birthday party!

I've decided to keep blogging, at least now and then. It probably won't be so often, but check back every couple of weeks, I'll try to post at least that often. And so, my birthday party!

There was lots and lots of chocolate. I mean, lots and lots of chocolate. We still haven't finished all of the dessert we had for that night.

Katie, Ellie, and Rowdy all became pretty good friends. I don't know if you can see the glow bracelets and glow necklaces, but there's lots of them around.

Mike stopped by for a bit to say hello.

As did a whole bunch of other friends. I think we figured we had about 16 people there that night.

We ate lots of delicious bad things, drank lots of wine (LOTS of wine), played some games (this is a few people playing a new version of Drunk Driver, adapted to be played by several people at once). We also had a hell of a dance party in the living room. I danced as hard as I could for hours.

And my cake! It was made by the same woman who made our wedding cake, so we knew it would be fantastic. She even remembered me when I went to go pick it up.

All in all, a great birthday. It ended up being almost a week-long celebration, just what I was hoping for. I need to have birthday parties more often!

my birthday surprise!

So far this has been a really great birthday week. Alfred and I went out for dinner last Friday; I enjoyed a spa day on Sunday; we put up our Christmas lights and bought a Christmas tree; yesterday I had a birthday lunch with one of my friends at work and then a dual birthday dinner with Gara and Kevin (her birthday is tomorrow, happy early birthday Gara!) and then today came a bunch of surprises: first the flowers that Alfred sent (which I had told him to send), then another bouquet and a sister!


Yes, Katie flew down to surprise me for my birthday! I'm so excited, it's such a fun surprise. I walked into my office after a lunch meeting and there she was just sitting there. I was so shocked, she and Alfred and everyone else who knew have kept this a complete surprise. It's awesome. What I was afraid was going to be a hard/stressful/unfun birthday is turning out to be so, so great so far. I'm feeling very loved and mushy and sappy now. :)

6 days

Thanksgiving was fun; we drove a long way, had a blast hanging out with the family (lots of food, drinking, and Mario Kart on the wii), and then drove a long way again. My mom got us some 4 loko (3 cases, actually), so we've got those to enjoy now. We've got enough to last the rest of our lives, probably. Though I've heard that kids have been selling them at parties for $5 a can, so I'm thinking about selling them to the kids in the neighborhood behind the museum. No one would believe the lady in the historical costume was selling booze to underage kids. It's the perfect crime.

Only 6 more days till my birthday! It's a big one this year, I'm turning 30. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. Sometimes I'm super pumped and look forward to my new decade, but other times it freaks me out to be leaving my 20s behind. I'm trying to be positive about it. Alfred and I went out for my birthday dinner on Friday, and I'm having a party next Saturday. We're doing a dessert buffet, so I'm pretty excited. I haven't really had a big birthday party in a long time. I kind of invited a mix of people, from Alfred's family to our friends to friends from work, so it will be an interesting bunch. As long as there's lots of chocolate (which there will be), plenty of booze is flowing (which there will also be), and there's good music for me to dance to in the living room (which I expect there to be), it will be all good. I'm going to hit up the dollar store for some fun decorations and party favors this week. Think glow in the dark necklaces for the living room dance party. It's been stressing Alfred out, trying to get the house done in time to have all these people over. We've made really great progress though, it's really almost done! And just now we put up our Christmas lights outside.

This afternoon I got a massage at Lucy's birthday spa day (happy birthday, Lucy!) My shoulders and back had lots of knots, I was getting pretty sore from all the work we've been doing around the house, so it felt so good to have those worked out. I'm actually a bit sore now, which he said would probably happen. It just means I need another massage!

In other news, I was looking through my blog last week, trying to find a picture, and I realized that this blog used to be way better. I used to post so much more often, I used to have lots more fun pictures. For awhile now it's just not been as much fun, I guess. I don't have as much time to do it, it's become more of a chore. So I'm thinking about stopping. We'll see. Right now I have 10 minutes to get ready to go to dinner, so I'd better get moving!

happy birthday, Louisa!

Exciting news for a Monday morning - Katie and Ingo's baby girl has arrived! Head over to Mein deutsches Leben to meet little Louisa and congratulate the new parents! (There's no baby post yet, but you can go congratulate them anyway!)

Guess where we are??

in case you wondered

I gave the guide all $20 of the tip. Mainly because yesterday a parent found a $20 bill on the ground and gave it to me in case someone came looking for it, and no one ever claimed it, so I kept it. So I figure that's my tip, and I shouldn't get greedy.

Moral dilemma

One of the groups at work today left a $20 tip for each of the 4 guides who did their programs. 3 of those guides were still here at that point (it was a few hours after they had left, the administrator came back) so I gave those 3 guides their tips, but the 4th was gone and will not be back until next Tuesday. My question: do I give her all $20, give her maybe $10 and keep $10 for myself, or keep it all? Obviously the correct answer is to give her all $20, but what would you do?

there's always money in the banana stand

The title of this post has nothing to do with the content. Sorry.

