Fabulous time in Jamaica

Greetings everyone, I wanted to make a quick post now that I'm home.

The trip itself was pretty uneventful. We hauled nearly 4 dozen sets of sheets down to the resort we stayed at -- I never had ANY IDEA that sheets were so heavy! We also hauled several computers down for some Jamaican friends we've made. Between the sheets and the computer it made clearing Customs in Jamaica something of an ordeal. I managed to talk our way out of owing any duty -- not sure exactly how I did it but in the end the Customs officer just waived us through.

We had a total of 8 days in the warm and sun. It seels like the beach has eroded quite a bit since Hurricane Ivan hit in2004. Didn't do a whole lot of site seeing this time -- we did make it up to Alfred's Ocean Palace for a live Reggae show. I managed to escape with little to no sunburn (quite a feat considering the amount of time I spent in the sun). The bugs, however, did have a feast on me. I'd meant to do some postcard writing but failed to get postcards early in the trip and it slipped my mind later on. I didn't do a very good job of getting the camera out, either -- the only pictures from this trip are of sunset on Monday. We went snorkeling at one of the reefs -- lots of beautiful fish to see. Our guide pointed out sea cucumbers I'd have missed and also some sea urchings. It always amazes me how much more colorful salt-water fish are when compared to fresh-water.

The owner (Don Mayer) of Small Dog Electronics were staying at the same resort (Whistling Bird). Any Mac user should be familiar with Small Dog; they have great support and great prices for all Apple products and lots of accessories to go with them. It was really neat to meet Don. I got to play with Don's Mac Book Pro (loaded with core2duo processor and a 12" monitor) -- it'll definately be my next major computer purchase to replace my Mac desktop and IBM notebook.

The trip back was pretty uneventful. Thankfully, we were much lighter on the way out -- even after hitting the duty free shops pretty hard. Because of the TSA restrictions on liquids in carry-on luggage for domestic flights everything had to be placed into checked baggage after clearing customs in Atlanta. Unfortunately, we did loose one bottle that didn't get packed as well as it probably should have. While it's a bummer, nothing else appears to have been damaged other than all our clean clothes were soaked in rum. I'm just glad to have made it home on Saturday -- now I have a full day to get caught back up on life and do laundry before work on Monday.

The only thing I'm kind of bummed out about is Blue October played a show at the Bluebird Theater here in Denver on 2/17.

Ah, well, back to laundry and trying to clear some of the things off my to-do list.

Mitch