Yes, you're correct.  That IS a black Escalade parked outside the lines, over in my space, practically touching my car, with some sort of Carolina Panthers stickers with the word "owner" on them.  I think the stickers are there to make me think he's important.  Note to the Escalade driver:  if you were THAT important, you wouldn't be parked in the $4 boonies section of Long Term 2.  So taking that into account, I gave the Escalade driver a parking ticket, of the same variety that I gave this Hummer driver.  I thought if I got too close, an alarm might go off... but then I realized you couldn't get much closer than he already was to my car.  So he got a ticket.  Ba ha.

After parking lot fun, I drove home, unpacked, repacked, ate dinner, gave Wyatt some much needed attention, went to bed, woke up, and got in the car to drive north for some house hunting.  Turn around time: < 12 hours. 

On the way, I came across some rain.  Lots of rain, in fact.  So much so that I felt a little like I was in Oregon Trail, fording the river with my ill-equipped Camry.  Here's an action shot (of the car in front of me... not my car) of driving through the rain's aftermath. 

Yes, I know you aren't supposed to drive through water you can't see the bottom of, and I could have been swept away in a vicious tidal wave of rain run off.  But this was just a puddle.  A large puddle, I'll give you that.  But it had no current... and all the cars in front of me were doing it!  Luckily, I had space to swerve to the left side of the puddle, where it was it's shallowist, and had no problems.  That really was the most eventful part of my drive.  Other than that, it was smooth sailing.

THEN I arrived at my hotel.  After browsing what Travelocity, Hotels.com, and Hotwire all had to offer, I went with a Hyatt Place.  I've never been to one before so it was a bit of a gamble, but the theory is that's it's a 3 star hotel operated by the Hyatt people (who clearly have a reputation to protect...), so I thought it would be worth a shot.  Especially for $90 a night.  So far, I'm pleasantly surprised.  It's clean, the employees are friendly, and there's free breakfast :)  It's got a definite "young" vibe (as in young adults, not kiddos).  Here are some snapshots from my room.

I'm a fan of the big couch thing (which I only sat on for half the evening... because I spilled coffee all over it (and myself...).  Whoops.  I also like the giant TV that swivels, so you can watch it from the couch OR bed.... and there are power sources and all sorts of cable connection ports right next to it.  I didn't have to unplug a lamp to plug my laptop in!  Woot woot!  I'm also a fan of the giant shower.  And the fact that they give you toothpaste.  Not that I didn't bring my own, but you can never have too many travel size tubes of toothpaste.

Anyway, today I looked at 7 houses, and tomorrow I'll look at about 4 more.  One of my favs was bought yesterday, which is a bummer, but there are LOTS of other ones that are great!  Hopefully I'll find the perfect house :) 

Cheers,

Kari