I’m back in Austin, after a long trip. I wrote 15 pages so far describing it, but it’s way too personal.  Guess that’ll have to wait until my book comes out, when names are changed to protect people.

What’s the short version?

I left Austin on Tuesday the 4th with a passenger, whom is female, and prefers not to be written about.  We drove 19 hours to Gainesville, FL – where we made it by noon on Cinco De Mayo.  The fun thing is that my little brother, Itay, manages a Tequila bar, and what better place to be on that Mexican holiday than there? We had a lot of tequila.  Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit.  We walked to my little bro’s place, and the next morning all of us, and 2 dogs drove to South Florida for Mother’s day.

I had gotten a hold of Dad previously to let him know about our trip… This was kind of tough, since mom and dad are always together!  My god! They always pick up on Speaker-phone! Grrr! They read e-mail together, speak on the phone together… I lucked out and called one time as Mom was about to go to the Dr’s for a checkup, and was finally able to get Dad alone.

I had explained my plan, mostly to make sure they’d be in town.  We were to arrive on Thursday, and leave on Monday.

The drive down was pretty easy.  Itay had an Ipod filled with music, and a really good transmitter. I had some influence over Itay’s taste in music as he grew up, so of course I liked a bunch of the tunes.  We got to South Florida, and parked 2 houses down from Mom and Dad’s house (so they couldn’t see the car).

As planned, I called Barak (my older brother), and informed him we were here.  His task was to call Mom. While he distracted her on the phone (although, really it was about having him be “there” and part of the surprise), the 3 of us (and the 2 dogs) snuck to the house, and rang the doorbell.  My plan was that Dad be obnoxious, and make mom get the door, and we surprise her.  Well… things didn’t go exactly as planned, but well enough.  Dad opened the door, peeped out, saw us, and opened the door wider.  We hurried in, Itay taking the lead.  We entered the kitchen, cut through it, and there… on the other hallway, Itay ran into Mom.  She screamed, and then saw me. Itay said “Happy Mother’s Day!” and I sang “Happy Mother’s Day to You!” to the tune of Happy Birthday to you.  Mom is yelling at Barak that “You knew about this?!  I can’t believe my kids!  I’m going to kill you guys!”  She was pretty surprised.  I’m glad I got it on Video. Mission accomplished!

The rest of the trip has many other flavors, but the goal was to surprise Mom with Itay, and that was accomplished.

Since I wrote 15 pages so far, and have even more to write, I’m trying to keep this short- so… let’s do it outline style:

• Buffet with the folks.
• Hanging out with a few of my buds from S. FL.
• Taken on a date to South Beach where I was out of my element, tired, and I think the date did more harm than good. It lasted from 9pm till Sunrise.
• We stayed at a hotel… it was the 3rd one, because SouthBeachGroup fucked up royally, pulled a bait and switch, had crappy service, incompetent people (both at the hotel and the corportate side)- although the room itself was pretty dope!
• Saw Iron Man 2 on Imax with my family to celebrate mother’s day — followed by a nice BBQ at their house.
• Questioned myself about… well.. everything.  And let me add that Karma’s a bitch, and a reliable one at that.
• Had to deal with some bullshit, where my little brother thought it was funny to put someone’s name and number on Craigslist with a bogus ad, saying they are giving away a tv.  Girls do not like having their name, number, and description of their vehicles put online!  Just in case you had any doubts about that.
• Dropped Itay off in Gainesville.
• Couchsurfed in Orlando with a guy that works for Halloween Horror Nights, and the Blue Man Group.
• Went to a dog beach in Daytona, followed by a real beach.  In Daytona you can drive on the beach (the actual sand).  My car got stuck… right before the beach closed for vehicles.  Thankfully there were a small handfull of people there, and they helped me dig and push.
• Drove to Atlanta.
• Texted while driving… which is dangerous, but I used it to pull a romantic scheme together.  We arrived at my condo, which was empty… but now had clean linens, a bottle of wine, and candles.  My passenger was asleep, so that gave me a chance to go inside and light the candles before waking her up.  It was very romantic.  I should do romantic things more often.  I’d like to thank my friend Robert for helping me execute this (And Meghan for choosing the wine), and for holding on to my keys… this was not a use for the keys that I ever imagined previously.
• Realized the next day why my place did not rent out:  It was left pretty messy, with stuff all over the place.  I was informed by my friend that the place was cleaned out completely. The realtor never mentioned this either.  Grrrrr…. My fault for not checking, or asking for proof.  Realtor’s a dumbass anyways for not mentioning it though.  I’d've happily paid a cleanup crew, and she would’ve made money off the rental.
• Spent all day and night cleaning, bleaching, scrubbing, vaccuming.  Only breaks: Taco Bell / Dunkin Donuts.
• Woke up early, finished cleaning.  Drove to Arkansas to visit my passenger’s family.
• Spent the weekend with them.  It was neat seeing 3 families within the same family all living next door to each other. Played cards, had a few drinks, sat on the porch, worked.
• Sunday I taught her grandma to:
  • Import her pictures from her digital camera to her computer
  • Tag images
  • Name albums
  • Delete photos
  • Copy photos to her Digital Photo Frame that she was gifted
  • Resize photos, so her digital frame doesn’t fill up.
  • Add memory to the photo frame, so it never runs out of memory.
  • Upload photos to Facebook.
  • Tag photos on FB / Caption photos / delete photos / Choose album cover.
  • Made her take notes on all this.
• Got made fun of that I’ll be the next grandpa… ’cause the grandma loves me.  There’s a video somewhere of me dancing with her, complete with twirls, and even a dip.
• Drove back to Austin, where I’m now house sitting for someone.  Does that count as couch surfing if the person isn’t here?

So, now I’m in Austin (which I’ve missed dearly), am getting caught up on my snail mail (which I picked up from FL and GA), and am stressing about numerous things.  I took the time to write this blog post, because I haven’t written in a while.  I apologize for that, but life needs living.

While my brain was confused about myself, relationships, what I want or need to do next, just rolling into Austin made everything better. This place is amazing.

Additionally, I have to mention this awesome sign we saw on our way back. Actually, I think George Bush is the devil, but I do love wit… so here’s the description:  The sign had a photo of George W. Bush, and it said “Miss me yet?  How’s that hope and change stuff working for you?”