I got home from work today (a very long, busy day) and had all sorts of surprises waiting for me! My bathroom has a new mirror, light, and toilet paper holder, a ton of trash was out of the garage and waiting by the curb to be picked up tomorrow, we had groceries in the fridge, the laundry was done, and dinner was in the works! It was awesome! It's quite nice having a pseudo house husband. At least he's holding up his end of the bargain to keep getting things done around the house now that we're moved in, because I haven't been doing so well with that. We did a bunch this weekend, but in the evenings after work I haven't been very productive. Partly because we've been busy - we had/are having dinner with Alfred's family on Monday, with Gara yesterday, and with Ilya and Mercedes tomorrow - but also because, let's face it, I'm kind of lazy. And it's hard. And I don't wanna!

So I kind of hurt my wrist a few weeks ago with all this house stuff, so I've been wearing an ace bandage to work for the past few days. I came up with this great story about how I hurt myself while hunting pigs on horseback, nice and period appropriate and all. I was telling one of my employees this story, complete with Southern accent and ending with "we caught 3 pigs, which will feed my family through the winter," and she totally believed me. None of the gullible little kids I told even believed me, but she did. It was kind of awesome. Apparently it's totally believable that I'm that much of a bad ass. I told some little kid the other day that life wasn't fair. I was also asked this morning if the houses behind the museum were real. When I said yes she seemed surprised. She thought they were just models. Ha! Kids are dumb. And funny. I've really turned up the threats with them lately, which is fun. I have to entertain myself somehow. Anyway, dinner's ready, and I'm on my second Kahlua, so I'm out like a deaf kid in musical chairs.

Growler the Turtle

Dang, how does an entire week go by so quickly without a post? Apparently I don't remember as often without Mike here to harass me about it. It's been a quiet week, it's been nice to relax a bit after the past couple of weeks. We've gotten some more work done around the house, gotten some more stuff unpacked. Today we got a bunch done, although it doesn't seem like it to look at the house now. I keep unpacking and putting stuff away in the kitchen, yet somehow the counter tops are still full. But you didn't come here to hear about house stuff, you came to hear about Growler!

So last weekend we went to K-Mart to buy some important Halloween supplies: colored hair spray (Gara and I sprayed our hair and Mister's tail pink and blue), Twizzlers, and a net to try to catch some wildlife in the pool. Mike spent a lot of time outside during the day, trying to catch various animals as they surfaced in the pool, but he wasn't having much luck. So he headed back out after it was dark and hit the jackpot: an alligator snapping turtle, and a Florida bullfrog! We put them in an aquarium and left it outside for Gara and Kevin to pick up the next morning so she could take them to school (she's a high school biology teacher). She has since let the frog go, because he wasn't eating, but the turtle is doing well and has been named Growler, since he was caught on Growler Day. Growler Day was a resounding success, by the way. Everyone accomplished the goal, and no one fell in the pool. We fully intend to repeat the holiday many, many more times.

quote of the day

Gara: you wouldn't respect her anyway, because she's a girl

(p.s. Gara's a girl)

action shot

We hit up a couple of bars last night, nothing too outrageous, but we got enough attention for our costumes to make Mike happy. We were rock, paper, scissors, and Gara, obviously. In case you don't know how Gara fits into the game, scissors cut her, rock bashes her, and she tears up paper. We realized last night that to really make the game work you need an odd number of items. Otherwise it isn't fair.

Today we have some things to make in the smoker, plus Gara and I just bought some hair spray paint. Also, it's Growler Day! So we're each drinking a growler (gallon) of beer. It's pretty cool that Growler Day and Halloween fall on the same day this year. Kevin and Ilya are both out of town (Ilya went to the big rally in DC that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had yesterday, we watched for him on TV, didn't see him but did see a friend from college, which was pretty awesome) so Gara's been hanging out with us, and Mercedes will hopefully be able to stop by later. She wasn't feeling well the other day but she was going to try to come over later. Shaping up to be a fun day!

Happy Halloween!

Alfred, Mike, Gara, and I are on our way out to hit up some sweet Halloween parties. I'll post some more pictures tomorrow probably. We're fired up!

Guess what's got 2 thumbs and had the day off today? That's right, this girl! It was great, because I got to a) sleep in ( I got almost 10 hours of sleep last night, which I badly needed, having gotten less than 10 hours of sleep the past 2 nights combined), and b) work on cleaning and unpacking the new house. Our bathroom, the upstairs bathroom, and the living room are almost done, the kitchen and our bedroom are maybe 2/3 done, and the dining room actually has no boxes left in it. One of the upstairs bedrooms is pretty much set up too, actually, the one that Mike's currently staying in. (Oh, by the way, Mike's here. More on that later.) The office is a complete disaster, it's where we kept putting all the random stuff we had nowhere else to put as we were moving in. At least some of it's going to end up in the attic, but I probably won't be tackling it for another week or so. Anyway, we're much more settled in after today, which is nice. Hell, we're probably almost as moved in as we ever were at our last house.

