happy birthday Lindsay!

First, I want to say happy birthday to Lindsay! I've been intending to email her for months, but she beat me to it the other day with a super cute picture of her daughter. I think the only picture I have of her is the one I posted last year, so I guess I won't post it again. Happy birthday though! :)

Next, I want to say hi to Meghan! Meghan lives in Kapolei, Hawaii, and apparently just found out about my blog from Mike. I met Meghan when I went out to visit Mike a couple of years ago when he first got back from Iraq. In fact, you can see Mike sitting with his leg propped up in the reflection in the glass door at the right side of this picture. I bet Meghan loves that I'm posting this picture. Hi Meghan!

I considered posting a picture of Mike's bullet wound here, just for fun, but decided against it. Maybe later. Instead, here are some pictures of another wound of sorts. Mama Kitty is still living at the old museum (we're going to try to bring her over to the new place this coming week) and apparently had an accident of some kind. I think her tail is broken. She isn't moving it at all, but doesn't seem to be in much pain. It had some fur on the end of it last week, but now it's gone from about the halfway point down. It looks like a rat's tail. See?

Gross, huh? In person you can see the individual vertebrae that make up her tail. It's kind of cool in a gross way.

Friday was Kara's last day, so I also took a picture of the cake I made for her. Unfortunately the cake was baked over a fault line, and an earthquake struck before we could eat or photograph it.

Really, I frosted it that morning and it didn't have enough time in the fridge for the frosting to set, so it slid in the car. I did all the piping myself. Not bad, huh? Katie taught me all I know. Which isn't much, but it's more than I knew before. It tasted damn good, that's all that matters. And I have a little tupperware container of frosting left in the fridge that I've been sampling over the past couple of days. Mmm, butter and sugar.

All right, I'm going to go back to watching Alf now. I mean, go make granola. One of the two.

I'm so firing my maid

The lazy bitch has seriously been slacking off. I just washed a bunch of dishes that have been sitting in the sink for (let's hope only) 2 days. There's a pile of laundry staring me down from the other end of the couch, waiting to be ironed. There's one item in particular that has been there for at least 2 1/2 weeks. It had company, but they eventually gave up and went back to the closet unironed because I had nothing else clean to wear to work. (Luckily it's been raining for the past 10 days so everything I wore was wet and muddy within minutes of me arriving at work anyway.) The bathrooms haven't been cleaned in weeks on end. The pile of mail is slowly taking over the counter top. BUT - the dishes in the sink are clean! And the laundry we did on Monday is folded, upstairs, and half put away! Someone hasn't gotten around to putting their half away yet. Not naming any names, of course. In case you were wondering, no pictures today. I can admit to this in writing, but photographic evidence is going too far.

Anyway, Alfred just texted me that he's still working and will probably just spend the night up there. I guess that gives me more time to get some crap done. I do still have half of last week's So You Think You Can Dance to watch, so that's some incentive to iron at least. Which reminds me of Katherine (the SYTYCD part, not the ironing part), which reminds me to mention that if anyone else is interested in guest blogging, just let me know. Just email me the post along with any pictures or anything else that needs to be included, and I'll put it up for you. And use it as an excuse to be lazy and not post for a couple of days. I mean, leave your post up longer for more people to see. Yeah, that's it.

happy memorial day!

A bit belated, yes. I meant to post this yesterday.

We house sat again this weekend, and ended up doing quite a bit of socializing. Friday night we met up with Lucy and Phil and a bunch of other people to go to some bar and watch Lucy's brother's improv group. They were pretty funny, we had a good time. Saturday we went to the gym and kicked our own asses quite thoroughly. My legs are still a bit sore. That evening we went over to Ilya and Mercedes' house to eat some ribs and play some games. We tested out that power hour program I mentioned a week or so ago - it was awesome! We only did a power 30, but it worked really well. I think we'll be using it a lot in the future.

Sunday we went to go see the new Terminator movie. I was sort of expecting to hate it, but surprisingly I enjoyed it. Better than the third one, certainly. We did another power 30 that evening. God, I wish we had found this program 6 months ago.

Yesterday we hung out with Alfred's family.

We did a bit of drinking.

Wait, that's not us. Emily put one of the bottles on the ground and a raccoon actually ran off with it. We also had some of these drinks, which were incredibly spicy due to the habanero pepper that Robyn had me put in them.

We played a bit of beer pong. Seriously. We kicked their asses.

So that's that. We celebrated the fallen heroes of our country by drinking a bunch and gallavanting around town. We're so patriotic.

guest blog: Mike's trip to Norway

Today's post is brought to you by my brother Mike, and the letter R. (Yes, I know you all know who Mike is.)

First and foremost I would like to thank Tracy for allowing me to “guest blog”. I’m hoping it starts a trend and others who recently took a trip (Tony or Katherine) write one too. Without further ado, highlights from my trip to Oslo.

