Words to describe the last few days in Florida:

Pukey— cat vomit, specifically. Because animals know the wife and I crave it.

Serrated—that's what the tooth was that I stepped on at the Sanibel Island Beach. We think it was a tooth. From an alien.

Opulent—we got to hang out for two nights in a mansion. A serious, real-live mansion with many, many rooms (ten bathrooms?), including its own theater. Which we couldn't get to work, so we watched The Return of the Jedi on a measly ol' giant plasma screen in the living room. So sad for us.

Rich—food that is. We've had take out or been to restaurants every night and the eatin' is good even when there's electricity missing in many spots.

Natural—walks in the Corkscrew woods/swamp revealed to us many a critter, from birds to (woohoo!) gators, including a gaggle of babies waiting to devour us all.

Windy—shelling on the Sanibel Island beach (that is, looking for shells, not being shelled by mortar fire) was like walking a wind tunnel filled with sand, though luckily it stayed low and not in our face. The wind surfers with their big parachute sized kites were liking it, though.

We haven't done much in the way of shopping with the exception of some Sanibel shops yesterday where we only bought rubber dinosaur skeletons for our nephew. Maybe we'll make up for it today, but the wife wants her toes back in the Gulf of Mexico, so that's the only priority. Me, I'm already feeling the creeping dread that comes with being two days away from ending a vacation, the return to work, long before I'm feeling ready. I miss the days when I would go on vacation and actually look forward to getting back to work in some way. That felt unnatural at the time, but was far more enjoyable that the creeping dread.

Greetings from Florida. Outside of several sad, dead trees and messed up signs and lots o' downed or out traffic lights, the area around Naples is pretty much fine. Though it's interesting to go to a nice restaurant like Carrabbas and find it jammed with all the people who can't go to the other Carrabbas in the area because they have no electricity.

The wedding won't go off while we're here, so I instead put my ability to wear pants while in warm weather to good work this evening at a fancy dinner at a restaurant on the Naples beach, literally, with our chairs in the sand. Good meals though here. Expensive meals. Joe and I like to fight over the checks, which makes it feel just like home.

I'm not sure what's up for the weekend. Hopefully some beach time. Maybe shopping. Definitely eating and likely drinking. Sleeping, not so much... I'd gotten used to sleeping in a cold room with a comforter, so the relatively balmy nights here have so far left me restless. [Okay, last night after I wrote this, I slept like a very tired rock.] The upside is, my brain churns through ideas for what to write during NaNoWriMo, starting next week.

My wife keeps asking me: "you still think we should go, right?"

Translation: "Are we bug-fuck insane for going on a so-called 'vacation' to a city that was hit by a hurricane only three days ago?"

I've been snippy with her about it a couple of times, because really, I was prepared to go down there the first time, as in last week, before Wilma even hit. The idea did not bother me much, and maybe that was just because when I've talked to Joe about it — he who had to live through it — he didn't seem bothered by it at all, either. In fact, he was more annoyed because he had to put shutters on his windows (I picture them looking like the silly shields on the Batmobile in the original Tim Burton Batman movie).

It really looks like the worst of the storm is on the East coast, not the Gulf (west) Coast where we're going, so I'm not worried.

That's my mantra. I'm not worried. I'm not worried. Even if we have to boil water to drink, there's no open restaurants or working phones or working traffic lights or whatever, I'm fine with it. I'm just not going to any sports complexes with a dome over them, that's for sure.

Though the whole wedding thing... that still might not happen. The courthouse is closed until Halloween day. (I should qualify that it might not happen while we're there... I assume that Joe and Andrea are secure enough in their relationship to go ahead with it once civilization and democracy return to the area.)

Dr. Barnes has asked, as I hoped someone eventually would, "What is with all the BNL lyrics?"

BNL, for those not in the know, stands for Barenaked Ladies. They're a band.

They are not actual ladies. They are not actually barenaked.

They're dudes. And they're Canadian. They even have a blog.

