2003
2004
2005
2006
2007

December 29th, 2004
Two pictures of my cats:


Samson with his little lampshade. He has a big booboo and won't stop scratching.


Leo being festive.



December 24th, 2004
It's Christmas Eve and I still have one more present to get for Chris. It is probably the warmest I've had for Christmas. Weather bug on my computer says 78*. It was in the 40's and 50's earlier this week, which would be a normal Christmas for me. My parents are having a slightly colder Christmas, since it snowed in Texas on Wednesday and there are remanants still on the ground. And they get to use the fire place! *Jealous*. I guess I shouldn't complain because I get to have nice, happy plants that are still blooming and hanging out happy for the winter here in S. Florida. YAY!

I ordered something for Chris on Tuesday night but I didn't think I'd get it until after Christmas since I asked for it to be sent ground. It came yesterday FedEx and I was totally surprised! Two days! Really a day since they probably got the order Wednesday morning.

Well, it's off to do some picking up, go see "Spanglish", and maybe wash our cars. They are filthy!



December 21st, 2004
A few garden pictures...this stuff actually bloomed overnight when the lows were in the 40's!


Zinnia


My $2 hibiscus

Got a few things for Chris for Christmas. Still need to go out for some others. Haven't finished family stuff yet. Not much goin' on!



December 17th, 2004
I've been a bad blogger! Truthfully I haven't had much to say or haven't felt like writing.

I have started panther patrol at work. I can't really elaborate, but I get to use stuff to track the panthers. It will be a really good learning experience I think.

Christmas is next week. We'll be finally getting presents soon for folks. Haven't had the money. I dunno, really have nothing to say.



December 6th, 2004
I've got some photos on my yahoo photo page: Photos and click on December garden pics and also on I think Thanksgiving. I've got a few non-Thanksgiving stuff in that folder but most of it is from camping. Not much going on. Went to West Palm this weekend for an engagement party for some friends of ours, stayed with them and then went to a geocaching breakfast on Sunday morning. Chris went fishing last night and came home at 4am. He went offshore with two of his friends and they caught a dolphin (mahi mahi) here's a photo of Chris holding it:





November 30th, 2004
I am putting myself on a buying plant ban. I just potted a bunch of things we found at nurseries up near Lake Placid and Sebring, FL this weekend while camping. We stopped at three nurseries and collected a few things on a trail and so I have bought about 10 more pots to plant these things within the past few days. We are seriously insane. If I do buy a plant or get a cutting it has to be from something that can take shade or part shade so that I can put it in the "backyard" behind the apartment, otherwise, I am running out of room in the "front yard" where there is more sun, but not full sun. I'm sure the neighbors are going "They've got MORE plants!?!?". Hehehe! I'll take some pictures tomorrow and try to post them. My hibiscus finally bloomed again. I had been getting buds but they were falling off. I think there was too much rain for it there for awhile cause now I've had two blooms in a week with several other buds to come. My red hibiscuses aren't blooming yet.

Like I said, we went camping this past weekend for Thanksgiving. It was really fun, though we were glad we got the primitive site instead of the general area cause there were TONS of people with kids and RV'ers and it was wall-to-wall people. Some campgrounds have little plant buffers around the sites, but these were out in the open. We did about 20 geocaches and hiked a few areas on the Florida Trail
. They were very nice areas and we loved the more rural areas. We even stopped at a few antique shops though we don't have any money for the big furniture pieces we eventually want! Ok, so it's about room also!!! lol!

What else? Yes, I am going to start a plan for a half marathon. I've really decided to get back into running. Now, if I could get myself up at 6-630 and follow it so I won't have to do it in the evenings ASAP when I get home since it gets dark early. I am going to have a running log that is at Running-log.com. You can see the link for it over on the side bar. Hopefully I will be comitted to this. There is nothing on it yet. Tomorrow I hope to add stuff!

This week I need to start scrapbooking again. Been on hold for the past three weeks. Gotta get back to it! Behind! AHHHH!

Ok, I am addicted to and want to start large collections of:
~Coleus: Easy, fast grower and comes in lots of pretty foliage colors!
~Irises: Pretty, some can handle wet areas and just plain lovely!
~Shrimp Plants: Yellow and Red, really nifty looking.
~Alyssum: All the colors that it comes in! Yellow is even out there!
~Caladiums: Caladiums are COOL cause they are easy to grow, have varities of color and design and are great in Florida.
~Bougainvillea:Come in several colors and have a papery looking flower. Trails, climbs and looks awesome against fences and homes!
~Salvia: Salvia is very pretty, and attracts butterflies.
~Cypress Vine: I want it growing along a huge trellis or up a side of a house, like ivy
~Lantana:I love the purple trailing stuff I bought, but I'd love to have more varities and have it covering a big area. Attracts butterflies and birds!

