Friday, October 15, 2010

The Fourteenth Year of a Five-Year Plan

Well, hello netties!

If you've come to this blog from Historic Traveler, then you already know a little bit about me and the crazy adventure I've just begun by buying a bed and breakfast in St. Augustine, Florida. You can skip today's posting and just jump to the next post, where things start getting good.

If you don't know anything about me, here's a quick run down: fourteen years ago, the hub and I decided that sitting in a cubicle was lots and lots of fun, but we might prefer living on the beach (even though it wouldn't have that nice view I had of the upstairs ladies' bathroom).

Because the hub and I were both good corporate doobies (and because some manager or other had forced us to read "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" every two years for some improvement initiative or other), we immediately sat down and made a plan to detail how we were going to get from business meetings to surfside greetings. We came up with a five year plan.

That was in 1996.

Since that time, life was pretty much normal. We went to work. We pretended we loved it. We held our traditional annual parties--the football party in January, the movie party in March, the Christmas party in December. And at every party, we'd say to our friends: "This might be the last time we'll be here to have this party". Or "Next year, we can have this party at the beach."

A couple of years ago, our friends started telling us to shut up. They no longer believed it.

Well, believe it now, baby, cuz we are living the dream. Our dream, anyway. And yours, if you have drempt of getting 5 hours of sleep each night, visiting Wal-Mart at least once a day, and dealing with broken Jacuzzis, daily beer runs, and guests who wish their mattress was harder/their pillows were softer/their sangria was colder, and whatever else they want that would make their stay with us just perfect.

It sounds like I'm complaining, but the truth is that I love it. When a guest says they haven't been on vacation for years, and that the past two nights have been the best thing that's happened to them since cable, well...it's hard not to be pretty darn happy.

Working right across from the water every day doesn't hurt, either.

That's assuming, of course, that that water isn't dripping from your ceiling. Which is what is happening today in our storage room. Nothing's been ruined, but I should probably go move the boxes of shampoo and conditioner just to be sure.

I can tell already this is going to be an adventure. I hope you'll hang out here, netties, and experience all of the fun with me.

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