We buttoned up the place in the Finger Lakes and headed for Syracuse at 0700 on Thursday. Easy drive, and beautiful, but a bit of a hike. Flights were all on time, some turbulence coming into Jax. There were two Delta flights arriving from JFK on Thursday, and apparently we went to the wrong baggage carrousel. A purple bag, very similar, if not identical, to Mitzi's circled the carrousel three or four times, while Mitzi's never appeared.

By the time it stopped, we were convinced the owner of that purple bag had mistakenly taken Mitzi's. Seconds after I'd called the number on the tag and left a voicemail firmly asserting she'd taken the wrong bag, she appeared to collect her bag. She'd gone to get her car rental first.

D'oh!

There was an air tag in Mitzi's bag and it indicated it was within the margin of error to be "with" us. Went to the baggage claim office to investigate and I spotted Mitzi's bag as she was talking to the agent at the counter, where she learned that our flight's baggage was at that carrousel.

Weird.

Ride home was wet and we got on Philips Highway at rush-hour where there's a well known backup at Racetrack Road, which added at least 15 minutes to the ride home. Doesn't sound like much, but it adds about 30% to the travel time, and most of it is standing still, creeping forward, standing still, creeping forward... I tipped the driver an extra $20 for the aggravation. (He's our regular driver and a good one.)

It'd rained nearly every day we were gone. A lot. Neighbor said there were snakes in the road, including cottonmouths. Many reports of flooding around the area. Not the kind due to rivers overflowing, the kind due to living at sea level and having no place for the water to go when the ground is saturated. Neighborhoods were putting up "No Wake Zone" signs because the streets were flooded but people would drive through them fast enough to leave wakes that would put water into homes and businesses that might otherwise have remained dry. Folks couldn't use their bathrooms because their septic tanks were full.

And the humidity? Oy. It's wet. Florida. The whole idea needs to be seriously reconsidered.

I miss New York so much already.

We were pretty much exhausted when we got home. Mitzi had a full schedule yesterday, getting the yard done (just before it rained again), pitching a new client, and returning some items we couldn't use in New York. I had a number of packages arrive that I needed to unpack and put away someplace, so a pretty busy day that felt a lot more like Monday than Friday. The HOA sent us a nice letter that our grass was overgrown and that there were weeds in our pavers. One of the things about HOAs is it empowers people to be little nazis. They don't send around an employee to inspect for standards. Nope, it's a zealous neighbor who rides around on a golf cart, snapping photos with his phone. And the association encourages that. Gotta maintain those "property values." (Because we're in an over-55 community and we're all going to be dead soon and all we have to leave our kids is our "property values.") People wonder why I never go to the neighborhood socials.

(FWIW, Mitzi hadn't mowed, which she does pretty regularly, because she'd just put down new sod to replace the sod killed by the guy she hired to mow the grass while we were away this summer. Landscapers suck.)

IQ Fiber is supposed to be here this morning, so I anticipate we may be offline temporarily at some point. Hopefully this will go smoothly, but recent experience suggests otherwise.

It's not clear exactly when the rain will stop.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 04:59 Saturday, 14 September 2024