Sixty-five

Party Pics

Sixty-four

Gorgeous day, eighty degrees fahrenheit, March 17. Great for the drunks out in Westport tonight! Now, those were the days. Start drinking at 9:00 am, wind down around ... oh, 2:00 am. I'll bet Jenny's out there right now. All the single ladies, put your hands up!

We're having a party for Lacey's birthday this weekend, incredibly hard to believe she's turning 16. I've known her half her life now. The first time I met her was in a parking lot, I was meeting Brian and Lacey for Red Friday, and I pulled into the lot and parked and turned the ignition off and turned to open my door...and she was already standing at my window, checking me out. Funny kid. Good kid. Argues like a barrister, but good.

Seth is sitting across from me right now with dirty knees and a big scrape/bruise on his forehead (faceplant on the playground at preschool), checking for toe-jam. When we got home he jumped right in his jeep and cruised around the yard for about half an hour. Totally happy. That thing was worth every penny.

My rash is nearly gone, I'm happy to report. Just nearly.

Sixty-three

Spent a good part of my morning at urgent care again. Last night I started getting a rash on my chest and arms and face, and this morning it was everywhere, and my face was swollen. Got a steroid shot and a prescrip for prednizone, and some antihistamines. It has maybe started to go down a little, but not much. I have NO idea what's going on, an allergic reaction to something, but god knows what. I can't think of anything I did differently yesterday, didn't use any new soaps or lotions, didn't eat anything new or unusual.

Looks like MU just won the Big 12 championship. Woot! So much for the Baylor bandwagon. I read earlier that the arena wasn't even a third full, and scalpers couldn't get $10 for tickets. That's kind of ugly.

I downloaded the new U2 album over a week ago and still haven't listened to it. I don't know why not. AND, I don't even know what it's called or what any of the songs are. (When asked, I always say U2 is my favorite rock band. Does this now disqualify me from being able to say that...at least with a straight face?)

I'm sitting here typing this and watching Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey undressing each other. If that doesn't make you want to kill yourself I don't know what will.

Sixty-two

Another Friday rolls around. This time last week I was unconscious, I was SO sick last Friday. Dr said viral bronchitis but I don't think it could have been that. I've had bronchitis before and this wasn't anything like that. In any case, I feel better now.

My very good friends James and Kristal had their baby this week, Gabriella Jean. She'll be called Ella, I believe, and not Gabby, thank goodness. :o) Seth is very interested in her, we got to have lunch with them around the holidays and Seth thought the whole "she has a baby in her belly" thing was fascinating, so now that she's "out" he asks about her a lot. The inevitable questions are bubbling around in that active little brain of his, I'm sure.

MU won their basketball game last night, apparently. KU and KState both lost yesterday. Funny. Even funnier -- I don't care!!

Random pictures to follow...

Sixty-one

What? Where have I been? Oh, you know. Job. Husband. Kid. Freelance work. A house to keep up with.

We bought another cow this past weekend. What? Yeah, “another cow.” Now we’re up to three cows. We bought the first two around the holidays. Lucy and Ethel. The new cow is Roseanne. She has a heifer calf, her name is Darlene. What? Yeah, yeah. Television names. You noticed. Lucy and Ethel are both pregnant. If Lucy has a bull-calf, just guess what his name is going to be.

Uh…we’re starting with the prep for the Myrtle Beach trip. Seth is already talking about what he’ll wear. We priced airline tickets and discovered it was WAAAAY cheaper to fly to Charlotte than directly to Myrtle Beach. So we'll rent a car (we would have anyway) and drive down to the beach, it's about three, three and a half hours. For an old hand at car-trips like myself, that's a cake-walk.

Seth. Seth is good. I am finding, however, that the Fours are definitely worse than the Twos or the Threes. And when you’re dealing with a smart Four, you’re really in trouble. I don’t have any specific stories to pass along today, just suffice it to say he's got a huge vocabulary and he knows how to use it. He also knows how to use charm and dissimulation.

Also, in case anyone else was wondering but had never bothered to really find out, I just read a little about why February only has 28 days. Probably at some point in my youth we studied this topic, but I didn't retain the info. So...

