Carrie and I are off tomorrow to go “camping”. Thank goodness it is in quotes. I haven’t done real camping since boy scouts and I wasn’t planning to start again anytime soon! However, what was originally a camping trip with Brendan and Julie and their friends, many years ago, has evolved into renting a house on the river in Concan, Texas (about an hour west of San Antonio).
Brendan just left me the GPS coordinates — because there is no address! Or at least none readily available … so, I punched it into my Garmin and we are ready to hit the road tomorrow!
On a whim, I tried putting it into Google maps as well and it pulled up the exact location — very cool!
We’ll be at the “camp” tomorrow through Sunday … and then Carrie and I are headed to the Hyatt Hill Country resort! We’re looking forward to a few days of rest of relaxation — first with friends and then just with each other.
After tubing down the river for real with the Lyons, we’ll have to check out the Hyatt’s “Ramblin’ River” — I’m sure it doesn’t compare, although I think that the Hyatt’s river does have concierge service!
We also have a spa appointment booked for Monday afternoon — for a couples massage … awesome!
Marshall and Natalie just got a new Macbook Pro — Cool!!
We fired up iChat last night and had a cool video chat using the notebook’s built-in iSight camera. Sweet!!
I had to help them fix their router a bit first before it would work correctly. Most new routers handle the iChat traffic correctly, but some of them need to have certain ports opened to work. After opening the correct ports, everything worked perfectly. The sound was perfect and the video was pretty good — especially considering it was coming from their backyard, over their wireless, over the internets, to my house, then to my computer! Very cool. You can chat with multiple people at the same time too, but I haven’t had the opportunity to do that yet.
It’s completely easy to use (with the exception of the router issue, but I bet if they had an Airport it would work flawlessly!) … as an example, check out the best iChat ever. Seems that Bruce Willis started posting on a movie discussion forum and people were calling him out saying that there is no way that it was the real Bruce Willis. Well, he got a forum member to dial him up on iChat. Yippee Kay Ay!!!
Funniest part of our conversation last night — actual chatting before we got the video and audio to work…
Me: Not sure what is going on here — think it might be a router issue.
Marshall: Let me reboot — maybe that will fix it.
Me: No. This isn’t Windows.
Marshall: LOL
Funny, but true!
Any other Mac / iChat users out there? Dial me up and say hi… My account name is bradbatt — @mac.com, of course.
This is our new friend Willie — taking photos on the way back from Hooter’s. JFLO was driving and Brendan claimed shotgun before I could get to it!
Our room key didn’t work, so the three of us all told each other to go get a new key — none of us wanted to walk back downstairs. Then, we all sat in the hall in a stalemate, each of us refusing to go downstairs to get a new one !!! We called the front desk from our cell and asked them to come unlock our room — they wouldn’t and said they needed ID!
JFLO and Brendan bet me that I couldn’t get a new room key without ID — a challenge that I could not turn down (I should have put money on it!) …
This is what I came up with — and it worked!!! LOL
(Note — this was extremely funny at 2am after several beers)
DAY THREE
JFLO and Rod with a great double whistle.
JFLO tried to report to the clinician’s table and realized his mistake mid-step. Brendan and I LOL’ed.
Brad and JFLO working our game — after we got there LATE!!! OOPS!
I found out from the official who worked in front of us that they started fifteen minutes early, but we still got in trouble for it!
JFLO — you can now officially never talk about my shirt being crooked again. Ever.
Brendan and JFLO watching games between working their own — we were tired!
HOOTERS! HOOTERS! HOOTERS!!!
Mmmmmmmmmm … Key Lime pie and beer!!! YUM!!!
Brendan ate at the social, but JFLO and I were late because we worked the last game and went to clean up. Plus, JFLO refused to eat Cuban food.
DAY FOUR
Brendan is ready to work his last game and get home!
Our room is a disaster! We decided to leave a nice tip for the maid for cleaning up after us!
JFLO broke his sunglasses!
Our flight was delayed TWO hours — nice! Thanks to Verizon and Cingular — we have internet access!
JFLO on Full Tilt.
Brendan on Full Tilt — yes, great minds think alike!!! (And, yes, of course I was playing as well — just didn’t take a picture of my screen.)
CAMP HIGHLIGHTS
JFLO calling a place to see if he could get a haircut and having to ask four people before getting someone on the phone that spoke English.
JFLO buying something at CVS and the cashier telling him the total in Spanish. Of course, since John “Como se what?” Flores doesn’t speak Spanish, he just handed her a twenty! LOL!!! Outlandish!!!
Quoting Talladega Nights all weekend for some reason… (i.e. “I’m going to come at you like a spider monkey”, “You made that game your bitch”, etc., etc.)
Watching Talladega Nights when we got back to the room Saturday night — that only made things worse.
Brendan refereeing an entire game in his “pee pants” (see above)
Playing poker — in the Presidents Club, baggage claim, hotel room, and finally in the airport on Full Tilt … Brendan and I are up for the weekend. JFLO, not so much.
And THE highlight of the camp… Brendan throwing the quarter into the toll booth on the way to the airport today and completely missing and having to open his door to try to find the quarter — our last quarter. Not being able to find the quarter, that was somewhere on the pavement, we had to scrounge up some nickels and dimes — all while laughing out asses off at Brendan!
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