Short week for me this week. I took off Friday because this weekend I flew to Florida for my cousin’s wedding. Thursday night after work Rich and Billie came down and drove us to the airport where we all caught a flight to Ft. Lauderdale. The flight was smooth and without incident. We changed planes in Atlanta and ended up getting into FtL about midnight. We took a cab to a cheapy hotel by the airport and spent the night. On our way to the hotel we saw a lot of damage from the hurricane that had rolled through the weekend before. There were tons of broken signs and a lot of dark places that still didn’t have power. I was a little worried because I wasn’t able to get an answer from our hotel when I called them during the week I was pleasantly surprised when we drove up to the place and it was still there. The weather was hot and humid and so was our hotel room. It smelt very musty and extremely damp. The four of us were only going to be there for a couple hours so we dealt with it. We cranked the AC and went to sleep.

Friday morning we woke up early and took a cab to downtown FtL where our nice hotel was. We dropped off our luggage at our hotel and started to do some site seeing. The site seeing lasted about four blocks when we decided we were hungry and needed some breakfast. We stopped at a little diner and got some breakfast. I had some delicious huevos rancheros. The problem is my meal was huge and had lots of salsa. This would normally not be a problem but having this meal sitting in your stomach isn’t very conducive to walking around all day site seeing, I was worried how this would work out. After we finished eating we walked toward the ocean. On the way we passed a bunch of intercoastal waterways. These waterways all had mansions up and down them but the amazing part is these mansions were dwarfed by their mega-yachts parked in front. These mansions and yachts continued the couple miles that we walked to the ocean. Once we got to the ocean we happened upon the international yacht show that was in town. The FtL marina had hundreds of mega-yachts tied up that you could walk around on and dream about some day being able to afford the anchor. I keep using mega to describe these yachts because they were. You haven’t seen anything like these yachts on Lake Michigan, these things were huge. We looked at the yachts from a bridge for a bit and then continued on to the beach. Once at the beach we snapped some pictures and walked in the sand a bit. It wasn’t all that exciting, more water and sand. Just across the street from the ocean there was an open air bar/club that we went to and had a couple beers and looked at the ocean vista. The scene was very nice but the beer was very expensive. So after a couple drinks we walked by the yacht show again. We were actually trying to book a riverboat dinner cruise and their office was right by the entrance to the yacht show. Once we arrived at the office of the riverboat cruise we found out that they were shutdown due to complication from the hurricane. A little disappointed we turned back and headed to a little German themed bar that we passed on the way. I really enjoyed this place. It was literally a hole in the wall. It was hidden down an alley but amazingly there were plenty of others there that found this little bar as well. The bar had no doors and was a typical warm climate open air bar except it served fine German lagers. This bar was the definition of vacation. The wind whistled through while we sat and relaxed. Rich and I played some pool and I kicked his butt all over the felt. I could’ve stayed their all weekend but we had to head back to the hotel and meet my dad, Randy and Becky. We headed back, checked into our hotel and met up with the rest of the family. We didn’t do much the rest of the afternoon. We sat around, showered up and got ready for dinner. For dinner we walked to a Mexican restaurant a couple blocks from the hotel. The dinner was pretty good. Since we were in a tourist trap the prices were expectedly expensive for what we got. After dinner we walked down along a waterway and looked at some of the moored yachts. We then went to a couple bars and watched the Lamborghini’s and other assorted luxury cars cruise the strip. This whole time we were actually waiting for our cousin Steve to call but due to hurricane complications the cell phone network was temporarily knocked out for three hours. Once the phones were back online we headed down by the ocean to meet up with Steve. We met up with him, my other cousins and aunt at a steak house. Since we had just eaten and we were dressed worse than the FtL homeless we really didn’t want to sit around and watch them eat their forty dollar hunks of meat. Conveniently there was a bar right next door that was more our style so we waited for Steve over there. Once he was done eating he came over and we sat at the bar the rest of the night getting caught up and talking stupid. A little after midnight we took a taxi back to our hotel and got rested up for tomorrow’s wedding.

