Yes Way Nor-way!

July 28, 2012
We had a nice day hanging out at home and watching Firefly with one of Seth's friends. As I cooked dinner I flipped on the Olympics on one of those other cable channels--you know, the ones waaaaay down the guide list. This crazy sport was being played. Seth and I ended up watching in a fascinated Olympic fever. It was fast-paced and quite violent and we both naturally picked to cheer for the team that was losing when we turned on the game--Norway (France was winning 17-13). We had absolutely no idea what the rules were or even the name of the sport, but we had great fun cheering madly for Norway :)  They had a player named Loke and their coach's name was Thorir! How can you not cheer for that!?

Unfortunately they lost 24-23 and it was a nail-biter. We did find out that the sport was handball (not the kind of handball I remember), there are only 12 teams competing, and the USA doesn't have a team. We are experts! :)

Seth says if he ever becomes a billionaire, he will finance a USA Olympic Handball team, so watch for that in the future.

Olym-pics!

July 27, 2012
Kind of a stressful day, but trying to unwind while watching the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics. I haven't watched these for a long time, and I feel like a big dork for getting emotional but so be it. This one's for you Allison :)

James Bond and the Queen skyjumping into the arena was cool,

but I'm still waiting for THE DOCTOR!

p.s. Oh, hey Allison--I'm recording the O.C. If you didn't get the chance to watch, hit me up.

The Remnant

July 26, 2012
Seth likes green tea. A lot. Last I knew, we had 2 unopened boxes like this one. Now we're down to the last few lonely bags. Time for a Sam's Club run!

Quarter Note

July 25, 2012
Wow, it took until July 25 to talk about my quarter collecting! When the mint came out with the new States quarters I collected a set for Zach and a set for Seth. When they finished with all 50 states, the mint did a series of U.S. Territories plus Washington D.C. I'm still working on those, and now they are releasing "America The Beautiful" quarters with designs from National Parks and Monuments.

Today I picked up a Yellowstone quarter at Subway :)

My original plan was to make a States scrapbook for each boy--one page per state we visited, with photos of them and then include the quarter on the page. I have the books, and have filled in a few pages, but we didn't visit as many states as I wanted. Also, having the actual quarters on the pages makes them very heavy (not to mention Creative Memories stopped making the perfectly-sized transparent envelopes I envisioned at the beginning. I switched to using two triangle-shaped photo corner protectors, but the quarter isn't as visible through that plastic). I recently decided I'd just take photos of the quarters and include those instead of the real quarters.

Our Ant Overlords

July 24, 2012
I saw a line of ants carrying this dead wasp, assumably to their nest. I know everyone knows how strong ants are for their size, but it's still cool seeing it in action. As long as they stay outside, I'm ok with them.

You can kind of see the ants.

Borderline

July 23, 2012
You can't really see it in the photo, but take my word for it--it's raining on the far side of the fence. It's not raining inside the fence. I still find it amazing that that happens. Usually it's a front-of-the-house vs. back-of-the-house deal, but same basic idea--clear border between rain and not-rain. Weird.

Issues

July 22, 2012
Felt totally icky today--miserable day. Blech. The picture on this mug of chicken broth summed it up well.

Tell Me What You Put In My Cup!

July 21, 2012
Just another trip to Starbucks, but here's a cute video for you all to watch:  Todrick and the Trio coffee-breaking it down :)

I just can't get enough of your Starbucks o/~

Roller Derby...Not Today

July 20, 2012
We were out and about, as we are wont to do, and I saw this poster for a local Roller Derby team. I've been hearing more and more about Roller Derby in general and I'm a little curious about it. I have no idea what the rules are, or what it's like. It could be fun; I'm willing to give it a shot at least. Mike is not, alas.

Maybe the next time he's out of town ;)

Group Text

July 19, 2012
Poor Charles, my trainer. He got a group text and whenever anyone replies to the message everyone on the list gets it. He had 50+ texts during our session. I don't have much experience with group texts, but apparently this is a common problem. Bummer.

