Krishen Greenwell

Adventure abound

Wowee… had a great day. Started off with getting up and organized. That took about three hours in the morning, hee hee. Then, at noon it was off to Myakka for a visit to the park. Yes, the one. And yes, we did see an alligator. Or two. Heh. Pictures to come.

The foliage was pretty exotic. This vine extended far past the field of view.

The water level fluxuates dramatically during the course of the year. Here’s a shot of the Myakka State Park forest floor recently.

There were tasty morsels all about!

Mom and Dad!

Not sure what these things are, but they look like grapes.

The convoy explores new territory.

This guy was wandering across the road when we found him. Tiny little guy!

A salamander!

That’s Mom. We think there was something hiding under the bridge.

Mom insisted we take a picture of these — found ’em just as we were leaving the park.

Drinking and driving.

The front entrance to my former place of residence, the Sun-N-Fun RV park.
After getting back, mom insisted on making dinner! Eventually, after some arm twisting I complied, and Mom made eggplant/tomato/garlic and pita (or “baigan choka” as we call it back home). Mmmm, soo good, I must learn how to make it. Talk about your comfort food.
And guess what? I can’t believe it, Mom Dad and Neil agreed to come watch me play ultimate! Three hours of disc-passing excitement — and Dad caught a ton of it on video! We won our first game tonight, and won it by a landslide too, 15-7 was the final score. That was our 7th (and second to last) game of the season. We’re definitely getting better. Extra cool, Jeff from work came out to watch too! Glad we won that game. 🙂
Afterwards it was off to the Wing Machine where a group of us (some from “Dos Manos”, our competition tonight) demolished 100 wings! Neil ate wings at a spectacular rate, more than Rex (captain of Dos Manos) and I combined. Quote of the night: “It’s all just mind over matter”. — Neil, upon eating some atomically hot wings. Ha.
Then it was downtown for a preview of the area before it gets overloaded with folks for tomorrow’s Independence Day festivities. There’s apparently a boat parade that goes right down Main street. Cool! Rob, my coworker and a local to the area is going to show up three hours early just to secure a spot, to give you something of an idea of how popular it’s going to be. Woot!
Ran into Hugo in the parking lot as we arrived back home. That was a neat coincidence! So now, Mom Dad & Neil just need to meet Alex, Cam and Carlos. 🙂 Looking forward to tomorrow’s festivities. Going to start it off with a charcoal BBQ at 9am (though I’m guessing a more realistic start time is 10:30.).
Hope you had a fantastic day!
[edited July 9th, added pictures and captions]
Family arrives

I spotted them before they spotted me!
Picked up Mom, Dad and Neil today at the Tampa airport! After a HUGE shopping trip, I made them a big dinner (grilled veggie burgers and chips for mom and dad, my signature fajitas for Neil and I) with chocolate chip premium vanilla ice-cream with chocolate fudge and tea for dessert. Mmmmmm! Hee hee. And plenty of fajitastuffs leftover for tomorrow. 🙂 Big day tomorrow, going to sleep now. Dad has been up now for more than 24 hrs!

Neil and Dad looking East at Tampa Bay. ThatÃs the Sunshine Skyway bridge in the distance. ThereÃs a dollar toll to go over it, which is understandable since at 200 feet up, itÃs probably the highest point IÃve seen in Florida.
[edited July 8: added pictures and captions]
Happy Canada Day!
The past five days have been a pretty weird time in my life.
The past five days saw me travel over ten-thousand kilometres. The past five days saw me and all my brothers, and Mom & Dad, in the same room at the same time. Feels like it’s been forever since that happened. And it then, when it happened, it was only for a few minutes as one of us rushed out the door with 47 minutes to get to the Swartz Bay ferry terminal. In the photo album at the end of this post, there’s a shot of us there all together, kindly taken by the Minataur. None of us were ready for it, but it was far too important a moment waste away with vanity.
I spent Victoria zipping from place to place, trying to see as many people as I could. It was rough. I didn’t manage to get to everyone, and if you’re one of those people I didn’t get to see, I’m sorry. I hate trying to squish everything into a few minutes.
It’s a product of the nature of my friendships — many of them, no, the majority of them — are “1-to-1”. So a lot of my close friends don’t know each other very well. And I have a lot of friends. This makes short trips back home difficult. I labelled myself a “wannabe extrovert” some time ago, and I think it stuck.
But back to my family. It’s all so surreal. We were all together for a moment four days ago in Victoria. And now? Davin’s wandering around England somewhere with Mina; Anand’s in Vancouver; and in less than an hour, Mom, Dad and Neil will be on their way to the airport arriving in Tampa, Florida at noon tomorrow. I’ll be their (hopefully) gracious host for the next week, then they’re down to Trinidad for two weeks, after which they return to Florida for a week and meet long-lost relatives. I drive them back to the Tampa airport at the end of it all. I have from tonight until next Tuesday off of work. Got plenty of adventure and surprise in store, should be good. Hopefully the size of my livingroom won’t be the biggest (read: the sleeping arrangements are gonna be cozy ;).
The past five days saw me renew my TN-Visa for another year. Saw me get my plastic license renewed into paper form, at least for the next 30 days, while the Florida government passes my name around to all the army and navy recruiting agencies.
And now, today, tonight, now it’s time for the mad do-the-laundry-clean-the-livingroom-make-dinner rush. Looking forward to this — perhaps I’ll finally get my livingroom clean. One can dream, no?
- Two Days In June

Adventure abound

Family arrives

Happy Canada Day!

Krishen Greenwell