When the Roman calendar was first created, it was established to keep track of the agricultural cycles of planting and harvesting. There were, initially, only ten months, March to December. But a guy named Numa Pompilius decided, around 3000 years ago, that a calendar that basically overlooked one-sixth of the year didn't really make sense, so he decided that a year should have 355 days...approximately the length of twelve lunar cycles. Extra days ("leap" days) were added to keep the calendar roughly in tune with the seasons, and January and February were added then (to the end of the year). Since Romans considered that even numbers were unlucky, he made seven months 29 days long, and four months 31 days long.

But, it turned out he’d need one even-numbered month to make it come out to 355 days. So February was picked, since, at that time, it was the last month of the year, and was “assigned” only 28 days. It wasn’t until a long time later that Julius Ceasar reorganized the calendar, bumped it up to 365 days, and moved January and February to the beginning of the year.

Sixty

Well, it's been a while. Too much "life" going on, I guess.

Seth's Christmas program at his preschool was Tuesday night, the roads were bad but since they didn't cancel we forged ahead. It was very cute. His class sang two songs, "Silent Night" and "Up on the Housetop." I'd post a video here but apparently they're both too big. Santa also put in an appearance. He and Seth had quite a conversation.

Otherwise, we've just been getting ready for the holidays. I'm pretty much done shopping, just a few little things left to finish it up. Work has been busy, have had to bring a lot of work home over the past couple months. But they've given us two nice bonuses this fall, so I can't complain about that. And just one more work day to go and then we have a nice break, I have off from the 23rd to January 2nd. Brian has that time off as well.

Tonight we're going up to Wendy and Andy's to have dinner and play cards and visit and spend the night, and then tomorrow we're doing Christmas with Uncle Phil and Mary, since they can't come up on Christmas day. Hopefully the 20% chance of light snow today stays 20% or below, and light as well.

Fifty-nine

Key West

November 1-8, 2008

Saturday, November 1: Travel. Lots and lots and lots of travel. A hotel stay, then a shuttle from the hotel to the airport. Two flights. A four and a half hour drive from Ft Lauderdale to Key West. Oy!

Sunday, November 2: Drove around the Key, took in some sights. Stopped and parked near Mallory Square, immediately starting buying things and taking pictures. (In the new encyclopedia coming out early next year, there's a picture of us next to the entry for Hoosier Tourists.) I did snag some Key Lime Lotion that is really great, and we bought some Key Limeade that was really great ... sensing a theme, are we? We went to the Aquarium, where they had a touch tank that I was armpit deep in within seconds of sighting it. Crabs, starfish, urchins, sea cucumbers, etc. Had some lunch, stocked up on groceries for the week, and went back to the resort and hit the pool.

Monday, November 3: Brian found a half-day chartered fishing trip to join (the boat's name was the Captain Conch), whereon he caught a 20 lb barracuda. I do not have pictures of this yet, he took the waterproof disposable and we don't have it developed yet. He also caught another large fish, I think he said a big mackerel. While he was doing that, my mom and sister and Seth and I went to one of the small beaches on the south side of the Key. There was no surf, the water was almost completely still. For someone who grew up going "down the shore" to LBI, with sometimes monster breakers, it was weird. Almost eerie. There was also lots of broken glass, so I, of course, spent my time looking for and picking up and grousing about bits of glass so Seth wouldn't cut his feet. He spent all his time running around like a crazy man. He does love the beach!!

Tuesday, November 4: My mom and sister went their own way, so Brian and Seth and I went on a glass-bottom boat cruise, out to some coral reefs. A pod of bottle-nosed dolphins joined us and swam with the boat for a while, I was excited to see that...so naturally the battery in my camera died right about then. I got a small bit of video and a couple shots where you can sort of maybe kind of tell that they're dolphins. The cruise itself was very cool, we saw some beautiful fish and coral while we were out there. Then we walked down Duval St and had lunch at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. Had our first conch fritters there (or, as Seth calls them, critters); they were quite good. Did not see Jimmy Buffett. After lunch, we bought some ice cream cones, bought some large matted prints from a professional photographer and had it shipped home, and then went to the Pirate Soul Museum, which is tres cool. Even the stuff you had to smell.