I first heard BNL on a cassette tape in a car driving around Delaware with my friend Chris in 1994. I was visiting him at his grad school during a particularly depressing time (for me, not him). Turns out that when you're morose, and you hear great music, it doesn't make you all uplifted like in the movies. Instead, it paints the music with the same brush. For years after, I didn't listen to BNL because I associated it with my depression.

By circa 1997, that changed. I was listening to the album "Maybe You Should Drive" repeatedly for months because it was the only one I had on cassette, and that's all my car would play. I'm not much of a music buyer really, but when "Stunt" came out, I went out and found all the BNL albums — only then did I discover that their debut album, "Gordon," the album I heard in Delaware all those years before, was perhaps my favorite.

In 1999, the era of the first Napster, I found even more BNL, specifically bootleg recordings of them in concert. BNL gives great concert. I've since watched them a couple of times on cable to prove it.

But I've never wanted to go see them live. I mean, I do — but I just can't stand the thought of being trapped around thousands of screaming 20-somethings. That kind of thing got ruined for me at a concert by, of all people, Harry Connick, Jr. that the Wife and I saw at Smith College... 19 year old girls standing on rickety seats, screaming, didn't lead to much enjoyment of the music. (This was Harry's pop-ish period, not his crooner period, so that didn't help.) I had a shot at a free BNL concert during Comdex in 2000, but my co-workers and I bailed at the last minute due to the crowds trying to go from Mandalay Bay Hotel on a bus to the private concert location near the airport (I think Intel was throwing the concert/party, tho it might have been AOL/Time Warner celebrating their merger). The only concert I've seen since is the KISS/Aerosmith double-bill in Vegas in 2003, and that was just impossible to pass up. And it was great without anyone having to stand up for the whole thing except Steven Tyler and Gene Simmons.

For some reason, my anathema toward BNL concerts changed when I saw that they are doing a concert at the Turning Stone casino east of Syracuse at the end of November. I'm not sure why, but I thought maybe, just maybe, this would be the venue where seeing them would be fun even for an elderly 35-year-old like myself. Perhaps it's my association of casinos with old ladies at slot machines holding a big plastic cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other that makes it seem so welcoming....

So I bought tickets. In 34 days, the Wife and I will watch the group cavort about, singing some of my favorite songs, like "Another Postcard with Chimpanzees" and " Shopping" and "Alcohol" and "Grade 9" and "One Week" (as if I know the play list, but I can dream).

To celebrate the upcoming even, all my blog entries for the next month are going to be titled with BNL lyrics.

But if I have to stand on a god-damn chair to see the band, some 20-something is going to get smacked upside the head.

The hurricane has come and gone and the reports from Joe are that he lived. I assume this, because he returned my call. Might have a roof leak, and a tear in the screen on the lanai. All in all, an excellent way to weather a Category 3, I'd say.

Now we worry that we can't fly out Thursday because we might be getting snow up here, maybe even a Nor'easter. Time to put on the snow plow.

The wife is still out, though its 8pm. She has a social life, as she works with people, and one of her favorite people is a photographer who comes to two twice a year to work for the college, and a bunch of them always get together for dinner one or two times while he's around. I usually go out with them too, though she called me tonight and quiet cautiously said, "We're having a no-spouses night, tonight, is that okay?" When she said "no-spouses," I didn't understand her, I thought she was saying the name of some new restaurant in town I had not heard of.

No worries on a night alone at home for me. I have one goal: to finish my second Payne story with a bang-up ending before the week is out. Sad that I really think it's going to take me that long to figure out something other than the quite boring end that seems to be dictated by what has happened to the characters so far. I had Bon read it last night to see if she had any suggestions-- and I told her it wasn't finished, but she still was all, like, "What's with the ending?" -- and we ended up talking about how she didn't like some of the other stuff in the story, specifically motivations for some of the characters. She's very hung up on motivations for characters where I tend to think people in stupid/desperate situations do stupid/desperate things. My wife is neither stupid nor desperate, so perhaps she has no basis for relating. Me, on the other hand...

