Zombies!

June 12, 2012


Mike bought a new game at Rapier. It's got special dice with pictures of Zombies, Gravestones, and Biohazard symbols. Everyone gets some dice (odd dice are put in the middle). You want to get rid of all your dice and if you have no dice when it's your turn you win. You roll, and any gravestones are set aside, zombies are sent to the middle or you can give them to your opponents, and biohazards do nothing unless you roll all biohazards. If that happens there is an OUTBREAK! You get all the dice in the middle, or if there are none, you have to reanimate one of your gravestone dice. It's fairly fast, easy, fun, and can be played almost anywhere. We like to play at restaurants while waiting for our food.

Teen Membership

June 11, 2012


Gainesville Health and Fitness had sign-ups for teenagers to receive a free summer membership and Seth took advantage of it. He's been doing the weight machines and lots of cardio--way to go Seth!

My Big Backyard

June 10, 2012


The hawks were particularly active and noisy this entire weekend. I think there are at least 4 of them that are now flying around our vicinity. There were two different ones that did a lot of perching on our back fence and benches, but when I tried to get a good photo of them they'd fly off. You can't really see the hawk in this picture, but I ended up liking it because it shows the really cool view of the forest behind our house.

The hawk is almost exactly in the center of the picture, resting on the fence left of the fence post.

I was annoyed with myself this weekend too. I was sitting on the couch Saturday morning and saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked outside the glass doors, to our deck, and not 2 feet from the door was a raccoon. My first thought was to get rid of him because raccoons are so clever and I didn't want him finding some way of getting into the house. So I made some noise and he did leave the yard, climbing over the fence. As soon as he was off in the woods, I thought "DOH! I should have taken a picture!". Grr. Oh well.

Froggy Visitors

June 9, 2012


Mike and Seth were off at the Rapier Gaming Convention in Jacksonville this weekend, so I had the house to myself. It was a nice relaxing, peaceful weekend. I intended to get out and do some walking, but every time I got everything gathered, it started raining. The rain was nice though, and it meant we had some froggy visitors.

When we moved to Florida, I was surprised at the tree frogs that come out with the rain. They love to hang out on our sliding glass doors and slurp up bugs (yay!) after a rain. There are days when the glass is jam-packed with frogs. When the kids were little, I would tell them we had "froggy visitors" and we all got a kick out of looking at the undersides of the little amphibians. This one tonight wasn't so little, for a tree frog anyway:

At first I didn't like the reflection of my hand in the picture, so I took another one angled off to the side, but then this one started to grow on me, with the perfect view of his little suction cup toes.

Andrew

June 8, 2012


Andrew works at the ReQuest physical therapy center. He helped me when I was in for my back issues, and he's now helping Mike. I live somewhat vicariously through Andrew--he's section-hiking the Appalachian Trail and I'm envious. I'm not ready for hiking yet, so I have to just appreciate Andrew's retellings of his adventures.

Zucchini

June 7, 2012


This whole "moderation" thing doesn't work for me unless I'm forcing myself to keep a food diary. The Weight Watcher system has an online tool for tracking food as well as activity. We've now actually found some recipes we like. This one doesn't look too appetizing, but it was decent. Zucchini with balsamic vinegar and maybe some other stuff. I don't remember.

Another Tattoo, Baby...

June 6, 2012


We were at the mall today looking for particular shoes for Mike. His physical therapist wanted him to get exactly the brand and model that would help his arches. The store Fit 2 Run had them and a very helpful guy got Mike all set up with the right shoes. I noticed his tattoo when he led us over to the register to make the purchase:

He is checking off various kinds of races as he runs them. I can't remember if he called the 70-mile race the Iron Man, or if it was the 140-mile one. Whatever "Ultra" is, he said he had actually just recently completed that but hadn't gotten the tattoo "X" in the box yet.

I'm going to cheat and put in a 2nd picture because I really liked the colorful wall of shoes in the store:

Oh yeah, the title for today refers to Weird Al Yankovic's "Another Tattoo (Parody of "Nuthin On You" by B.o.B. feat. Bruno Mars)".

Tilting at Windmills

June 5, 2012


The health club has this fairly new workout system called X Force. I don't know the specifics of it, but it's supposed to work you more by making you move slowly to release the weight after you've lifted it...or something. Anyway, they have these large posters up promoting the system. I realized the other day both posters I've seen have the people in this weird tilted position. Apparently X Force gives you incredible abs at the cost of constantly having the look at the world from an angle ;)

Hawks

June 4, 2012


The hawks around our house have another batch of young ones it seems. They have been really noisy lately, but I love having hawks so I accept it. I was out getting the mail and saw one of the adults swooping around the court. The other adult was in the nest calling, along with baby hawks piping in their own 2 cents. It was one of the few times I've actually seen any of them in the nest--it's pretty big and usually they are obscured from view down here on the ground. I took a picture even though I didn't hold out much hope the bird would be visible. You can kind of make out the lighter colored breast peeking out from the shadows about 1/3 of the way down the photo.

This is zoomed in, and I've complained about the zoom on the iphone before--the quality is pretty bad

Ansel Adams I'm Not

June 3, 2012


Seth and I were leaving Piesano's Sunday night and saw this gorgeous huge moon rising over the trees. At times like this I wish I did have a better camera, but then again I've never been able to take a really good clear picture of the moon. I'd have to have a really really good camera.

Weight Watchers

June 2, 2012


Mike and I are trying to get going on Weight Watchers. So far it kinda sucks. I picked out a few recipes yesterday and today we tried a couple of them. Both had issues. I think it had to do with the fact Mike tried to cook the meat on our little mini-grill. It just didn't cook evenly enough for me. The huge slabs of shark steaks really didn't cook well, but the parts that were done were good. Hopefully the next experiment will have better results.

Hurricane Season

June 1, 2012


Today is the official start to hurricane season. However, no hurricane to celebrate it. I'm ok with that; I'd much rather have a few tropical depressions--they do less damage and still bring the rain.

Today Mike and I went for a walk after dinner. We both need to get out and walk more often, and he needed to break in a new pair of shoes. It's more of a challenge for me when Mike walks with me than when I'm solo because we talk and that takes more breath :)

Spiffy new clean shoes :)