shuttle launch

We timed our walk today so that we were on the beach in time to watch the shuttle launch. It was awesome, as usual. We've gone to see it launch from the beach by our house a few times now, 3 or 4 I think. This picture is from today.


It's from Alfred's camera, so it's not quite as good as the pictures we took of a launch last June. So I decided to put those on here too.



The coolest launch we saw was a night launch a year or so ago. The whole sky lit up. We didn't take any pictures though. Some day I really want to go to Titusville to watch a launch up close. We could have gone today, but traffic would have been awful. Ok, time for dinner, bye!

busy tracy = late post

Holy hell in a handbasket! Today's been busy. I was at the office for less than half an hour total. We went to the gym this morning, then over to the house where all our fireplace inventory is now stored to meet a guy (who used to be a road manager for Lynyrd Skynyrd) to load up his truck with some stuff from the order last week, then over to the office so Alfred could meet a plumber, then I headed over to the house where all the fireplaces are being installed to go over an installation manual with them, then back to the office to pick up Alfred and head to the house to meet the guy again to pick up another load of stuff, Alfred dropped me off and had to go back to the office for the plumber again, then came back and we waited an hour and 20 minutes (!!) for the guy with the forklift to show up to help us load the pallets. By then I had to go meet someone to show them a rental house and Alfred stayed with the forklift guys, I finished showing the house and went back over to meet Alfred and the forklift guys for lunch, then we finally got back to the office at about 3:30. At which point I had to open mail and do my usual morning duties (and write half of this post). After about 20 minutes we left to go talk to the couple we're house sitting for for a couple days next week, then we came home!

We spent last night at Ilya and Mercedes' house. We watched the video of Ilya sky diving last week. It looked like so much fun. My favorite part of the video was the very end: the camera man films Ilya landing, Ilya turns to the camera and announces "I puked!" as he turns and shows that he did, in fact, puke. Meanwhile the guy who's attached to him (they did tandem) has a disgusted look on his face and is unhooking himself from Ilya as fast as he can. It was hilarious. We spent the night there because we're cat/house sitting for them for a couple weeks while they're visiting Mercedes' family in Spain. Both of these pictures were taken at her parents' house when we were there for their wedding and our honeymoon a few years ago. Their house is built into the side of a hill and has a gorgeous view. The huge rock you can see in the distance of the second picture is on the beach where we actually stayed for the week and a half or so we were on our official honeymoon. We climbed to the top of it. We also went diving at the base of it. It's called Ifach. It's a funny name.

odds and ends

Katie, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to post more goofy pictures of you apparently. I got more comments on that picture than on anything else I've written so far. Thanks for taking one for them team.

So, what do you get when you have 3 19/20 year olds staying with you for a week?


Except for the couple of Red Bull cans on top, those are all from beer. We had an entire second bin full of our other recycling. We looked just like the house of alcoholics down the road this morning.

In other news, Alfred and I hit up the big main library downtown last night. I love libraries. I used to love to go to the stacks in the older libraries at Cornell and just look at all the crazy books they had there. The library near our house now kind of sucks. It makes me kind of sad. But now that I have Alfred's card to this one, and they have a self check out thing, I can go there and explore to my little heart's content, and no one can get suspicious that I'm not named Alfred. Anyway. I checked out a few teaching books, and Alfred checked out like 10 books on house design. He's got a whole station set up at home with the books and sticky notes and a pen so as he goes through them he can mark stuff he likes. I'm getting the feeling this house building process may take longer than we planned.

One last thing. Go look at this website with lots of passive aggressive notes that people submit. I spent a long time Tuesday looking at them and then my computer shut itself down overnight so I had to re-find it today, but I lost my place where I was, and I was several pages in. And I actually have work to do today, so I can't even read them until tomorrow. But you can, and you should. Have fun.

all by ourselves

Katie left today to go back to NY for the summer. It's the end of an era. The plus side: there will be no one around to convince me to make delicious bad things all summer. The negative side: there will be no one around to convince me to make delicious bad things all summer, which means I will not make delicious bad things. Or if I do, I will eat it all myself. Damn Alfred and his willpower!