So, Mike's here! He got in late Monday night (technically Tuesday morning, it was around 12:45am I think). He and Alfred have been palling around, as usual, though today I got to play a bit as well. Right now we're doing a power hour. It's our first, actually, which is kind of weird. Since it's been like 2 days. We were supposed to do one earlier but Alfred had a bunch of errands to run, so he was being all responsible and stuff. Lame. Last night Ilya, Mercedes, Kevin, and Gara came over for dinner. And Mister. He didn't eat, though.

On Saturday we went to Mercedes' and Mister's birthday party, which was fun. They had a barbecue party. It was all delicious. And an ice cream cake. And a dog food cake for Mister, which Ilya tasted. Apparently he tastes all of Mister's treats, too. Full disclosure: I tried one of Mister's treats once, it was peanut buttery, it was actually pretty good.

We're talking about Mike's trip to DC. Alfred and I almost lived in DC. True story. I sort of wish we lived there now. I'm going to go ahead and post this now, because I've been working on this post for approximately 40 minutes.

Movin on up

Vehicles are loaded, currently making our first trip from the old house to the new house. One more trip should do it. Today we have 3 cars and a moving truck, which Alfred has not destroyed yet. And some really great friends :)

I'm practically famous!

My former advisor at Cornell was just on NPR! Ritch Savin-Williams, in case you were curious. I'm sure you were.

Lame

Sorry I've been so bad about posting lately, we've been pretty busy getting the new house ready and starting to pack. We're moving Sunday. Hopefully we'll be ready. I'm on my way there now to help install the flooring downstairs, as a matter of fact. The picture is of the train that I'm stuck waiting behind. I was lucky enough to be the first person in line. It's going a little too fast to jump onto like a movie hobo. We were out with some friends a couple of weekends ago right next to some train tracks and a train went by so slowly I could have stepped right onto it. Somehow I resisted.

Well, train's passed, guess I'd better drive. Between the move and Mike visiting next week I should have some good posts soon. Then maybe "anonymous" (really, Mike, why not just sign your name?) will stop heckling me.

Bear Cat!

First, a little back story. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before or not, but we seem to have something lethal living in our new neighborhood. First a snapper turtle's bloated carcass was found floating in the pool. Those suckers are pretty mean. It was gone a few days later. So something was bad ass enough to kill it and then eat it. Also, we found 2 dead squirrels in the yard within a few days of each other. With that in mind...

On Saturday as I was walking out to the car at the new house, I saw a giant gray animal out of the corner of my eye in the backyard. My first thought was that I'd never seen a raccoon on steroids before. I went over to the fence to get a better look, and by the side of the pool was the biggest damn cat I've ever seen in my life. Seriously, if I was a little shorter I could ride the thing. It looked like a cross between a cat and a bear, hence: Bear Cat. I yelled at it, hissed at it, and banged on the fence at it. It laughed at me, then strolled off through a hole in the back fence.

This is clearly a very dangerous situation. Not only has the bobcat army that's been stalking me since I moved to Florida discovered my new location, but they've begun cross breeding to create an even more lethal strain of warrior. Bear Cat is only the first in a new line of vicious attack artists. Obviously it's terrifying. Bear Cat.

house update

So, the house. It's going well, we've made quite a bit of progress since last weekend. If all keeps going according to plan we'll be done and ready to move in in about 3 weeks. Here's our updated to-do list:

repair roof - done
pressure wash house - done
scrape popcorn texture off ceilings - done
spray new texture on ceilings and paint them - done
install new AC - done
remove old carpets - done
install new lights in living room and kitchen - done
drywall repairs - done
paint walls
install new carpet
install new wood floors
install new toilets
install new kitchen sink
repair banister

That's it! Unfortunately everything we have left to do is pretty cosmetic, so the house looks like a total disaster right now. We start painting walls tomorrow though, and lots of painting and flooring will go on this weekend. It's going to make a huge difference. We're ordered all the flooring, and I've picked out all the paint colors, I think; I probably have about 1/3 of all the paint color chips that Behr makes. We were at the house the other day and Alfred suggested a color for a room, and I whipped out the suggested color from my purse, right on cue. Don't worry, we'll go on a virtual tour once it's done.

The really fun thing I got to do this weekend was walk around in drywall stilts! The drywall guy left them behind when he left on Saturday, and I was all over those like white on rice. It took a few minutes to get used to walking in them, but I got pretty good at it. I used them for a couple of hours that afternoon, and then again for an hour or so on Sunday. Literally the second the drywall guy left on Sunday I had those puppies on. Seriously, they're great fun. I felt like a cross between Forrest Gump and the Terminator. If anyone needs a gift idea for me for my birthday or Christmas, keep these in mind. Either that or a massage. Which I could actually use right now, my back and shoulders are awfully sore from all this work on the house.

Quote of the day

Mike: Obviously I've been drinking, otherwise we probably wouldn't be talking right now.

Home Improvement Hints

Today's Lesson: Scraping Popcorn Texture Off Of Ceilings

For this, you'll need some ladders, medal scraper tools, and a water sprayer thingie (not like a little bottle, something bigger and more hardcore).

