17 Oct Wednesday

[Last Updated: 2018-10-17 20:55 EDT]

As I mentioned yesterday, we stayed up past midnight to see if we could catch any sight of the Atlas V rocket launch. I took the laptop outside onto the balcony so we could head the countdown. It launched on time at 12:15 and, indeed, we did catch sight of the flame trail as it moved upwards. I was hopeful we'd see something even though we were on the complete opposite side of the state. The clear night helped a lot here!

That smudge on the left of the centre of the screen is the rocket trail as it arced off over the Atlantic. Once it had disappeared, we headed to bed.

Once we resurfaced, we spent a lazy morning in the apartment. Linda's now on her 11th book this holiday. I've finally managed to make some progress in my Oxygen Not Included game. We had lunch indoors then popped down for a swim for 45 minutes.

Then we headed to the car to drive south towards Sarasota. We were heading to the big mall that's there, the University Town Centre (or UTC) mall. Linda picked up a couple of bits of make-up. We then headed to the Cheesecake Factory to once again fail to finish a meal there. I think we've been to a CF 4 times now and we've never walked away having finished a meal as their portion sizes are just ridiculous. I mean, this is what we were served up..

Linda's was a chicken sandwich. Mine was Orange Chicken with rice. Needless to say, neither of us finished.

Then is was back into the car for the 40 minute drive home. This is the car's display when we were about to pull out of the car park.

Yes, that's right. It was half past seven in the evening and still 34'C.