Shake Shake Shake

Nov. 9, 2012

It was Gator Homecoming weekend and that means the public schools get Friday off for the parade. It's disappointing that Gainesville doesn't have a 4th of July parade, a Veterans' Day parade, or a Memorial Day parade. I kind of get the 4th of July lack--it's HOT in Florida. I wouldn't want to march in a parade in July. There are other events for Veterans' Day and Memorial Day, but we always went to parades when I was a kid and I miss them.

They cancel school for the public schools but not the university which is kind of funny. I kind of get the school cancellation too, since the cops close off University Ave. the school buses would have a hard time getting to their regular routes, but it's still weird.

I've gone to the Homecoming parade a couple of times and mostly felt like going this year so I'd have a photo for this blog :p  I got a late start though and only caught the 2nd half. (Another event I thought about attending solely for this blog was the Gator Growl pep rally Friday night, but they had some country group I'd never heard of, and Tracy Morgan. I guess I'm the only person in America that doesn't find him funny in the slightest--I had zero interest in seeing him.)

My favorite part of the parade was watching this little boy dance when a float playing a hip-hop song cruised by us :)

He was digging it

Goodbye Dr. Wyatt

Nov. 8, 2012

Seth has been sick awfully frequently this school year. I insisted this time he go to the doctor. Of course they said it was viral and couldn't do anything, but I felt better for taking him.

This is probably our last visit to this pediatrician :(  Seth will be 18 soon. Sigh.

I was looking forward to joking with Seth about climbing up the play structure in the waiting room, but when we got there I was saddened to see it was gone :(  The receptionist wouldn't give any information on why it was gone, so that makes me think it was some kind of liability issue. The "Mr. Rogers" traffic light is still there at least.

How Now Brown Cow?

Nov. 7, 2012

We drove up to Alachua for lunch today and on the way I saw these cows grazing away the day. I went back later in the day to photograph them. The one on the left was a little too interested in me. He kept moving towards me and I tried to get a better angle. I settled for this picture and left before I bothered him more.

Election Day

Nov. 6, 2012

After 5000 polling calls, 1000 "vote for me" calls, 30,000 tv ads, 40,000 radio ads and 50,000 internet ads, election day is here!

The news reports this morning were already saying polling places were seeing lots of lines and waits around 45 min. Mike and I had decided to go after lunch and were dreading similar lines. But there wasn't any problem at all. We walked right inside--strangely past the tables where people were actually filling in their ballots--and went to the tables where they'd check your name against the list of voters. The funny thing was, A-O had no one waiting, and then the last 2 stations P-S and T-Z had about 3 people each; so that was our long wait--about 4 minutes for the few people ahead of us to get checked off the list and given their ballots.

I was planning on taking photos while in line outside--but since that line didn't exist and there were signs up saying you couldn't take photos inside, I didn't take any. I suppose I could have gone back to the entry point and taken a photo of the bored guy sitting there watching people walk in, but it slipped my mind.

Poof

Nov. 5, 2012

Between taking 100 pictures yesterday at rehearsal, and then thinking about the election, I forgot to take any photos this day. Sigh.

To make it up, here's a photo from today of my trainer Charles who is back in action after having back surgery. I'm so happy to see him return to torturing me ;)

1-2-3-Heave!

Nov. 4, 2012

This afternoon was an all-cast blocking rehearsal, which was focused on the procession at the beginning, but had other segments too. The director had to work with the boys carrying the boar's head to make sure they all understood about lifting together, and then walking together. I think this was the first time they had the actual prop for practice, and it was heavier than they were expecting

I found out that I am playing 4 bells up in the choir balcony in a very small space, and also that the hardest part of the entire performance for me will probably be getting down out of the balcony :(  My knees really hate going down stairs. I can do it but it's slow-going, so I'm going to let everyone else go ahead of me to make sure I don't hold up the process. Thankfully it is the very last piece of music in the entire pageant, so I don't have to be anywhere else by a certain time.

Mini Me

Nov. 3, 2012

Mike picked up one of the new iPad minis on which to test work-related stuff. Here it is next to his iPhone for a size comparison:

It's a Masterpiece I Tell Ya!