So I've been working on teaching stuff most of the day. I need to write a classroom management plan, which is basically something that says how I'd run the classroom and handle discipline and stuff (that's what google has told me so far, anyway). I'm also updating my resume, and I have to put together a portfolio. There's a big teacher recruitment fair in 2 weeks that I'm going to, so I need to get myself together by then. They do hiring on the spot. It's the bigger of the 2 counties I'm applying to for next year, and easier to get into, but I'd rather teach in the other one because it would be closer to where we're moving. But I'm not going to be picky; I'll take any job I'm offered!

beachy goodness

I downloaded Katie's pictures last night, so here are some more from the weekend to share. First, we had an Iron Chef competition Sunday night. The secret ingredient was roasted red peppers, and we had to make 1 regular dish and 1 dessert. I made garlic focaccia with roasted red peppers and mozzarella, and my dessert was roasted red pepper tarts with meringue. They both turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, and I won! I was also the only competitor. Here I am contemplating the meaning of life.

I was going to post a picture of Katie's boogie boarding injury, but I couldn't find it just now. I know I saw it this weekend, but it must have been on our camera, which means I copied it to the computer at home and deleted it from our camera. My b. (I don't think I told the story of double nipple ring boy, who we met at the beach Saturday, and who has given us such gramatical gems as "my b" instead of "my bad," and "twisted" which I presume means drunk.) Anyway here are the younguns boogie boarding.

Yesterday we went to the beach. Surprise! Some kid left a shovel and bucket, so we made this sweet sandcastle. In the back is the watchtower, and the castle for the royalty is in the front. Check out the land bridges. That's some amazing construction right there. I made them, in case you couldn't guess. We gave up trying to fill the moat after 1 bucket.


After that we got the brilliant idea to take pictures of our shadows in the sand. It started out with us doing "YMCA" and went from there. Please enjoy my first attempt at a slideshow, with handy subtitles in case you have trouble figuring out our spelling. Just remember as you see the words we chose that we were with 3 19/20 year olds. And me and Alfred. Not the most mature minds.

fun with Katie's friends

Three day weekends are great.

Saturday we went to the beach right by our house. Apparently you can ride horses on the beach. On their way back the girl in the back here had her skirt hiked up around her hips. Classy.

That night we did a power hour, and made pizza and cupcakes. The first picture is of my pseudo-Hostess cupcakes, and for the ones in the second picture I used the Magnolia Bakery recipe. It was seriously the most delicious frosting ever.


Yesterday we went to Daytona. We cruised the beach for awhile, watched some lifeguard training, then drove the car onto the beach and only got stuck in the sand once. The younguns went in the water and rode some mad waves on the boogie boards but it was too damn cold for Alfred and me. Yeah, we're wusses. On the way home we stopped for dinner at Chipotle (Alfred's favorite!) Then last night we had yet another power hour. Behold the wonderous tower of Coors Light. I also enjoy the artistry of the girls in the background. Alfred took several videos of Katie and Christina performing but I think they'd both kill me if I posted that. It's pretty good blackmail material though, so don't piss me off, Katie! :)

order completed

It hasn't rained in months. When does it start to rain? Just as our shipment was being delivered. Of course.

It went pretty smoothly, all things considered. I've had to make way too many phones calls because of people bitching at me and other people screwing things up, but (almost) everything has been delivered, and part of it has even been paid for. And we got to spend a good chunk of the day out of the office! We didn't get here until about 3! Awesome!

So it was kind of funny, the house these were being delivered to is literally next door to a country club. Across the street is the golf course. You can actually see a golf cart in the background of this picture. So this huge flat bed truck has to back in, through the country club's parking lot, and then park on the 1 lane road that leads to the 15 or so houses that are back there. I swear, every single person who lived back there drove in or out in the 2 1/2 hours or so that he was there. There was also a lawn service, a bug service, and UPS. Alfred was directing traffic for awhile, he got bitched at a couple times, but what do you really expect from Republicans?

