Redhead at the water park.
I'm also wearing a t-shirt on my head.  It is not attractive!

Edited to rotate the picture. :P

Testing...

I am testing out this mobile blogging app.  Here is a picture of a young praying mantis on the largest tomato in my garden!

Dog Days

July has been pretty rough temperature-wise.  The past two or three weeks have seen triple digits as a matter of course.  Dan, the cats, the dog, and I have been relatively inactive.

We did hit a productive spurt last weekend, though, and accomplished a bunch of things around the house in anticipation of the kids' return after spending nine weeks with their dad.  I cleaned up Thea's and Faith's rooms, we put a vanity in Thea's room, we put new lamps in our bedroom, my friend Carrie and I installed the long-promised chair rail in Faith's room and are painting the trim tonight, Dan and I cleaned hundreds of pounds of plaster, insulation, wood and other debris from the unfinished room, he worked on putting up drywall, and he installed a new sink and vanity in the downstairs bathroom.  Lots to be proud of.

My yellow pear tomato plants are in mutant mode.  They are busting out of their cages, climbing out onto the grass, choking out the other tomato plants.  Their branches go down to the ground, ROOT THERE, and then grow back up again.  I have yellow tomatoes everywhere.  It's almost scary.  Carrie and I made yellow tomato salsa one evening and I thought it turned out quite good -- the tomatoes gave it a sweet taste that hid at first the kick from the peppers that burned your mouth.  Speaking of the peppers, after chopping up two jalepenos (one was from my garden!) and a serrano, my fingers burned for two days.  Also, removing my contacts that night apparently transferred the pepper oil onto my contacts, and when I tried to put them in the next morning, my eyeballs nearly burned out.  A quick Google search showed me I am not the first person to experience this.  I rinsed the contacts with hydrogen peroxide and then milk, and let them soak for several hours in fresh solution.  This seemed to do the trick.

My one and only jalepeno

I'm doing a little redesign of the photo album portion of my website.  I'm only.. oh, seven months behind in putting up pictures.  There are a couple of pages I did for 2012 already -- our May trip to Ocean City, and Thea's 8th grade graduation.

I must admit that I have kind of a music crush on Foster the People at this moment.  Which led me to this song that I am currently rocking out at my desk to -- check out the adorable Mark Foster along with Kimbra of "Somebody That I Used To Know" infamy and a DJ named A-Trak in a really cool collaboration on this song, "Warrior".  I love the video, too.

Enjoy and stay cool!

Stormy weather

So we got hit by that big storm that swept through the Midwest and then smacked DC/MD/VA.  I don't really have a terrible story -- we didn't lose power, nothing fell on our house or off of our house.  Lots of people have it really bad right now, but we don't.  We are very lucky and grateful!

So I'm really not complaining... but I was kind of sad about my tomatoes, our one casualty.  Here are my tomato plants on June 19.

They are almost as tall as me at this point.  Ten days later on June 29, they were way taller than me.  They were being barely contained by the tomato cages I had planted them in.  Then this "derecho" came through and flattened them.

All ten tomato cages blew over and left a tangle of twisted branches and wilting leaves.  So sad.  But we will rebuild!

We got some stakes and did our best to pull the cages back up and lash them to the stakes and to each other.  It's kind of a mess of wire, wood and twine, but it holds up the monstrous plants.  And, there was a silver lining:  Deep inside the hedge of tomatoes, I found two yellow pear tomatoes that had ripened!

I admired them for a while and then I ate them.  They were so good -- sweet and tangy.  There are literally well over a hundred more green pear tomatoes where those came from.  We're going to be popping them like candy!

In less tasty news, I cut the bejeezus out of my finger tonight.  Dan sharpened some of the knives in the knife drawer.  Imagine that!!  I am used to having dull knives.  So after I cursed a bit and bled all over, I sat down and held a paper towel tightly around my finger.... and then started to get light-headed and nauseous.  This is something that has come on in just the past 10 years or so.  I used to be able to donate blood at our office blood drives.  I didn't LIKE doing it, but I could, and it felt like such an important thing to do.  But sometime in between having Faith and having Holly, I got to the point where I could not donate blood without becoming faint and dizzy, having the Red Cross people get worried, and having to end the donation without finishing.  I was really disappointed in myself;  I felt like a huge baby.  And I couldn't really understand what the matter was!  I mean, I'm not queasy about blood, either my own or other people's.  It seemed like more of a physiological reaction.  Finally a nurse told me I was having a vasovagal response -- meaning that yes, it was a physiological response to stimuli and did not mean I was a giant wuss.  Basically a trigger causes a malfunction in the way the brain handles heart rate and blood pressure.  My blood pressure drops crazily.

Anyway, so I sat there with my bleeding finger, and got nauseous and dizzy, and had to go lay down on the couch and actually cried a little bit.  I felt pretty silly in a minute, when my senses came back, but HEY!!  I have a VASOVAGAL response!  I'm not just a big baby!

Focus on your ability!

I'm currently obsessed with this song by Foster The People.  I got the album "Torches" while in Florida to play while driving around in the convertible.  Unfortunately Dan didn't particularly care for the album aside from "Pumped Up Kicks".  (I loved that song last summer but I've been kind of done with it for a while now.)

I didn't agree with Dan;  I enjoyed the CD a lot, especially the track "Helena Beat" and this one, "Houdini."  It in fact may be contributing to my insomnia because it's so catchy that it's hard to remove it from the replay in my head.

Enjoy, and sweet dreams!  Hehehe.

Last Week In Florida!

