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.

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.

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.

oh, my liver

(FYI, I started this post Saturday morning. It's now Monday night.)

Actually, I haven't really had any beer since Tuesday after work, but I drank enough Saturday and Monday to last awhile. I'd say our booze fest was a success. Alfred and Mike both finished their cases on Monday, and I finished my half case. I think Katie was within a couple of beers, I'm not sure about Maureene. Lucy, Ilya, and Mercedes all joined in for part of the day too. We played a whole bunch of flip cup. Only a couple of puking incidents. Not bad at all. The rest of the week was fun, even though I had to work a lot and couldn't join in in all of the festivities. I could make pizza, though! We had it 5 times total, twice for breakfast. Katie left on Tuesday, and Mike and Maureene left on Thursday. Now it's just us again. But we have pictures!

energizer bunnies!

So yeah, another busy weekend and week. Last Saturday was Ellie's first birthday party, as you may have guessed by the picture. They had a keg of beer and a bunch of Easter eggs hidden around the yard with lots of candy inside. So yeah, a good party. Sunday we spent most of the day with Alfred's family. Robyn wasn't feeling well, so we got to learn how to make their traditional Easter ham loaf and tomato pudding. It came out ok. Not quite as good as when she makes it, but ok.

Every night this week has been full, too. Monday night we went over to Lucy and Phil's for leftover beer and barbecue from their party. Tuesday and Wednesday we scrambled to get various chores and cleaning done for this weekend. We did laundry, ironed, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher, washed dishes, and cleaned the whole house. We have a big weekend coming up: Mike's on leave, so we're having a big get together! He, Maureene, and Katie are coming for a long weekend, and Tony and Cathy are meeting us in Orlando for the weekend. It's going to be quite a boozy weekend. Expect some drunk posts. We'll be in Epcot for Around the World on Saturday, then a Case Day on Monday, and who knows what else. My liver is trembling in fear!

we've found a better maid

This maid only comes once a week, and the day he comes tends to change from one week to the next, but today when I came home from work all the dishes were done and a delicious dinner of fish ceviche was waiting for me! Someone's laundry hasn't been put away yet, but the ceviche made up for it. Plus he watched last night's So You Think You Can Dance with me (which was not great, by the way). What a guy.

In other news, it's Veteran's Day. Here's a picture to dispel the solemn, honorable mental image that phrase might conjure up for you. Yes, this fine young knight is off defending our country. Go visit Mike's blog for a up close and personal view of his life in the army. This picture makes me want a beer.

On another totally unrelated note... one of the reasons we live in Florida is no longer alive. Back in summer 2002, Alfred moved to Washington DC after he graduated college. I was all psyched to join him after I graduated the next year. And then the sniper thing started. You may remember the month or so that fall when people living in the DC area were basically terrified to go outside because of the random sniper attacks taking place. It was one of the things that made Alfred decide to move back to Florida. Well, last night one of the snipers was executed. The other one is serving a life sentence. And I didn't get to move to DC. Jerks.

more tales from the road

Alfred said he liked my post last week about our trip, so here's another one for him. I think some of you may have already heard this story.

The place: Seattle. It was hot. Seattle in general, and Mike's apartment in particular, is not air conditioned. Mike had graciously offered us his bed, but we declined, saying that the couch and air mattress would be just fine for us. Turns out that was a mistake. His bedroom was somehow a lot cooler than the living room, for one thing, and Alfred managed to deflate the air mattress during the night. He has a talent for that. I fared better on the couch, though since I was kind of sweaty I kept sticking to the couch and had to peel myself off of it whenever I rolled over. I tried to keep myself wrapped in the sheet to prevent this, but then the whole hotter-than-hell thing kicked back in. And it wasn't just the heat. Since it was so warm, we kept the windows open at night to try to get some cooler air inside. Mike's apartment was about, oh, 20 feet from 2 major interstates.

You could probably literally get a running start and jump onto I5. So it was loud. And hot. And Alfred somehow deflated the air mattress. The second night, he and I switched sleeping surfaces. I was fine on the air mattress, but he of course was unhappy on the couch. And Mike and I had to listen to him whine all day about being tired. So Mike got proactive. He asked me (via text, with Alfred in the same room as us, if I recall correctly) if it was ok if he crushed up some sleeping pills and put them in Alfred's drink. I said sure. So Mike very generously offered to get us all drinks. He was even nice enough to give Alfred the frozen mug. After awhile, Mike took our glasses back to the kitchen (he had noticed some floaters in Alfred's glass and didn't want Alfred to see them) and soon after that we went to bed. And our dear friend Alfred slept like a baby. Success! He's so much happier with a good night's sleep. Now, just so you don't worry that Alfred's seeing this for the first time right now, Mike did tell him about this the next day. And when we finally left Seattle, we had a few doses of sleeping pills in hand, in case of future emergencies. Thanks, Mike.

ah, fall

I've decided that I really like fall. I like when the weather starts to cool off and the humidity drops. I like that work starts to get a little busy: busy enough to give me something to do so I'm not bored, but not so busy that I go crazy. And I like that football is on and we spend all day cooking! Yesterday we hit the farmers market and had all these plans for food to make to eat during the Jaguars game. Unfortunately the Jaguars aren't playing this week, so that plan sort of fell through, so instead we watched the Vikings game for Mike. Pretty good game, especially the fourth quarter, though I must admit I slept through some of it. All that eating wore me out.