Skeeter Vac

July 18, 2012
Everyone in the state of Florida is looking for mosquito abatement methods. Home Depot was sold out of most everything except cans of Off. Mike ordered the Skeeter Vac on the internet and installed it today. It fakes human warmth and respiration to trap mosquitos, removing them from the breeding population. This one had the best user reviews.

After a few days there was a noticeable drop in the cloud of mosquitos, and after a week it was almost pleasant outside--at least as far as the bugs.

Wilderness All Around

July 17, 2012
After having lunch with my friends I walked a few steps to a section of the watershed of Possum Creek or Hoggetowne Creek (see blog entry for May 5 "All Wee-wee'd Up on Cinco de Cuatro") near Mildred's and thought how much it looked like the Spassky River in Hoonah, Alaska. The breadth of a continent away, and yet similarities abound :)

No bears

Cloud Nine

July 16, 2012

I never get tired of looking at the cloud formations during hurricane season. They gather quickly and change often, and have so many layers of colors and density they are always interesting.

Turkey Vulture

July 15, 2012

There's nothing like looking up from reading a book to find a humongous carrion eater just a few feet away from you. I was worried this one had friends and that they would stick around. That wasn't the case this time though--they were just passing through apparently.

Trophy Time

July 14, 2012
Seth came home from the Mu Alpha Theta Nationals trip with a load of trophies :) His best was 6th place for Hustle--a timed team event that he practiced for quite a bit. EHS came in 6th overall as well, so yay for them! :)

He had a number of stories from the trip to share. One of them involved his preparation for using the stairs at the hotel. In the past, there are huge crowds at the elevators and it takes too long to actually get on an available car. Seth ends up taking the stairs and is usually faster than the others that wait for the elevator. This year he used part of his workout time at the health club on the elliptical machine (which by the way, should be mandatory for math students!) to get ready for this ordeal.

Once at Nationals, he used the stairs to go from his room to the event level and discovered that the hotel locked the stairwell doors at the bottom. He found a floor that was unlocked and got to where he needed to be, but when he went to the front desk to complain he was told it was the hotel's policy, to cut down on noise. He was incredulous that the hotel's policy was to trap people in the stairwells in case of a fire. Of course a high school student didn't persuade the hotel staff to change anything. Mike suggested Seth should have called the Fire Marshal. We'll see how the hotel in San Diego handles it next year.

Pinched Nerve

July 13, 2012
In Tuesday's personal training session I managed to get a pinched nerve in my leg. It hurt. I was doing something I'd done before several times, and was in the 2nd round of the exercise when my left leg just started feeling wrong. I tried to continue but it got worse and worse. I had to stop and try to explain to Charles what was going on with it. He had me try some stretches that helped for about five seconds. We had to cut the session short and go back to the stretching tables. He pulled out the RTS (ugh) and tried to loosen things. The original problem felt a little better, but of course now my lower leg felt like one big bruise. My homework was to use the RTS at home and try to stretch my legs.

OW!

It took about a week to completely fade.

Special Delivery

July 12, 2012
While in Seattle, we bought a new mattress at a place that was having a sale plus a tax-free weekend. Even with the cost of shipping it to Florida, it came out cheaper than buying it locally.

It arrived this afternoon and it was a struggle to get the humongously heavy mattress inside. Eventually it was in and placed. Now all we have to do is find a place that wants the old set. Haven't heard back from Goodwill yet. *hint* *hint* all you Goodwill pickup drivers reading this :)

Mike's Way

July 11, 2012
We tried out a new place in town for lunch--Mike's Jersey Subs. I thought it was funny that they had all the sandwiches available "Mike's Way", which only meant lettuce, tomato, and I forget what other generally expected things on a sandwich.

It wasn't that great. The shrieking child a few tables over didn't improve the ambience or the food >:(

Pentaholic!

July 10, 2012
I love Pentatonix! Pretty sure I've mentioned them on here already, but their first "album" was released while I was on my cruise (also available on itunes). I was able to download my pre-ordered copy once we were at Thomas' house but I am listening the crap out of it now that I'm home. It sounds best with good headphones, but I enjoy the music no matter what :)

Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones

July 9, 2012
I felt like going to the movies and Men In Black 3 was still in theaters. After a quick check on the internet to see if the movie was worth seeing in 3D (consensus was no), I headed off to the theater.

