32 Hours, 997 Miles

We made a quick trip to Tampa to pick up Brother Lou. !6 hours of driving, 7 hours of sleep and 9 hours of visiting with Kathy and Joe. Kathy fixed a wonderful grouper dinner on Thursday night when we arrived. The visit with them was much too short.

The drive was uneventful both ways. There was unusually heavy traffic (for me at least) for the full length of I-75nheading North today. I had to concentrate on my driving and that type of driving wears on you much more rapidly. Added to the traffic was the fact that we had to stop every 40 – 50 minutes for Lou to have a potty break. He explained that his 64 year old bladder demanded that schedule. So we were able to walk around and stretch a lot on this trip and my back didn’t really have the opportunity to stiffen up.

There were a good number of motor homes on the road, too. They managed to mess up the traffic flow on both the 2-lane and 3-lane sections of the interstate. There are just too many people out there with too much money and too little brains. Of course, if I owned one of those monsters I’d probably have a different viewpoint – but I know I would drive the thing correctly and be considerate of my place in traffic flow.

We arrived home to find that our house was without power. A squirrel had inadvertently provided his body to short circuit the fuse from the power pole to the house. So we had no power and a roasted squirrel. I called Gulf power—an interesting call in that I only talked to a machine. Their system is good. Shortly after the automated system took my report of power out I received a call from a real person who obtained the details and said he was on his way. We headed out to Chik-Filet for dinner and when we returned the power was on. The power wasn’t out long enough for us to lose the food in the fridge so the squirrel decided to go to squirrly heaven only a few hours before we arrived at home.

We introduced Lou to Sonny’s Barbeque and Chik-Filet today. Tomorrow morning we will drag him along on our usual run to Waffle House, Lowe’s and grocery shopping. Last week Diane at Waffle House met Christy and Christian. This week it will be Lou. Heck, before too long we will probably be spending holidays with her.

Kitty Update—3 of the 5 kitties have shown up so far tonight. That’s not bad considering we were only gone one night. Brie is taking her time getting used to Lou being in the house. I think she will warm up to him by the time his 2-week stay is over.