Key West...Key Lime....

Key West was an awesome place.. we really fell in love with it. We would love to go back again and again. Riding around town on scooters. Eating great food. Beautiful beaches. Beautiful water. Great people. Just a different pace of life.

One of the things we did discover was what you can do with Key Limes..

We started seeing many many things Key Lime somewhere around day 2. We started making a list.. Then a friendly shop owner said if we really wanted to flesh out our list we needed to go to Kermit's

Let me tell you..some of this stuff is awesome.. the barbecue sauce and the cilantro chip sauce is fabulous. Key Lime Margaritas...not so much. A tad too tart. The wine on the other hand even had us non wine drinkers singing its praises.

Well enough with the details... here is the list of everything we found Key Lime on Key West.
In no particular order... Key Lime:

Ice Crush
Coconut patties
Bark (as in candy coating)
Pie on a stick
Taffy
Ice cream
Cookies
Fudge
Juice
Coffee
Aide
Tea
Pie cookies
Coolers
Margarita Mix
Pretzels
Mousse
Shortbread cookies
Mojito
Cheesecake
Strawberry iced tea
Tea cookies
Candy canes
White chocolate cookies
Mango poppy dressing
Barbecue sauce
Honey
Hot sauce
Mango chutney
Wine
Datil pepper
Powder
Strawberry jalapeno jelly
Bath jell
Shampoo
Conditioner
Candles
Fruit Squares
Cocktail dipping sauce
Guacamole dip
Florida bay spice
Soap
Citrus salsa
Jelly Beans
Soda
Cinnabun
Smoothie

I don't proclaim that this list is all inclusive.. if you have had some other Key Lime "something" let me know and post it here...

Oh yes.. as like the pic says..

Key Lime Time

Miami for a day… + some

We did a quick run in to Coconut Grove Saturday night… pretty cool place. Walked around a bit but was an interesting evening… Burn Notice has a warehouse there where they do all their stage shooting. They also do most of their “on location” shooting in the Coconut Grove area.

Then Sunday we went to Miami Beach.. we walked and walked and walked.. Some fun observations, experiences and encounters during the day.

The beach is amazing!!!



Met a really great lady that was the bartender at the poolside bar and The Clevelander hotel. She has two beautiful daughters and she’s afraid of going in to the remote areas of Florida where there are not many lights. She has the same feelings that many people from my part of Texas have when they go in to a big city. I had 2 margaritas there… it was actually before noon….

Then had a cigar a little later while walking down Ocean dr.

Later as Hannah and I are standing outside the Ghirardelli's. chocolate store contemplating a hot fudge Sunday.. Donna walks up and says “what sin have you found now?” My favorite quote of the day from family.

Later on at the beach near the Key Biscayne lighthouse, a local asks Donna “Do you speak English or do you speak Spanish?” Just never thought Donna looked like a Spanish speaking person.

Coolest observation of the day: Donna says “You know, I’ve noticed something about the groups around here”. I said “There are no lines… not like the ones we normally think of .. color..”

We were also the minority as English speaking people in Miami beach.

We have also designated Miami as “Smokers Paradise”. Dang there are so many people that smoke there. I guess it’s all the Europeans. I’m not hating… since I had my cigar there..but still. Lots of cigarette smokers. Lots of scooters too.

About 10 percent of the people I saw in Miami look like models.

The lady at Key Biscayne was very nice too. She was very sociable .. asked Donna to take pics of her and her son. We had her take pics of us too.

Most everyone we ran across was very friendly and nice. Now Donna had us marching all over Miami beach..the a little driving to Key Biscayne..then walked all over Miami beach again to get pics of the art deco hotels with their neon on at night…put blisters on my left foot. Wore us out. Felt like boot camp. It was about 15 kilometers.. Donna and Hannah named our day the Donna Anderson’s Miami Beach, 15K pro am fun run race for the cure (a la The Office). Still recovering..

We’ll have more observations from Key West..mainly how may different ways you can eat Key Lime “whatever”..

Oh..yeah..

Forgot that the lady at Key Biscayne also asked Donna if we were from Northern Florida..because we sounded like her in-laws.

also...

A guy in an al fresco restaurant ..the cafe at Books and Books..had a dog that was slobbering all over Austin.... He was too timid to say anything to them so Donna asked if they could pull their dog back..in a very nice way. One of the guys asked us where in the south were we from..he then pointed at his SMU business school cap (with his Princeton t-shirt on too). We tried to bond a little by pointing out that our daughter was going to TCU but he would have none of it...

More from Hannah and her trip to Italy-Venice!!

More pics from Hannah in Italy

Hannah at the church of St Francis of Assisi. The writer of my favorite hymn..



Hannah at Assisi with the Tuscan countryside behind her.



The Tuscan countryside..

Houston we have a problem....

Today we went to Space Center Houston.. Man this place touches me way down in my inner child. I grew up watching people blast off in to space to try and get us on the moon. I was a little over a year old when Yuri Gagarin had made history by being launched in to space.. Alan Shepherd made the trip not to long after that and yada yada yada when I was 9 Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon (see more here)... it was that yada yada yada that was a part of my growing up.. tang, the space race, coupling that space race with the cold war, bomb shelters in peoples back yards and the fear of just what the russians would do to us from the moon if they got there before us made the whole space thing very important to almost all of us growing up back then.

I also used to lay on my back in the yard at night and use our binoculors to look at the moon.. believe it or not it always looked closer and more detailed than by the naked eye..

I had a map of the universe when I was in first grade and I would pull it out and look at it over and over again. I used in school for presentations several different times as I grew up. Space, NASA, all that stuff was just a part of me as I was growing up...

Also..schools in the Houston area went to NASA often.. Not every year but we went pretty often.