I liked the movie. Don't want to give any spoilers, but it was good. I can see why the people that like 3D that jumps out in your face would like a particular scene, but I prefer the 3D where they've added depth to scenes in general.

Coffee

July 8, 2012
If you haven't guessed by now our family puts great stock in coffee. We have our own espresso maker and Seth makes coffee just about every morning--and we still end up going to Starbucks a lot. With Seth on his way to Boston, I took the opportunity to thoroughly clean our machine; part of that is descaling it. My problem with descaling is I forget the machine is in the middle of the cycle and I don't turn the steamer lever at the correct point, which leads to the machine turning itself off after it idles for enough time. Then when I start it back up, it resets the entire descaling process, thus giving me more chances to forget. This can go on for a while. Sigh.

Only forgot once this time around :)

Last Mathbender: Legend of Seth

July 7, 2012
The Eastside math team met up Saturday morning to start the long bus ride to Boston. Seth said there were outlets on one side of the bus every so many seats, so he commandeered one for his laptop and a bunch of the kids crowded around to watch his buffered episodes of the new show Legend of Korra. Field trips aren't what they used to be ;)

Don't Remember

July 6, 2012
I know we were busy getting ready for Seth to leave for Mu Alpha Theta Nationals, but I don't know what else we were doing. I forgot to take any pictures. Oh well.

Mosquitoville

July 5, 2012

Hurricane Debbie rolled through while we were out of town and left behind an army of mosquitos. We desperately need to mow the lawn, but the bugs are so bad it's not feasible. Mike has this mosquito fogger spray thing that has worked in the past, so he went to use it and found it was depleted. So off to Home Depot we went to look for more. We found some mosquito-fighting stuff, but the product we needed was sold out. No lawn-mowing for now.

Mosquito on glass. One of the many.

Happy Birthday America!

4th of July, 2012
I did the traditional watching of Wimbledon during the day, followed by a bbq, followed by fireworks :) We went to Judy's house to watch the Alachua fireworks. She lives near the park where the city does the show, and the view is pretty good from her front yard. The first few minutes when the fireworks are just warming up are usually low and behind some trees, but then they shoot higher and spread out farther, taking over most of the sky.

Judy's new dog Ranger was happy to see the crowd that showed up to play with him.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

July 3, 2012
Actually didn't care if I dreamed or not. It was just nice to be back with my own pillow. Wubba da pillow :)

Long Flight

July 2, 2012
Our flight on Sunday was cancelled and the airline rebooked us on an 11pm flight. We didn't get to Gainesville until 10am Monday. Ugh. It was nice to be home though. This nice plant arrangement is in the Gainesville airport:

Go Gators

God's Eye Is Upon You

July 1, 2012
Thomas' new place is in a renovated church, and there are little remnants of some of the decorations scattered about. This one is a little more noticeable than most. This is the ceiling of the lobby of the building:

Um...So...Chocolate Martinis. Yeah

June 30, 2012
I blame Thomas. Completely. No picture today.

Back In Seattle

June 29, 2012
*sob* The cruise is over :( I had such a fantastic time with my Dad, seeing such awesome parts of God's creation! I can't wait to go back :)

Mike and Thomas picked me up from the terminal and we headed to Thomas' new place on Capitol Hill. It's so cool! He's got a spectacular view from his balcony. My little camera can't do it justice. He can see all of downtown, the Space Needle, the water, the mountains...sigh.

Instead I give you Thomas' cat.

Prettiest Trash Can

June 28, 2012
In Victoria the highlight was Butchart Gardens. The grounds were beautiful and I wish we had had more time there. Everything was worth seeing. The Sunken Garden was probably my favorite though, because of the story told on how the Butcharts managed to create it--mostly through a lot of work!