In completely unrelated news, Robyn made blondies (brownies without the chocolate, kind of like cookies in bar form) for dessert last night. They were slightly undercooked, so the insides were all gooey and warm and delicious. I didn't even want to know how many sticks of butter the recipe called for. Oh dear Lord they were delicious. (Disclaimer: this picture is not of Robyn's blondies. But they look good, eh?) We were there for lunch today too, let's just say that I single handedly ate about a third of the 9x13 pan between the two meals. I could have kept going. I may not have much willpower, but I at least scraped up a little. But I didn't eat breakfast today, so that makes up for it, right? And we went to the gym this morning. (Speaking of which, the main trainer there has been wearing jeans the last couple of Fridays. He's in his 40s maybe, really short, but dang he looks good in those jeans. Sorry Alfred.)

dreams and annoyances

Last night I had a dream that I was in the hospital, and our bedroom was my hospital room. The door was closed and Alfred was outside, and I wanted him to come in, so I started calling his name to get him to come in. Apparently I said his name out loud for real, and woke both of us up. At 4:40. It sucked. Then on my way to the office (I dropped Alfred off to meet his dad) I stopped at Starbucks, and it was freaking closed! What the hell!

I also had a dream last night that I was babysitting for this little boy. The link is for his parents' blog. He's a 4 month old baby with a genetic disease similar to Down's Syndrome in that he has 3 copies of 1 chromosome, but different from Down's in that it's fatal (more fatal than life generally is, anyway). Only half of all babies conceived with this are born alive, and only like 5 or 10% make it to their 1st birthday. (I somehow found a blog for another baby with this condition and have read about several more since. For some reason I read a lot of blogs about sick kids.) Anyway, in my dream he looked totally different but somehow I knew it was him, and Katie kept getting him to laugh. Then he stopped breathing a couple times in my dream. It was weird. And kinda scary cause I thought this baby was going to die in my care.

(By the way, I had a dream last week about someone coming to our house with a gun and getting ready to shoot me in the head. I woke up before he shot. The last time I dreamt about someone shooting me was a few days before Mike was shot. Also weird.)

So now for the annoyances part of my post. This damn order is driving me crazy. Our dealer who placed the order, more specifically. He called yesterday at 4, all frantic because he had a mistake in the order and wanted to know if it had been picked up yet. I called, it hadn't, and they were able to fix the mistake and still have it ready to ship out right away. Which is great, but apparently not good enough for my dealer. He called me again today and was bitching about how the shipping company is going to be late. You'd think he's be appreciative of the fact that they were late and saved his ass from having to pay for a $3000 item he didn't need. He sucks. (The picture is another shot from the house this order is going to. It appears that whole back wall is going to be glass.)

pretend there's a title here

This morning we took Katie to her scuba diving class. She's finally going to be certified! We had to drop her off a little early, so she had to sit by herself in this little alley way to wait for the instructor. She was supposed to do her dives this weekend so I was going to go with her, but now she has to wait till August because the guy can't do it this weekend anymore. Kinda sucks, I was looking forward to diving. Too bad she's going to be back in NY this summer, or we could have gone diving this summer so she could practice. Anyway, I have to include this picture because I made Katie let me take it of her for the sake of the blog. She's a champ.

So I don't think I mentioned this, but I made another sale. Yippee. It's a pretty good one, for us at least. I guess it's good to get one more order in before it's all over. Anyway we went to check out the house to see what it's like and where all 6 of the fireplaces are going, and man, is it big (that's what she said!) It's right on the river, this picture is the view from every room at the back. They've got several rooms that are going to be just glass all the way across the back wall. The only weird thing is that we couldn't find where 6 fireplaces are going to go. (Actually, there's a second weird thing too: we couldn't figure out where the master bedroom and bathroom were. But I digress.) We found a few spots that might be for a fireplace, but not 6. And none big enough for the largest unit they ordered. But hey, it's none of my business. As long as I get a check I couldn't care less where they put them all. They're supposed to be delivered tomorrow. I'm a little nervous about it, but hopefully it all goes well and we get paid fast.