The most abundant thing I did in Norway was walk around and see stuff such as the waterfront,

famous paintings and sculptures,













culture museums,

and of course the people, my favorite were the Russes.

Every year for a couple weeks, high school seniors will wear these red pants everyday. They will also carry around business cards and it is common practice for little kids to go around and ask the Russe for their cards. Although not a little kid, the Russes humored the good looking American and not only posed for a picture, but also gave me a card.

The biggest day on the trip was 17 May, Norway’s Constitution Day.

There were parades,

excited children yelling “hipp-hipp hurra,”

drinking,

and more walking around the city seeing stuff.

All in all it was a very good trip. Some of my favorite highlights include: speaking Kurdish (much to his shock) to a Kurdish man, waking up on 16 May to children practicing their “hipp-hipp hurra’s”, trying different types of food, trying to take out money from a machine (I would later learn) was used to play video solitaire, having roughly 4 hours of darkness daily, everyone speaking fluent English, and having the same song stuck in my head the whole time. This guy won the 2009 Eurovison by the biggest margin ever, woman in Norway love him. Special thanks to my friend Kristina for being my Oslo tour guide and putting up with me all week.

holy high water, batman!

Ok, I just spent a whole lot of time looking through old pictures and then in photoshop finding pictures to compare the water level today with water levels in the past. Cause it's been raining for days on end and the water's really high. So let's take a tour down memory lane, shall we? First, a picture from when we first moved in. Man, we still had a whole dock, roof included.

Now, here's a picture of the same area after Hurricane Ophelia, the highest we had ever seen it.

This one was taken this morning. It's a different section of the dock because the part in the last 2 pictures no longer exists. But it's close.

Another picture from awhile ago, from another angle.

Another shot of that same section after Hurricane Ophelia.

And today. If you look at the end of the beam that goes out into the water on the left, you can definitely tell the water's higher today.

Now a comparison of the shore line. The red arrow is pointing to the same tree in the next 3 pictures. Well, it's a tree in the first one, then a stump, then a shorter stump. The first one is from a few years ago.

Here's another picture of the same area when Mike was down here a couple of weeks ago and we were burning stuff. You can't see the water in this one but the angle is better.

And now, today. About an hour ago, actually. Because I went outside and took more pictures to match up with the ones I already had. That's my dedication to this blog.

Here's a picture of the dock across the river from us, also from when Mike was here last.

And about an hour ago.

And finally, Alfred sitting on the couch, waiting for me to come back inside so he can unpause the show we were watching.

Now, wasn't that fun?

hurricane-esque

I feel like that picture I posted from my phone is weird. My feet look weird. And you can't really see Alfred, he's in the pool with a beer. We had a good Saturday, in other words. Lucy, Phil, and baby Ellie came over for lunch and to hang out for awhile. We cooked some burgers on the tiniest grill you've ever seen. I got lots of baby time in, too. Good stuff.

So, this deluge of rain we're having. That's what weather.com is referring to it as. It's been raining almost constantly since Sunday evening. It's been windy too, rather reminiscent of hurricanes and/or tropical storms we have been through in the past. Thus, this post's title. This morning, the water in the intracoastal was as high if not higher than we'd ever seen it. The camera was in Alfred's car though (I think) so no high water picture. So, here's a completely unrelated picture!


Aw, we're cute.

So we've been catching up on our TV the past couple of days. Season finale time is a very sad time. We always run out of good stuff to watch on our DVR over the summer. However, I must say I'm quite pumped for the beginning of So You Think You Can Dance. Oh, how I have missed it! Oh, and I found this very convenient website today. Just in case you were wondering about the status of any TV shows for next fall. You're welcome.

This is the life!

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

two more weeks

Then our busy season at work is over. I'll be back to 9-5 work days, sitting in my office for more than 5 minutes at a time, taking lunch breaks.... ah, summer. I'll also be alone, because Kara's quitting, which I've been expecting. She's been totally checked out the last couple of weeks, she's more than ready to leave. She called in sick this past Tuesday, then told our boss that she wasn't really sick, she was just "exhausted" from having to walk part of the way to her dentist appointment the day before. Yeah, I'd like to call in tired too, but some of us have a work ethic. It still pisses me off. My boss told me I should call Kara on Friday morning and tell her I was too tired to come to work. I was tempted, seeing as how I was there until 10:15 Thursday evening. Two more weeks, just two more weeks. I can do it.

In other news, I was emailing Mike one of the power hour CDs we made (so that he can listen to a song and then drink) and gmail told me about a program called myPowerHour - you put in your playlist, set how long you want it to go for, and it plays a minute (or more or less, depending on how you set it up) of each song, plays a sound at every minute change, and can even keep track of each person, what they're drinking, what minute and beer you're on, and even your blood alcohol content based on what beer you're drinking! It's so unfortunate that we didn't find this sooner. All of our power hours when Mike visited could have been so much more official. Of course I downloaded it, maybe tonight Alfred and I will give it a test run. I'm so excited!

