Last night, as Snackpants and I were driving from our home in Middle Georgia back to Orlando, we made a slight detour in Gainesville to partake of one of my favorite chains: Tijuana Flats. Because the closest one to us is in Jacksonville, every time we come back to Orlando I insist that we have it at least once. Due to time constraints and pre-existing plans for this trip, Gainesville was really our only option.

The TomTom faithfully got us to the UF Plaza where the Tijuana’s is located, and we proceeded to park my car in the lot before enjoying some of the tasty goodness. We were in there for about 30 minutes and upon returning to the parking lot, Snackpants says…

“Where’s the car?”

It took a few minutes for my anxiety to fully kick into gear. I stared up and down the row, knowing full well that the car had been there and now there was a different, not-my vehicle parked in its place. I admit that I even did a ‘faculties’ check in my mind to see if I had gone insane.

Now, instead of being a rational human being, my mind automatically went to the worst possible scenario: someone stole my car. It took about 30 seconds for me to begin bawling on the sidewalk and mentally running through the list of everything we had just lost: 3 laptops, 2 iPods, my digital camera, my knitting. I ran the mental circle of “well, we have to report it stolen, but the VIN number is on the car and the registration is IN the car along with the insurance information, which I could also access online but my computer is gone” and all that jazz.

Snackpants managed to keep mostly calm, while he did a pretty poor job of keeping ME calm or being soothing in any fashion (sorry honey, but it’s true!). Fortunately, though, he was still in the right frame of mind to realize that we were surrounded by 22 signs signs stating “TOW AWAY ZONE” and he had misread the list of businesses for which the parking lot was used.

Luckily for us, but rather unfortunately for the owner of the car being towed next, the tow truck pulled up about 3 minutes into my hysterical crying and Snacky was able to verify that he had, in fact, taken my car not 20 minutes earlier, which was about 5 minutes after we parked it. Turns out the plaza pays a guy to sit and watch people violate the parking rules and then calls in their vehicles to be taken away.

From what we learned on the ride to the tow yard, towing is a HUGE business in Gainesville. There are about 12 companies that run around the clock picking up cars, which apparently have NOWHERE to park in that city that is actually legal. And far be it from anyone in the plaza to let us know that we were being retarded and failing to read the signs. Oh no. They couldn’t even be bothered to say “It was towed” while I was standing there losing my mind along with my tears.

Next trip, we are stopping in Ocala instead for some Flats.

Earlier this week, for what constituted our “weekend” on Monday and Tuesday, Snackpants decided to take me to Savannah for a little getaway. We had an awesome time wandering around the city, being tourists, and exploring many of the local pubs, of which there are a great many.

Monday night we ended up in Kevin Barry’s Pub on River Street where we found ourselves sitting at the bar with a party of drunk middle-aged guys. There were about 8 of them and we later found out that they work for a company that sells sewer pumps and had budgets due the next day so they were drinking away their worries because they were not going to hit their sales goals.

As the night wore on, one of them got slowly more and more drunk while the rest of them went home to get some sleep, and this one guy kept hitting on the waitress at the bar. Turns out she has a cop boyfriend, though he continued to pursue her anyway. In an effort to boost his morale and “help him out”, Snackpants made the following comment:

“It’s only serious if there’s a ring.”

Excuse me, what?!?

He tried to save himself after this one, but the damage had been done. That’s how you define serious, Mr. Snackpants? I can see we are going to have some problems then. Being that we live in a military town, I don’t think I would have too much trouble finding another casual boyfriend (or two) since I appear to be mistaken about the commitment level in this relationship.

When you come home to find me gone, having run off with some 19 year old recruit, remember that you dug your own grave with this one! Then you’ll recall the immortal words of the great Beyonce: “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.”

Dance it out for me, Ava!

**Note: I am not actually going to find another (or more) “casual” boyfriends, in case you were seriously worried. I threatened Snackpants with a post about this one so here it is.

**Edit: I know he is getting a lot of crap about this one. I also know he didn’t mean it the way it came out. Blame it on the 3 Irish Car Bombs. I do.

So, because I have WAY too much work to get done tonight, I am taking the time to post that in the coming days, I will recap my impressions of Dragon*Con this year. So be warned. There may even be photos posted, since I took so freakin’ many.

At World of Coke, they are clever devils, as you would expect from such a global corporation. The only way to get out of the building is by exiting through the gift shop. Now Snackpants loves him some Coke products. So we browse through the t-shirts, the shot glasses, the stuffed Coke polar bears, the lip balms and the messanger bags, and find a table with scented shirts. That’s right – the shirts come pre-stinked for you in a variety of scents. One of the Coke products loved so dearly by Snackpants is Grape Fanta. And wouldn’t you know it, they have a shirt bearing just that odor.

Snackpants does not get to enjoy the Grape Fanta as frequently as he may like, due to the predominant ethnic population at his place of business, who happen to share his affinity for the fizzy purple drink. As a way of satiating his love, I now have (sitting here beside me on my desk) a shirt that smells like purple.

I am undecided as to whether or not I will actually wear this shirt. Were my social life more active, I would be concerned about being sniffed by virtual strangers. On the other hand, it eliminates the need for deodorant or perfume, as long as I don’t operate heavy machinery or go for a jog. I am thinking about just keeping it in a Ziploc so as to preserve it’s purple smell for as long as possible, since the scent comes out in 8-12 washes.

What ever is a girl to do! If nothing else, I will take the sticker off before wearing it in public. No one should walk around wearing an open invitation like that!

No, this does not mean that this post will be pornographic in nature! That was actually the name of the menu item I ordered for lunch at The Vortex Bar & Grill yesterday.

It was exactly what is said: a big naked weenie. A footlong all-beef hot dog with nothing on it, cause that’s how I roll. And instead of fries, I got… tater tots!!! And they were crispy and yummy and so awesome!

Snackpants ordered this monstrosity consisting of bison meat, cheese, bacon, and onion rings [edit: I forgot the BBQ sauce! For shame!]. It was an adventure watching him trying to smash it into his mouth without things falling all over the place, since it was so tall.

The Vortex is a really cool place. I think my favorite feature was the toaster on the ceiling. There were all kinds of random things on the walls and the ceiling. Perhaps my least favorite thing was that they allow smoking, but I admit that it was separate enough that I could not tell that there were people actually smoking in the restaurant. And of course, I LOVED that it was 18 and up only. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against kids or teenagers eating in restaurants – but having an adult only place was kind of cool.

After lunch we headed to the aquarium, which was just awesome. We saw all kinds of crazy fish and whales, weird looking creatures and humongous sharks! The highlight of the afternoon had to be when we went into one of the banquet rooms (which was technically not open, I don’t think, but the doors were open) and had a closer view of the Beluga whales. Here is Snackpants with his new friend:

The fun didn’t stop there.  There were 2 females and one male, and the females liked swimming by that back window. Of course, they liked doing their business by that window as well, so we had front row seats to Beluga whale poop. It was pretty gross. Ah, nature.

Here are a couple of other things we saw:

After the Aquarium, since the World of Coke was just right there, we decided to go. Admittedly I was not real excited about it, since I am not a Coke fan. But it was neat. We got to see a small bottling plant in the building, a real cute “documentary” about the folks that work inside the Coke machine and put the soda in the bottle when you put a coin the machine, and go on a very intense 4D ride that should be banned from even a theme park for being so violent!

We tasted some lovely drinks from around the world, Snackpants (for some unknown reason) decided to verify that the Beverly was still gross, and we got our commemorative “World of Coke” Coke bottles to take home. A tiring but very good day.