So...going to Space Center Houston today was something I was really looking forward to. The last time I had been to NASA.. it was just the Johnson Space Center.. there was no Space Center Houston. I had heard a lot of good things about Space Center Houston (SCH) so I was looking forward to today..on many levels.. I had a real good time.. you can see the pics I took here.

Unfortunately... it wasn't nearly as good as when it was just JSC... probably because I imagine how great it could be. Basically me and my family stood in line for over 3 hours today to go on 2 tours.. shop a little and go home. I studied recreation and parks in college and so did Donna. Donna even worked at Disney in Florida and knows how important it is for things to go right for there to be a quality experience for visitors....guests..whatever term you want to give to those poor suckers that come in the gate in the morning and hand you a pretty decent stack of cash to spend the day on your property..

Here are just a few things that need some attention Houston...

Tour guides or hosts do not need to be texting friends while guiding your group.
Tour guides or hosts should not make sarcastic comments about the place they work while on duty in front of guests.
Tour guides or hosts should not bob their heads to the music on the guide video no matter how sick they are of "The flight of the bumblebee".
Videos used on tour buses should be less then 10 years old.
Audio files used on tour trams should be less than 10 years old.
Security screening should be done at the beginning of the que line while people are waiting to get on trams..not at the end of the line so that people are delayed boarding their trams.. It must have taken at least 15 minutes (Donna's guess.. I think more) to load a freakin tram.. 3 minutes tops to get everyone on...maybe a tad more if you have physically challenged guests. This was insane!!
Don't tell people to return to the tram at the end of a tour and then tell them they should be sitting in the same seats they left AFTER they return to the tram.
If you are going to have flight simulators in the flight simulator part of your facility you should have more than 2 of the 10 working.

We didn't get to see anything else because it took so freakin' long to do these two tours. I'm sure I would have seen more that needs attention.

I know that JSC specializes in rocket science.. but this isn't rocket science.. it's hospitality, expectations, follow-up, leadership and respect....but then again this is a government agencey (NASA) and I'm sure SCH is the lowest bidder.. I really don't know how this was put together...it could be so much better..

and bobble head host told us today they were only expecting 6000 guests but would have over 8000 tomorrow with all the parking lots full including the staff parking lot.. good luck folks..the tram lines don't go too fast...and the security people that are going through your stuff and scanning you with a hand held metal detector are in no rush..which wouldn't matter except that the tram is waiting on you and the 80+ people behind you to get on... yawn..

I really hope to go back some time soon so I can spend more time in the main facility and skip the tours because they took forever but it was what I wanted to do today. I didn't get to look at any space capsules up close like I have every time I've been to JSC. I didn't get to see any rocks like every time I've been to JSC. Again.. it was the choices we made, they were long slow choices with a lot of standing still but I'm ok with that.

I'm not mad..I love the place.. I want to see more.. I just know with some minor changes that would cost nothing so many more people could be serviced with no extra effort put fourth by any of the underpaid, under motivated hosts on staff.

A little trip to Houston..

We didn't go on the church ski trip... Austin nor Donna wanted to ski.. Hannah was going to Italy so we didn't know what we would do for our little spring break jaunt.. Austin had a neat idea.. let's go to Houston and do like we do when we go to New York.. in other words.. let be tourists in Houston..

Having grown up in the Houston area and generally having a disdain for the city because it's hot, and humid, and un-zoned, and humid, and has never seemed to have the hiways it needed to move people around like it needs to I really wasn't fired up about that right off the bat but then I thought better of it.. so that's what we're doing..

I went to priceline.com and bid on some 5 star hotels in downtown Houston and got a nice deal on a room at The Inn at the Ballpark.

This morning we had church..and in the midst of church Hannah took off for Italy.. once church was over we headed to Livingston to have lunch at The Courthouse Whistlstop Cafe.



A very nice cafe with very good food and good sized portions. Service was excellent even though some of the Sunday specials had been eaten up by a large after church crowd. We had lunch with family there (Donna's mom, sister, brother-in-law, and our nephew John). After visiting and eating we headed on to Houston..











We had been toying with the idea of going to a hockey game.. it was looking like we weren't going to miss much of the afternoon game of the Houston Aeros so we went to the Toyota center and enjoyed the sport from the great white north.

The Aeros won and we had fun..minor league sports are a hoot because they do so much to keep you entertained.. same with minor league baseball.. anyway, we had a good time and then checked in at "The Inn".













Room is spacious and the bed is heaven...it's huge and comfy.. The lobby, bar and cafe all beautifully appointed with baseball memorabelia.. well so is the room.. even little baseball stickers on the toilet paper rolls... we really did get a nice deal now that I've seen it.













We go eat in "The Ballpark Cafe".. food is pricy but good. Donna had the ballpark burger..I had the ballpark hot dog (a foot long that was about 18" long..stuck out about 2 inches on each end of the bun)..and with ballpark dog I had to have a bock..Austin.. always one to watch cost of items on the menu had a $6 salad and the fried shrimp.. The bill was ... well alot for a burger, a dog and 5 shrimp but the place was nice and the waiter was fantastic.

Back at the room taking it easy.. contemplating going here tomorrow..

My Friday..

I got up this morning.. I drank a cup of Starbucks coffee... ate some frosted mini wheats and some biscuits and gravy.






I loaded my luggage and the luggage of several people that were with me on to our church bus. We then left the T bar m resort in New Braunfels TX and drove across Texas back to Lufkin. On the way I dropped my son and my wife off in Conroe so they could go to a baby shower tomorrow.. ewwhh.... not for me. Hannah came with me because she has to work tonight.

I'm now sorting damp clothes and washing them so they don't mildew.

If I get enough done I might go see The Dark Knight tonight.. if not oh well. I do get to sleep in my own bed tonight.