I will have to keep this as brief as possible, given I just got home this afternoon from our vacation in Turkey (Club Med Beldi) and have a thousand things to take care of (including booking a flight to New Jersey for middle of next week), but just a few quick notes to update you all:
First, thank you all so very much for your continued prayers, thoughts and concerns for my mother. I am happy to say that it appears she has one hell of a great specialist helping her beat this horrible bacterial infection (we'll never know where she got it from, either), and she is finally out of the hospital and in a rehab for at least the next week. Which gives me time to arrange to get myself over there so my sister can have a break for a couple of weeks. Her recovery will take time and be slow, but I am hoping I can help her through the transition to being back at home while she builds up her strength again, and can be more independent in her daily life as soon as possible. Anyway, at least the news is so much more positive now, although it will be a long haul in many ways.
Our vacation was lovely, despite the crushing heat and humidity (even the locals told us it was way more humid than usual for this time of year although the temperatures of 95-105 are normal) and the fact that the sea water was roughly as hot as the air... which is why we spent all our time at the colder salt-water pool. The food was amazing, the service excellent. The spa? FABULOUS, can't rave about it enough (if you ever have the chance to get a hot stone massage, DO IT). My skin hasn't felt this great since I hit my 40s, and now my objective is to try and make this sort of self-care a more regular thing, instead of something I do every 3-5 years for special occasions. After the summer I've had, I totally needed and deserved this, and Georges is my angel for encouraging me to do whatever spa treatments made me feel good.
One strange and very disappointing thing happened, though, having nothing to do with the resort itself... my new iPhone 4 curled up its toes and died a slow and painful death. And no one knows why. I didn't get it wet. I didn't use it in direct sunlight for more than a brief moment or two, taking a photo or checking the time (there was no WiFi to speak of, so I was really unplugged anyway). One moment I was playing a little game, and the next minute the screen went black and wouldn't restart, and I was fairly sure I had more than 50% battery life left. When we tried to recharge it, it went into VIBRATE mode... and wouldn't stop, even when we unplugged it from the charger! (I know, I know... you're thinking, "And this is a bad thing because....?") It even started to heat up and we worried it might explode, so I put it on the air conditioner to keep it cool while Georges did a little online research, and the best advice we found was that it would stop vibrating when the battery fully ran out. This took nearly 2 HOURS. We tried several times after that to recharge it, but every time we did, it started to vibrate again! It really was pretty hilarious except for one thing... this happened on our 2nd to last day of vacation and I had a lot of vacation photos on there!
Well, nearly as soon as we got home today, Georges headed out to the Apple store for advice; luckily he invested in an extra warranty but it was still covered under the basic 3-month one. The geeks over there were as mystified as he was; seems none of them had heard of this particular problem especially with a phone just 5 weeks "old" that hadn't been dropped or abused in some way. Bottom line: I lost all my vacation photos, but luckily had synced the phone the day before we left so I can restore everything else. And Georges came home with a brand spanking new phone, on the spot, no waiting. My dead phone is probably going to autopsy even as I write this; I picture it being part of some Apple experiment on iPhone 4 bugs, which of course Apple will deny exist.
I think the highlight of our week was... our swim with the DOLPHINS. We did this on Monday afternoon (and took Georges' iPhone for pics and video) and honestly, I think we were all thrilled with the experience. I'll write a whole post about it later, but for now just know that if you ever get the chance to do something like this, DO IT. It will be really worth it. We are still flying high from that experience... as well as having had a fun and successful first "family" vacation to a totally new place. It was hot, but we made the best of it, and made some wonderful memories as well.
So, now we're home again, home again, jiggedity-jig, and I'm facing a mountain of laundry, food shopping, and preparing a certain Little Guy for the school rentrée next week. Plus making my travel plans to go home and give my mother the biggest, longest hug EVER.
Just wanted to stop by and say "bonjour" to you all. Hope your summer has been going well and you've all been making good memories of your own.
