Cajun Vacation

So to recap the Thanksgiving vacation.

Dori and I had fun in Louisiana even though we didn’t want to leave Fort Worth because we have a ton of work to catch up on. We mostly hung out with Dori’s Dad and her extended family. It was crazy having that many people over for Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving I helped out around the house and around the 20 acres of land they own about 3 miles from the house. Mr. Boone bought the land a year ago and has completely transformed it. The place is pretty incredible when you consider that less than a year ago it was covered with trees and 8 ft. tall grass. He cleared the land, leveled it off, installed a huge barn, fenced the entire thing with electric fence, and is just yesterday finished up a 1 acre pond. He has a little farm going on out there complete with goats, chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, horses, donkeys, cows…….well you get the point.

In the course of the week I visited and passed through several interesting places. It seems towns in Louisiana are very concerned with having a distinct city.....I mean corp identity. For the people from the other 49 states, Louisiana calls counties parishes and doesn't have city limits, but instead has "Corp" limit. Some of the more interesting cities I visited where Jennings, "The Cradle of Louisiana Oil", Rayne"The Frog Capital of the World", Crowley "The Rice Capital of America", and Gueydan "The Duck Capital of America".

All in all a great time even though I found running tough down around Lafayette, La. The weather is fine, but there wasn't as much sidewalk coverage as in DFW. The area is less populated so speed limits are not really enforced. It was disconcerting to be buzzed by cars going 70 mph on some backroad near the Boone house. I restricted my mileage because of fear for my life on the local roads. No shoulder, plus no sidewalk, plus no speed limits, is a little to risky for even me. I will have to make up some mileage this week back at home.

Black Friday

Ok, here comes a long blog update.

The day after Thanksgiving started off the same way it did last year, with a crazy Black Friday experience. Dori has decided that she wanted a new MP3 player for Christmas. After a lot of research and convincing by me that the Ipod is overpriced and restrictive she decided to go with the Creative Zen Micro Photo. It was on sale at Circuit City for $129.

So we woke up and left Dori’s Dad’s house at 2:30 a.m. and got to the store about 3. By the time we arrived the parking lot was filling up and we found ourselves about 90^th in line. We weren’t really worried about being so far back because the first 100 or so people are always there to get big ticket items like computers and Televisions. The problem is that the stores usually only have at most 15 of each item which are snapped up by the first 50 or so people in line.

By the time the doors opened at 5 the line had swelled to around 400 people. Everyone rushed in and quickly clogged up the computer and TV sections, but the MP3 player section was relatively quiet. After grabbing the player Dori and I ran around the store and picked up some great deals on work related items. By this time all of the line was starting to empty into the store so it was becoming crazy. By the time we finished and hopped in line to check out I was having to hold the shopping basket over my head to maneuver through the crowd. All in all we spent a ton of money at the store, but after we send in the 30+ rebates that we have to file it will be chump change. It took the receipt printer 5 minutes just to print out all of the rebate slips we will need.

After the store we got back to the house around 7 a.m. and went back to sleep for a little bit before the rest of Dori’s family woke up.

Well Dori and I arrived in Lafayette, LA for Thanksgiving. We got here Wednesday evening after about a 6hr drive. Dori's brother rode with us, but he slept the entire time except for the 15 minutes when we ate or stopped for the bathroom. The impressive part was that he went to bed relatively early that night. Oh, to be a teenager again.

We had 80+ people over at Dori's Dad's house yesterday for Turkey Day. Quite a lot of people, but we started cooking at 11:00 the night before so we had enough food for everyone. Quite an experience cooking for 12 hours straight. This is hands down the largest Thanksgiving get together I have ever been too. At my house we usually have about 25 people at most. I guess this is my welcome to Cajun Country.

Today started off with a 2:00 am trip to Circuit City for the Black Friday deals, but I will have to comment on this and the rest of the day tomorrow. Later.

Back to the Blog.

Well, I am going to start of this blog again and I have committed to staying current with it so here goes.

Dori and I just got back from a wonderful trip to San Diego. We stayed with my 91yr old Great Grandfather who is still going strong out on the West Coast. It must be the weather and the Italian bloodline that keep him running around. I am counting on having the same longevity. We left Friday morning at 9:00 am and landed in San Diego at 10:00 am. The 2 hr time difference causes the flying time to only have a 1hr impact on my day although it wipes out the day when we are flying back to Texas.

During the weekend we caught up with Grandpa, visited the beach a couple of times, I ran 12 miles on Coronado Island while Dori followed on a bike, visited the Tide Pools at Cabrillo National Monument, and ate more in 3 days than we have in the past week combined. Italians have this thing about eating well and making sure that no one ever goes hungry. I am going to spend the next week trying to run off all the extra calories I consumed.

So my biggest current goal in life is to run with Dean Karnazes. I missed him when he came through town for the Endurance 50 because I had a test in Real Estate Law, and he ran the Ultracentric National Championships in Grapevine last weekend while I was in San Diego. So it looks like I will have to go and find him while he is running home from New York to Los Angeles. GandaMan went and ran with him at the Ultracentric. Go and read his blog post when you get the chance.