It is a little creepy that gmail can look at my email subjects and then give me an ad for something it thinks I want... I mean, I know that sort of thing existed, but I never had it actually work for me. Or I never paid much attention before. I guess the phrase "power hour" is enough to catch my eye.

We're house sitting again this weekend, first time in awhile. Alfred's out doing something with Max at the model, so I'm here along (with Sam, the dog). Seeing as how it's sunny and gorgeous outside, I'm at a house with a pool, and I brought a bathing suit, I'm going to get off the computer now and go enjoy the fact that I live in Florida. Peace out!

by the way

I forgot to blog about Alfred's new car! He and Mike drove a total of 6 hours round trip to go pick it up a couple of weekends ago when Mike was here. It's a Pontiac Vibe, which I have to be sure to mention is basically a Toyota Matrix, because he likes Toyota better. He bought it right after the announcement that Pontiac was going out of business, and he got a really good deal. The garage is so, so far away, so instead of taking a picture of his actual car, here's one google showed me that's basically the same thing:

It's nice. I haven't gotten to ride in it much yet, but the one trip I took in it was nice. It's a lot bigger, so he can carry lots of stuff with him, which is a big change from his old car. Overall, he's happy with it, which is good. It doesn't have cruise control, but you can't have it all.

happy mother's day!

Alfred's family just left about an hour ago; they came over for dinner tonight. We had hummus, pizza, and chocolate mousse - all homemade, of course - and it was pretty awesome. So most of the day today was spent cooking and cleaning, which was actually kind of fun. Not the cleaning part necessarily, but I like cooking. And now the house is damn clean.

(We're watching the 30 Rock from this past week, and Liz Lemon referred to the Sims! It was awesome!)

Yesterday we spent a lot of the day outside. We decided last weekend that we need to hang out outside more often, so yesterday we actually did it. We went canoeing on the intracoastal and explored some of the canals that branch off of it. The people who live back there really like those statues of little boys fishing.

We also played with some crabs for awhile, freaking them out and making them run like hell. It was fun. We also sat and watched a lizard go about his life: he surveyed his land, found a lady friend, had a romantic experience, was confronted by a challenger, and got into a rumble. Watching 2 lizards fight was probably the coolest thing I've seen all month. It was hilarious.

In other news, Alfred went tanning at the gym the other day and the girl didn't set the timer right, so he got a bit pink. Then yesterday he forgot to put sunscreen on his arms and legs, so he's a little red today. He's been quite diligent about putting aloe on, at least. First sunburn of the summer!

famous people galore!

There's all sorts of cool shit going down in St Augustine today. First, Tiger Woods is in town for the TPC, which is played near St Augustine, and his yacht is actually anchored in St Augustine. It's called "Privacy." So the local newspaper published an article about it with a picture.

One of my co workers actually saw it docked there the other day. He said he tried to go paparazzi sneak attack style and get a picture but failed. Or maybe I used the phrase paparazzi sneak attack style. I can't quite recall.

There's also a festival going on downtown with crawfish and music. Snoop Dogg is one of the performers tonight. Snoop Dogg! I was probably within about a mile or so of Snoop Dogg at some point of the day! I'm awesome by association! Or something. There's a bunch of other groups I've actually heard of too, including Presidents of the USA and 3 Doors Down, but somehow Snoop is the one everyone in town was talking about. I thought about going paparazzi sneak attack style on their asses, but then I decided to come home instead. I was hungry.

weekend roundup

Photoshop was being ridiculous, so I'm sorry if these pictures take forever to load. But I figured if I went any longer without posting I'd get shit from Mike. So, we've seen the pictures of woodpeckers and of burning half our yard. (Our house still smells like smoke, by the way.) Let's take a look at the rest of the weekend. First, drinking:

Mike got some breathalyzers from the army somehow, so we took them after a couple of power hours. The yellow is what it starts out as, if it turns greenish you're drunk. So we were drunk. Alfred and Mike ended up doing 3 full power hours on Saturday. I did not. It was for the best.

While in various stages of drunkenness, we engaged in some more yard work (or murder):

Alfred decided to go for a quick swim:



And decided to make some napalm.



It was cool. It sort of melted down the side of the log. We were very careful with it, we didn't yell at it or anything.

So that's that. Mike's moving soon, so probably no power hours for awhile. And our yard will probably look like crap again soon. Alas. It was fun while it lasted!

the woody woodpecker show

I wanted to just put up a slideshow of these woodpecker pictures, but for some reason I can't upload them, so here they are all in a row:







Based on 4.7 seconds of google research, this is an ivory billed woodpecker. There were 3 of these in our backyard yesterday afternoon, and again this morning. And Mike was army crawling up to them to take pictures. Army's good for something, after all!

Edit: After a more extensive (and sober) search, it turns out the ivory billed woodpecker is super rare and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is offering $50,ooo to anyone who can bring them to a live bird. And I think that these are pileated woodpeckers. No money for me :(