E’s job at The Very Nice Restaurant affords him a certain number of perks, including free nights and major discounts on food and services at several Very Nice Hotel chains, including the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, and some others all over the world.

On the advice of several of his coworkers, we went here:

Let’s get something out in the open right now. My family grew up going on camping trips for vacations. I’m totally good in a tent with a sleeping bag and eating food that’s been cooked over a fire or on a little camp stove. So, try and imagine my eyeballs when I saw that we got to stay here:

Here’s our hotel, smack in the middle of this beachside lineup.

Suffice to say, I felt a little country-come-to-town wandering around that place. I was constantly asking E who I was supposed to tip (anyone who arranges things for you or gives you something you asked for) and who I was not to worry about tipping (anyone who brings you something you didn’t ask for, or anyone who assists you while you are in a bathing suit and obviously do not have money).

I took advantage of the free steam room and the seven-headed shower in the spa, enjoyed the complimentary L’Occitane bath goodies every day, and got an amazing pedicure. We had one meal at the restaurant and one meal with room service just because we were feeling lazy. But beyond that, we really skipped out on all of the fuss and were just our normal, beer-and-burger kind of selves.

Except the Bud Light was $7 per bottle and the burger was made of grass-fed, free-range, pilates-doing, inner-peace-having cow, and cost $18. Plus tips.

Seriously? We actually stopped at the grocery store before we got to the hotel and loaded up on bread, cheese, lunchmeat, hot dogs, yogurt, fruit, beer, soda, and chips. We even brought the mini George Foreman grill down there with us so we could make hot sandwiches in the room. Even at the Four Seasons, and even with 50% off at their restaurant, we’re still cheap.

There were red flags on the beach much of the time, but we had some beautiful sunshine, enough for good walks and a 20-mile bike ride down the island.

This pier was about a ten-minute walk down the beach from our hotel, and it goes out to where the water is about 40 or 50 feet deep. We saw  a school flying fish being chased by barracudas – tricky to photograph, but so gorgeous. Here’s my attempted shot of the flying fish – look in the lower left of the picture.

The Four Seasons is on an island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intercoastal Waterway. We had to go over a drawbridge to get pretty much anywhere, and for some sort of growing-up-landlocked reason, this totally thrilled me.

The ocean side was full of hotels, and the waterway side was lined with huge homes – some probably bigger than the hotel – where the supa-rich docked their supa-expensive boats.

It can be an expensive town. Even the taxis are Lincolns and Cadillacs. No, not just the Four Seasons club car. I mean the TAXI you wave down on the street. And even it has complimentary candies and bottled water.

We took a day to go deep-sea fishing, and although it started out kind of gray-ish, it ended up sunny and perfect (minus the first hour, in which I was uncomfortably – but not barfy – seasick). Here’s our little boat:

And here is E reeling in a freaking 7-foot sailfish.

Flickr Video

That was completely amazing. We ended up letting the fish go (as you can see) because we weren’t going to eat it, sell it, or mount it. That pinkish thing in its mouth is actually the fish’s stomach! Sailfish, I kid you not, will spit up their own stomachs to rid themselves of a hook if they can, and then gulp it back down once freed.

There’s your trivia for the day.

(And no, I didn’t catch anything.)

Aside from the bike ride and the fishing, we really spent most of the time just wandering the shore searching for coral and shells, laying around by the pool if it was nice or in our room if it was not. We only did one night out on the town and it was okay, but we chose to spend our last night in Palm Beach eating a delivery pizza  and watching movies instead of going back across the drawbridge.

It was just better that way.

Neither one of us could get more than two bars of cell service while we were on the island. I didn’t even get to read my guest bloggers’ posts until Saturday because we chose not to pay extra for wifi in the room. Although it was pretty frustrating to feel so disconnected at first, I have to admit that it was kind of sad to look down at my phone at the airport and see all the bars lit up again.

And, in keeping with the frugal nature of our swanky trip, I didn’t buy a single souvenir.

But I think I’ve got the best one right here anyway:

And that was our vacation.

