Furlong Christmas 2010

For most who celebrate Christmas, there is yet another week of work and shopping before your celebrations. In the Furlong family, we have opted to celebrate Christmas a week early the past few years for the sake of convenience (Sarah and I like to be with our nieces on Christmas morning and Suzanne and Daniel are typically in Cape Breton). Tonight we're wrapping up the second and final night of our celebrations and I thought I'd share some of the photographs we've taken.

From Sarah, Myself, Suzanne, Daniel, Mom, and the old man, Merry Christmas!

Our Adventure Home

7:30am - Wake up and pack
8:30am - Grab breakfast
9:30am - Leave for Orlando Airport
10:00am - Drop off rental car
12:00pm - Depart Orlando for Washington, D.C.
2:15pm - Arrive in Washington, D.C.

So far so good.

2:30pm - Discover our flight to Ottawa has been delayed. It will not arrive in time for us to catch our connecting.
2:45pm - Found customer service desk. We spend 20 minutes speaking with an unhelpful agent who is spending more time complaining about the weather outside (there's an overcast) and talking about her shift ending than she is helping us.
3:00pm - I'm getting impatient and feel myself about to yell at the agent when Sarah pats me on the shoulder and I decide to grab some food across the hall. Sarah stays and patiently deals with the agent.
3:30pm - I bring some food over to Sarah; she's now talking to a second agent who is equally unhelpful. With food in me, I'm a bit more patient and in a better mood.
4:00pm - A third agent finally finds us a route home. She's not very friendly but at least she got the job done. She provides us our boarding pass for the United flight to Toronto and advises us to pick up our Air Canada boarding pass when we arrive in Toronto.
4:40pm - We depart Washington, D.C.

We're glad we have a way home, but are concerned our luggage made it to the flight in time.

6:15pm - Arrive in Toronto. Our luggage is nowhere to be found. I speak with a United Agent who advises the last they scanned it, they had removed it from our original flight to Ottawa. No activity since. Great.
6:30pm - We attempt to check in with the Air Canada agents just outside of customs and obtain our boarding pass. They advise they cannot issue our boarding pass as the United agent did not properly change the itinerary of the original ticket (its still showing us traveling from Washington to Ottawa to Halifax, instead of to Toronto and then Halifax. She advises us to walk across the airport to the United booth to have the itinerary fixed, and then back to the Air Canada booth to check-in.
6:45 - We arrive at the United booth and find noone to help. We call United, I choose International Reservations, I get domestic, have to be manually transferred. United advises everything looks good on their end and provides me a confirmation number to provide the Air Canada agent.
7:00 - Back at an Air Canada booth and telling my tale for the 12th time. Provide the confirmation number, this is of no significance to the Air Canada agent. I call United and advise Air Canada is still not able to check me in (again selecting International Reservation, again routed to Domestic). United provides me a ticket number, Air Canada says this ticket is the problem. United agent sounds like she has an epiphany and places me on hold. 5 minutes later she comes back with a new ticket number; we now have boarding passes for our flight.

Almost there...

10:15pm - We're waiting to board our flight to Halifax in 5 minutes. Announcement that the plane is not serviceable. Our gate is changed to the other side of the airport; there will be a 1.5 hour delay.

We're currently waiting.

It has gotten so absurd, we can't stop laughing.

Florida Vaca

Its currently 8:42 PM EST and Sarah and I are sitting in the Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto, having just finished a bowl of delicious stir fry. The highlight of our day. Sarah is on the phone with her mother telling her about our adventurous day traveling home. I won't go into much detail in that regard, suffice it to say we should be currently on a flight from Ottawa to Halifax arriving around 10:30 PM, and instead we're in Toronto waiting for a flight that will have us in Halifax at 2:00 AM, with no idea of the location of our luggage.

Wait! Highlight of the day was the $45 bottle of Balvenie I purchased duty-free.

Sarah and I had a fantastic trip. In the above slide-show, you'll notice my alertness in the first photo. Sarah and I were waiting in the Orlando Airport for our rental car as we had arrived 4 hours too early. I had to speak with two different agents (one before my nap, one after) to finally get our car. The 2nd fella was nice enough and even gave a deal on a convertible. Its that black car you'll see in the photos.

The first day Sarah and I relaxed around the hotel. Not many photos from that. I had a history paper due, so instead of letting that sit on my conscience, Sarah forced me to complete the whole thing that first day. She's a smart girl (she would say S-M-R-T). I finished more school work that day in the hotel than I have done in the past month. For those interested, the paper was in regard to why Newfoundland didn't join confederation in 1867. Those Newfies had an admirable libertarian streak.

The second day we went to Universal. This was alright. We didn't take many photos; you'll see a few from the Harry Potter portion. Harry Potter was new to the park and packed. We picked up a ticket around 10am just to get into that portion of the park at 1pm. There was a ride there that was probably one of the most enjoyable attractions we experienced during the vacation. We waited nearly an hour in line to experience 5 minutes 0f thrills flying through Hogwarts.

The Kennedy Space Center was up the third day. I maintain NASA is one of the biggest tax payer wastes of money in the history of mankind, and nothing I saw that day changed my mind. Although, we saw lots of cool stuff. Some IMAX movies, the Vehicle Assembly Building (the big NASA building you always see in photos), some launch pads and lots of rockets; alligators too. I had LOTS of photos, however, my camera wiped my memory card and lost everything that was on it.