Saturday morning we woke up refreshed in a hotel that didn’t have 200% humidity in it. The wedding was at three so we had some time to burn but we really didn’t know what to do. We figured that by the time everyone got their stuff together and showered up that it would be noon so we decided to start getting ready. So everyone started getting dress but J who wanted to go lay by the pool for a bit. The rest of us got dressed up in out finest duds and a couple headed to a restaurant down street from our hotel. I had a nice sandwich and then we sat at the bar for a bit and tried to find out exactly where the church was. We found out the church was actually back in the direction of the hotel so we walked back toward our hotel. We met up with the rest of the group at a bar that was across the street from out hotel. After a couple beers it was finally wedding time. We put the women and my dad in a cab and the three brothers walked a couple blocks in the heat to the church. The wedding was nice. It was a full catholic service so it was pretty long but the priests kept it pretty interesting. One of the priests was a monsignor that the Counsells knew from Notre Dame. After the wedding we all piled in a cab and headed to the reception. This was actually a secondary reception hall because the initial venue was wrecked in the hurricane. I don’t envy my cousin Jen having to find another reception hall and getting it set up in less than a week’s time. This place was really nice though. The Atlanta Falcons were playing the Dolphins that Sunday and they were staying at the hotel. Five buses filled with massive guys got a police escort to the back door. They closed off the whole lobby and roped off an area for the team to walk through. I tried to snap an incognito photo of Michael Vick but it turned out blurry. After the Falcons excitement we tried to find the Badger v Penn State game on the lobby TV but it was nowhere to be found. We even tried to find it at a seedy sports bar by the hotel. Their cable was out so they were even worse off than the hotel, we could at least watch the Notre Dame game there. So instead of watching football on TV I had fun in the cocktail party with the family. My dad appeared to be having a good time himself as he bounced around from conversation to conversation. Finally it was time for dinner. We sat down and did the whole wedding routine, speeches and whatnot. For dinner we had a chicken breast with some vegetables, it was good. After dinner the grooves started up the cocktails started flowing a little faster. It was an open bar and I saw a guy get a Johnnie Walker and water so I got the same and continued to for the rest of the night. For about ten minutes everything in the reception hall went completely black and it wasn’t because of the whisky. The aftermath of the hurricane had struck again. They must’ve been fixing the power and cut off power to the hotel. They either fixed the problem or had a backup generator because the lights came back on and stayed on for the rest of the night. The night went by very fast. I don’t get to see the Bennett cousins very much so we had tons to talk about. My cousin Jeff had to leave the reception very early because he was running the New York marathon on Sunday so I really didn’t get to talk to him very much. Steve always makes for great conversation and a good time. The reception ended very early. It was ten o’clock when the lights came on and it was time to leave. We hailed a couple cabs and went to the same bar that we were at before the wedding. We spent the rest of the night there, just the fam. Everyone left at different points of the night and surprisingly the last ones standing were Jocelyn, me and my dad.

Sunday morning was rougher than rough. We got up at six to get a taxi to the airport. As soon as we got to the airport I laid on my bag and slept until the final call for us to board. We make it back without any problems, we had a layover in Cincinnati and got in about one. We made it just in time to see the Packers lose to the Steelers. A great extended family weekend, they don’t happen enough.

Final tally on exotic car sightings. 3 Lamborghini’s, a Rolls Royce Phantom, a Bentley, an Aston Martin, countless high end Benzes and BMWs (the Ford Escorts of FtL). I haven’t seen this much excess and filthy richness in my life and I only saw a two mile stretch of FtL. I’m really disappointed in myself because for the first time in my life I felt a little jealousy being around all the haves and I have always tried to be thankful for what I have. But seeing all the excess and knowing that I will never have a fraction of their opportunities got me thinking for the first time about material goods as a measure of a person instead of a person’s ethics and morals. I haven’t had any material jealousy since we left and I am back to just worrying about being a good person but for the first time I could see how one could be driven throughout their life by material worth instead of self worth.