I spent much of Saturday, re-working parts of the first Payne story to fix another plot/motivation thing she pointed out to me, something that seemed to put the entire potential for the story into question. As her punishment for not pointing this fact out to me until two months after I first read it to her, she has to read it. Again. (Oh, the suffering that causes. But I feel no guilt, having been forced to read every single one of her freelance articles for eight years. She'd probably make me still read stuff she does for work if she actually wrote more. Or if she wasn’t afraid I'd screw it up because I don't know CMoS.)

I did this before we went to our fancy, overpriced dinner at Banfi's on the Cornell campus. We probably won't go back, even though the food was very good... the atmosphere was stodgy. It's stuffed-shirt place populated by old men who'd been involved with the university and golf and yachts for many, many years. I wore my suit, such as it is, and remarked to the wife that I looked like a fat Mafioso. She said I didn't look like a Mafioso at all. Must be a need a shark skin jacket or a good Paulie Walnuts track suit.

Crap, 8:15 and the wife just pulled in, and I haven't got any work done on the story. Farg.

Anniversaries are very, very important days (as I am required to say by law). Today is my 11th of my wedding with my wife, and next Thursday is the 16th anniversary of our first date... we're fast approaching the point of life where we've been together longer than we were not. That said, it's amazing just how many of our previous anniversaries we could not recall at all as we lay in bed together this afternoon morning.

Last year on Maui was easy, and so is 1997 when we went on a cruise around the Caribbean, which back then didn't seem to have a hurricane season (or at least not one that effected the trip ), though that was the year the volcano erupted on the island of Montserrat, ruining Sting's recording studio. One day, we could see it from the deck.

Luckily, I've got a blog so I can at least go back and see how we celebrated since 2001...

When I was a kid, I was big into making big plans for creative endeavors. My dream projects always seemed, at the time, like they would be oh-so-easy to accomplish.

Examples:

I'm still in the wedding.

Despite the fact that Wilma probably won't hit until Monday, the city hall where Joe and Andrea are getting hitched to each other for all eternity made plans to bug-out today, and they made good on those plans. Thus the ceremony is pushed back to next Friday, when the Wife -- whom I call the Squanto of Honor -- will be there to take the newlyweds out for a bottle or four of wine.

In the immortal words of Homer J.: I said, Woo-Hoo!

I am not on a plane to Florida.

Turns out Delta was/is kindly offering those with non-refundable, non-changeable, non-edible tickets the option to reschedule if we flying into the eye of Hurricane Wilma (AKA airports in Florida) anytime between today and Sunday. So we switched out our flight to go next Thursday, one week from today.

Of course, there were rumors that our destination might evacuate, but now CNN says even people in the Keys don't have to leave until Friday. And the storm is down to a weak, piddling Category 4 now. Winds of 145 MPH? Bah. This proves beyond a doubt my theory that by not going, we have ensured that the peninsula will be spared any major damage. By Sunday when it makes landfall, Wilma will be nothing more than a light breeze with some hail.

Not going today, however, means I miss the wedding I so successfully bullied my way into. Unless, of course, the city hall staff doesn't show up for work on Friday and the nuptials are postponed for a week, as well. Probably better for Joe and Andrea to get hitched tomorrow if they can, so they can spend they "honeymoon" at home in the storm, doing what comes naturally to honeymooners....playing Monopoly and Clue.

Tomorrow is supposed to start my long-weekend vacation, attending the nuptials of Joe and Andrea, basking in the sun for one last time before the onset of winter here in the northeast.

My destination: Naples, Florida. Which is where Hurricane Wilma — now a Category 5 storm with 175 mile per hour winds, as I write this — is expected to make landfall.

Getting to Florida, flying into the Ft. Myers airport tomorrow, is not the issue, as Wilma probably won't hit Florida until Saturday. Though it might not go there at all. And it will probably be down to Category 3 by then — only 100 MPH winds, no big deal! Though then again... it might not.

The wife, when informed around noon today that Cat 5 Wilma was bearing down on our future destination, made noises toward not going south. At all. This would be very, very disappointing, to say the least. I suppose its better than spending Saturday night in a bathtub with a mattress over our heads. (Or is that just for tornados?) Though then again, maybe not.

People are being interviewed on CNN suggestiong that those who can get out do so. Bastards.

Will Delta even fly down there tomorrow?