So you've just bought a house. Yay! Unfortunately, you and/or your freakishly-observant-of-ceilings spouse hates the popcorn texture that's on every ceiling in the house. Sounds like you'll be scraping that off! Luckily, if you follow these 3 easy steps, it will all be over in no time!

Step 1: Climb up your ladder and start scraping the plaster off the ceiling. Scrape until your arm starts to hurt and you realize that this really sucks, which will be about 3-5 minutes. In this time you have probably scraped about 1 square foot. Unfortunately you will have only scraped off about 1/2 off the amount of plaster you need to remove, because it needs to be down to the drywall only, and that's super hard.

Step 2: Spray a bunch of water all over the ceiling. Go walk around the house for 10 minutes or so, thinking about how maybe popcorn ceilings aren't so bad, and how to convince your crazy spouse of this fact. If you're not thinking that, then you are obviously the crazy spouse.

Step 3: Go back into the room you sprayed with water. Spray it a little more. Climb back up your ladder and start scraping again. Try not to leap for joy as the plaster now easily comes off in wet gooey splats, because you're pretty close to the ceiling and will probably hit your head.

Repeat this process over and over and over again (except you can skip step 1, that was just so you could fully appreciate how much easier it is to scrape the plaster off once its wet). You will love life for the first couple of rooms, maybe even go as fast as you can to show off how easy it is now that you know this new trick. You'll walk around the house on your plaster coated shoes, leaving white footprints all over your old navy blue carpet (assuming your old carpet is navy blue, and assuming you're getting rid of your existing carpet, which of course you are, because there's no way you'd do this on carpet you ever plan on living on). You'll vow to help eradicate popcorn ceilings everywhere, now that you're such an expert.

It will dawn on you soon that though this is easier, it's still not easy, and that you will most likely not be able to move your arms the next day. If you survive. Maybe if you're lucky some wonderful people will bring you a 2 liter bottle of Dr. Pepper and save your life moments before you expire of exhaustion.

To summarize, make sure you marry someone who is either extremely short and nearsighted, and/or not overly observant of or opinionated about ceiling textures. In other words, someone normal. That way you never have to bother doing this. But if given a choice between this and doing something like installing insulation, go for this. Trust me.

#3

It's official: we're home owners again! This has been in the works since the end of July. We actually got the call that the sellers had accepted our offer back when we were camping with my family earlier this summer, and we were originally supposed to close September 1. Of course there was an issue with the title, closing got pushed back, drama ensued. Then finally, this past Thursday, the bank calls and says the title's ready to go, we're closing Monday. Yay! The next day they call Alfred and say hey, you've been dicking around too long, close today or you lose the house! (Cause, you know, when they take 3 weeks to fix the title that's fine, but the 18 hours we've spent getting our loan in order from our lender is just unreasonable.) So at about 3:30 I left work, drove 45 minutes up to the bank to sign the paperwork, turned around and drove another 45 minutes back to work to close and lock up, then drove another 45 minutes back to approximately 1/2 mile from the bank we had closed at to meet friends for dinner. 90 mile round trip to travel approximately 3 blocks. But we have a new house!

This one is 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, 2 stories, attached garage, and a pool! Lots of nice big closets (this is the first time since Alfred and I have lived together that we'll both be able to keep our clothes in the closet in our bedroom!), attic space over the garage, tons of storage, it's great. It's on a big property too, nice big fenced in backyard, plus a shed and pool house (well, what we call a pool house anyway, really it's a little storage type room next to the pool). It also comes complete with some new pets. The pool hasn't been cleaned in probably a year or two, possibly more, so it's basically a nature preserve now. We've seen at least 2 frogs and at least 2 turtles. I think there are more turtles, but I only ever saw 2 at a time today. Here's a good picture of one of the turtles.

In this picture you can actually see 1 of the frogs and 2 turtles. The circle on the left is the frog.

This house is bigger than either house we've lived in so far, much larger than where we are now, which is going to be so nice. I can't wait to actually unpack all of our boxes! At least 1/4 of our stuff is still sitting in boxes in our house now, which makes it easier for this move I guess. This new house does require a bit of work, of course, but we actually did a bunch of work this weekend already. Our to-do list as of right now:

pass electrical inspection - done
repair roof
pressure wash house - done
scrape popcorn texture off ceilings - 99% done (except for one chunk over the stairs I couldn't reach with the ladder)
install new AC
remove old carpets
install new carpet
install new wood floors
paint
install new toilets
install new kitchen sink
install new lights in living room and kitchen

Whew! I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff that Alfred will remind me of as soon as he reads this. The goal is to be in mid-October. Then we sell the house we're in now ASAP. And live in one place for more than 6 months. It's going to be a busy few weeks.

ginnie!

We went for one last hurrah this summer over Labor Day weekend: Ginnie Springs! It's another park where you go tubing down a river/spring, but this park is privately owned (as opposed to Ichetucknee, where we've gone before) and so drinking is more or less allowed. So we drank. The first trip down the river started out all sorts of innocent and fun loving.

