change in habits

Our busiest season is coming up at work, so I'm going to be working longer hours and more evenings soon. Which means that I'm not going to be blogging as often during the week anymore. I'll try to blog during the weekends some to make up for it, but we have so many friends and things to do... ha! Once in awhile we do, I guess. This weekend we're going to Orlando, so that will be fun. Last weekend we just sat around and relaxed, though. It was awesome.

Here's a fun picture:

It was taken in one of the tunnels below Alcatraz. When we were out there visiting Rosemary and Greg, we went to buy tickets for the tour, only to find that they were sold out for the day. While we were trying to decide what to do, the park ranger we were talking to asked if we'd like to go on a special tour with him. He and another ranger were giving a special behind the scenes tour to some park rangers from somewhere like Pennsylvania, and asked if we'd like to come along. So we got a super cool tour, and it was free! We got to go in a bunch of cells, and walk around underneath the prison, and go upstairs to where they filmed part of the movie "The Rock." It was really fun. I meant to send that guy a thank you note and never did. I'm so not a Southerner. They write thank you notes for everything.

In other news, I haven't asked anyone to be my friend on facebook since Katherine first signed me up. It's kind of fun to see how many people ask me to be their friend. I don't know how many I have right now, though, and I just signed on yesterday so I can't sign on again so soon. I can't get people's hopes up. It's a little weird though, most of the people I went to high school with who have asked to be my friend were huge losers. That doesn't say much for me!

stress

Work right now is all about stress. Friday was a fairly terrible day. It was incredibly busy, with programs at both museum locations all day long. Plus Kara was sick and had lost her voice, so I had to pick up some of her slack (although she claims it didn't have any impact on her work that day, which makes me worry even more actually). I say it all the time, I should buy a pedometer so that I can see how far I walk on these busy days. Cause I crossed that street about 1000 times, sometimes running instead of walking. It was just pure insanity. And then Kara had the balls to imply today that I wasn't doing my job well enough. I had told her that in general, when there are 5 busses in the parking lot she should come out there and help instead of going inside with the teacher, and today she told me that her groups were taken care of and the bus that had just pulled up was one of my groups, so that's why she walked away. So somehow it ceased to be her job, at that very moment. Ugh. It really irritated me.

One good thing that came out of the busy day was that I wore my snood for the first time. It was a little smaller than would have really been ideal, but I think it went well.

It stayed where it belonged, at least. Now I'm working on a new one, a little larger and with elastic this time. Exciting, no?

Unfortunately this is just the beginning of the work stress. Starting next week, we're going to have 3 programs going at the old location and 4 at the new one. In other words, lots of running across the street. Man, I can't wait.

happy birthday Tony!

Yup, my favorite oldest brother is another year older. He is, in fact, damn old. We lamented the fact that we're old and fucking boring when I called him earlier. It could be worse, though. We could be dead. If he read this, he'd probably like this picture. The rest of us will just have to enjoy it for him. Happy birthday!


We have a new guy at work who has the same first and middle name as Tony. I told him that, and he said "I knew that, because you're my sister." The Tony at work I mean, not the Tony who's actually my brother. In other words, it was kind of weird. Mike met him last week, he pointed out that he looks kind of like Dad. I had noticed the same thing earlier that day. But only when he's wearing a hat. So he looks like my Dad and has the same name as my brother.

We're watching the SNL from a couple of weeks ago, where TV on the Radio performed. Alfred corrected identified the lead singer as the guy in Rachel Getting Married. I just assumed he was being racist. Cause that guy's black. But nope, he was right. It's now official, he's not racist. In case you were curious.

Mike is going to love this title

Apparently the only reason he bothers to come visit is to get mentioned in my blog. So, here's a good one for you, Mike.

He came down Thursday and came right to the museum, since I was still at work for a couple of hours. He brought cannolis, which were really tasty. It was the first cannoli that Kara had ever had. Pretty crazy, eh? Then he went outside and had lots of fun doing museum-ey stuff. He helped make candles.

Sunday we decided to try out the dutch oven in a bonfire. We made peach blackberry cobbler. It turned out ok, but the pan was a giant bitch to clean.

The dutch oven is at the bottom right of the picture here. And that's a big ass fire.

Ok, back to Mike. Sunday he had to change his Hawaii plates for his new Florida ones.



It was a big moment for him. Or not. Whatever.

booze, booze, and more booze

Mike came down to visit Thursday evening, so of course we drank a lot. By now I'm sure you've seen the live blog. That was some good times. Next time anyone thinks about how lame a post is and wants to complain, just remember those posts. Cause they were awesome.

So this post is all about our drunken fun. We all wore our coordinating John Deere t-shirts on Saturday, so we took a formal family portrait.


God, we're adorable. Here's another good one from Sunday night. Our cousin David came down for the evening, and we had to get the obligatory Mike-showing-off-his-wound shot.

And now, a few high quality drunken photos. I had no idea Mike took these. There's like 5 on my camera.

I was smelling the tree. God, it smelled good.

Alfred showing off his fraternity pride.

And now, a progression of our bottle collection over the weekend. Saturday morning:

Saturday evening:

Sunday morning:

Sunday evening:

We had lots and lots of beer. On Saturday evening, after our second power hour, we walked up to Publix for more beer. I wasn't wearing shoes. We evidently decided we needed 4 cases of beer. On the way home, I dropped the one I was carrying, then grabbed it and ran home with it, beer streaming down the front of me. And only 2 bottles broke!

p.s.

You're gonna want to start at the bottom of these posts and work your way up, because they're posted in reverse chronological order. I just typed that completely without typos. I'm awesome.

power hour live blog: the aftermath

Our shot glasses have been approved for future power hours. Ok, from this sentence on I am not going to edit my typos. We just got off the phone with Tony and Cathy and the kids, Ella wants silly string for her birthday burt she isn't going to tell her mom, cause her mom wil freak out! So I'm totally buying her silly strong. her birthday's coming up. That means my blog-aversary is coming up. Woprd. Our pizza is baking, hopefdully it's awesome. It's a rasta pizza plus half a pizza worth of banana peppers. For those who do not know, rasta pizza is pepperoni, green pepper, and pineapple. It's fantastic. Wow, it's awful how many typos I have. HBowever, it's an authentic representation of the fact that I have completed a power, plus half a beer, plus maybe 2 sups of another. Dang, I keep wanting to correct my speelling but I commited to bot fixing it. Mike just said cream.