happy mother's day!

Alfred's family just left about an hour ago; they came over for dinner tonight. We had hummus, pizza, and chocolate mousse - all homemade, of course - and it was pretty awesome. So most of the day today was spent cooking and cleaning, which was actually kind of fun. Not the cleaning part necessarily, but I like cooking. And now the house is damn clean.

(We're watching the 30 Rock from this past week, and Liz Lemon referred to the Sims! It was awesome!)

Yesterday we spent a lot of the day outside. We decided last weekend that we need to hang out outside more often, so yesterday we actually did it. We went canoeing on the intracoastal and explored some of the canals that branch off of it. The people who live back there really like those statues of little boys fishing.

We also played with some crabs for awhile, freaking them out and making them run like hell. It was fun. We also sat and watched a lizard go about his life: he surveyed his land, found a lady friend, had a romantic experience, was confronted by a challenger, and got into a rumble. Watching 2 lizards fight was probably the coolest thing I've seen all month. It was hilarious.

In other news, Alfred went tanning at the gym the other day and the girl didn't set the timer right, so he got a bit pink. Then yesterday he forgot to put sunscreen on his arms and legs, so he's a little red today. He's been quite diligent about putting aloe on, at least. First sunburn of the summer!

famous people galore!

There's all sorts of cool shit going down in St Augustine today. First, Tiger Woods is in town for the TPC, which is played near St Augustine, and his yacht is actually anchored in St Augustine. It's called "Privacy." So the local newspaper published an article about it with a picture.

One of my co workers actually saw it docked there the other day. He said he tried to go paparazzi sneak attack style and get a picture but failed. Or maybe I used the phrase paparazzi sneak attack style. I can't quite recall.

There's also a festival going on downtown with crawfish and music. Snoop Dogg is one of the performers tonight. Snoop Dogg! I was probably within about a mile or so of Snoop Dogg at some point of the day! I'm awesome by association! Or something. There's a bunch of other groups I've actually heard of too, including Presidents of the USA and 3 Doors Down, but somehow Snoop is the one everyone in town was talking about. I thought about going paparazzi sneak attack style on their asses, but then I decided to come home instead. I was hungry.

weekend roundup

Photoshop was being ridiculous, so I'm sorry if these pictures take forever to load. But I figured if I went any longer without posting I'd get shit from Mike. So, we've seen the pictures of woodpeckers and of burning half our yard. (Our house still smells like smoke, by the way.) Let's take a look at the rest of the weekend. First, drinking:

Mike got some breathalyzers from the army somehow, so we took them after a couple of power hours. The yellow is what it starts out as, if it turns greenish you're drunk. So we were drunk. Alfred and Mike ended up doing 3 full power hours on Saturday. I did not. It was for the best.

While in various stages of drunkenness, we engaged in some more yard work (or murder):

Alfred decided to go for a quick swim:



And decided to make some napalm.



It was cool. It sort of melted down the side of the log. We were very careful with it, we didn't yell at it or anything.

So that's that. Mike's moving soon, so probably no power hours for awhile. And our yard will probably look like crap again soon. Alas. It was fun while it lasted!

the woody woodpecker show

I wanted to just put up a slideshow of these woodpecker pictures, but for some reason I can't upload them, so here they are all in a row:







Based on 4.7 seconds of google research, this is an ivory billed woodpecker. There were 3 of these in our backyard yesterday afternoon, and again this morning. And Mike was army crawling up to them to take pictures. Army's good for something, after all!

Edit: After a more extensive (and sober) search, it turns out the ivory billed woodpecker is super rare and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is offering $50,ooo to anyone who can bring them to a live bird. And I think that these are pileated woodpeckers. No money for me :(

Woodpeckers

Stay tuned for more radical woodpecker pictures, mike is working so hard.
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I can photoshop drunk!

Mike has this peculiar love of doing yard work when he's at our house. We're putting him to work this weekend, since we don't know when he'll be back.

Right now we're in the midst of a controlled burn of a section of crap by the dock. I'm staying up on the porch, far away from the spreading flames. I'm also drunk enough to not be freaking out about raging fire in the middle of our yard. It's better that way.

Mike's currently down by the water, throwing random flaming objects up onto the main part of the fire. Not asking questions. He and Alfred worked on the yard for awhile yesterday, and we've been burning shit like crazy. Doesn't it look nice? Go here for a look at the before (Alfred's computer is off, which severely limits my picture access).


We finished our second power hour of the weekend about half an hour ago. I didn't go full out, but the boys did. We've got ribs in the oven and big plans for another power hour later this evening. Also, I made the best pizza ever last night. I discovered the secret, which I shall not divulge in such a public forum. If anyone's interested, they'll just have to visit us to try it and see for themselves!

bye bye beard!

As Mike's time in Georgia comes to a close, so does Alfred's time with a beard. And he let me shave it into different designs first!








And yes, Mike's visiting for the weekend. Prepare for drunken posts!