There were 9 of us total. We had 2 floats, one that fit 8 people and then 1 that was basically an inflated armchair. I'm not sure that Mercedes touched the water all day; she could definitely have gotten away staying completely dry, that's for sure. The big float was fun to do back somersaults off of into the water, though. As the beer and camel back of margaritas started to kick in, things got pretty energetic.



We had a nice big lunch after our first trip down the river, complete with more beer. We played around on land for awhile (pretty sure there was a photo shoot on the beach volleyball court conducted by yours truly with Eric and Susan's camera) then headed back to the water. The second trip was pretty fun too, but by the third time we were all pretty wiped out.

I slept the entire way down. Seriously, someone woke me up and I thought I was supposed to move over on the raft to let other people on, but we were at the end. Whoops. Alfred and I actually did make it out to dinner with some other friends that night, but we were so spent we headed home early and crashed. We really had fun though, definitely a great way to spend the last big weekend of summer.

Quote of the day

Eric: Taste the rainbow. It's mostly yellow.

Coolest truck ever

the swim

Last Friday we spent most of the day cleaning our old house for our new tenants. That's right, our old tenants broke their lease and moved out 6 months early. Punks. Luckily we were able to find someone else to move in, and we had 2 days in between tenants to clean everything and get it ready for the new people. Also luckily, those 2 days happened to be my days off for the week. Yay for me! They did a pretty good job cleaning the house actually, so it wasn't so bad, except for the guest cottage. The girl who lived out there sort of trashed the place, including smashing one of the windows. Jerk.

That night we went out to dinner with a whole gang: Ilya, Mercedes, Kevin, and Gara, with Phil, Lucy, and Ellie joining us after the meal to say hi. We feasted on barbecue and attempted to listen to some bluegrass from the band playing there, but they weren't very loud and we couldn't really hear it. The food made up for it, though. After dinner we went back to Lucy and Phil's house for some drinks and water sports. Their new house is right on the water, so they have a paddle boat. We attempted to fit all 6 of us on it (Ilya and Mercedes had to go home so they weren't there) and very nearly sank. As you can see by the picture to the right, even 4 people almost sank it. This was all leading up to Kevin swimming in this less-than-sanitary water to earn $31 from Phil. Which he did, with flying colors. He may have almost died, but he made it, and earned Phil's money fair and square.

In other news, I am happy to report that I have spent most of my last 2 days off of work gearing up for the return of The Vampire Diaries next week. I believe I've mentioned my love of this show before. The second season starts a week from tomorrow, so I'm re-watching season 1 in preparation. I've gone through 15 episodes so far, 7 more to go. I can't wait for it to come back, it's seriously the show I'm most looking forward to. Mock me if you will, I'm not ashamed. I just feel sorry for those of you not watching it.

for Rosemary

I just talked to Rosemary and she requested a new post so she didn't have to look at the picture of the watermelon anymore. I don't know why, since it's an awfully cute watermelon, but I'll oblige. I've had to go to work every day for the past 8 days, but in exchange I get 2 days off in a row, tomorrow and Saturday! I'm pretty pumped. Unfortunately I will spend most of tomorrow cleaning. Our tenants moved out of our house yesterday (breaking their lease, which makes me very angry and makes me want to keep all of their security deposit out of spite) and new tenants move in next week, so we have to clean in between. I'm really hoping they didn't mess it up too badly in the 6 months or so that they were there, but we'll see. We haven't actually seen the house yet, Alfred said that he noticed a few things that needed to be repaired the last time he was there though. Punks.

Today after work I met Lucy and went to a Lush party. Not for alcoholics, though I'd certainly qualify for one of those types of parties these days, for the cosmetic and skincare company. Some girl Lucy knows set up this product demo through the store in Orlando, and I've heard about this stuff from someone at work, so I wanted to check it out. We got facials, got little hand massage treatment things, and when I bought something (only 1 thing that I needed anyway!) I got free stuff along with it! There was some food and drinks and it was a nice little evening out. No picture for this post though, when you google "facial" some stuff comes up that you don't really want to see.

I carried a watermelon

This watermelon happens to have grown in our garden. It's one of two that did; unfortunately the other one split open and started rotting while it was still on the vine. Also unfortunately, we brought this one over to Kevin and Gara's house on Saturday night and forgot to eat it. Very disappointing.

I've been quite the little social butterfly the past few days. Thursday evening I went out to dinner with a bunch of people from work, we hit up the 2 for 1 margaritas. Friday evening was claude's with some other work friends (he makes his own marshmallows now! Chocolate covered coffee flavored ones, mmm), then joined Alfred, Ilya, Mercedes, Kevin, and Gara for dinner at an awesome barbecue place. Saturday was a beach party for most of the day (flanked by visits to the museum to open and close, and pick up a couple bottles of wine for the road), then a power hour at 7 with the gang from the night before, plus Melissa and her new boy toy. Sunday was Turk's birthday, so we had dinner in his honor with Alfred's family after I got home from work. Busy, busy!

