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?

Alfred's birthday celebration weekend

I love getting all these comments! I feel so popular. :) Yes, the tiramisu was delicious. I mean like super delicious. And there wasn't even any chocolate in it. So you know it must have been good.

We had a good weekend, Saturday was fun with Alfred's birthday party. We had an awesome meal at his parents' house: ceviche with red snapper and scallops, caesar salad with steak and shrimp, and of course the tiramisu. It was great. We ate at about 3:00 and didn't even need dinner, we were so stuffed. We all got to dress up like Superman, and Robyn bought these little potato guns that you stabbed into a potato then shot the little potato nugget out. They were really fun, we all had little starchy spots on our clothes from shooting each other. And there were about 10 pounds of potato bits on the porch afterwards.

Sunday we went over to his parents' house again to watch the Bills/Jaguars game. That game is always fun, because of course I root for the Bills while everyone else is rooting for the Jaguars. It's even better when Buffalo wins, like they did yesterday! So I have bragging rights for another year. Not that I really follow football all that much anymore, but it's still fun. Plus I got pizza and wings, and we finished the tiramisu.

The other thing that happened this weekend is that gas went up. Stupid Ike. It went up from 25 to more than 60 cents a gallon at different stations. Luckily I had heard that it was supposed to go way up and got it on Saturday morning, by Saturday evening it had already gone up and some places had actually run out. So that sucks.

One last thing: happy first anniversary to Rosemary and Greg!

this week rules

I left work early again today, as you may be able to guess. It's not raining at home anymore, I actually see a little sun, but it was really gross earlier. I just talked to Alfred, he's on his way home from work too, he said it's really bad where he is. There was also apparently a tornado spotted right where he was driving through, about 10 miles from the museum. Glad I left! Really we both messed up, we should have gone to work all day yesterday and taken all of today off. Oh well, what are you gonna do.

I've been fairly productive in the hour and a half I've been home. I cleaned the bathrooms, swept, took out the trash, made some cookie dough (I've heard rumors that a certain sister of mine is coming down here next week, and I've been craving some dough anyway), and washed some dishes. I was nice and left the vacuuming for Alfred, and haven't quite gotten around to laundry yet. Hell, I've got 2 1/2 days to do it now! I love having my weekend chores done by Friday afternoon.

I'm watching Ghost Hunters right now. I kind of love this show. I saw it for the first time when they visited the St. Augustine lighthouse, which was a really good episode (I might still have it on our dvr), and then I sort of got hooked. It's sort of cheesy sometimes, but it's fun. How's that for a pointless story?

It's more fun to blog during the day than at night. By the time I get around to blogging most nights it's after dinner and all I want to do is sit around and be lazy, so I kind of hurry through it. When I do it during the day I take longer and you get gems like this.

I think I'm going to go bake a couple of cookies. Or at least eat some more dough. Peace out!

soggy update

We're in Fay's eye right now. It's kind of cool, there's no rain and almost no wind. I guess it started moving again, I'm kind of excited for the next update to see where exactly it hit land again. They've been saying between Daytona and Jacksonville; we might be famous!

So I did go into work today, but I left at 1. It was really gross on my drive there, very windy and rainy, kind of scary on the bridges. Here's another action packed video for you. I made sure to turn off my cd player first so you can't make fun of my music.




There's lots of flooding in St. Augustine already, and we're supposed to keep getting rain until Saturday. They closed the bridge and a bunch of roads downtown. There was one place where a small lake/retention pond completely overflowed over a road. I didn't have my camera ready though, so no picture. I stopped and got gas on my way home and almost got blown away. I kept thinking "it's a twista, it's a twista!" cause I'm cool like that. The water in the intracoastal's pretty high, too. Luckily our house is nice and high up, we shouldn't have any flooding or anything.

The museum was fine, just lots of branches down. I was nice and let Marc stay in the office for awhile this morning, even though he crapped all over the damn floor and kept pulling out his feathers and leaving them around. I'm going to have to vacuum tomorrow. Here he is, cowering under a desk like a little pansy.

Meanwhile, Mama took it like a champ. She's a real woman.

I feel kind of bad for them, being stuck outside in this weather, but at least they got some food today. Plus there's a couple of structures outside they can get into, so they'll be fine.

So now I'm home. Alfred stayed home too, so we got to have lunch together. Now I have to work on some laundry, maybe clean the bathrooms, make some granola. Maybe we'll get drunk and watch the Olympics. It's gonna be an exciting time!

I think she's here

We've been getting rain most of the afternoon/evening, and it's been pretty windy. The museum closed early today, more because we had absolutely no customers than from the weather. We're going to be closed tomorrow too, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have the day off. If it's not bad out I'm supposed to go in. Is it wrong that I'm hoping for lots of wind and rain?

Sorry for the lameness of posts lately, I've got nothing.

hurricane's a-comin!

First, we did get the truck out of the fountain. The limestone got scratched, but the truck was fine. It could have been much worse.

So we've been under a tropical storm warning since this afternoon. The governor declared a state of emergency on Saturday, and the northeast FL red cross is preparing supplies and getting shelters ready. I feel like this is all being blown (ha!) out of proportion a bit. I mean, I can see the Keys being worried, since they're islands and all, and I guess the west coast could be concerned, but really. It's only supposed to be a category 1 when it hits, which isn't all that bad. And as my buddy Jim Cantore has taught me over my years of watching the Weather Channel, it will weaken as it goes over land, so by the time it gets to us it won't even be a hurricane anymore. Like one of my coworkers said today, it'll be like our typical afternoon thunderstorm, only all day long.

Of course, for my first hurricane I totally bought into the hype. I think my first was hurricane Charley though, which hit as (I think) a category 5. Worthy of my attention. I stocked up on bottled water and canned food. We still have about 2/3 of the food I bought, 4 years later. Oops. We did lose power for two of the other storms that summer, and between that summer and the following summer I got lots of hurricane practice. Here's an action-packed video of hurricane Frances.



Not as exciting as when the weather channel shows it. And for some reason when I try to put the slideshow in this post it messes everything up. I need to find a new photo hosting site to use for slideshows. Anyway, below this is a bunch of hurricane pictures. I love this stuff!

hurricane slideshow