I am wrapping up my trip to Miami. It has been ridiculously cold here for this time of year. It’s been going down to like 30 degrees at night which is obviously not as cold as the northeast (where I’m from) but is still really cold for Florida. I guess it’s part of the high pressure system over the northern part of North America which is making so much news lately. I feel pretty bad for all of the farmers who are currently getting their crops destroyed but I guess shit happens. Hopefully they have insurance for stuff like this.

Unfortunately for a lot of people in south Florida, they don’t have heat. My grandmother claims she hasn’t used her heat since she moved into her current condo (something like 20 years ago) and when we tried to turn it on it didn’t work. Also, when we went out to a Japanese restaurant they sat us near the Hibachi grills away from the door because they didn’t have any heat. I guess this all just goes to show how unusual this cold front is in south Florida.

So last night I went to go see “Up In The Air” with my brother. It’s a movie with George Clooney where he stars as a frequent business traveler who goes all over the country firing people at various downsizing companies. In the movie he says he’s on the road for like 280 days per year or something ridiculous like that. He’s “elite” status at a bunch of different places like American Airlines, Hilton, Hertz and others. I won’t give away the point of the movie but I found a few things about it really funny and familiar. For one, I am a Platinum Elite in the American AAdvantage frequent flier program. It gets me upgrades to first class and a number of other things. I also sympathized with him on a number of levels. Things like his thought process for how to choose a line at airport security really resonated with me. Overall I definitely enjoyed the movie although I don’t know if I would bother to see it again.

The other funny thing about seeing the movie was listening to all of the old people in the theater saying “what did he say??” over and over. I am not making fun of old people for poor hearing as it happens to everyone but it was kind of entertaining to hear the whispering all over the place. Although, to call it whispering was pretty generous. I think the elderly stop whispering at some point because they know their spouse can’t hear it so they just say everything outloud even in movie theaters. It definitely would have pissed off the people in stevesbets’ movie theater if they’d been at this showing up Up In The Air.

Today I went with my brother to Sawgrass Mills which is a huge outlet mall like 30 minutes north of where my grandmother lives. It was a total madhouse. As with most outlet malls, there’s a reason why the merchandise is at an outlet mall. It generally sucks. I saw a lot of random stuff like neon green polo shirts and the like. Also, the Oakley store pretty much only had XXL tshirts. Lots of other stores had similar ridiculous selection. Nonetheless, my brother managed to find things at a number of stores and a I found a few good items as well. If you went to the right stores, there were definitely some great deals.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up the weekend. This hotel has horrible internet (even worse than the internet at the UB Aruba tournament — and that is saying something) so I am probably even more excited about getting home to good internet than I am about escaping this weather.

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