What Happened to the Summer of 2011?

Jillian, Alison and Natalie in Central Park in New York.

My last blog post was way back in June shortly before my summer began in earnest.  The time has come for a little catch-up in preparation for my upcoming adventures.  Out with the old and in with the new!

The day after posting my Bunko blog Gordon and I left in the wee hours of the morning to move Alison out of her beautiful, but on-campus, apartment at Cal Poly into a storage unit in preparation for moving into a single family home later in the summer.  We decided to deliver what furniture items we had stored here at home and some things we had stored at Natty's home in San Jose too.  We would also move her apartment things into the storage unit as well.

We had rented a Uhaul to pull behind my Trailblazer all the way from Tucson, Az. to Pleasanton back in May of last year with Jillian's things.  So we have some experience with towing.  Unfortunately the only Uhaul available for the trip to San Luis Obispo (SLO) is a bigger unit and that makes Gordon uncomfortable.  Have you ever backed up a car with a trailer attached?  I'm sure many of you have but we haven't.  It's ridiculously hard!  We make the decision that wherever we go...we MUST NOT have to back up.  We must only go forward.  Ok.  So we pick up furniture from the studio behind Natalie's house in San Jose and then we are off back to Pleasanton to pick up furniture we have purchased from the local thrift shop.  Fortunately in both places we were able to park in such a way that we only had to go forward!

Now we have driven to SLO and we meet Alison at the storage unit to unload.  Alison has rented a 5X10 storage unit.  We have a full bedroom set, a sofa, a dining room table and end tables, and 4 chairs.  Oops!  The storage unit is a little small but we manage to get everything in and we are hoping to get her things from the apartment in too.

BUT we are realize there is NO WAY we can go to Cal Poly with this huge car and trailer with so many people moving their kids out of campus the same day.  CRAP!  What to do?  I come up with the idea that maybe we should park the trailer and remove it from the car so we can use just the car to schlep back and forth.  Ok.  Now here comes the tricky part.  The only place we can find to safely leave the trailer is a space that we must back into. Doh!

I won't go into detail here but suffice it to say that Gordon doesn't follow direction well.  I think we spent a half hour trying to park the trailer next to a curb.  I swear there was smoke coming from Gordon's ears and Ali and I couldn't help but laugh at each feeble attempt to park the trailer even close to the vicinity of the curb!  AND after all that we couldn't get the trailer off the hitch!  CRAP!   Now what do we do?  We need to get Alison's apartment things over to the storage unit (about 3 miles away) without driving my vehicle with trailer attached.

We pile in to Ali's little 2 door Honda and go to the campus thinking we'll just have to make a billion trips in this little car.  Not a good plan.

Once we are there we discover that Alison has not packed many of her things.  She was waiting for me to bring boxes?  There are people everywhere; the elevators are slow and packed each time you want to use them and we have to not only schlep all her stuff out to her car, we also now have to drive over to the storage unit each time her car is full.  Not good.  We decide to move the car with trailer to an empty lot close to the school which makes the whole thing easier.

Once we've done that it becomes simpler and we finish up; drive over to the storage unit to cram whatever we can in there and head home with way too much stuff that wouldn't even come close to going into the storage unit.  Now, Gordon is driving my car and the now empty trailer and I'm riding with Alison in her car.  We get to the top of the mountain you must go over  when leaving SLO and Alison remembers that her new eyeglass prescription is in a box in the storage unit along with her birth control pills and all her make-up.  CRAP!  We turn around and drive the 20 minutes back to the storage unit but I called Gordon and told him to go on....we'll catch up.  By now it's 4:00 p.m. and none of us has had lunch.  We're a bit cranky, tired and hungry.

We are back at the storage unit and we manage to get all the boxes down and look through them.  Guess what?  The prescription and pills are in a box in the back of the Trailblazer.  CRAP!  Close the roller door to the unit; lock the key lock and head back to the car.  Alison says "where are my keys?"  Eh?  What's that?  You were driving and you have the keys. No?  CRAP!  The keys are now locked in the storage unit on a key chain that has the storage unit key on it! OK!  So we head down to the office to get a pair of cutters to cut the lock off, buy a new lock and head back home.  Ach!

Anyway, mission accomplished on phase one moving of Alison.  A few days later Ali flew to New York for a week with Jillian.  Gordon, Natalie and I join them one week later in New York.

Jillian in front of her Hell's Kitchen apartment building.

Now Jillian and her roommate live in a walk-up building in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York.  It's kinda expensive in NY and their building isn't the best but we have fixed their home up cute and it's serviceable.  But there's no air conditioning in the building.  SO being good parents - we buy and have delivered an a/c unit to the apartment prior to our arrival.  Jillian cannot figure out to install it herself so Gordon must perform this task upon our late arrival in to the sweltering city of New York.  It's about 10:30 p.m., we haven't had dinner, sweat is running off our bodies, we are again schlepping suitcases up 3 1/2 stories into Jillian's cellblock apartment.  Oh good, let's install an a/c unit now!

