

More painful issues related to my wife's son in Colombia... I'm very tempted to go find his dad and commit mayhem on him.

Monday also turned out hard on Alicia. She lets one of the cats, Ruta, out every day for a couple of hours. Yesterday afternoon she forgot about her and we sat down to watch a long movie. By the time she thought about her, Ruta had been out for four hours or more and was nowhere to be found. We wandered the neighborhood, probably spooking all the neighbors by shining the flashlight at their houses. I finally went up to the study to continue sorting papers, and Alicia got occupied in the dining room. When I went downstairs, I heard a "meow" by the door, so I opened it, and Ruta walked in.

Thank God for small blessings.

The washing machine in our new house needed a part replaced (the doohickey the water hoses attach to). I found the machine's model number on the back.

One of the few downsides to being in my 50s is that I have a hard time reading fine print in close quarters. So rather than pull the machine two feet away from the wall to make room for my presbyopia, I pulled it out a few inches and took a photo of the tag with my phone.

Then all I had to do is search the internet with the model number and the words "parts" and "valve", and eventually I found what I needed ("Water inlet valve"). More searching with the part number turned up the best combination of purchase price and shipping cost. A few days later, a box was at my doorstep.

It's an extremely easy fix, so don't be intimidated if you ever need to replace yours. Symptoms: water won't flow into the tub when the washer is set to fill. The other likely culprit (after a tripped electrical breaker) is the washer lid switch, but usually a bad washer lid switch will let the washer fill but then it won't run.

Some dude ordered a pair of slippers from a company in China. He asked for a size 13 right and size 14.5 left slipper since his feet are different. Apparently the size was misread as 1450.

I saw this on AOL under Strange But True.

I pulled over to follow these funky birds around a parking lot a couple of weeks ago. Apparently they're sandhill cranes. I filmed them for a few seconds. When they got nervous, they gave out a weird holler that you can see and hear in the video.