Oh, and Mom, it's funny you mention being a professional blogger - Alfred and I have been talking about starting a blog like this!

five things

Ok, so I've seen this on other people's blogs and thought it would be a good way to kill some time. Also enjoy my 5 random pictures to go with my five things.

What I was doing FIVE yrs ago: That would be May 2003. I was finishing up my senior year at Cornell, getting ready to move to Florida, and figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. It was a pretty fun time, I wasn't stressed out about a job yet.


FIVE things on my to do list for today: finish my current project, which is punching holes in a bunch of paper and putting it in a binder; go look at a house with Alfred, Phil, and Lucy; eat dinner; pick up Katie's friends from the airport; go home

FIVE things I would do if I were a billionaire: RETIRE! Have some babies. Get lasik surgery, travel, build a new big house on a hundred acres of land by the water somewhere, probably donate to some good causes and stuff... (I know, that's 6, but I had to put the last one in so I don't seem shallow :) )


FIVE places I have lived: Tonawanda, NY; Ithaca, NY; Gothenburg, Sweden; Washington, DC; St. Augustine, FL


FIVE jobs I have had: whatever it is I'm doing now, museum manager, alumni relations (that sounds nicer than telemarketer), law firm temp, beer warehouse breakage

pasta-riffic!

We tested out another mixer attachment this weekend: the pasta maker! Yes, folks, we made our own pasta. It was awesome. Here's how it happened.

It all started when Alfred and I watched an Alton Brown episode about eggplant. Thus inspired, we purchased several eggplant from the farmers' market on Saturday and decided to make baba ghanoush and pasta with eggplant and tomato. We followed Alton's instructions to roast half the eggplant and salt the other half. Ilya and Mercedes were joining us for dinner, so after they arrived we got cracking.

The baba ghanoush was good, but I forgot to add the garlic. Next time, it will be better. I blame the bloody mary.

Then we started on the pasta. For this I enlisted the help of Mercedes and Katie.

Alfred and Ilya helped by continuing to drink.


It looked like real pasta!


Katie and Alfred graciously offered to play sous chef, aka chop all of the veggies (eggplant, tomato, onion, pepper, garlic, basil, and parsley). No pictures of this, but it really did happen. I think that was my favorite part of the evening: not having to chop!

And so we have the finished product:


I had already eaten a bunch before I remembered to take a picture, hence the plate looking kind of juicy. It was yummy.

We then settled down for a nice long stretch of speed uno. Now, as most of you know, Mercedes is from Spain. It stands to reason that she thinks in Spanish and translates that into English for our benefit. Also, in Uno, when you are down to one card, you yell out, "Uno." The back story thus established... at one point of the game, when she was down to her last card, Mercedes called out "one." We had quite a giggle.

warning: gross stuff about beef ahead

I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, which Alfred has already read most of. It's what has really spurred him into becoming a hippie and trying to produce more of our own food, or at least getting it from healthier, local sources. I just got back from lunch, where I read while I ate. And now I get why he's turning into a hippie.

The part I read today was all about what cattle are fed on a feedlot before they're slaughtered: mostly corn (which is not natural for them and therefore makes them sick), mixed with antibiotics (since the corn is making them so sick), protein from sources such as chicken parts and droppings, and whatever manure gets stuck to their bodies throughout their lives on the feedlot that doesn't get washed off. I'm reading this as I'm eating a taco with beef. Lovely. It's also talking about how Mad Cow Disease became a problem because cattle used to be fed protein from other cattle, aka cannibalism. Now it's much better though, cause they eat protein from chickens, which of course are fed beef protein. So now the cattle gets digested by the chickens before being refed to other cattle. There's also stuff about E. coli becoming more resilient because of the change of stomach pH in cattle. Is this sounding as gross as it sounded to me in the book? Cause it sounded really gross. I want to be a vegetarian.

