saturday afternoon i headed out to parade to catch a ride to town, en route to caudwell. the journey from seaford to caudwell is a lengthy one: first you catch an hour long bus ride to montego bay, another hour and a half bus ride to lucea, a half-hour taxi ride to green island and finally a fifteen minute taxi ride to caudwell. i arrived in green island to see jess waiting for me so we could make a stop at the shop before heading up… we darted across the busy intersection to the little shop to pick up essentials for the weekend. jess and i caught up for a while and the kids even stopped to say hi and comment on how long my hair had grown since they had seen me in the summer. as evening settled in, jess had to head out to meet up with melissa to volunteer at a rotary dinner they had previously signed up for… being exhausted and broke, i opted to stay home and take a nap, so i would be awake for the evening’s concert. as hard as i tried to catch some sleep, i could only manage to lie there wide awake. so i ended up flipping through magazines, ate dinner, browsed the latest news headlines and caught up with natty for a while. nearing 11 jess, melissa and some friends arrived back and we soon made our way out to orange bay for western fest; there we met up with natty and melissa headed to vip. we had to survive a magic show before the show would even begin. it was quite late before any artists went on stage. there were enough top headliners: voicemail, aidonia, richie spice, etana, queen ifrica, tarrus riley, … unfortunately because of the late start and the newly formed cold front, time had become freezing beyond imagination. as well, the nitro had worn off and exhaustion from the week had set in. jess and i fought hard to think warm thoughts and stay awake, but as the venue was on the waterfront, the wind chill was no match and eventually sent us running to the car to seek shelter. it was from the back seat in a sleepy stupor i heard queen ifrica and etana… i fell asleep and woke up near the end of tarrus riley’s set. it was then at 5:40 am, all frozen, we decided to head home. lucky us, ramen’s tire went as we passed the green island bridge; 20 minutes later it was switched with the spare and we were soon home, staggering and shivering along to our beds. sunday was a quite day, we tried to watch youtube videos, which took a lifetime, thanks to our dialup modems… we heard there was to be a football match so we met up with jen and the baby and walked to upper cauldwell. as we got there, not a soul in sight. laughing the entire way, we just pretended we had intentionally gone for a stroll. when we got back we headed to jen’s and watched some good old lifetime movie while the baby stared at me all night. we didn’t stay too long, it was getting late and we both had to wake up early, so we headed back up to jess’ place and soon passed out. as morning came, we shared some coffee, showered and headed out, jess to school and me, down to green island. i was supposed to meet up with sarge, rocksan and mama at the bus park, but as i had headed out so early, i arrived before they had even left… so i hopped into a taxi headed to the airport to wait for them and erika and marie to land. i people watched for a couple hours, and made my way to arrivals. shortly after sarge, rocksan and mama appeared and we all awaited erika and marie. about 30 minutes later they walked out with a ton of bags. we made a pit stop at the boy’s school to see them and then headed up, dropped off erika and later unpacked marie, everyone anxious to hear about the trip…