The final two days were Disney. Epcot was everything I've heard it to be. Lots of cool attractions and neat things to see. Sarah and I arrived there around 10 am and were there until close at 9:30 pm. We experienced a virtual ride to Mars; Sarah almost got sick. There was a candle light processional in the evening with an orchestra and choir. All of the different countries offered different attractions; Canada had a video hosted by Martin Short. All of the workers were dressed like lumberjacks; not sure why. Ellen took us through history to investigate where energy comes from. The night ended with fireworks. Not just any fireworks, the most spectacular fireworks I had ever seen. There's only a couple of pictures from Epcot as I was tired of taking pictures from our day at the space center, and frustrated with the camera.

The final day was spent at Animal Kingdom. The majority of photos you'll see in the slide show are from here. Sarah and I were pretty pooped walking around this park after the previous few days but we made it. We went on a safari and saw lots of cool animals. Took a couple of walking tours to see more wild life. There was a funny live show where we got to check out different birds. We watched a cool 3D show about bugs under the Tree of Life. At the end of the day there was a parade; it was neat, but would have been much more awesome if I was one of the 6 year olds jumping up and down in front of me.

Packing was difficult. Neither of us wanted to leave the warm weather; or the convertible. The hotel was nice too. In the evenings, when we got back, the pool was almost always empty and the hot tub there was helpful on Sarah's hands. I spent about $75 on clothes that would have cost me close to $200 back home (I bought a couple of sweaters at an Eddie Bauer outlet for $20 a piece). The breakfast was delicious and the liqour was cheap.

Good-bye Orlando.

Detroit

I just arrived in Windsor, ON today and will be living out of the Radisson for the next 12 nights.

My room is on the 19th floor and I thought I'd share the view I have of Detroit.

Cucumbers Anyone?

Mom is OK, No Surgery Required

Mom is okay. The surgeon here in Halifax doesn't think she needs surgery. Her arm will be placed in a sling and after a week they will check to see her shoulder is healing appropriately. She has left the hospital.

98 Dom Perignon

This past week Sarah and I took a week of vacation to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. To me it feels as if we lost a year and it was last summer our friends and family came together to celebrate our love, not the summer before. Some reading might think "2 years..pffft...thats nothing", it was a fun celebration none-the-less. We watched whales and fine dined in Saint Andrews, we jet-skied on First Eel River lake, played soccer with the pros (our nieces), watched fire works, partied in Shinimicas, visited our grand parents, a baby was born (not ours), and drank a 12 year-old champagne while, inadvertently and coincidentally, celebrating my sister's new home. We even had an unexpected visit with some aunts and uncles which we enjoyed very much. Tonight is the end though. Tomorrow is chore day, and the day after back to work we go. We enjoyed every minute of it and appreciated the time we spent with our friends and family. Here are a few photos of the champagne which closed out this campaign. The cork is deep in our woods.

ShimmyStock 2010

Over the weekend we celebrated the annual ShimmyStock. Here are the photos:



Also, here are pictures from my garden when I arrived home yesterday:

Happy 95th Birthday Grampy!

Sarah and I would like to send out a Happy Birthday to my Grandfather as he turns 95 today. 100 is just around the corner!

This is a picture of my Uncle Kencil and my Grandfather putting up a wind turbine at my parents place a year and a half ago. Kencil just had a birthday yesterday, so from Sarah and I, Happy 65th!

Welcome!

Welcome to our new blog. For the past year or so I've been maintaining a political blog (link to the right) and every once in awhile when something interesting happened to Sarah and I, I'd post it there. This didn't serve as good medium for us to share parts of our lives as it would be mixed in with a jumble of political posts that most people we know would rather avoid.

So welcome to The World Is Furlong. This blog serves as a place for Sarah and I to share our going-ons, no matter how little, and definitely when its big. We might put up a post of a new recipe we've tried or a new place we've visited. We'll definitely put up a post when there is big news like having a baby or buying a house.

Fresh Orange Juice

Tonight Sarah and I squeezed, by hand, some fresh orange juice. Now, you might be thinking, by hand? Yes. Yes I tell you. My hand pushed the orange into our 10 year old juicer.

Making fresh juice is something we've wanted to start doing for a couple of months now. I had mentioned this at work one day a few weeks before Christmas and my supervisor gladly handed me her 10 year old juicer that she said had been collecting dust with a multitude of other kitchen appliances for the past 10 years. Thanks Kathy!

Now, we have, on one occasion used the juicer to make some vegetable juice, but we found it was rather expensive and wasteful of some very good veggies! So now we keep a look out for inexpensive produce that will make good juice.

Last week the local supermarket had 3lb bags of oranges and 3lb bags apples for sale: buy 1 bag, get 2 more free. Just a couple of days ago we also bought 3 3lb bags of carrots for $1 a bag. We now have a good supply of cheap produce to juice!

Tonight was the first opportunity the two of us had together to put the juicer through some work. Just so you know, juicing is definitely a two person job; Sarah does all the work, and I make sure she does it right! Hmmm...I suddenly feel a cold glare in my direction...

By the time I arrived from work Sarah had already started peeling and juicing some oranges. It took us about an hour to peel and juice all 9 lbs of oranges and it was completely worth it. For $3 - $4 and an hour of our time we ended up with over 2L of freshly squeezed Florida orange juice. As Sarah says, "mmmm Florida...." Not this year darling.