Sunday was also both Katherine and Jevon's anniversary, and Katie's baby shower. Many expressions of love and congratulations to all of them :)

Oops

Not gonna lie, just forgot the second quote. Kevin said it, it was awesome, so unfortunate I forgot.

Quotes of the day

#1 Lucy: what, are you going to the prom later or something?

omlg

Honestly, we had a blast. It was such a nice relaxing week. We left our house Saturday morning, stopping to visit Katherine and Jevon and spend Saturday night in their log cabin. It was a really fast visit, but it was nice to get to see them at least. Sunday morning we finished the drive to the Thousand Islands to meet up with my family. We then proceeded to spend the next 7 days going out on the boats, laying (lying?) in the sun, and drinking. Lots and lots of drinking. We completed 4 power hours along the way. Played a bunch of games of Asshole, too. My uncle Bill even joined us for one of each. There were 2 days where we spent literally 12 hours drunk. It was great.

We did manage to get in a little physical activity as well. We played some ladder golf (a weird game, but my cousin Nick's friend Dean and I were on a team together and annihilated the competition), some bocce ball (Dad was mysteriously good at this), and lots and lots of frisbee. We were getting pretty good by the end of the week. There were quite a few impromptu dance parties as well. It was fun and relaxing, definitely a great week. I didn't realize how much I needed that. I felt so rejuvenated when we got back. And super tan. I'm approximately 60% of the way to being a different race!

Alex bay

On the road again

Yes, it's road trip time again! This day last year we were either in Vegas or San Diego, I just checked yesterday but I forgot already. Today we're on our way to NY to go camping with my family! We're currently in Pennsylvania, trying to find somewhere to grab a quick dinner. Our destination this evening is Katherine and Jevon's house to visit them for the night. Unfortunately Katherine has to leave super early tomorrow morning so it will be a quick visit, but it's better than nothing. Then tomorrow we have just a few more hours to drive to the thousand islands, where my dad's side of the family has gone camping every year for as long as I can remember. We haven't gone in a few years, so we decided to make the trip this summer. It was sort of a last minute trip, due in part to the fact that my vacation days run out next week and I need to use them up! It's going to be a fun week, lots of sunbathing, going out on the boats, and drinking. I'm fired up!

just for Mercedes

She and Ilya are in Spain right now, so I don't even know when she'll read this, but we made gazpacho for dinner tonight! About 1/4 of the tomatoes came from my bosses' garden, about 1/2 from the store, and the rest from our garden. There's some sort of tomato thief afoot at our house that eats or knocks down our tomatoes before they're ripe enough to pick. The gazpacho also has jalapenos and parsley from our garden. It's really, really delicious.

In other garden news, I have 2 watermelons growing! They're little and cute right now, and I'm super excited for them to grow and to eat them. We also have some more eggplants coming along, and another banana pepper has finally started growing. Not as good a haul as we were hoping when we started this project, but not bad for someone who can kill a plant just by looking at it, like me.

it's tough

I'm sorry about the lack of posts lately. It's just been a lot harder to post for the past couple of months for some reason. It's not that we're not doing things, because we have been. It's just that I'm not very motivated lately, I guess. I get home from work and just don't feel like writing and editing pictures and stuff. I have been doing this for almost 2 1/2 years, so I guess I just need a little break. I'm sure I'll keep posting, I just can't promise how often it will be for a little while. I'll try to do it at least once every week or so, and hopefully I'll get back into it at some point, but maybe not. We'll see.

Onward! We had a few open house events last week, 2 for hospitality and tourism employees and 1 for the general public. They were pretty successful, especially the general public one - we had almost 300 people despite rain and the road being closed right next to our entrance because of construction. After a couple of the events a few other employees and I helped finish some of the leftover alcohol. Because we didn't want it to go bad, you know. It was fun. A good way to end a few really long days. Here are some pictures! One of our employees came and took pictures for us, so we've got a whole bunch now, which is good. This first one just cracks me up, the woman is the wife of one of our blacksmiths, she's not even one of our employees but came to hang out one night for some reason. The Indian about to attack is one of our guides. The point of the spear he's holding is from a swordfish bill. I was playing with it the night before, spinning it around, he said something about how I was going to drop it and break it, I said "no I won't!" and spun it around again, and promptly dropped it and broke the end of the tip off. Hurray for super glue!

This one shows me in action, I'm showing them how to make a canoe. The real reason I posted this is because you can see the frame of the barn in the background. It's the last building that needs to be completed in the museum. It's freaking huge. Initially it was supposed to be done spring 2009, then by this past April 1, the new estimated date is the end of September, and reality is probably next March. We'll see.

This is the new blacksmith area, it's sort of in the middle of our fort. That little girl (who is the daughter of one of our former employees and is featured on a bunch of our advertising) is helping to work the bellows to keep the fire going.