Alright, nighty night! :)

November 21st, 2004
This past week I was in Colorado learning ArcGIS, the second part of what I took in October. I had a pretty good time this time and I really love Colorado! Monday we just vegged when we got in, I ran to Wild Oats to have dinner and then I dragged my partner to watch BJD again. Come on, I needed me some more Colin Firth with a dash of Hugh Grant. Plus, it's fun to listen to Renee Zellweger speak the Queen's English. On Tuesday we had some Mexican and walked around the mall. Afterthoughts had a sale on their makeup so I bought some eyeshadow since a lot of mine was old. Wednesday I dragged my partner geocaching. We tried four, but only found two. One was around downtown Golden. Thursday, we rented our ski's and stuff and then went to a great pizza place in Golden and played some pool at a bar. My predecessor to my positions lives up there now so he tagged along on T and Th. Friday we dashed into class for an hour to get our certificates and to get a disk of some information to help a coworker fix an error with her GIS program and then we went up into the mountains to go skiing!

We went to Keystone. So, we got up there and we were digging stuff out of the car when the guy who lives up there realized he forgot to put his jacket, his pass and his wallet in his bag! It's a 45 minute drive back into west Denver so he and my work partner went back, because we still had enough time in the day to ski. So, I stayed and thought about getting a lesson with a class but that didn't start until one and it wouldn't work since they would be back by then. I ended up buying a day lift ticket and hitting the learner slope. I haven't skiied since I was 11 so it was a refresher course. I remembered how to do the snow plow thing to stop, but turning was a different story. I played around and had some lunch and then they got back and we headed up the gondola to the green slope. I was totally scared! I ended up doing alright, falling only twice the entire time, with one near miss. It was a great time, but my calves were hurting and my arms are hurting too from falling on them. The first fall I intentionally did because I knew that I was going to go off into the non manicured area and into trees. The second time I was going too fast and couldn't stop and went face forward. Both times my ski's stayed on. It was a great time. Of course yesterday when we were leaving we woke up to several inches of snow on the ground and it was snowing at take off! GAH! No snow at all until we leave! Unfair!

But, I'm home now. Catching up on laundry, work for only three days and then a four day weekend with camping! YIPPIEEEE! Piddled around the "garden" today and fixed things up and we got a few plants. Chris is a staghorn fern fanatic and saw a small one at walmart. Well, I guess that's about it!



November 14th, 2004
We've been married 31 months! :) I dove you Christopher!

Sorry I have no written much. I worked three days last week and then my Mom and Chris' mom came down Wednesday evening until this evening for a visit. It was pretty fun. I was off on Veteran's Day and took Friday off by using some comp time I had accumulated. Thursday we went shopping and watched "Shall we Dance" with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. It was actually pretty good. Richard Gere was defintely the centerpoint, and J. Lo accented the movie. I actually like her acting better than her singing. Overall a very good movie with a good evening. It will make you want to get up and do some ballroom dancing. Chris made a deal that he'd go if I took fishing lessons! ;) Hmmm, what you do for love! :)

Friday I dragged them to Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason so I could swoon at Colin Firth and even the devilish Hugh Grant. Not as good as the first movie, but it was pretty good. I would have liked it to stayed with the book, but that's alright. More of "Mum and Dad" would have been great, and a LOT more of Mark Darcy! :) Heh! I want to go see it again while I'm in Colorado this week. Afterwards we did some shopping. I found my Secret Santa presents and also some jeans.

Yesterday we went to the Keys to do a few geocaches, shop and just hang around. Chris' mom hadn't been to the Keys before so it was a nice little adventure for her. We did a geocache at the Florida Keys Wild Bird Sanctuary. It was a neat little place. I took tons of pictures because they had the cutest birds! Most are in cages because they are injured or are being rehabilitated, but the herons, ibis, egrets and pelicans come for feeding time and we happened to show up at the perfect time. I've got plenty of pictures of those! It's really cool! Then we did some shopping and had dinner.

Today was spent showing them where I work in the Everglades and taking an airboat tour. We stopped at a fish store on the way to the airport for Chris and then we said our goodbyes. It was a nice trip with them and I was glad to see my "Moosie". :) That's my pet name for my Mommy. :) And it was good to see my MIL too. It was fun! I think my cats liked their grandmommies. They got to see how psycho Leo is! And how FAT Samson has gotten! Hehehehe!