It's done, we venture out to dinner at midnight and walk the city until about 3:00 a.m.  The next morning we grab our suitcases; schlep them down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk and walk the short 2 blocks down to the Port of Manhattan and grab a cruise ship down to the Virgin Islands.

Sailing out of New York with Lady Liberty in the background

Now I don't know if having cruised twice aboard Oceania  Cruises qualifies Gordon and I as seasoned cruisers but the clientele aboard those cruises is a bit different than a Carnival Cruise out of New York.  Suffice it to say that we are SHOCKED at the clientele aboard a ship leaving from New York.  Can you say Jersey Shore meets the next cast of the Biggest Loser?  Oy Vey!

Gordon and I had a beautiful stateroom with a large balcony, tub with shower and double sinks and a separate dressing room and makeup area for me.  A very large and comfortable stateroom.  Let's hit the mini bar!  The girls have a triple room; a little cramped but with a balcony.  Most of the time we have cocktails as a family in our room which suits us fine.  And fortunately, Natalie had the foresight to think about the fact that Jillian gets car sick and recommended that perhaps I should get patches for sea-sickness.  That's good because both Jill and I need them.  Once we sailed out of New York....in the rain, the sea swells got bigger and bigger until Jillie was pale and there was sweat on her brow!  Not good.

Gordon enjoys the view from our balcony.

Four girls in a bed!

Gordon takes a turn on the Carnival Miracle water slide.

Our trip took us from New York to Puerto Rico, which was fabulous (except for all three girls sitting on a fire ant nest);

The streets of Old San Juan.

The old Cathedral in San Juan.

On a hot and humid day the locals enjoy the refreshing fountain.

Natty makes a new friend in Puerto Rico.

 St. Thomas (where we met up with our friends and Bunko companion Kathi and Phil for a day on Sapphire Beach)

On Sapphire Beach in Saint Thomas with Phil and Kath.

and to Grand Turk where we went snorkeling and swimming with Sting Rays,

Our ship from the shore of Grand Turk.

White sandy beaches and turquoise waters of Grand Turk.

Can you find Gordon and Alison?

then back to New York.  The trip was 8 nights and as a family we had a blast.  Would I want to go on another Carnival Cruise?  NO.  Would I want to travel with Jersey Shore and Biggest Loser casts again. NO.  Would I sing to Lady GaGa's "Let's Dance"  with Alison and Jillian at karaoke again?  NO.

Sailing back into New York.

View from the Top of the Rock with Central Park in the background.

Gordon meets a flat friend in Matt Lauer at the NBC Studios.

A very hot day in Central Park with Jillie and Ali.

We spent the next four days living at Jill's place and sightseeing the City.  Gordon and the twins had never been to New York before and we had so much fun!  New York is such an exciting City and there are SO MANY wonderful things to do and see.  It was hot and humid but we had a new a/c unit that was working great AND we got a rooftop view of the 4th of July fireworks over the Hudson River.  Unforgettable!

Ugh, Hot and humid!

Gordon and Alison on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Come on Stock Market!  The NY Stock Exchange building.

Natalie and Alison spent another week in the city with Jillian and Gordon and I headed home to deal with an overgrown garden; slow real estate market; and news that another of our rentals would be vacant soon.  We had just painted and re-carpeted a rental in Livermore and now we have another to do.  Money seems to flow like a river from this house.  Unfortunately there's not enough money raining down to keep the lake the river flows from supplied!   On top of that, Gordon had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee on his 51st birthday just a week after returning from New York.  


So this summer has been spent healing at home and managing little crisis.  Though the summer has been cooler than usual, we have managed to have a wonderful time with our friends.  Casual dinners; hiking and biking and relaxing by the pool; lots of wine tasting; a BIG birthday party for a friend which was a complete blast.   AND we got Alison moved into her new house in San Luis Obispo.  Guess what we did?  We hired movers to do the schlepping this time!  Brilliant!

So Alison and Natalie are tucked away safely at school and working on their careers; Jillian, who is off the payroll,  has just received her second promotion since February to Assistant Editor at her company, Fluid.  She is moving from her crappy Hell's Kitchen neighborhood into a new apartment 25 blocks north to a Lincoln Center neighborhood with two new roommates.  AND the big news is she's getting a kitty which will finally make her feel like she's home again.  All is well with the Corsie family.

Next up?  I'm headed to Virginia on August 28th to visit my family.  Both of my parents are in assisted living facilities.  Then I head up to New York for the Labor Day weekend to spend with Jillian.  I'm meeting Gordon at he Newark airport on the 6th of September and we are flying to Scotland where our friend Charli will be meeting us for a week.  We are going to Paris on the 23rd through the 28th and coming back to California on October 11.

Details of our adventures to follow.............

Possibilities!