This is my boss and some dude in the main entrance of the fort. When you enter the museum (at least for the general public, not the school groups) you go through this area first. At the left of the picture you can see the very beginning of the blacksmith area from the last picture. It's a neat little area. It's more fun to climb up onto the gun deck above this, but there's no ladder kept there because, you know, we don't want kids climbing up there and falling off or something. It's ok if the employees do, though.

Here's another one of our blacksmiths (not blacksmithing at the time, he was decked out in his Spanish finery instead) guarding Carlos, the ear of corn growing in the Spanish yard. Poor Carlos, all alone. The garden in the Indian section has at least 8 or 10 ears developing, but those were at least planted there by kids doing the school programs. Carlos started his life in a corn grinding bowl on the table that used to be in this spot, apparently he was one of the lucky kernels that fell off, got some of the oyster shell dirt kicked over him, and grew like crazy. All these damn corn plants at work look about 1000 times better than the corn in my garden. So unfair.

Ok, one more that amuses me: costumed employees hitting up the Weinie Wagon at the end of our shift! The trailer belongs to one of the owners, it's not at the museum full time but certainly came in handy on these evenings. The guy on the left is yet another blacksmith, he's also a bit of a racist. He told me I was being disloyal to my race the other day because I had music by black artists on my mp3 player. The girl in the trailer had a baby about 7 weeks ago. She looks fantastic. Her middle name and her daughter's middle name are both Jean. And her birthday is the day after mine. Obviously we get along well.
Ok, hopefully this post makes up for the past 2 weeks, at least a little!

awesome things

Today was one of my days off of work for this week. My work schedule has been so screwy, with working some weekends and taking random days off during the week, that I have very little idea what day of the week it is lately. We spent a good chunk of the day hanging out at Lucy's parents' house, in and around their pool. I drank a bottle of wine. I was hungover by 6pm. It was awesome.

I'm sure I'm the last person on earth to discover this website, but it's funny. I like this article in particular.

Also, happy birthday to Mike and Ellery. We had dinner with Ellery last night, he lit his birthday candles with a blowtorch. It was awesome.

Harvest

When I got home from work today I went out and picked a whole bunch of pole beans. I did have to use a ladder (the poles they're climbing on are a solid 8 feet tall, and those little bean plants just shot right on up there once we put them in), and I did get 14 mosquito bites in the process (yes, I counted), but I got them! I roasted them for dinner with a bit of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper, and they were really good.

It's so fun making actual meals and side dishes with stuff from the garden. So far we've used at least 2 dozen tomatoes, an eggplant, these beans, and the 2 jalapenos in the picture are going into chili this week. I've got a bunch more tomatoes ripening soon, the herbs are doing well, I think I have an actual ear of corn forming, and I counted 3 tiny butternut squash today. The only thing that's really not doing well is the zucchini. The stems are splitting and no zucchini have appeared yet. And of course that's what's supposed to be so easy to grow and so fruitful. Figures that's what I have trouble with.

long weekend!

I'm in the midst of a 4 day weekend from work! We decided to take a little mini-vacation and headed down to Fort Lauderdale to visit Alfred's grandmother, Egee. We left Friday morning, spent all day Saturday down there, and left to come back home yesterday morning. The three of us went out to dinner on Friday night. I wasn't terribly impressed by the meal, but the creme brulee we had for dessert was phenomenal. On Saturday we had lunch and dinner with Egee at the dining room in her building, spent a few hours at the beach, and watched TV in our hotel room. We used priceline to get a really nice hotel for really cheap, so we figured we should take advantage of it. Plus, I was on vacation! I wanted to be kind of lazy. It was a really nice little visit, and Egee seemed to appreciate us coming down.

Yesterday we had dinner with the rest of Alfred's family for Father's Day: lots of good food, as usual. Today is my last day off, and I have a bit of socializing planned. I'm having lunch with friends, a book club meeting later this evening, then some laundry and grocery shopping to do, maybe some ironing if I get motivated enough... busy, busy!

Robyn's birthday extravaganza!

Today was both my day off of work, and Robyn's birthday! We spent the whole day with her. Well, most of the day. Alfred and I started out at the gym, then picked up the rest of the family (except for Emily, who had to work) and headed to an Indian restaurant for a lunch buffet. It was really good. After lunch Max and Ellery went home, and Robyn, Alfred and I went to the zoo. It was hot. But fun. My favorite part was the bonobo monkeys. One had a little 6 month old baby who was super cute, and the 2 other older ones in the exhibit were swinging on ropes and chasing each other around and playing. One even kept spinning around in circles and then rolling down the little hill into the water. We must have watched them for 15 minutes. There's a penguin exhibit there too, it's the weirdest penguin exhibit I've ever seen. First of all, it wasn't in a building with AC, just outside. Second, there was just a tiny little viewing window to watch them swim, and it was right at ground level so you had to bend down or sit way back to see them swim. And there were only like 7 of them. Lame.

