Phew. What a weekend. Friday I was dead tired. My ass was really dragging. I got home from work, plugged in my PSP and connected it to my computer. I wanted to download some shows to it to watch on the airplane and it takes a long time and runs the batteries down pretty quick. The power light was green. I queued up the shows I was going to convert using PSP9 and fell asleep. Hard. I woke up to go to the powder room around 9:30pm and noticed that the green light was flashing. In my state I took that as “battery is fully charged now” and went back to bed, leaving the PSP plugged in. I slept through the night, and woke up around 5:00 AM Saturday morning. Assuming the videos had finished converting, I wanted to start the download to the device before I got in the shower, because it still takes a few minutes to download nearly 1gb of data via USB2.0. The PSP was dark, so I slid the switch to on. Nothing happened. It was still plugged into the charger. I disconnected it from the charger, tried again. I removed the battery and re-seated it and tried again. still nothing. I removed the battery and plugged it into the charger and still nothing. Crestfallen, I figured that I overcharged and/or killed my PSP. I put it in my suitcase anyway, along with the receipt. Maybe the superstars at the Doral Circuit City could help out in some way.

Hopping out of the shower, shaving, making myself pretty for non-rev travel, I made sure all the things I would need for the weekend (toothbrush, deodorant, shaving kit, hair gel, toothpaste) were in order, along with underwear & socks, a spare t-shirt, a pair of shorts and a pair of swim trunks (ya never know when you'll need em) and made sure to grab my passport, unlike the last time I had to go and had to make a mad dash back to the house to get it when halfway to the airport. Everything's in order, but where are the tickets?

Not on my dresser where my passport was, not on my desk where I sat down for a couple minutes when I got in last night before passing out around 6PM. Not in the car on the passenger seat. I was SURE I left the office with them in my hands the night before, but because I was so tired, I just couldn't remember. I decided to wing it without the tickets and left for the airport. I picked up Matty, we hit the airport and found out that they were E-tickets, so the receipts really weren't neccesary. Phew. Off we went to Miami.

Unlike February when I went up, I was through Immigration in about ten minutes (compared to the 3 hours and 20 minutes last time) although I DID still manage to pick the slowest line. We picked up our car ($15/day from Avis via Priceline.com) and nearly started off the weekend with a bang: I made a left out of the rental car lot into oncoming traffic. Oh, yeah, now I remember, they drive on the RIGHT in Miami! After that we were off and running. First stop: Cobb Theatre at the Dolphin Mall for Star Wars Episode 3. No spoilers here, but man I thought it was a great show. Tied up all the loose ends, some almost forced, some downright funny, and once again R2D2 is a total scene stealer. Love that little guy... I'm going to have to go looking for a download of $g(“Beneath the Dome”) next weekend.

We finished the movie and then hit the mall looking for something for Matty to wear to his beach wedding next week. We looked around, stopped in at a few places and in the end got an olive-colored pair of chinese pyjamas for the bottoms, and a pirate shirt from an Indian imports place for the top. I picked up a few shirts at Nautica and then we were off to Circuit City.

Helped Matty find what he was looking for, and went looking for my video card. They didn't have it in stock, I'm starting to think that I'm going to have to order it via mail-order and have someone pick it up from the office in Miami next time they're up. After that I went to see what could be done about my PSP. Since I bought it nearly two months ago, it was under Sony's warranty, not anything that Circuit City could or would do about it. The girl suggested I try buying another battery, see if my battery was toast, or if it was the charger, or if the unit itself was toast. If a new battery didn't help, then I could return it. I got the battery (plus a Mad Catz USB sync/charger cable for it.. one less wall wart adapter to carry around now) and it worked! She suggested I contact Sony anyway and have them replace my defective battery since it was still under warranty, but for now I had a working battery and a USB charger, and eventually I'd have two batteries good for seven hours of playing games/watching videos.