 I thought their trash cans with flair were particularly great :) 

Ford Prefect Would Be So Happy

June 27, 2012
Bonus points if you know what today's title means ;)
This day on the cruise was another "at sea" day. We were chugging through the long leg to Victoria. I spent the day again going through video and photos, and I went to the class on making towel animals given by some of the stewards. It was fun watching them put together these cute creations from one or two towels. I managed to make half of the scorpion--the body, not the head :)

Sitka--You Otter Go!

June 26, 2012
 We were in Sitka and the weather that had been so perfect finally turned. It still wasn't too bad--just a steady medium rain, wind, and colder temperatures.

Our excusion was a combo trip Raptor Center/Otter Quest. We went to the Raptor Center first, and we were treated to a close view of one of their permanent residents, HALi (don't ask me why the funky spelling. I thought it was Hallie until I looked her up on their website). HALi is a bald eagle with a crossed beak--a deformity where the upper part of her beak doesn't extend out over the lower part, so she can't feed herself. She was found starving to death and brought to the center. They use her as an educational bird. We walked around outside after the presentation and saw some of the other birds they have permanently--hawks, owls, one golden eagle, lots of bald eagles. Pretty neat.

Next we went back to waterfront and got on a touring boat for the otter quest. It was great! We saw so many otters, as well as so much else--eagles, gulls, seals, 2 whales (didn't even try to film them this time--just enjoyed watching), jellyfish, and starfish!

We learned that a group of otters is called a raft.

Hubbard Glacier

June 25, 2012
This was a sea day, but we were going to be sailing up to the Hubbard Glacier. Honestly, after South Sawyer and Mendenhall glaciers I thought I was done with glaciers. They looked almost identical and I thought "Ok, that's what glaciers look like, I'm good." I figured I would just watch the scenery from a comfy spot inside, instead of out on the bow like I did with South Sawyer (Tracy Arm).

We went to a presentation on the glacier early in the afternoon by a park Ranger and he actually managed to get me excited about seeing it. The size and scope of it were unlike the other two I had seen. I still didn't want to be outside for hours though, so after the presentation, we just happened to walk by one of the bars with a great view and an empty table right near the windows. We plopped down there and had a great time viewing everything.

My plan was to stay there until we got as far in as we were going to get, then get my video camera from the cabin and go out on the aft deck to get some footage of the glacier as well as something called the Polar Bear Plunge. The ship's crew had drained the aft swimming pool when we were in Kodiak, and had refilled it with ice-cold water. I don't know if it was salt water from the bay we were travelling through or just cold fresh water. Regardless, anyone who wanted to, could dive in when we were near the glacier and get a certificate that they were in the Polar Bear Club. I thought it would be fun to watch.

Several people came and shared our table with us during the afternoon. The last couple was very pleasant--Bill and Kathleen. I mentioned my plan to take photos of the Polar Bear Plunge and Kathleen had the best line. She said while gesturing out the window, "This is Beauty! Why photograph Crazy?" :)

When we got as close to the glacier as we were going to get, I did run back to my cabin to grab my camera and ran into one of the people that did the plunge. He looked to be about 16 and he was shivering like mad, but you could tell he was proud of himself. Good for him :)

Outside on the bow, I was able to hear the thunder of the glacier calving, and see some of them spraying ice before breaking off the wall. So cool :)

Kodiak

June 24, 2012
Again, we had no planned excursions. The one we wanted was sold out, but strangely enough, we could just walk into the places that were included on that tour. We went to the Baranov museum and the Wildlife center which were right across the street from each other. We didn't make it to the Alutiiq museum, but we spent the full day with what we saw.

Back on the ship I enjoyed the view from (again) the aft deck 8. There were lots of float-plane flights going over the area and I finally got a good photo of one. Most of the touristy things to do on Kodiak involve going inland on one of those planes for extended periods. I think it would be cool to spend a week out at one of the lodges but that's for another day.

Homer

June 23, 2012
We didn't have any activities planned today, and my dad wasn't up to leaving the ship, so I disembarked and just walked around the Homer spit. It was awesome! So beautiful! I feel like I need a new word, but sheesh! Alaska is just beautiful!

Homer is the main port of the Time Bandit from the tv show "Deadliest Catch", but they must have been out at sea. I saw lots of Time Bandit logos, but no Time Bandit.