Back in June when I was migrating from “She’s Got Baggage” over to this fine establishment, I wrote a post about how I got the baggage theme going in the first place – namely, about how a certain guy I dated said I had too much baggage and so on.

He was referring to my ex-fiance and Suicidal Rebound Ex.That all happened in 2003. I told him that if he didn’t want baggage he ought to date high-school girls. He was 29 at the time.

I knew through the grapevine that this particular guy got married over the summer. I’ve never met his wife, but I’ve heard she’s lovely, and he absolutely deserves that. And I recently found out that she already had a four year old kid when they met.

HAH!

I think this is great. Love conquers baggage. There is hope for everyone.

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I’m trying some stuff with Feedburner today. If you’re reading this from a blog reader and it showed up as a partial feed, please comment and let me know! The goal is to get rid of that. And if it showed up as a full feed in your reader, please let me know that too. Please include the type of reader you’re using.

Thanks and love!

When I was 22, I broke off my engagement 3 months before I was to have gotten married. He was a wonderful guy, but it just wasn’t right. Took me awhile to figure that out, but it’s better than getting divorced, I say.

So I re-entered the dating world in the summer of 2003, fresh out of a long-term relationship with a very conservative man who didn’t like me to have male friends or short skirts. I was free, free! I wanted male friends and boyfriends and short skirts were the way to get them!

After my first post-engagement boyfriend threatened to commit suicide when I broke up with him, I sought refuge in the arms of The Next Guy, a very handsome Indian doctor with a sophisticated lifestyle and a Very Important Job as a surgeon. We went to trendy restaurants and bars, and I spent way too much money buying trendy clothes in a desperate attempt to blend in. What this fellow saw in me and my Gap-based wardrobe was beyond me. We didn’t have any major sparks, but Next Guy was fun to hang out with and a lot more low-maintenance than Suicidal Rebound Ex. Plus, he taught me how to shop.

Suicidal Rebound Ex was still on my case, though, and I made the mistake of saying something about it to Next Guy. A few days later, he told me he didn’t think we should date anymore.

“It’s just kind of hard to deal with the baggage thing,” he sighed.

“What ‘baggage thing?’” I asked.

“The ex-fiance, the crazy suicidal guy, I don’t know…”

“You’re almost thirty years old,” I pointed out. “Everyone has exes by now. You’ll have to go back to high school girls if that’s too much baggage for you.”

“Still. Yours just seems really complicated. I like things to be simple, and there’s just a lot to deal with here. I just want to have fun.”

I didn’t pursue the conversation further. Next Guy and I still ended up being good friends for awhile and it was just as well that we didn’t date, since it turned out that he did have a thing for high school girls… or at least girls dressed up as high school girls in the “Barely Legal” variety of p-o-r-n.

But what he said stuck. Was my stuff really baggage? Until then I’d just thought of those things as life. Experiences. Things that happen to people, things we deal with, things we leave behind. Maybe he had a point, I considered. Maybe I wasn’t good at letting go. Maybe I’d been scarred for life. Maybe, I thought, my life at 22 had already encompassed enough emotional highs and lows that I had become unappealing to others.

At 27, I named this blog “She’s Got Baggage” because last summer, I thought I’d gathered enough that I could try and make a joke out of it. Ex-boyfriends were baggage. Certain health issues were baggage. Navy, Fireman, Copper and Captain* were baggage. Tim was a freaking steamer trunk. I had to make fun of the fact that I honestly felt like I was doomed.

And now?

Things are actually pretty great. Light. As though everything I thought was awful about my past experiences has actually pushed me in the right direction. Maybe it’s because I’ve learned a few things and let go of a few others.

Even if it has irrevocably changed you for better or worse, is it still baggage if you’ve learned something and moved on?

Sometimes I stare at my blog header and wonder what I was thinking. Because really… DO I?

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* See June – September 2008

I’ve been swamped lately… pun intended, because the crazy rain around here has seeped back into my basement and I am once again smashing concrete patches into the walls in a desperate attempt to dry things out before I put my house on the market.

