Well! Where to begin? The airport in Cayman was a circus. A complete circus. There were extra flights to Jamaica starting already, and let me tell you something, those passengers DID NOT pack light. I would hazard a guess and say that every person had a carry-on, a personal item, a suitcase, a big rolling duffel bag and two cardboard boxes. Each.

I had this awful feeling that I forgot something, and then reconciled myself to the fact that whatever it was I could do without (I actually thought it might be the charger for my MP3 player, but I found that in the bottom of my laptop bag later) so I don't know what it was, now.

Made it through customs in Miami and caught the shuttle to the hotel, and Shannon was already there waiting for me. I dropped off my bags, and we jumped in her convertible (with the top up because it was like, 70f or something) and headed down to South Beach. We parked (found a sweet spot right on Ocean Drive) and walked around looking at the buildings and the people and listening to the bands and the people. I heard this flamenco guitar coming from one restaurant, and it was the Gipsy Kings. I thought “man those speakers are LOUD and CLEAR” but then saw that it was actually a band playing on a stage on the far side of the pool. I stopped and listened to them, because they sounded SO MUCh like The Gipsy Kings that it was uncanny. We wandered around for a bit and then came back to the place where the Gipsy Kings-sounding guys were playing and got a table. Turns out the place was called Oceans 10. It ALSO turned out that the band ACTUALLY WAS the Gipsy Kings! (some of them anyway) and they had this flamenco dancer that would come out on stage and dance around in her big clunky shit-kicker flamenco shoes and drown out the drums when she was stomping away. Way cool.

The next morning I hopped the flight to Toronto. It must have been about 60f in Miami that morning. Couldn't quite see your breath, but still cold for me (and the people in Miami) There were some people from Cleveland standing around the lobby in shorts and t-shirts. Must have been tropical for them. I checked in and got through security in like four minutes, so I played blackjack on my laptop while waiting for the flight.

I got on the plane and as soon as we took off and they turned the seatbelt sign off, the jackass in front of me starts bodychecking the seat to make it go down, smashing the seat into my knees, knocking over my drink, and generally being a jerk. I said “Whoops... hey, man. can ya take it easy a little? you've knocked my drink over” (luckily he didn't spill it on me, or worse, on my laptop or he would have gotten a free skydiving lesson) he did it again, and then he kept doing it! He was worse than a five year old kicking at the seat in front of him, AND he was in the exit row so he had a good six feet of space in front of him. Right before the movie (Cinderella something or other that I wasn't interested in) he started in again, and pushed his seat back so hard that it actually hurt my knee. I leaned forward and asked him if he was going home to his family for xmas, and he said yes. I then told him that they would be really distressed to have a funeral on xmas day because if he hit me with his seat one more time, I was going to strangle him with his headphone cord. He got up and changed seats, and I was half-expecting the airline police to be waiting for me on the jetway and take me back and lock me up with Gaylord (Greg) Focker in airline jail.

Customs in Toronto was worse than I'd ever seen in Miami. People were jammed all the way back to the back wall and as always happens in these situations, I ended up being the last person standing in the customs hall to get checked out. THE LAST PERSON. When I finally got up to the line, there was still one girl ahead of me, and the silly bitch at immigration said “Im going on my coffee break when I finish with this person, you'll have to find another line.” UN-BE-BEEB-ABLE!!

Instead of having a 2.5 hour layover, I had 20 mins to catch my plane... in another terminal. Which meant having to go outside in -20C weather! Got on the plane, and the first good thing to happen that day was they were showing Shark Tale as the movie. The bad news was the two screens within viewing distance on my side of the plane were broken, so I had to watch it ACROSS the aisle, with the b athroom lineup blocking the tv for the most part. Oh well. I got down, got through and Ork was waiting for me outside, so we headed home.

I had to tell The Hurricane Story once I got home, and show some pics and video, and I didn't get to bed til like 12:30am, which of course was 3:30am to my body.

Yesterday was a driving around and looking at toys (future shop) and dinner with the fam, and today will be xmas shopping (i'm going to put on a clinic on how to get in, get your stuff and get out in under an hour and get home alive) and then tonight is the Red Meat Extravaganza (unless I get stood up)

Right. well it's time to make a move, I have to make an extra trip to a different mall for my dad, so Im going to get that out of the way early and be back in time for an XML skull-session lunch. :)