An Amazing Week

I haven't had Internet access until now -- except by blogging photos from the cell phone.

But other than that single snafu, this has been an amazing week. I've met some wonderful people, and I just happen to be related to them all.

My sister Amy and husband Brice are great people, and their four children -- Kenny, Abby, Melissa and Grace -- are wonderful kids who each are independent thinkers and pretty darned smart.

We've all spent quite a bit of time together, going to places like Boomers (a family fun center), Universal Hollywood, the pier at Surf City USA -- a/k/a Huntington Beach -- and just out and about around town.

Catherine, I, Melissa and Grace drove out to Riverside the other day to meet my brother Dan and his daughter Hannah. Dan lives in the city but just far enough out that his neighbor has goats in the backyard. He has lots of room on his lot. And (shhh, don't tell anyone) he has a roller rink in front of his garage. Ask me about this later.

Dan is a great guy and I hope to get to know him better through the coming years. As with Amy, we have a lot of time to make up.


Hannah is a wonderful young lady. When we first met, she was dazed and confused due to exhaustion from a Girl Scout camping trip and then a night at her friend's house. Too pooped to pop is how my Mom used to put it. But once she woke up, she warmed up very quickly. She and Melissa -- who prefers the name Missy -- spend the night in our hotel room and they conked out there pretty fast. But no bother, as the next morning was our trip to Universal.

The weekend is booked but I hope to meet up with my sister Tracy and her two kids next week. I will call her to set up a time and report back here.

I can't begin to describe how hot it is out here. Once you drift inland from the coast even just a couple of miles it is uncomfortable. Unless you're in the shade. Then it's bearable. Barely. At Universal Hollywood, the temps had to be in the low triple-digits. It was hot. Scorching hot. Central Florida is by no means chilly, but the heat is different. This is a "dry heat." It's very, very hot, but not in the shade. In Florida, it's just plain hot and humid.

It was so hot at Universal that the kids had to play in the Curious George water playground to stay cool and comfy. They had a blast there. We did, too, by watching them play.

Catherine and I shift hotels from the Hilton to the Double Tree, but just for a night. Sunday night and Monday night we'll be in Vegas, and then Tuesday through our departure we'll be at the Double Tree in Anaheim.

Speaking of hotels and accommodations. Here's my ranting review of the Hilton across from the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif.:

It's pretty darned mediocre. The room's nothing to write home about. Very plain Jane, vanilla, dull, same-old-same-old. The staff is sub-satisfactory and very much less than accommodating. They charge $16 a night to park. Yes. Really. The breakfast buffet costs nearly $20 a person and wasn't that impressive to look at so we didn't choose to buy.

The pool and spa were bright spots, but the fitness center, even with its nice, shiny, new machines, lacks some major basics. The business center is well equipped, but why the heck would you use it for 60 cents a minute? What a load of crap. Oh, speaking of which, they also charge $10 a day for high-speed internet, or $6.99 an hour if you chose to connect in the lobby. (Funny thing is, that's why I didn't hook up to the Internet until now. And I hooked up by finding the hotel-guest signal from my room -- for the hotel next door. It does not charge!)

So, shame on Hilton, in a big way.

But if that was a bad review, watch out Spirit Airlines. Spirit, in a word, sucks. If you have a choice between Spirit and any other airline, choose the other carrier. Yes, Spirit has leather seats. But they cover the most uncomfortable plastic and metal objects one can imagine using as airline seats. My back ached the entire flight.

Also on the entire flight, the flight attendants INTENTIONALLY turned the temperature up to a point where even I, as in I, the person who hates room temperatures too cold, was way too hot. I had to ding and ding the attendants throughout the flight because it was so uncomfortable. And it wasn't due to any mechanical problems, just that they set it up high.

But the biggest kick -- aside from the $20 fee for baggage -- was they don't have ANY entertainment, even for a fee. They claim to keep fares low (NOT!) by allowing their passengers to bring their own entertainment devices. What a bunch of B.S. That's just their way of saying we were too cheap to buy minor upgrades to our new Airbus A-319 aircraft. Even low-cost carriers JetBlue and AirTran offer more -- and more comfortable seats, to boot.

So in summary: Great family, cheap hotel, crappy airline.