Florida: The '30' Checklist

Just arrived in sunny rainy West Palm Beach! Some good news. A few months ago I "lost" the battery charger to my Canon point and shoot. I scoured my house, car and workspace to no avail. I've been using my SLR or Blackberry cam for the past few months. The SLR is awesome of course but it's not the most convenient to carry around, say, when you're snowboarding. And the Blackberry has a decent cam, but it's still a cell phone.  Welp, when I pulled out a suitcase last night tada camera battery charger right there. I guess I haven't had the charger for about 6 months. It's back, I'm happy, It's in my pocket. And now I can easy document the lofty '30' goals I have for this Florida trip. In an ideal world here's what's gonna get checked off this week...

Twilight - I WILL finish Twilight. I read another 70 or so pages on the plane this afternoon so I'm about halfway through. Tomorrow morning I'll be in the pool or under the palm trees reading. That's right.

Capitals Road Game - Tomorrow, 5 pm, vs Panthers! So excited. Our seats are 9 rows off the glass on the blue line at Bank Atlantic. Last year I went to the final Caps-Panthers game, but a) Ovi was suspended which always makes things a lil less exciting and b) it was mid-March and the Caps had already clinched the SE. I'm way more excited for tomorrow's game. Meaningful and I get to see the newbies for the 1st time. Plus it's Wideman's return. I guess that is something interesting to Panthers fans, if Panthers fans exist...

Cook a turkey - Turkey is in the fridge thawing (thanks, Mom!). The plan is to cook it on Monday night provided it thaws by then. I guess fresh turkeys aren't in season. This will be an adventure. I'm still creeped out by these gizzards I keep hearing about, but maybe this is a gizzard-free turkey. We shall see. I've been working on my poultry handling aversion. I have faith I'll survive this one. 

Be more patient - This was not originally in this week's plans however I think I get to cross it off the list tonight. I love Southwest, I absolutely do, and I had a great flight down here and I'm really not complaining but there was a screaming 2-yr old behind me for most of it. Normally, I would have been really really really irritated and annoyed. However, this more patient me just sat back and relaxed and didn't let it bother me much (helped that my iPod headphones are somewhat noise reducing). I was only a lil irritated. Does this count? 

Learn to drive stick - The likelihood of this happening this week is slim to none, but since none of my friends with stick want to teach me on their cars, I'm exploring alternatives. I considered having my mom take a manual car out for a test drive, get it off the lot, then teach me in some empty parking lot. Of course we'd have to kick the salesperson out of the car and hope they don't call the cops on us when the car isn't back within a reasonable time.  The other issue is that while my mom swears she can drive stick, she hasn't done so since the mid-70's when she had a Fiat X1/9. Right, I'm thinking the same thing. Some of the neighbors down here have fancy sports cars, maybe I could peek in and see if they happened to leave the keys in the ignition? Problem with that is my lawyer sister is not licensed in FL so it would cost me an arm and a leg when I end up in a ditch in a "borrowed car". I also considered finding out if any of the car rental places rent out stick cars, but I have a feeling they've already caught onto people like me and you can only rent automatic. I think I'm just gonna have to work on convincing a friend they owe me a favor and this is it.

Expect a bunch of posts this week, but for right now, back to vacation...