Oh, yeah, I went and found the house on Duncan St where Tennessee Williams lived. It's not a museum now or anything, just a private residence, so I just had Brian take a couple shots of me standing outside. I was dying to see the studio out back where he wrote but it's fenced and, of course, the yard is completely full of palm trees and other lush green things.


Also, Brian and my sister and I stayed up to follow election results and to hear the acceptance speech from Grant Park. I wept. I was so proud of this country!! (Missouri, not so much...) John McCain's speech was very gracious ... where was *that* guy during the election? The John McCain I liked a year ago finally showed up! I think if Obama had run against the *real* John McCain it would have been a tougher race.

Wednesday, November 5: The Big Day, the trip to the Dry Tortugas. Seventy miles west at 26 knots on choppy water ... Seth threw up before I could get him outside. Then two other people threw up. I thought maybe, just maybe, I would have to join them, but I stayed strong and did not ralph. Thank god, because the rest of the day was BEAUTIFUL! I have never seen water like that, so incredibly, perfectly blue. I could have put up a tent and stayed on that beach forever. Fort Jefferson was cool, also. Could use a few ghosts, some eerie noises in the dark corners would have spiced things up. But my god, the water.

I tried snorkeling. If anyone reading this knew me as a child, you know I used to enjoy swimming. Loved to swim underwater; I was like a seal. Then I hit puberty and inexplicably lost the ability to keep water from entering my head through my sinus cavity. And one summer wearing a nose clip around your Jersey cousins will permanently cure you of wearing a nose clip, so no more swimming underwater for Jennifer. Anyway ... I put on the mask, got the tube or whatever in my mouth correctly, put my head underwater ... and hyperventilated. WTF?!? So now I'm AFRAID of going underwater? When did that happen?

Also, the captain of the catamaran we rode out pulled Seth and me aside to show us what was quite probably the biggest fish I have ever seen or will ever see up close, a 300 lb grouper, one of five or six that hang around under the docks and boats there on the island. It was huge. The pictures I took don't do it justice, there's nothing really showing for scale.

We doped Seth up with some dramamine for the ride home, and he slept the entire way. We had supper at Finnegan's Wake (complete with authentic swearing Irishmen in the front bar! Fookin' this and fookin' that! It was great!) and then hit the hay, we were thoroughly worn out.

Thursday, November 6: More shopping in Mallory Square, and a visit to Mel Fisher's Maritime Museum. If you're into underwater archaeology (shut up, Anne-Marie) and shipwrecks and gold, Google this guy. He found the wreck of the Atocha and brought it all up. It's quite something. I wanted to see more gold, but what the hell, it was still cool. In one part of the exhibit you get to heft one of the gold ingots from the wreck. Heavy! Later in the evening we went back for sunset at Mallory Square, when lots of street performers and artisans and vendors set up shop. It was neat. Seth was being a pill, really whiny and grouchy, wouldn't even smile for the pictures with Captain Wasabi, a very nice pirate who didn't make us walk the plank or anything.

Friday, November 7: Our last full day on Key West. Because I'm me, we went for some more shopping. I caved and bought a replica coin from the Atocha; it's a replica, but it's made from a silver ingot that was on the Atocha, so it's *almost* real. It was authentically expensive, in any case. Brian and Seth and I went to a restaurant for lunch called the Conch Republic Seafood Co., and I fully and wholeheartedly recommend this restaurant to anyone going to Key West who wants a fantastic seafood meal. OMG!! I had a dish that was ravioli stuffed with crab meat, paired with seared jumbo shrimp, sun-dried tomatoes, and baby spinach, in a lemon-garlic-parmesan cream sauce. My basic reaction was "Holy Shit!" I also had a real mojito, which I *think* might have made the meal even better. :o) Later in the afternoon we went to our third beach, at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park on the west side of the Key. It was nice, but really rocky and full of shells. We traveled home the following day, landed at KCI around 10:00 pm, where it was SIXTY DEGREES COLDER than where we were all last week. That makes it rather harder to be glad to be home. Also, our furnace isn't working. Did I mention how cold it is here?