August 20, 2015: Credit Card Emergency

Got up early this morning and got to watch the sun rise over the Pacific.  That was really nice.

Once the little store at the resort was open this morning I took a walk over there to pick up milk as we had run out at the house.  We are very thankful that we have figured out that there is a little shop there and a way for us to get the most basic supplies or little things like running out of milk would be more like fair sized disasters.

We had a bit of a credit card emergency today.  We were supposed to get a rental car this morning and when I went over to pick it up we found that my one credit card had been turned off and we had accidentally brought expired cards from the other bank!  And, of course, the car rental place is not allowed to take debit cards at all.  This was a disaster.  They had to drive me back to the house.

I spent a bunch of time on the phone with banks trying to figure out what could be done.  We have no way to address the one until we are back in the States which is some time away.  I managed to get the other turned on, just in time, to get the car rented at the end of the day.   It was a close call and we got the car just before it was too late.  We almost did not have a car to go to Panama City this weekend.  We were starting to panic.

After work this evening we piled into the rented Toyota Yaris (we seem to get a Yaris, but a different one, with every rental) and we headed east to Panama City.  Tonight’s drive went really well.  No issues at all.  It was fast getting out there and we had little problem getting onto the right bridge or finding the hotel.  I am starting to learn how to navigate around the city.

We are staying at the Hilton DoubleTree downtown in El Carmen where I was staying two weeks ago.  This time Dominica managed to upgrade us to a suite on the Hilton Honors floor (the fifth floor) which made a huge difference.  We have a three room suite with a huge living room where the girls will sleep, a bedroom with an office for Dominica and me and a large bathroom.  The girls love that the rooms connect in a circle and that they can round around the whole place.  We are very impressed with this room.  So glad that we sprung for a suite.

I got set up with my laptop in the office of the suite and found a huge cache of awesome classic games had released on GOG.  The old Dungeons & Dragons games from my childhood were all available now.  So, of course, I bought them all.