Dan's busy week at Microsoft TechEd began.  My lazy week doing absolutely nothing began as well!  I spent my days reading, surfing the very slow internet, trying to get in touch with my kids in Atlanta and lounging by the pool.  The days were hot and sunny, but every afternoon a storm rolled in (usually while I was at the pool), rained for an hour or so, and then rolled out, leaving the air cooler and less humid.  In those evenings Dan and I enjoyed the convertible very much!

On one of those evenings we decided spur-of-the-moment to go over to Downtown Disney.  I had avoided going there because I figured it was basically just another way for Disney to take my money, but hey -- there was free parking, and we had already eaten dinner, so I thought it would be interesting just to see the place.  Turned out I really enjoyed myself.

Dan on the bridge between Pleasure Island and West Side

On calmer evenings this balloon apparently takes people on rides.  Tonight, the winds were too high, so
it remained safely on the ground.

Do people who live in Florida still notice the sunsets?

A service dog trying on apparel in the Harley Davidson store.

Sunset and palm trees

We sat for a while and watched a dance party going on beside the water.  My girls would have loved it --
and if they had been there, I would have had a good excuse to join in!

We splurged and had a brownie sundae at the Ghirardelli chocolate shop.  The staff was working furiously churning out tasty treats.

On Thursday evening we went to the TechEd closing party.  They rented out Universal Islands of Adventure for us, so basically they kicked the regular public out of the park at 6:00 pm and bused us in at 7:30.  :)  Of course it began to rain in the afternoon and was still raining when we walked down to the bus.

Saw this guy on the way to the bus.

Here's me on the bus laughing at the people who had to wait in the rain for the next bus.  This was after WE had to wait in the rain for the bus, so you can see I'm a little bedraggled.

When we arrived at the park (a little late because our bus driver took "the scenic route") the rain had stopped.  We got free ponchos in case it started up again (it didn't).  All the food and drink in the park was free, too.  Pretty cool!

After grabbing dinner we decided to ride this Jurassic Park prehistoric ride of some sort, but only after we had waited in line for like 40 minutes did we find out the ride was having mechanical difficulties.  D'oh, way to waste time.

So we left Jurassic Park and went to Hogsmeade.  Where we waited in line again for like 45 minutes to get into the main Harry Potter ride.  Here we are in line, looking up at the towers of Hogwarts.

The Sorting Hat

The ride was fun, but by the time we got out, it was already like 10 pm.  I thought having the park to ourselves for four and a half hours would mean we just sailed through all the rides, but nope.

However we got free food and drinks, did I mention that??  Here we are enjoying Butterbeer.  (No real beer involved.)

Frozen Butterbeer, Butterbeer on the rocks, and pumpkin juice.  We brought the pumpkin juice home for the kids so I cannot speak yet as to how it tastes.  :)

After we wandered through the rest of the park, we rode one more ride (and we had to wait in line for 20-30 minutes for that one too).  It was the Hulk roller coaster, and it was pretty awesome.  By the time we were done, the party was nearly over, so we listened to the band that was playing, and then we caught the bus back to the hotel.

Friday it was time to leave.  :(

Before our flight out, Dan stopped to visit colleagues at the Florida Conference office.  We went out with them to a tasty Mexican lunch.

At Orlando airport, this little guy was going through security behind us.

We had to switch planes in Fort Lauderdale, and then home (by way of Philadelphia).  One more beautiful sunset to round off a great vacation!

More Fun in Florida

Our second day in Cocoa Beach didn't start out sunny, but it was dry.  In the morning Sarah and I went out for a swim.  The ocean was a great temperature, no shock at all to wade right in.  The waves were pretty tame, and we floated in the water for about an hour.  I don't think the water is ever this warm in Ocean City MD, even at the end of summer.

We were pretty hungry come lunch time so we walked about a block to a little bar and grill on the water.

Mmm, fish tacos!

We did a little browsing around at the Ron Jon Surf Shop and a couple of other shops, then walked back to the condo.  The sun blazed.

After some lazing around and lengthy naps, it was time to think about dinner.  But first we really wanted to cruise around Cocoa Beach with the top down!  A storm was coming up so we rushed to get in some cruising time.

Dan's real excited!

But he put on his cool persona.

We're having a ball. Sarah is posting a picture on Facebook.  The fun lasts approximately eight minutes... then the rain gets too heavy and we have to put the top up while sitting at a stoplight.

On our third morning in Cocoa Beach I inexplicably wake up at six in the morning.  I wouldn't normally call this serendipitous, but I stepped onto the balcony just moments before the sun rose over the Atlantic.

And after that beautiful show, I climbed back in bed and slept another three hours.  What could be better!

Later in the morning we went swimming again.

Me and Sarah wave hello!

This is the condo as seen from the water's edge.

This is Dan as seen at the water's edge.

We have to leave for Orlando in the afternoon, but first we go with Sarah to Jetty Park in Port Canaveral.

Apparently peacocks roam freely through people's yards in this part of the state.  Also apparently they enjoy posing for people who pull over on the side of the road and get out with their cameras going "Ooooh peacock!!"

Jetty Park has a long fishing pier that runs between the beach and the waterway that pleasure boats, fishing boats, and cruise ships use to get to Port Canaveral.  From the pier we saw pelicans, sea turtles, and dolphins.

Sea turtle.  Duuuude!

Pelican

Dan really wishes he had his boat with him.

Preparing for the march of the cruise ships!  There are three ships leaving today.

The Carnival Sensation

We have to leave Jetty Park, but right before we leave for Orlando, we get to see the Disney Dream cruise ship leaving port.  You can see that everyone on board is apparently already having a blast, especially the people on the water slide!

It's a quick drive to Orlando, but as evening approaches yet another storm comes up.  Welcome to Orlando!