Nov. 2, 2012

Restaurants that have crayons and craft paper tablecloths are the best :) 

Early Deadline

Nov. 1, 2012

Always double- and triple-check things! Seth thought he had everything submitted for his college Common App (and for his first choice he was correct) but upon triple-checking he saw that the Florida system said he didn't have his proof of residency form filled out. So at 10 p.m. I was gathering documents to provide the info the state wanted. Luckily I just renewed my driver's license the other day and all of the documents needed were handy.

The nice thing is that most of this process is now electronic, so it was just a matter of filling out the form online and submitting it. The nicer thing is we didn't have a power outage, or a loss of internet ;)

Seth really wants to go to Rice University, and I hope they are smart enough to grab him :) We visited there in spring of 2011 and we all liked it. It's in Houston but the campus is its own world. Seth liked it for their math and science focus. He sat in on a class one day and then walked around on his own. A group of students saw him but didn't know him so they stopped and chatted with him. He was impressed that they knew he wasn't a student there, and that they were so friendly without being overwhelming.

You hate to get your hopes up when anything can happen, but....GO RICE! He should hear back from them in mid-December. 

Happy Halloween

Oct. 31, 2012

I had intended to take pictures of pumpkin carving. I've wanted to make "pumpkin pi" with Seth for a few years by carving the digits of pi into smallish pumpkins. I suggested this year that we have the Mu Alpha Theta kids over for a combo practice and party, and have them carve the pumpkins, but Seth wasn't interested.

I finally decided I'd just do a truncated version myself with four pumpkins:  3, . (decimal point), 1, and 4. When I went to buy the pumpkins, all the sales places I knew of were gone. Publix only had a few pumpkins left and they were all very large. For about three seconds I considered settling for one of them and trying to carve 3.14 going around the pumpkin, but it was just too big and I didn't want to strain my back trying to lift the darn thing. So yet another year of not doing pumpkin pi. Oh well.

I settled for lighting a bunch of candles.

Mike did his customary Wed. evening round of golf. I dropped him off at the course and on the way home I stopped and took a photo of this Spider of Unusual Size:

If you look closely you can see the car that the spider caught ;)

62 Degrees in the Afternoon

Oct. 30, 2012

I got this new comforter just in time. The temperatures have finally dropped and it's actually chilly outside. 

I love the moose :)

Soy Sauce

Oct. 29, 2012

I was refilling our little bottle of soy sauce from the larger one and it made me think of Zach. He loves soy sauce and we used to go through the stuff like crazy. Since he's gone up to Boston we just don't use it as quickly. I hope he's remembering all his hurricane preparedness lessons from Florida.

13.8

Oct. 28, 2012

I haven't been able to donate blood since 2006. My iron count was too low and it just kept dropping lower each time I tried to donate. I had a doctor that was starting to look into it but then she moved and I didn't follow up with my next doctor. In April of 2011 I finally ended up in the hospital where they determined I had anemia with pretty severe iron shortages.

To cut a long story short, the problem was fixed after a few months but due to a blood transfusion I couldn't donate blood for a year. My church had the bloodmobile outside today so I thought I'd see if I was finally eligible. It was more than a year after the transfusion so that met one requirement, and the iron test needed to show at least 12.5. It came up at 13.8 :)

Team Dead Men!

Oct. 27, 2012

We went to Mike's Mini Meet this weekend. My Mike made sure we played a lot of party games that he thought I would like. The games I remember are: Crappy Birthday, Wits and Wagers, Creationary, some game containing the word Portrait, Werewolf, Witches' Way, and Cash and Guns Live.

Cash and Guns was played outside. We had 3 teams of 6 people each. Our team was called Dead Men. Everyone got a card with a type of weapon. You were supposed to hide it from everyone else because some of the cards were "bluffs". Each weapon had a hand signal to show what it was--fast gun, 2 guns, or shotgun. If you had a bluff card, you just used one of those signals to try to make the other teams think you had that weapon.

After the cards were given out, the Game Master gave a countdown during which all the players ran around the yard. When the countdown reached 0 everyone froze and pointed their weapons at an opponent (or bluffed if they didn't have a weapon). Then each type took turns shooting, and any survivors got to split some loot. There were around 4 rounds I think. Our team ended up with the most cash--woot! Dead Men Rule!

One game I wished I had played was Dixit. I was able to watch a few rounds at the end and it looked like fun. Maybe next time :)