Well, I will be in Colorado this week. So I will probably update this next weekend. I hope to do some skiing while I'm there. And see some more Colin Firth onscreen! :)

Here's just a few pictures. More will be posted next weekend in the picture area








November 8th, 2004
The weekend was pretty fun. Yesterday we tried to put out a cache and used the mountain bikes. I used to mountain bike a lot with my brother when we were younger when my family would go camping. So, it's probably been about 8 or 9 years since I've really done anything like that. I guess I thought I might have been better at it, but I really suck. I'm shaky about going over gravel and forget going over tree roots or big hills. I don't know what I'm afraid of! Gah! Ridiculous. I suppose I will get better over time.

The Edge of Reason comes out this week! YAY! I need to dig out my Bridget Jones book so that I can read up on it again before the movie. I can't wait to drool over Colin and Hugh and WOOHOO! Cute British men! :)

So, I subscribed to Outside Magazine, Organic Style and Mother Jones. YAY! Mom you can go through my health magazines and take articles cause I'm gonna chunk them.



Black Wednesday, 2004

It's over. Four years of aching for it to be over and it's over. But it's not over in the right way. Almost 50% of the population was hoping for George W. Bush to be recalled from his position and replaced with John Kerry. A slightly more than 50% of the population felt the need to have Bush stay in office. At least it wasn't a landslide. There was a good fight put up. For the past four years the passion has been boiling. It reached a peak last year when we had Howard Dean come out for our side, the Democratic progressives, those who wanted a change in the party and in politics.

There are many things to consider when talking about this election. Many of these things I have seen brought up on the Avonlea Forum as well as other forums and weblogs I read. How did morals become such a big thing? Amber wrote a lot about this in her post on the AF. Why is it the Republican party deems it necessary to legislate morality? From what I've seen and heard from many Republicans for Bush, the verbage they use makes it out that no liberal could have morals. One example is this new senator from Oklahoma who has been quoted in saying that gays and non wed mothers should not be allowed to teach. Doesn't that sound absolutly ridiculous? But he was voted IN! After all the controversy, somehow the Oklahoma population voted some psyho in. It makes me There's all of this talk about a liberal media, but that's far from what I see. I was listening to Air America Radio on the internet last night to hear "my" side of the election commentary and being that it is a liberal radio network NONE of that is on the so called "liberal" media outlets. You would never hear half or more of what I heard last night, nor would I necessarily say what was said. Somehow the media has played a bigger role in politics than it should. I think that it's good to have opinions in editorials, but when news stations have so many talk shows that skew news with opinions you often wonder what the viewer is taking with them.

I know a lot of the results come down to the war on terrorism and in Iraq. During the past three years the wars have been the center of most everything. We were going after OBL for up to a year after the attacks on the US occured, but then around August of 2002 somehow the focus shifted towards Iraq. Of course it was shown that Iraq more than likely either a: destroyed the weapons long ago or b: moved them, so far there is no proof of the weapons of mass destruction. Throughout the time Bush has still maintined the link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein while there has never been any proof. I don't know why mainstream America seems to still believe this to be true. Somehow, though, the ones who voted for GWB this time seemed to think they would make the country more safe. At least that is the things I hear from many of the Republicans or moderates who voted for him. For one, I have never really felt significantly unsafe since 9/11. Even during the start of the Iraq war I have never felt unsafe. Why aren't we afraid of getting our our cars? More people die of car crashes in America than of terrorism.

In all, I don't get the majority of America. I can't see how they vote, I don't understand it. It dissapoints me. I guess you could say I am dissapointed in friends and family because I know they voted for Bush. That won't stop my loving them or talking to them, but it makes you wonder how other people think. I'm sure they are going "She's a wack nut crazy head!" or something. But, I don't care. Someone said something on the weight lifting forum after quoting the issues from GWB's website that she was a conservationist and not a preservationist. I believe in conserving things to be able to use them later, but I am very much a preservationist in the environment. That is one thing I would never bend to support Bush.

So, I have new goals now. I won't let this go in vain, so I feel that since I didn't do so much these past four years but debate and talk and send in a few online letters to congresspeople, I am going to be more involved. I am going to actively join up with the Green Party in my county and do stuff with them as well as renew my membership to the Sierra Club and be active with them. I will also start handwriting letters to my representatives and I am going to start with a thank you letter to Mr. John Kerry for running and showing those of us who didn't like Bush that we did have a voice. I have more respect for him today than I did during this past year. I floundered my support, mostly as an Anybody but Bush person, but today I really realized that we should have all supported him fully. He deserved that. That is what I am going to do.

