[theoddz]

Then there's "The Moving Story" about the time my ex and I moved to Jacksonville, FL from Richmond, VA.

We stopped at a Comfort Inn along I-95 in South Carolina, just shy of the Georgia line. I wanted to push for Savannah, since I was driving, but my ex, who had been mortally terrified (and refused to drive) the 26 ft. Ryder truck with the auto transport (carrying my truck), was so at her wit's end that she insisted that we stop. When we first got the room, it looked really nice. The A/C didn't work too well, much to MY dismay, but the room looked clean and so we unpacked our overnight stuff and I headed for the shower. I had just stepped out of the shower when I heard Jan scream like bloody hell. I tore out into the room, naked, to see what she was screaming at, and I just caught a glimpse of a lizard with a bright red tail as it scooted across the floor. By this time, Jan's on top of the bed screaming "Get it!! Get it!! Get it!!" at me and pointing.

Jan didn't even want me to pull my shorts on. She wanted me to go, right away, and KILL this thing, whateveritwas. (I put a pair of shorts and a t-shirt on anyway). So, I then grab the plastic wastebasket and go seeking this thing out (read...on the hunt). There it was, trying to hide under the window air conditioner. It looked like some sort of what we used to call a "skink". It was a scaly black lizard, about 4-6 inches long, black with a bright red tail. I popped the trash can over it and start scooting the can across the floor to the door, which looked like it had an open crack of about 1 inch under it. Well, the can was a good idea.....scooting it quickly over the carpet (very low pile, btw), was not. In my haste to scoot this thing out the door, its tail got caught under the lip of the can and IT. BROKE. OFF. AND WAS TWITCHING.

By this time, Jan, who is from Ontario Canada (the land of little to no "strange bugs and creatures") was beyond traumatized. I scooted the now tailless lizard out the door and the broken tail behind it. No sooner had the lizard made its departure, Jan was off the bed, gathering all of our stuff up and threatening me with every heinous, hideous consequence she could pull out of her brain to threaten me with, if I didn't get us out of that damned place and into a decent, bug/lizard/creature free hotel. She wasn't kidding, either. As tired as I was, I got us out of there and down the road to Savannah. (That was her "Welcome To Dixie" initiation. )

For several months, Jan refused to even discuss "the event" that happened to us during that move. I'm sure that, to this day, wherever she is now, she would absolutely, beyond question refuse to stay in another Comfort Inn.

The End.

~Theo~