In non manure related news, we should be receiving our permit from the Army Corps to build our house any day now. Also, we're supposed to be getting our official address from the county today. We might really get to build a house! We also looked at a couple of houses that we could potentially rent while our new house is getting built, assuming we can somehow rent our current house. (We're thinking vacation rental for our house, unless Katie finds a couple of friends who want to rent it instead.) One house we looked at today is already owned by Max's company, the other is being purchased this month (or maybe next month, I'm not sure). Either way, it would cut down our commute and, depending on what we rented our house for, our monthly housing cost. Which is a good thing. Then we can use the extra money to buy grass-fed beef! (You like how I connected my two topics? I feel like Dave Barry!) (You like all my linking in this post? I feel like a dork!)

exciting night, and Katie's craptastic morning

So, first things first. Last night I made a key lime pie with meringue. It's my first meringue pie, so I hope it's good. It looks good.


I also made a loaf of bread, but it wasn't pretty enough to take a picture of. And we made granola. It's like crack to me. Sweet, crunchy crack.

The other accomplishment: I beat the Legend of Zelda! Yes, I took a picture. We didn't get a picture of the last screen when I won cause it scrolled by before we grabbed the camera. I guess Link and Zelda had to go make out. No, I didn't have a mouse in my pocket, Alfred came downstairs to watch my victory. And offer some tips.


I started the second quest, but it's hard again cause I lost all the cool weapons and power I had from the other game. I'll probably start looking for websites for help/to cheat. Or give up.

And now for the exciting-in-a-bad-way news. Katie called a little after 10 last night: her car had died on her way home from work. So Alfred went to pick her up, and we drove her back there this morning (she got to sit on my lap, since our only car is a 2 seater) so it could get towed.


Turns out the timing belt is shot and with the potential damage she's looking at at least $2000. Not worth it, considering she/we bought it for less than that. So, Katie has no car. Luckily her classes are over, but 2 of her friends were supposed to be flying down next week and all three of them were going to drive back to NY for Katie to spend the summer up there. Not anymore!

The best part is, Katie called me a few minutes ago. Right after she got off the phone with my mom, her phone died. She was right next to a Radio Shack, so she went to try to buy a new charger, but of course they didn't have any. So she had to go buy a phone card, find a phone book, look up the number for the mall she works at, call to get the number for the store she works at, call there, get phone numbers for a couple of her friends, and then try to find someone who was able to pick her up and take her back home. I was just laughing. I mean, what else can you do? It could be worse, she could have broken down in the middle of West Virginia on her drive home. West Virginia sucks.

and we have a decision

Well, the job decision has sort of been made for me. I've been leaning towards looking for a teaching job, and getting things put into place to start applying when jobs for next year are posted. A little while ago I got a call from the fireplace company we are the distributor for: they're giving our distributorship to another company. But we can still sell in 3 smaller towns in the area. We've had just so much success with the large territory that they're taking away the majority of it so that we can do well in a much smaller area. Makes complete sense to me. I mean, I understand it's a business decision, but we've been told for months that we're safe and have nothing to worry about, they'll protect us. The best part is, the company they're giving it to is a company we approached to sell to. They didn't want to buy from someone smaller than them, so they went to the manufacturer and took our area. So that's cool.

Max doesn't seem to be very concerned about it, but I think it's time to move on. We've lost enough money in this, I'd prefer to just cut our losses and get out. Of course, it's not my money, and I guess he wants to keep trying. But I think Alfred can handle the blistering 1-sale-every-3-months pace I've set so far. I have confidence in him.

It's really not so bad, since I've been thinking of leaving anyway, but it still kind of sucks that I was so bad at this that I completely screwed up the entire company.

Oh well. Who likes fireplaces anyway?

Fun with Young Children

Scene 1: church, during one of the hymns

Ella: Is there only a piano at this church?
Katie: Yup, just a piano.
Ella: No trumpets?
Katie: Nope, no trumpets.
Ella: Not even any cymbals?
Katie: Nope, just a piano.
(pause)
Ella: Trombones are my favorite.

(I don't know what kind of church this kid's been going to, but it sounds entertaining.)


Scene 2: the living room of my parents' house

Ella (coming up from the basement): Uncle Mike, they won't let me do whatever I want.