To end here are some very good editorials:
Michael Moore's front page Shows the dead of the Iraq war made into a face of GWB.
Fear Trumps Reason
Answers? Do we have Answers?
The Values Ploy It's all about the values...
The Day After
Talking Points Memo Blog's take

Three last things: 1. GO BARACK OBAMA! You are going to rock the Senate and I hope to see you run in 2008! 2. I will eat my words in 2008 if I'm wrong, but there will be a reinstituion of the draft. Wait and see. I was right about the gas prices going up if we went to Iraq and where are they now? 3. Listen to Air America Radio sometime if you get tired of Fox News.

And that is all the politics for me for awhile, unless something major happens. Thanks for reading



Election Day, 2004. The day Bush is defeated

I have voted. My boss let me off at 3 to come home and meet Chris at 4 so we could vote. In and out in 30 minutes. Touch screen voting is easy. No problems. So, we shall see when the returns comes in! :)

A Day that will Decide the Fate of the World
One Day Left by Michael Moore



October 31st, 2004
Chris wanted me to write something, so here I am. Today we got up at 7am (clock said 8am. Darn time change). I was tired because last night some friggin' idiot was playing music and all I heard was "boom, boom, boom" and since our bed is against the window I can hear what goes on outside. So I moved to the futon at 10:45, pre time change, because I knew the fish tanks would drown out the noise from outside. Sometime later I was woken by "boom, boom, boom". The dumb asses turned the music up. So, pillow went over the head. Sometime later I tried to move the blanket but noticed Samson was laying at my feet. Next thing I knew it was almost 6am (technically 5am) and Chris was asking what I was doing out there. So, I slept two more hours and we got up and then sat around and finally got up and left to try to put a cache out. We didn't really find any place, though we did go up to Palm Beach county out west and to a wildlife management area. We got about a half a mile down a "trail" that was muck to your ankles and would have been a fun torturous cache but turned around because we didn't want it to be that bad! We ended up doing a cache on our way back that wasn't too bad and I came home and took a two hour nap. We went to ride bikes before dinner and here I am with little Leo laying on his back, between my legs, his head against my stomach and I'm rubbing his belly. He fell asleep like that yesterday. He's so sweet sometimes! ie: not in the morning time.

October 30th, 2004
Almost $800. That's how much Chris made today at the frag trade and sale with the Florida Marine Aquarium Society!!! We were hoping to at least make enough to buy new tires, but now we can buy me new tires AND get a new GPS. Two things we've been needing/wanting for six months or more. So, WOOHOO! See, there is a good thing that comes from having aquariums besides that they are pretty to look at.

Tomorrow we are hiking somewhere to put a really long cache out. Should be fun. I know we are going to be a lot of people bitching and moaning about how we put it out because we envision a 10 mile round trip through marsh and stuff too! Should be pretty fun. We're also going to vote tomorrow, hopefully. There have been long lines suposedly so I wouldn't doubt a wait. We shall see.



October 28th, 2004
Chris is officially off his rocker. :) Samson and Leo and ALL the Fish and Coral side with me. :)

I bought a mop. Woohoo. Yes, a mop. My Chlorox swiffer type thing broke after 2.5 years. So, I bought a mop, and then got other stuff at Walmart and proceeded to stand in a LONG line. You can tell it's Halloween because there is a clogged area near the candy aisle. I had to run in there because the kids will come through the office tomorrow "Trick or Treating". Should be kinda fun. I thought about dressing up, but I don't think I will. I'll probably be the only one in my department there, but Water Resources should be there too.



October 27th, 2004
I have my Colorado photos up. Check out Photos and #9. Not much to say. Sleepy. Think I'll go to bed early.



October 25th, 2004
We got Chris a mountain bike today. We had seen one at Walmart a few days ago but the one nearby didn't have it when we went back this evening. So we drove to Costco and finally to the Homestead Walmart to get it. He had a road bike and I had a mountain bike so we couldn't exactly go trail riding and now we can! So, tomorrow we are going to start riding again in the evenings. It should be fun because there is a 10 mile bike path around these lakes in my area. Plus there are some other Greenways around the area that we can ride.

Thanks Erin for the cd's! ;) I put in the Sister Hazel one now! If you want any more fitness articles, lemme know! I've got tons of magazines that are begging to be gone through!

One more week until we get to vote. VOTE KERRY! :) Vote Nader if you are in Texas, but VOTE KERRY everywhere else! :) I hope there aren't any problems when I go to vote! I'll be ticked if there are!