After the zoo we went back to their house to start making dinner: the most complicated hamburgers ever, onion rings, and french fries. The burgers were really good, just a lot of work, and the onion rings were delicious. The fries were just ok. The picture is of one of the burgers, it has cabbage, special spicy ketchup, tomato, cheese, onion, and fried egg on it. They were huge. We're waiting to digest a bit before we have dessert: blueberry cheesecake! Hopefully we'll both fit in the car to go home later.

check it out!

I think everyone who reads this regularly is my friend on facebook also, so you should go over there and check out the pictures I posted today. The museum is getting some billboards! It's super exciting, definitely more exposure than we've ever had before. Hopefully it works and we're nice and busy this summer. I'd like to have a job for the rest of the summer.

In other news, I passed a pick up truck on the highway doing probably 70 miles an hour, with 4 little kids in the truck bed. Ah, Florida.

What in the what?

I just picked 6 or 7 of these juicy little bastards off of my tomato plants. They're as big around as my thumb and each one was somewhere between 3 and 4 inches long. I think. I'm not great at estimating measurements. Anyway, they're eating my tomatoes. And I think something else is climbing on my squash. Stupid wildlife.

Quote of the day

Gara: I am sooooo drunk right now, guys.

par-tay!

Last night was our annual end of the season party for work! Not to brag, but I totally started this tradition 5 years ago. I planned the first 2 annual parties, then my replacement planned it the year I was gone, then last year we didn't have one (it sort of fell through), then this year it was all me again. We set the date about 2 1/2 weeks ago, I ordered all the food within the past 3 days, then got all the decorations and got everything set up yesterday afternoon. I did have help with decorations and set up. It was pretty fun, I do like doing this sort of thing. It was pretty simple too. We had about 70 people RSVP yes, and probably about 50-60 showed up. I'm not sure, I could try to figure it out but haven't bothered. It started out all normal and innocent.

After the first couple of hours, people started leaving, and the people who were sticking around started getting a little tipsy. (We had 3 cases of beer and 20 bottles of wine.) At some point my maintenance guy started singing along with the music using the microphone that was attached to the sound system. It all went downhill from there.

I may or may not have performed "Baby Got Back" for the benefit of a few of my employees. I was smart enough to stay far, far away from the microphone. It was really a lot of fun, I had a blast! It was a great way to end our busy season and go out with a bang.

memorial-ness

I actually took a holiday off - I was off yesterday for Memorial Day! More because I'm working this coming Saturday than because of the holiday, but that's ok. It meant that I/we could go to Ilya and Mercedes' for their Memorial Day picnic! A whole bunch of people ended up coming, and we had a whole bunch of really good food. Ilya made ribs (which are always awesome), we brought smoked pork (which Alfred chopped instead of pulling, also good) and smoked wings, and then there was corn on the cob, potato salad, cole slaw, a couple of dips, and a variety of desserts. It was all delicious and I ate too much. But, what else is new?

We also spread the fun of speed Uno to a few new people that have never played before. You know us, never missing a chance for speed Uno. I've actually tried getting people to play at work a couple of times, but somehow our jobs keep getting in the way. Anyway, Ilya and Mercedes also bought Connect 4. I used to play in like 4th grade and loved it then, and apparently still love it now. So, it was fun. Of course we did not take any pictures, so no pictures again with this post. I'll have to work on this for my next post or 2. Sorry.

Notes

I found a chunk of oyster shell in my sock as I was putting it on this morning. Not many people have a job where that's not entirely unexpected.

I've been at a conference yesterday and today for work. Schmoozing is not really my thing. My boss is supposed to be here too, but I've seen him for about 30 minutes so far. Right now I'm pretending to be busy while waiting for the next session to start. Then I get lunch. So, not bad. Plus I get out of the office for 2 days. The only drawback is that it's freaking freezing in this building. You win some, you lose some.

There's a rumor floating around here that a certain Orlando theme park is doing a soft opening for their big new attraction next weekend. I'm tempted to go check it out before the official grand opening in the middle of June, but I'm trying to get some more info first, in case the rumor is not true. If you don't know what I'm talking about, ask google. I don't want to write it here in case someone else is asking google and google thinks I know what I'm talking about.

Guess I'd better head over to my next thing. They're giving out tickets at each session and are doing a drawing for free airline tickets tomorrow. Don't want to miss out on that.

Quote of the day

Alfred (to me): You have so many boyfriends, it's hard to keep track.

my poor car

As I was attempting to leave for work this morning, I made the oh so pleasant discovery that I had not one, but two flat tires. Tires which were brand new, by the way. Hurray! Luckily I was able to take Alfred's car so I could get to work. He investigated after I left and found slash marks in both of them. So apparently someone came by our house last night and slashed both of my driver's side tires. Alfred had a suspicion of who it was, but he talked to the guy and , so I guess it's just a random occurrence. I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.

Luckily I have a wonderful husband who took care of everything for me and got me some new(er) tires, and (most of) the people I work with are pretty awesome and cheered me up. (The situation put me in a pretty bad mood this morning, as you might imagine.) So first my car gets broken into by that dude who tried to break into our house last fall, and now this. It's been through a lot. Poor thing.