The free shuttle from the ship dropped us off near some shops on the spit. It was a needle of land sticking out with one row of shops on either side of a road. Behind one row of shops was the beach and then the ocean. I headed that way and enjoyed the landscape. In the middle of the beach there was this stream of water running through it. I saw an eagle hanging out at the ocean's edge and wanted to get closer to get a better picture, so I started walking down the beach looking for a place I could jump over the stream of water. I walked about a mile and was able to get close enough to get some good pictures. I saw more eagles as I walked as well. Some were mature with the full bald head, some were adolescents with speckled feathers. It was really cool watching them.

Anchorage

June 22, 2012
We went to the Anchorage zoo and it was pretty cool. The tour focused on native animals, but we walked past lots of others as well. We saw our only polar bears of the trip here.  Unfortunately, we brought a heat wave with us and it was a scalding 74 degrees--the polar bears were very inactive, just trying to keep cool. We also saw our only moose, but my only non-blurry photo still has a lot of the fence in the frame and I didn't like it much. The brown bears were very accommodating and decided to have a wrestling session right as we got to their area. I have great video of this too, but again I have to get that edited and posted. I'll try to remember to come back and link to it.

At Sea

June 21, 2012
We were just cruising again this day and I spent a lot of it in the ship's library going over my photos and video. There were very few places on the ship with two outlets near each other. One particular workspace in the library did have two, so I camped out there (one outlet for my laptop and one for the video camera--the camera will only transfer files if it's plugged in). My favorite thing about that was that it was right next to the espresso bar :)

This was the first night my dad and I went to one of the shows onboard. We saw musician Chris Michaels whose claim to fame is the variety of instruments he plays. He was great :)

This is him playing a traditional Hawaiian song on the traditional Hawaiian instrument--the bagpipes :)

Hoonah. Who Now? Hoonah!

June 20, 2012
Our next port of call was the village of Hoonah, but it was called Icy Strait Point on all the cruise literature. I loved it here! We went on a bear search on the Spassky River and even found some. The tour guide said we were a little early for the salmon runs, and that's what brings the bears out in larger numbers. From a distance we saw a mother bear and one cub, and that was pretty cool. The area was just beautiful, and I can imagine what it's like when the salmon are running. I'd love to go back sometime in July to see it.

Back in town my dad and I walked around the old cannery which had been turned into a really neat mall for local shops/artists, and we went a short way down a beach trail. Right after we got on the trail my dad called out "Look!" and there was my first whale :) Practically right next to us in the bay was a humpback. I was so excited I screwed up my camera. I kept hitting the wrong buttons. The whale blew, then did the tail flip. A minute or so later it breached...and I missed it all with the camera, but I got to see it and that's the important part. It went back underwater and we figured that was the last we'd see of it. We continued down the trail and stopped at a bench with a great view of the bay and mountains. While we were there, the whale resurfaced! It was like it had been pacing us. I got out my video camera instead of my iphone and just filmed the water waiting for another awesome moment. It didn't do the tail flip again, but I managed to get some good frames and pulled a still photo off the video.

It was really hard to pick just one photo from this day. There was so much we saw! The bears, the whale, the spectacular scenery...I really need to get my travel blog up and running so I can post more pictures :)

Did Juneau Juneau?

June 19, 2012
In Juneau we first went to Glacier Gardens, and then Mendenhall Glacier National Park. Our bus driver Scott was a riot! I wish I had written down some of his jokes, but I was too busy laughing :) Glacier Gardens is mostly located at the bottom of Thunder Mountain. A local nursery owns the land and uses it as a show garden. They also have access to an area around 600 ft. up the mountain. This whole area is the Tongass National Forest, so it's all gorgeous. To get from the lower level to the observation boardwalk at 600 ft. you have to ride in this extended golf cart that holds about 12 people. The "road" is about 6 inches wider than the cart and is pretty steep. I was petrified! This was supposed to be the Easy Level excusion, but the thrill ride to the boardwalk was probably as scary as a zip line would be to me. Ack! The view was worth it though.

