Well, we finally head out tomorrow morning. Not a second too soon.

All this trip did for us was confirm that we never want to live here again. I don’t dig the heat. I don’t dig boats or water. I don’t dig the laid-back, almost bohemian approach to life. I don’t dig drinks by the pool. I despise seafood. I don’t get off on the beach and the ocean (or the gulf in this case) isn’t exotic or relaxing, at best it’s lukewarm asshole soup. A bunch of fat, sweaty tourists and leather-skinned, over-tanned locals sweaty privates marinating in the salty water with the occasional used band-aid floating by for extra flavor. Bah!

I just don’t like anything about it from the scenery to the weather to the activities to the lifestyle. Florida is truly America’s wang. And it’s a sickly one at that.

The wife and I actually got away alone yesterday and headed over to Orange Beach (Alabama) and hung out for the day. Checked out cheesy tourist souvenir shops (a favorite pastime), ate a couple of great meals, and stopped by Waterville USA.

Speaking of which, we set an all time personal record for tickets won to money spent ratio in their arcade. We had some time to blow when we stopped by so we dropped a twenty at the arcade. I ended up hitting a decent jackpot on the Simpsons Kooky Carnival game (or something like that) and my wife hit a smaller on on some token drop game. In the end we cleared 1106 tickets on $20. That’s 55 tickets per dollar. Not too bad. Got a shitload of crap with the tickets and brought it back for the kids…they were pleased.

Earlier in the week we hit up a local mall to escape the opressive heat of the in-laws and found that the Discovery Stores are going out of business. The dude working the register claimed they were ALL going, but the online presence would remain. At any rate everything was like 25% to 60% off. We scored big time and now have the kids birthdays covered and a nice start on X-mas. (thinking ahead!) I’m just glad I have kids who dig that sort of stuff.

Today I hooked up the in-laws home theatre. They’ve had this stuff (big ol’ TV, sweet Denon receiver, DVD player, Bose surround set-up) since Ivan trashed their house and had it all sitting there looking nice, but none of it was hooked up. I got it all up and running and scored some serious brownie points with them.

Speaking of the in-laws, I’ve finally just come to the conclusion that we’re complete opposites. For real. I’m sure you’re familiar with opposites:

- Hot/Cold
- Up/Down
- Big/Little

Well, add Gonch/In-Laws to that list.

Seriously. Every last thing about human existence on Earth is different. General approach to life, things that are important, personal views, ideas, opinions, likes, dislikes – we’re fucking polar opposites.

But they’re nice enough people for the most part and they mean well, so life is what it is. Everyone does their thing and that’s all we can expect, I suppose. (which is just a nice way of saying, “Everyone has the right to suck if they want”)

But after 5 mind-numbing days we’re finally getting the hell out. Here’s to another 6 year hiatus before we get around to coming back.