Scene 3: the basement of my parents' house

Kristin: Ella's uncle told me that I was in charge of the lights cause I'm the biggest kid here.
Me: Yup, that's right.
Kristin (worried): Well, did he tell Ella they were going to take over the world?

(yes, yes he did)


Scene 3: photography studio

Cathy carries Mason into the studio. He's a little cranky and doesn't want to cooperate. He's rubbing his face, and eventually his finger makes it into his nose. When he pulls it out and holds it up, there's a giant booger on the tip of his finger.

weekend recap

No pictures today, but a story about me being a drunken fool! Almost as good!

It was a nice weekend, though the reason for it was sad. If you've ever read Tuesdays with Morrie, though, she did not want to get to that point, and for her sake I'm glad she didn't. The funeral was very nice, the priest was good friends with both of my grandparents and did the mass for my grandfather as well. He was able to make it very personal, and he actually teared up at the cemetery. He was the priest that confirmed me, my brother, and a couple of my cousins, but I did not feel the need to go relive old times with him. I'm sure he would vaguely remember me because of my grandma, but he doesn't need to be reminded of me specifically. I wasn't the most pious teenager. Heck, the most I remember of the weekend retreat we had to take was going upstairs to the boys' hallway, and flirting with a couple of guys I liked.

So we decided to have a night out with (almost) all the cousins Saturday night. We started out with a power hour (complete with Uno) at 6pm. Luckily, we had 2 19 year olds that could be our DDs, but unluckily, they joined us in the power hour. By 7 we had moved outside (after Mike knocked over about half a dozen bottles on the living room floor) and my cousin Kim had brought her 3 kids over (my mom was having a sleep over with them and Ella and Mason). So we spent some time chasing the kids around and playing with them, I attempted to clean up the bottles and shot glasses (fully intending to clean them up on Sunday), Mike got denied buying beer at a gas station because he had an out of state ID, and Katie and my cousin Aaron raced each other around the block on my grandma's motorized scooters. By maybe 8 I think my mom's head was ready to explode, and everyone was there by then, so we headed off to a bar/restaurant.

I will add at this point that I had made it through the power hour and, while I was feeling somewhat intoxicated, I was really doing quite well. So I decided to have a couple more cans of beer. Smart move.

So we get to the bar, and we order some pitchers and food. That's when things start to get fuzzy. I think I drank some more, and I know I had at least 1 piece of pizza. Apparently there were also wings, fries, chicken fingers, and all sorts of other stuff, but I have no recollection of that. I spent a lot of time working the table, circling around and talking to everybody, and I called one of my cousins who hadn't come to try to convince him to join us. I'd love to hear that voice mail. Tony and Cathy told me Sunday that I got sentimental. I didn't ask what they meant. I also started taking little walks. I kept going outside and walking around the shopping plaza we were in. At one point I walked across the plaza and into Mighty Taco (drunk food of champions), walked up to the front, studied the menu for a couple of minutes, then walked back out.

Eventually I decided I needed to go home. So I started walking. I texted Alfred to let him know, he called me, and that's when I got emotional. I was on the phone with him for the next 18 minutes while I walked, crying my little eyes out, because I was wasted and felt bad leaving. I seem to get very emotional when inebriated. Once Alfred's sister and a couple of her friends came over and I ended up doing a bunch of shots, put myself to bed early, texted Alfred and Katie a bunch, then came back downstairs and spent an hour or so alternating between playing Mario Kart and sobbing uncontrollably. I think because a glass broke. Sometimes I get mad instead and yell. I have a problem. Where was I? Oh yeah, walking home crying. Katie caught up with me right when I got to my parents house and started laughing at me. Next thing I remember it was 3:30am and Alfred was handing me my phone (I should ask him how he got it). He told me the next morning that when he got back I was passed out in bed with my glasses on and the lights blazing. I did manage to take off my eye makeup, take out my contacts, wash my face, and put on my pjs.