Here's my dad on the boardwalk with the eastern view in the background.

Tracy Arm

June 18, 2012
The ship cruised up the Tracy Arm to the South Sawyer Glacier. It was cool seeing the first iceberg float past, then seeing them get bigger and bigger as we got closer to the glacier. The fjord was so awesome!

It's hard to tell here, but if you click on the photo and make it larger you should be able to see that those brown splotches in the water are seals resting on top of the icebergs. I was saying to my friends today, the photo doesn't do justice to the BLUE-ness of the glacier. When we came around the last turn of the fjord, and there was this triangle of blue in the distance, it was breathtaking.

Yes We Ketchikan

June 17, 2012
Happy Father's Day :)  I took my dad to Alaska; what did you do? Our first port of call was Ketchikan and we had signed up to go on an excursion to the Saxman (Cape Fox) Village--a Tlingit village--and the Lumberjack Show in Ketchikan itself.

This was inside the beaver clan house. A dance group performed several native dances and chants. I really liked looking at their decorated cloaks/blankets. Each person had their clan totem on the back. They taught us that there were two main clans--Eagle and Raven. Then under those were about thirty different smaller clans. Most of the dancers were kids and they all seemed to really be into it.

The Lumberjack show was cool too--totally hammed up, but fun :) Hopefully I'll get my videos edited and uploaded someday. Back on the ship, I hung out on the aft deck again watching bald eagles soaring over the water and hills. Beautiful!

Seasick Saturday

June 16, 2012
It was the first full day of our cruise and the sea was just a little choppy when looking at it, but the ship was rocking a lot. I spent the day stumbling around, very glad for handrails. I was queasy but never totally lost it, so that was good. Thanks Dramamine! This entire day was at sea, and the sunny skies were gone. It was overcast and rainy. I did pop outside for a little bit just to get some fresh cold air. The rocking actually was nice when I was lying down, so I napped in the afternoon and went to bed early. Not a very exciting day, but at least there were towel animals :)  The cabin stewards made little animals every night out of a towel or two, and I don't think they had any repeats.

Sunny Seattle

June 15, 2012


Cruise day! My dad and I were going on a 2-week cruise of Alaska and we were both so excited! This was the first cruise for both of us so there was a little nervousness as well, but I was well-stocked with Dramamine :)

It was a beautiful sunny day in Seattle (yes, they do have those). Mike dropped me off at the pier around 1, and the ship was supposed to leave at 5. My dad and I were arriving separately so it didn't surprise me that I didn't see him. I went through the terminal and was onboard around 2.

I looked around the cabin a little bit, and found the schedule of events for the day. There was a ship tour happening at 3, so I decided to do that. Part of the tour was looking out at the aft deck on Deck 8--Lido Deck. While our group was there, a fireboat in the marina turned itself into a fountain. It was gorgeous, especially with Mt. Rainier in the background!

Into the Wild Blue 2nd Floor

June 14, 2012


I was able to visit the Google Kirkland offices with Mike. They limit where and what you can photograph, but this was allowed:

It's kind of strange because most of the rest of the place had a nautical theme.

Apropos of nothing, it just occurred to me that when you Google something you go ogle it :)

Diabetes-detecting Dog

June 13, 2012
Today Mike and I left for Seattle, where he works. While we were waiting at the Gainesville airport, we saw this dog:

Mike went over to ask if he could pet the dog and noticed the 'working dog' harness on it. The harness said "Diabetes Dog" and Mike had never heard of that. He spoke with the owners for a while and found out that indeed, this dog had been trained to detect when diabetics were high or low on blood sugar. Some are trained to stare at you, some are trained to nose you, some are trained to jump up on you. We found out which method this dog had been trained with when it jumped on Mike later as we were boarding the plane. He tested himself after we were seated and sure enough, he was starting to crash. Good dog!

Mike looked into what was involved in getting one of these dogs, and it was pretty difficult. They cost a lot because the training is expensive. I think he said he found some web sites where the lowest starting price was $15K. He checked into one of the training places only to find they were no longer participating. He's going to keep looking.