It was getting to be late afternoon by then, and we were a bit peckish, so we stopped into Rotten Ronnie's for a snack. There's NOTHING like McDonald's french fries. The new chicken fingers were pretty good, too. The Buffalo sauce was nice and hot, but not too hot. After that we headed north for Ft Lauderdale. My friend Shannon offered to put us up for the night, and said to turn east on Broward Boulevard when we exited off of I95. I turned left. Once we got to Plantation, Florida, I called her and said “I think we went too far” and she said “Plantation? That's WEST of here, did you turn left or right off the interstate?” “Well we were going north, so I turned left, east.” “uhm, no, you frickin dumbass, that's WEST”. We turned around and ten minutes later we found her place. Bella (her dalmation) had been playing all day and was really tired, so she came up and sniffed us and got petted a bit and then went and curled up and basically dozed all night. We had a couple drinks with Shannon and her roommate, and then everyone crashed because it was a long day.

Sunday morning we got up around 9:30 and Bella, who had slept all night long was up and about and FULL of energy again. Then the neighbour dog, Trini (short for Trinity, I'm assuming because she has only three legs) came over and they played HARD and got lots of pets from us. We all went out for breakfast to Lester's diner on SR84. If you're ever in Ft Lauderdale, you gotta try this place out. Make sure you save room for dessert, it's one of those places that has a whole rotating case of huge pies and cakes that they make themselves. We hit Aventura Mall after saying goodbye to the girls as Matty wanted to check out a few more jewellery stores for a ring, but he couldn't find anything he liked. Next stop: World Watersports and Outdoor World in Dania Beach. Big toy store for big boys. Two and a half hours later, we headed south from Aventura and checked into the old Amerisuites in Blue Lagoon. It's called something else now, Not Summerfield Suites, but S-something Suites, and they gave me the old rate, which was cool. We consolidated our purchases and then got back in the car and headed south once more, to Key Largo and a meetup with Cajun Dave, one of our Fallen Soto's Compadres.

Note to self: next time take the turnpike. It took us an hour and forty-five minutes to get down to Mile Marker 95 in Key Largo on US1. Dave told us to look for a restaurant called Snappers, and then in behind it, out on the end of the dock is a saloon called the Turtle Club. I REALLY had to go to the bathroom at this point, and we pulled into the parking lot to find it full! Matty noticed a second parking lot across the street for trucks with boat trailers, so we pulled in over there. Just as we were parking I thought I saw someone I recognized... No, it can't be. She's in South Carolina, and we're in Key Largo... sure enough, it was Lucy from Columbia Scuba! Columbia Scuba was a longtime participant in Cayman Madness, a program I used to run at Soto's back in the day. I honked at her and stopped the car and jumped out and she had this “that LOOKS like Mark from Cayman, but.. this guy is blonde... and I'm in Key Largo, not Cayman...” look on her face which quickly gave way to shock when she realized it WAS me. She was down with a group of divers from South Carolina, who road-tripped down to the keys for a weekend of diving and just happened to pick the same restaurant as us at the same time as us. Never mind the internet, SCUBA DIVING is making this world smaller and smaller.

Dave & Jamie showed up around 10:00 after dinner with his folks who had flown in the previous day, while Matty and I had peel n eat shrimp (soooo good, and Im not even a big seafood eater) and then I had the fish sammich (blackened dolfin, or mahi-mahi). We caught up with them for a bit, and then Lucy & her crew came and joined us for a bit when they had finished their dinner and then we started the trek back to Miami at around 11:00. This time I opted for the turnpike right out of Homestead and we were back to the hotel room in one hour and ten minutes.

An uneventful morning, I went from the airport in Cayman right to work and then home at 5:00 where I checked on my PSP again, and made a fateful discovery. When the PSP is plugged into the charger, it's LED glows ORANGE to signify charging. I followed the charger to my UPS and realized that I HAD UNPLUGGED IT last week sometime to plug something else in, and then never replaced the plug. So what I had on my hands was a dead-as-a-doornail battery, and no juice on the charger because it wasn't plugged in. Duh. I felt like a compleat ass at that one. At least I have two batteries now.

The only thing on the agenda for tonight was the 2-hour season finale of 24 on Fox. I came home, cleaned up the apartment (I dunno how it happens, but everytime I leave for a day or two, it looks like a hurricane went through here) and planned out some dinner and timed it so I could sit down at 8:00 and have dessert and watch the show. What I DIDN'T realize, my second big fat dumb mistake of the day, was that we're on EASTERN STANDARD TIME, not EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME, so 24 was on from SEVEN to NINE instead of EIGHT to TEN. D'oh! Thank goodness for Bit Torrent, I'll be able to watch the full thing tomorrow night.