Random

• Having a usable kitchen -- meaning one with enough room to turn around and with a working oven -- makes a lot of difference in enjoyment of cooking.
• Waking up with the coffeemaker having just finished brewing a pot is also pretty cool.
• I'm not Linkin Park's biggest fan, but I really like "Burn It Down."
• When Chester and I walk around the neighborhood, we set off frantic barking at about every other house.  Chester never says a word though.  He's so well behaved!
• Except for when he took a dump on the patio.
• Faith is playing intramural badminton.  She loves it!
• We still go swimming almost every day.  But the water is getting darn chilly in that pool, despite the fact that the days are still very warm.
• I met my goal of reading 20 books this year.  (the list)  Now I'm working on number 21!

Pros and Cons

For the past several mornings I have taken the dog for an early walk.  Early for us is 7 am.  I love walking at this time of day and seeing the neighborhood when most people are not out.  Our neighborhood is very nice -- large lots, tons of trees and foliage, every house different and unique as opposed to cookie cutter.  When we were preparing to leave Baltimore, I felt that I was going to miss the variety of plants and trees.  I assumed that down here there were only palm trees.  This was a very wrong assumption.  :)  I love looking at other people's landscaping to see all the different kinds of things they have planted, and in our neighborhood there seems to be a lot of area remaining as it was before the houses were built.

Lest you think it's all fun and contentment here... this morning I saw the second Florida roach in the house.  It was in the drawer under the sink where I keep my hair supplies.  The first roach was on the ceiling in the kitchen, Monday night, and Dan got up on a stepstool to grab it with a wad of paper towels.  This second roach I thought I would get with a wad of toilet paper, but I hesitated out of sheer disgust and terror and the thing scurried away.  UGHHHH.

I found an informative link from the University of Florida that talks about dealing with the roaches (http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ig082), but unfortunately for the moment we are apparently providing a perfect place for them to live and breed, with all of our boxes sitting around and nice tight dark piles of stuff.  It makes me even more motivated to unpack.

I have not yet told the girls about either of the roaches.

I could be writing about so many other adventures and experiences we are having as transplants to Florida, but you can see I am fixating on these nasty bugs.