Really, worst case seems to me I'd be trapped in Florida for a few extra days.

I'm heading out after work to drop my dogs off with my parents on the assumption that we are still trekking down to the Sunshine State (Motto: "I though they were supposed to hit Louisiana now?"). But I'm not optimistic....

Looking at Maui, my Sony Vaio laptop the other day, I realized that the VAIO logo, when upside down, looks looks like OIVA, which I would think you'd have to pronounce as "oy vey!" But that would be meshuga. (I would totally buy a Sony Meshuga though....)

The only good thing to come out of the movie Along Came Polly is the term sharted, which Philip Seymour Hoffman refers to as a problem he has at a party where he tried to fart and a little shit came out.

For some reason, the term came up as the Wife and I were driving about today. We laughed. We love poop jokes.

Then, on our way home after visiting my mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew -- practically the entire race of in-laws -- I had what we're now calling a "buke." Which is that phenomenon of throwing up a little in your mouth when you think you're going to belch. (Burp+Puke=Buke).

And it happened again when we got home, so I shared this with the wife saying, "I just threw up some of your sister's lasagna into my mouth. We should name this." Thus... buke.

Just saying this term to the Wife made her hysterical, at least until she came over to give me a kiss at one point and I put my finger to my lips and expanded my cheeks, then pretended swallow as if clearing the field of buke. Not so funny then.

When my brother and I were kids, we played Batman and Robin.

A lot.

God bless Adam West.

This was in the days when you couldn't buy a really nice super-hero costume at Target complete with fake muscles, not to mention a nice cowl and a weapon-filled utility belt. So my grandmother made capes for my brother and me. We still have them, and last year I bought frames for them. Mine hangs in the stairwell to my basement, where I see it several times a day on my way to work. (Which, now that I think about it, is much like working in the Batcave. Though I don't know why Bruce Wayne never thought to put a screen on his 1960's Batcomputer...)

Anyway, I just want to publicly say thanks to Grandma. And also point out to my parents that not all of our toys and belongings from our pre-teen years were destroyed.

Saw this just today from the local paper, the Ithaca Journal...

LANSING - A single engine aircraft crashed on a residential street Friday, although the injured pilot, a New York City furniture designer, walked away from the accident.

At about 4 p.m., police responded to 22 Reach Run Road, where a 1982 Mooney aircraft registered to James W. Evanson, of New York City, lay upside down on the lawn after hitting several trees and a house on its way down.

According to Tompkins County Sheriff's Capt. Mark Dresser, Evanson, the pilot, was approaching Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport from the west but had been flying too low. The weather was rainy, with low-hanging clouds in the area at the time of the crash.

...

Mirrsepassi complained about low flying planes being commonplace in the neighborhood, which is several miles from the Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport. Evanson appears to have come down roughly two miles from a runway.

"I think the planes fly too low to the houses here," Mirrsepassi said. "I'm not surprised that something like this happened."...

One more mile away, on a direct path from that home to the airport runway, is my house. Planes pass over it all day long.

Once upon a time there were these two roads in a town. All the people on one side of town could only contact those on the other side by using the two roads.

And then one day the roads got mad at each other and demanded money and stopped connecting and the people couldn't visit each other and it sucked, the end.

That pathetic analogy sums up the last couple of days I've had on the Internet. There's two backbone companies, Cogent and Level 3, and no one's ever heard of them, I know I hadn't, but they are making me miserable because my ISP (Time Warner RoadRunner) uses one, and my web host company for Squishedfrog.com uses the other. And because they won't talk until money changes hands for whatever reason, I can't get to my own web site. or check my mail. Or send any, at least not without using Gmail (thank you Google).

So I'm downtown at a hotspot before dinner, just to check my personal mail. I'm almost afriad to do so, since I know it'll be 80% spam and that'll just make me even madder.

And there's seriously nothing I can do about this. It's ridiculous.

I have got to stop reading blogs. RSS Feeds are my crack, Bloglines is the pipe. Argh.

Reading some just now I saw big news in Wi-Fi land and actually spent the last hour writing a story and posting it for the day job -- at one in the morning. Now THAT's dedication!