i'd go the whole wide world!

First, start this song playing in a new window while you read the rest of the story:

The problem with working on cruise ships, or leading any sort of travel-y lifestyle, is that you meet great people, and you get to know them very well, and then you all go off to different corners of the world and may never see each other again. My cruise gig was two years ago exactly, but I have kept up with three incredible people from that ship - and through them, I've met some other incredible people.

Yesterday, all of these awesome cruise people (except one, and I'll see her in two weeks), on two different ships, were in Miami at the same time. A little while ago, around the end of February (when we first realized this was happening, and when plane tickets were cheap) we started planning the day. And since I enjoy very much making things more epic than they already are, I didn't tell Full Tilt that I was going to be there. (they just thought they were meeting up with Ken for lunch - no idea that I was flying down for the day to see them)(because no one expects awesome people to show up a thousand miles away from where they're supposed to be).

Here is their reaction as they walked into the restaurant and saw me there:

So much happy all in one place!

We had a great lunch together, made some faraway plans to see each other again, then ran some errands. Too soon, they had to get back to their ship, the Millennium.

It would have been nice to have more time (and I wanted so badly just to go on their ship with them and go on a cruise - but I have too much to do on land right now) So then we walked around, found the water, and sat by it for a bit. The weather could not have been nicer!

My flight home connected through DC - if I had been able to get out and see all my DC folks, that would have made the day even better. But a Potbelly sandwich sufficed (Tennessee doesnt have Potbellys, so whenever I get a chance for a delicious sandwich, I have to take it!) By the way, the Reagan National airport is pretty swell. Free wifi, charging stations all over the place, all the good Maryland food in a row? I enjoyed it.

Then I flew back to Nashville. 2,630 miles total.

This awesome day was brought to you by:

The Ken Ge Center for Shenannigans and Laundry Studies

American Airlines

PF Changs

The Atlantic Ocean

The Celebrity Millenium and Equinox

Reagan National Airport

Apple, Inc.

Potbelly Sandwich Shop

earth, air, fire, wine

To the girl I told to run away

The ghost I saw a hundred times a day

You weren't like me no you weren't afraid

You are elements combined

Earth, air, fire, wine

Someday you'll be mine

You stuck around, but we didn't fly

Weighed down by all I hid behind my eyes

I only hope that you realize

You are elements combined

Earth, air, fire, wine

Someday you'll be mine

I'll bury all excuses

Burn all the reasons why

I cant be everything you want

And everything you need

You're elements combined

We talk a lot but it's always small

Tiny bricks that make a giant wall

I hope these words are a wrecking ball

Poppop Hannigan

William Hannigan Jr., long time resident of Annapolis, died on April 9, 2012. He was 86 years old.

Born on April 6, 1926 in Brooklyn NY, he was the son of the late William Hannigan and Florence Hiebel Hannigan. He enlisted in the Navy where he served from 1943 to 1946. He moved back to Colesville, MD where he met and married his first wife Helen Horak in 1948. In 1950 they moved to the Panama Canal Zone where he worked as an electrician in the Aids to Navigation Department. In 1958 he sailed his 30’ wooden sailboat from Panama to Annapolis, in preparation to move back to Maryland in 1959. There they settled in Annapolis. He worked for the Chesapeake Instrument Corp in Shady Side which was later purchased by Gould. He retired from there in 1987. In 1988 his wife Helen died, and in 1989 he married Eugenia (Gene) Hommel. He liked to travel, build models, raise redwood trees and repair things in his work shop.

______

Most little girls will tell you that their daddy is the strongest man in the world. I remember when I was little, we all staunchly believed that our daddy was (very strong, but) the second strongest in the world, second only to his daddy, our Poppop. Poppop was a large man with a large beard and a large belly. He had a workshop that he could build anything in: he built real, big boats, and he built tiny, very intricately detailed model boats, and toys for us to play with, and we would crack walnuts from the yard in the vise grips.

Four years ago, when I first walked into the violin shop where I now work, the smell of wood shavings, and good honest work, hand tools and power tools, brushes and fine motor skills, was a familiar surrounding. I was at home here. (fortunately, they hired me so I had an excuse to hang out here every day). Poppop always took credit for me going into a woodworking field.

The 4th of July was always a good tradition when we were growing up, at Poppop's (right after we just celebrated Elizabeth's birthday every year, with swimming in the recently opened pool, as soon as the helicopters fell off the trees, and eating angel food cake) We would eat all the hamburgers and watermelon our little stomachs could handle, and set off bottle rockets, and go out sailing.

When I was in early high school, my grandparents went on a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth II, over to the British Isles. They brought back a lot of Irish music books for my sister and I to play out of together, and other assorted celtic-y things (celebrating all our awesome Irish heritage), but they also brought back stories of how great the music was on the ship. I said at the time, wouldn't it be cool to be a musician on a cruise ship? You'd get to go so many cool places.

In 2010, I got to go to Panama, three times (as a musician on a cruise ship). And again, once in 2011. My first reaction to being there was, how could anyone live in this humidity. (He assured me that you got used to it pretty quickly when you lived there) Also, how incredible that people related to me actually lived here in the 1950s, I tried to picture it how they would have seen it. It was hard to do. I had seen pictures, heard stories. He had shown me old maps from those days, and maps that he had drawn where he used to race sailboats, around the bay, and go camp on the little islands. I showed him my pictures, one picture in particular of a lighthouse right on the locks. "That's my lighthouse!" he said, probably the most excited I ever saw him. He went up that lighthouse once a week to make sure it was working, apparently, back when he worked there. He was so thrilled that it was still there, that I got to visit there fifty years later and things still be the same.

He had some flaws too, but everyone does, and the many good memories I have of him will always be good. He was an incredibly interesting man, and I'm proud to be a Hannigan.

Joy to the World!

My family doesnt have a lot of must-do Easter Traditions (and you know how much I love traditions), but the best one is my dad putting on the old Keith Green record and blasting this gem throughout the house to wake us all up. Happy Easter everyone! He is risen indeed!