myJason.com

Jason's Blog

Today we intended to wake up bright and early to watch the sunrise on the beach. That obviously didn’t happen. We woke up around noon again, and went to McDonalds to eat (again). Afterwards we walked back to our hotel on 22nd and collins and changed into our swimming suits. Our hotel is just a block and a half from the beach, so it only takes a few minutes to get there. Not having a car hasn’t been a big deal, we have made great use of our legs and the public transportation system.

We pretty must just hung out at the beach until it started to rain, then we headed back and change again, then walked to mcDonalds again to eat. We honestly need to find some variety. Afterwards we walked down a

different street, Washington. Down there are more options for us to eat, too bad we didn’t discover them sooner. Tomorrow we plan on waking up early enough to get breakfast so we can stop eating double bacon cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets.

This evening it was obvious that it was Friday night. Everywhere we went there were limos or shuttles unloading party-ers onto the streets. It is definitely black beach week as they call it. Rap music and fancy cars everywhere. I saw a couple Bentleys and Lamborghinis.

Tomorrow we depart on the Carnival Truimph for a 8 day cruise. We will be back on Sunday June 1st. I am pretty certain we will not have internet access because it is so expensive. Tonight I booked a deal on Expedia.com for the Catalina hotel just a few blocks from here. It was a steal at $53.00 a night plus $30 off coupon plus $50 mastercard by mail. Compare that to our hotel which I payed just over a hundred a night, and they quoted me $155 if we wanted to come back.

Its one AM here now, I don’t have a lot of time to blog since we are going to bed now. Nessa and K will be departing on their flight in about an hour. We are going to meet them at the port of Miami. I’ve got the bus schedule that should take us right there. We are taking the S bus for 24 minutes from Collins to N America Way. Wish us luck. We will try to take tons of pictures. Love ya -Jason and Mandy.

Image via WikipediaThis past Sunday was busy enough for us. We both had to work starting at noon. So knowing that we didn’t have much time to do stuff with families other than stop by and say hello, I ordered flowers online for Saturday delivery. I saw a really good deal online at slickdeals for only $20 you get lillies DELIVERED! I couldn’t believe that included delivery on a Saturday. Lilies are pretty nice also for Mother’s Day and included a free vase. How could I go wrong. Well a week went by and it looked like everything was good to go. My mother and Mandy’s mother should both get something with a little message from Us the day before Mother’s Day.

Of course it wasn’t that easy. The day BEFORE the flowers were to be delivered I got an email saying my mother’s order had been canceled as there was no available florist in the area on that day. Are you kidding me! Did you not know this when I was placing my ‘electronic’ order online?!?! So I replied to the email and expressed my extreme displeasure that it took them 6 days to inform me of this minor detail.

Saturday Phyllis did get her flowers and they looked really nice. The greeting was cut off, so it looked like they only came from me and not both of us. Oh well, she knew they did. My mother however got nothing from the order I placed. We had to rush to 2 different stores to find something, anything worthy of my mother. We did find a really cool plant after deciding that flowers just die and she might appreciate this more.

To give you an update, today I got an email with a $20 online gift card to apologize for canceling my Mother’s Day order. If they had not done this, I honestly would still hold a grudge against them. Instead I will have to remember stuff like this happens and online orders aren’t reliable even for Mother’s Day.

Image via WikipediaA week ago my wife and I traveled to St. George UT for a quick one day vacation with our sister-in-law Chris and her family. We stopped by the new IN-N-OUT Burger there which has only been open for 2 weeks. There was a line out the door and the drive thru line was about 30 cars deep. We opted to go inside and order which was a wise move as they were really quick to get us through the line. I think we only waited like 15 minutes total till we had our food. It was excellent. I haven’t had their food for 3+ years, but it was every bit as good as I remember. We ordered just the regular double double and Mandy got a chocolate shake. It was cheap and really good. I had only wished that we had gone there again that night instead of the nasty expensive pizza buffet place which shall not be named. I cannot wait until there is an IN-N-OUT here in Utah County!

As a side note, we did not see a bus in the drive thru. Apparently this only happens here.

Wednesday April 16th 2008 is going to be our 5 year anniversary. I can’t believe its been 5 years already! Mandy and I have known each other for 7 years and somehow we are complete opposites that mesh together so well. She is random, exciting, cute, rambunctious, petite, emotional, I could go on and on. Basically I’m the exact opposite of everything mentioned.

Five years ago we got married and traveled to Florida for a 7 day cruise and 7 days in her parents timeshare. It was a nice break for us, we enjoyed not having to do anything for 2 weeks!

In the past years we have been so busy going to school and working full time that we haven’t gone anywhere or done anything for our anniversaries and even sometimes birthdays. 5 years though! This has to be special. As I planned this, Mandy had no idea. If anything, she thought it is going to be the same old stuff — I hoped she wasn’t scheming something at the same time, it would have been bad.

I have already booked plane tickets and the 9 day cruise for us to Florida and the Eastern Caribbean. For almost a month now I have been playing it as though we are broke and don’t really have money to do anything. Which now that I have bought the tickets, is true

We are going to go with Nessa and Korban on the cruise, they invited us a while back but I didn’t know if we would have time or money to join them. Things I do are usually not planned out in advance, I live day to day. We plan to go do some excursions as a group which is going to be a blast. Luminescent kayaking is one thing I have already paid for. I also got Mandy a nice digital camera so that we can take tons of pictures and hopefully add a photo gallery so everyone can see what we did.

I will add more information as we get closer and of course during or after our vacation.

Mandy, Vanessa and Chris all went to the annual Holi Festival of Color on Saturday, here in Spanish Fork. Here at the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple, over ten thousand people joined in and clouded the air with 20,000 packets of colored powder. People parked on the highway as far as two miles away. They came back completely covered in many different colors of fine powder. Anything they leaned against or shook over became the same color as they were. Even my garage floor has remnants of the powder which changed Chris’ hair color. In the end, everyone was relieved that the powder came off nearly as easily as it fell on them. A quick shower and dusting off of clothes and you could barely tell they were involved in the chaos. The scene was, well here’s the video:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5yVeKkhvKk