Living the Dream with Joyce: February 1

My annual trip to Ontario, to keep my extended health insurance with ARM active.Well, two years ago, I got caught in a huge snowstorm which ravaged the whole east coast and then some - was stuck in a hotel in Buffalo for a solid week! Bored out of my skull! So . . . last year I didn't go at all. This year, though, the time has been expanded to 95 days - meaning that I have to be in Ontario for 24 hours every 95 days - so I left in February, figuring that I had a better chance of avoiding the bad weather. Well, it worked out perfectly - after I got back, the shit hit the fan, so to speak, and Ontario got frozen and dumped on - temperatures of -29 C with a wind chill factor of -42. Thank God I missed it!! The trip to Niagara Falls was pretty uneventful - Susan drove me to the Red Roof Inn in Galveston, where I took the airport shuttle to the same hotel in Houston, overnight there, up early to take the shuttle to Bush Airport; Houston to Detroit (half hour stopover) to Buffalo, shuttle to hotel in Niagara Falls (my cabbie told me the shuttle doesn't actually go to that hotel, but since I was the only one in his shuttle, he took me there anyway), The hotel was a disappointment - half the stuff they offered online and in the binder in the room wasn't actually offered until the summertime - but what the heck - it's a hotel. I did a bit of wandering around the outrageously touristy area, saw the falls - again - and, most importantly, accomplished all the stuff I wanted to accomplish: renewed my driver's licence (hopefully, the new one will arrive in Galveston before I leave to go back to Canada . . . ), unlocked my Canadian TD account (I had locked myself out at an ATM in Galveston), and, of course, got receipts to prove my presence in the province for 24 hours. The trip back was just as uneventful - although we were late leaving Buffalo due to a sudden downpour of snow requiring wing de-icing, so late into Atlanta, giving me 20 minutes to get from one end of airport to the other in order to catch my connecting flight to Houston; Galveston Express Shuttle back to the Red Roof Inn, where Susan picked me up and took me back to Jamaica Beach. Thank God for good friends!!