I finally got up for the day at 9:15 with a little bitch of a hangover. We had to leave for the airport at 10:30. Luckily I felt much more human by the time we left (15 minutes late) but we had no problems checking in and got home fine. I didn't have time to clean up the bottles and cans like I thought, but hey, you do what you can. Fun times.

quick post

These are all of my grandma's great grandkids (so far, anyway!)

heaven's new VIP

She was God's best customer, after all.

We're leaving tomorrow and will be gone until Sunday, so probably no posts until next week. Unless I decide to harass Alfred and Katie in the airport again.

have I mentioned

that we're turning into hippies? This weekend we made some more jam (strawberry jalapeno and orange marmalade):

and some granola:


as well as our weekly ration of rolls. I feel like we made something else too, but I can't remember. I know a lot of time was spent in the kitchen, anyway. I'm feeling a little scatter brained at the moment. So, for lack of a better post, please enjoy some Fun with Photoshop. If you click on them they look cooler.

A couple of pictures from strawberry picking:


Rosemary and me when we visited a couple of summers ago:


Group picture from the day after our wedding:

I think this one's pretty self-explanatory (original is on the left):

I'm going to hell

On Friday night we went to this guy's house to check out something Alfred found on Craig's list. After he showed us what we came to see (a barge to rent to fix our dock, if you're interested) he was just showing us all the other stuff he has. He had I think 5 or 6 boats in his driveway, all in different stages of being redone, he showed us this huge work space with tools and all sorts of other things just hanging everywhere, he's got a stash of used PVC pipe that he picks up and saves, he owns all these rental properties that he's worked on and redone, he makes dog houses... all sorts of crazy things. He was big into "recycling," aka garbage picking. Very interesting though, I mean nothing is wasted with this dude.

So we're talking to him for close to an hour when he asks what church we go to. Now, being from the north, I get a little weirded out when people ask me this, but I hear it fairly regularly down here (at least when I meet new people). Alfred makes up some answer about how he used to go to this church with his family but we just moved so we haven't found a church yet, blah blah. Then he turns to Alfred and asks:

Dude: Are you saved?
Alfred: Uh, yes.
Dude: good, a personal relationship with Jesus is the most important thing in the world, blah blah. (he turns to me) Are you saved?
Me: No. (he just looks at me) Sorry.

He then goes on about how having Jesus Christ in his heart is what keeps him going and Jesus gave him all these skills and he's so happy and he just lurves him some Jesus. He goes on lecturing for a bit, then turns to Alfred again:

Dude: When you go to heaven and Jesus asks you why you should be allowed into heaven, what are you going to say?
Alfred: Geez, that's a tough one...
Dude: No, it's not. It's the easiest one.
Alfred: (makes up some stuff about God being number 1. The dude doesn't look impressed.) Well, what's your answer?
Dude: I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. That's the only answer that will get you into heaven. Doesn't matter what kind of person you are, as long as you accept Jesus as your personal Savior.

He told us about 57 times we need to go to his church. And, big shocker: he's a Baptist. Figures. Baptists, in my experience, are bat-shit crazy. I think there's a requirement in their religion to try to save people they meet, which I guess is why he was pushing us so hard to come to his church.

It reminded me of this one time, at band camp, at the museum, I was talking to a mom and she was asking me about the churches in the area. Thinking she was talking about visiting them for tourist reasons (considering she was there as a tourist) I started telling her about the different historical churches downtown. Then she asks me which church I went to. I told her I didn't, because I lived half an hour away (not the only reason, but hey, it's not her damn business.) Then she asked me if I wanted a close, personal relationship with Jesus. Her crazy potential was finally starting to dawn on me, so I kind of stammered out an "uh, sure?" So she grabs my hand, hold it up in the air, and starts praying to Jesus for me. I came to my senses, took my hand back and said I had to leave. The best part was, as I was telling my boss about it, she starts saying how if I ever have any questions or want to learn more about Jesus or her church she can help me. Apparently she didn't think it was as funny as I did.

Do I radiate a sense of Godlessness or something? Or do I just naturally attract the Jesus freaks? I guess I am a yankee...