And that’s the other reason why I’m swamped! It’s time to move! Moving may be one of my least favorite things to do, yet I do it so often. But a quick look at the old bank account (and credit card statements) has convinced me that it’s just not a good idea to hold onto all this space for just little me. It’s not an investment if you can’t afford Spaghetti-Os.** I can get a 2-bedroom apartment for less than the price of this 2-bedroom house, plus I get relieved of such onerous tasks as mowing the lawn, cleaning the gutters, and patching the damn basement walls. I also save money on things like sewer and trash and water service (always included in rent) and utilities, since it’s cheaper to heat and cool less space. The most awesome bit will be not having to sock away money every month JUST IN CASE the old air conditioner finally gives out. I sooo hate having major home repairs hanging over my head.

My house is in good shape and it’s pretty. I have nice taste in decorating and have updated both the kitchen and bath since I moved in. The whole first floor has new-ish paint and lovely hardwood floors. But I still have to put a few hundred dollars’ worth of work into it before it goes on the market – MAY 26TH! So soon! I’ve been laying vinyl tile in the basement (waterproof is a good idea here), fixing drywall (ruined by rain drips), painting basement bonus rooms (which I never painted because I only ever used them for storage) and doing little things like planting flowers, replacing floor thresholds, quarter-round strips, and light switch plates.

This is all worth it because if I can sell it for the price my agent recommends, I can pay her commission and all my credit card debt and some of my student loan debt AND have a little saving fund money left over when all is said and done. God, a clean slate would be SO. NICE. No more debt to pay each month, no more extra bills each month, less rent, no more yardwork… wowza. Give me off-street parking at the apartment and put a remote-start in the car and I’ll be just fine.

The other bonus – which had BETTER HAPPEN IF HE WANTS TO LIVE LONG – is possibly living with E in the new place. His apartment now is a little one-bedroom shotgun and he’s got it quite full. I really do want to find the new place in his neighborhood because I lurve it there, and if we find a place together – HALF the rent. HALF the utilities. My shopping nerves are tickling even now. Juicy Couture jeans, I have missed you.

E is a little weird when we talk about it though, which I seriously do not understand. Why would he be up for us living together in Vegas and not here? What’s the difference? We’ve both lived alone for years and we like our space, but splitting the rent we can afford a bigger place so we can have a little room to move. We work opposite schedules so it’s not like I’d be sitting around saying “whatcha doing?” and bugging him all day.

It’s a big change, I know. It’s one that I’m ready to make. I don’t have a clue how long it will take the house to sell so it’s not like I need to rush the conversation, but seriously? I don’t get the reluctance to talk about it. Why would we do this somewhere else but not here? Obviously I don’t want to push him into anything (well, not TOO hard anyway), but really, if we live in the same neighborhood, we both know we’ll be at each other’s houses so much that one of us is basically paying rent on a closet.

Any assistance in the moving-in-together-conversation or fixing-the-house arenas is most welcome.

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** Yes, I know. Credit card = my fault. So it’s Spaghetti-Os till I pay it off. And how will I do that? Keep reading.

The happy fun of going to the  Cubs-Cards game yesterday (7-3,go Cubs go!) was tempered by a migraine and a very drunk boyfriend that I was about to punch in the head. It drives me nuts sometimes – he is normally such a sweet and considerate guy. He worries about me and takes care of me when I’m sick. But yesterday, good lord. Some sort of E-replacing, beer-based demon ate his brain, and that was NOT what I wanted to deal with when I was stuck at his house, unable to drive myself home or even sleep because I was in so much pain.

I woke up this morning, still woozy from the supa-strength narcotic pain meds, in a snuggly cuddle with a snoring boyfriend whose first slurry words were “I love you so much” when I rolled over and woke him.

Anyway, on to a different thing that might put you off your appetite instead.

I was reviewing some OR instrumentation today. Some of these names make about as much sense as the names on OPI nail polish. Maybe less. You could guess that “In the Navy” is dark blue and “Canta-berry Tales” is probably some shade of dark red, but put your imagination to use on these…

Brain Spoon?

Big Ugly?

BEAVER RETRACTOR???