Jonathan Woods

Yesterday around 6:15PM EST my fiancé , her sister and husband, and our 13-week-old boxer (Penelope) left for the northwest (gulf coast) town of Crestview, FL. We arrived in Crestview at 8:15CST. We drove straight through the night, all 15+ hours to get here and spend time with Yvonne and Sarah’s dad (my future father-in-law) before he heads back home.

The trip was fun (as always), aside from me fighting some awkward multi-symptom “illness”. I’m getting a cold, so all the congestion is there. I’ve also been on-again off-again nauseous. Been like that for days. No idea what’s going on.

Anyway – I will probably add more to this post with additions etc – but I wanted this blog post to be kind of a static and editable diary of my trip down here. More to come folks

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Monday, July 12

So I’m still recovering from the sunburn I received yesterday. I was in too much of a hurry in my preparation for swimming here at Yvonne’s family’s pool. I have burned far worse than this in the past, however, this sunburn seems to be really hurting in areas of my shoulders/back where it hasn’t previously been an issue. Kinda sucks.

Anyway – things are well. I’m relaxing. I’m relaxing a lot. Yesterday there was a multi-family 8 hour party. We drank a lot. I don’t think anyone got hammered, but in eight hours, the like 10 of us (who were drinking) drank a large volume of alcohol. That combined with my sunburn…I was VERY tired last night.

Anyway – I’m very much looking forward to the week of relaxing ahead of me. I know we’ll make our yearly pilgrimage to Joe’s Crab Shack in Destin, FL – and hopefully one day this week we’ll get to the beach…though I  hope it’s as the sun’s going down because, as I said, I am BURNT.

More to come. -jw

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Okay – so it’s WEEKS later. I just needed to follow this thing up. Florida was fun. Very different. Fun none the less. The emptiness shared by all of us due to the lack of a Col. Richard S. Briggs was staggering at times. He wasn’t even my own grandfather – but I missed him. I missed him a lot. He was such a character, so funny…and a great man. He will be missed, because he already is.

On a lighter note, we met some AWESOME people down there. Kamoi, Ashley and Jesse. Those three were like Family from the get go. Really awesome. I hate that I don’t live down there and can’t spend time with them. I miss them a lot already.

Anyway – to sum it up. BP can try their darndest to mess up Florida, but they can’t kill the spirit, and the feeling of being on the gulf coast. I LOVE FLORIDA!