We started our day with a smoothie for breakfast (didn't want to weigh ourselves down too early). Then we got cracking with the food. We made 2 dips: 1 with eggplant and 1 with spinach and cannellini beans. Both were awesome. To go along with these dips we attempted to make some butternut squash chips. We do this with both squash and sweet potato fairly regularly, but for some reason it totally didn't work today. So we ended up with some kind of mushy baked squash pieces. Still tasted good. Luckily we had also decided to make some pita bread to have with our dip. Yup, pita bread! From scratch! It was awesome!

You roll the dough out really thin and then they puff right up in the oven. So cool. They were yummy, too. Now I totally want to have a Mediterranean dinner party.

After the game (and my nap) we had one more kitchen task for the day: roasting chicken. Yes, we're currently roasting 2 chickens in the oven. One's just your basic roast chicken, with garlic and lemon, and the other one has a Caribbean rub and basting sauce. I'm not so sure we'll be hungry enough to eat much chicken tonight, but that's ok. It just means we'll have food ready to go for dinners this week. We have big plans to make some chicken salad to eat in our leftover pitas. Anyway, our kitchen is clearly a bit of a disaster right now, as can be seen in this picture. Alfred tried his best to get out of the frame. Ha! Got him!

I just remembered the other reason I like fall: cranberries are in season! Last year we found this amazing cranberry chutney recipe, not realizing that we were at the end of cranberry season. So we've been waiting months for fresh cranberries to be at the store again. We made our first batch yesterday. It's so damn good. I might have to go sneak a spoonful right now.

water sports

Luckily we're busy making granola and on the phone trying to get our satellite service working again, so I got to finish this post! Finally! I've been intending to post these for years. Days, anyway.

So we got this really cool waterproof case for our camera, and Tony and Mike took it with them diving to test it out.



This is the same place Katie got certified last summer. This picture is so cool. It's looking up towards the surface from probably 30-40 feet down. I'm guessing, I wasn't there, but I've done this dive.

Ok, enough of that. What we really want to see is cute kid pictures! Here's Ella getting ready to go.

The kids playing under a fountain at the first hotel we stayed at.

We spent a few days at the beach, too. They loved the water (Ella especially, she was boogie boarding like a pro), but we spent some time playing in the sand too. Here's some evidence.

They just look like they're having a blast here.

And Mason, chill-axin' after a rough day of fun.

this is screwed up

I expect to be busy at work all during the spring, but during the summer I'm supposed to be able to take it easy, leave early now and then, come in late, take long lunch breaks. But this week has been sucking ass! I'm already at 39 1/2 hours for the week, and I still have a 10 or so hour day tomorrow. We're gearing up to start new programs for the public next week, so between extra stuff to do and extra training we've been running, I've been working a lot. Sucks. So, that's my excuse for the lack of posts. I missed Mike and Ellery's birthday, which was yesterday, so happy birthday to them. And hopefully I'll be able to post for real this weekend.

cathy's pictures

I just downloaded Cathy's pictures and wanted to add hers to Mom's from yesterday. First up, a couple of shots of Mike and Cathy grabbing hold of some double D's. And in Disney World, no less!













I just think this one's cute.

And now, back to the drinking. Luckily Cathy had her camera with her when we were out in search of dessert Saturday night. We made a stop at a gas station at one point to buy more beer (which we then carried up and down the road before hiding it in the bushes in front of the hotel) and for some reason Alfred bought a can of cat food. And then took not one, but two bites.













Ugh. Moving on. They gave us crayons to keep us entertained and out of trouble while we waited for our food. Mike apparently got bored by coloring on the paper table covering and went for Cathy's face instead.

And then I got my water, tried to take a sip, somehow stuck the straw up my nose, and then dumped it into my lap.













And one last group shot. Good times.

my bad

As Katherine pointed out to me today, I haven't posted in 5 days. I've just been so busy having fun and whatnot. Today was my first day back at work since last Thursday, and so along with the end of my 24 hour a day, non-stop fun comes the return of the blog. First up: Orlando!

Everyone flew into Orlando on Thursday, and we headed down there to meet them after we both finally got home from work. Clearly, we did some drinking. Friday we went to Disney!

The kids had a good time, although they got a little tired of walking at times.

That night, more drinking took place. Obviously. I think that was the first night we did a power hour. That hotel had a little balcony that we all crammed onto and got drunk on. We did a whole lot of swimming before that. Ella is a crazy woman in the pool. She swam non-stop for like 2 hours. It's no wonder she's so tiny, she should be eating all day to keep up with the calories she burns.

Saturday Mike and Tony went diving (they took our new waterproof camera case with them, so at some point I can post pictures that they took underwater) and the rest of us hung out at the waterpark at the hotel.

We had to switch hotels that day, then off to a pirate dinner adventure. It was fun, with an extra pitcher of beer. Mason was laughing his head off watching one of the pirates get whipped. How adorable.

And another power hour that night.

Ella helped us keep things tidy. She also earned some good money in tips by pouring us our shots.


We were using our new power hour program on the computer, so we knew that none of us were sober enough to drive by the end. So instead we walked around, up and down the road that our hotel was on, looking for some place to get pie for an early birthday celebration for Mike. Eventually we settled on Denny's, a mere 100 or so feet from our hotel, after walking back and forth for an hour or so. Mike went wading in the retention pool in front of the hotel. Alfred ate cat food. I think there are pictures somewhere.

And then we left. Tune in tomorrow for episode 2: the beach!

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.