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!

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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.