October 24th, 2004
Hey, lookie here! I'm writing! ;) So, I have pictures up now, some you may have seen, some you haven't. I've got crochet stuff up. I'll be working on the other things soon. I hope to have the links, art, library and more photos up within the week.

My Colorado trip was awesome. The class I took was for ArcGIS I, which is a mapping program. I took the class in college but the company has since upgraded from 3.x to 9.0 and there are a LOT of changes in the program. So, off my partner and I went to Denver where there is a free training center offered by the BIA for tribal workers. I have pictures but they have to be scanned, so maybe tomorrow at work I'll do some scanning. What else? Not a whole lot! LOL! I'm writing again at least!



October 5th
| September 23rd, 2004
Chris asked me something tonight at dinner and I think it hit home. He asked if I was voting against Bush or voting for Kerry. I keep trying to defend Kerry but at the same time I don't really want to. Honestly, I'm voting against Bush. Kerry isn't the right man for the Democratic party. Edwards possibly, but my man Howard Dean was and is the right man and could have won the presidency had the media not twisted his "YEAHHHHHHHHHHHH" thing out the door and making him look like some maniac. Not to mention the dumb midwesterners who voted Kerry in because he seemed electable at the time. They probably didn't see the Swift Vote folks coming, though.

All of this makes me miss Ralph Nader. Chris and I both agreed that we need a moderate or at least an Independent to run and be able to win. Someone between Nader, McCain and Dean. Sometimes I still want to vote for Nader. He's on the ballot here in Florida. So I can do it if I want to shoot myself in the foot for the next four years. Then again when Chris and I go vote we'll be nixing our votes anyway if I don't vote for Nader.

Just a few articles on Nader: BBC Profile on Ralph, The Record of George W. Bush on Ralph's website, FAQ on Ralph's site.

*sigh*



September 19th, 2004
Yesterday I had a great post ready to go and I hit "save" and then Geocities promptly asked me for my password. I'd logged in Yahoo under another window and so that had signed me out. GRRRR! I was so mad and didn't feel like re-posting my message.

This weekend has been pretty nice. We got some more orchids yesterday. I'll take some pictures soon. We went to Walmart today to get some groceries and we found a staghorn fern that we've been wanting. Been busy. Put out a cache yesterday and have been trying to fix our cache that got broken into. We'd put out a really hard cache back about two months ago and someone was going to go put a travel bug in it a few days ago and found it ransacked. This had to have taken some work because this is made out of wood that Chris purposely made it difficult to break into where you couldn't pry nails out as they were nailed from the inside and there were hinges, three locks and whew it was insane. Someone came back with a crowbar and knocked one of the few pieces of wood on the sides loose. Chris can fix it but it'll take a little time. The person who found it all messed up we met today to pick up the ammo can that was inside it. Most of the swag that was in it was looted and gone and this person we met today was kind enough to buy new stuff for it! It was so nice and as we were going through it we were wishing we'd found the cache!!! lol! So that was nice...we just have to relocate it and then the cache will be up and going again.

Not much else. Perhaps I will have energy to type out what I typed out yesterday tommorrow.



September 17th, 2004
Got some photos up of my garden and a few of the cats. Click Photos and then #6.



September 16th, 2004
Sorry I have not updated in almost a week. I started getting the "itch" on Monday, by Tuesday the sinuses were clogged and dripping and the Tylenol Cold I took gave me an acute case of ADD and I couldn't focus all day long. Yesterday got worse and today my eyes started watering and my ears are popping. This is all thanks to my lovely co-workers!!! Yippieeee! Therefore I've had zero interest in updating. I had planned on taking photos of my container garden. The wild grapes I'd planted a month or so ago have sprouted and I've gotten two more orchids in the last month. Just a lot of things are growing and doing well.

We have bypassed most of the hurricanes this season but Jeanne looks to be coming this way. Sick of hurricane season. I just want it to cool off. Work is frustrating. Ack. Just glad the weekend is soon and next week I have a three day weekend. One of our most prized caches was ransacked and pretty much destroyed. We'll be fixing that and putting out a Halloween cache this weekend. That's about it for now. Going to go do some drooling on my pillow since I can't breathe through my nose. :) 'night.



September 10th, 2004
Hurricane Ivan track
Real Hurricane Ivan Track


Not sure where it came from, but was sent to me via email.



September 7th, 2004
A few pictures before I write:


My little Leo Bennino being a cutie pie! He loves things with bells and I "discovered" the little feather stick again and pulled it out from behind some stuff and he has taken to carrying it around. Such a goofball. He's a never ending sources of craziness.


This is our bamboo shark in our 180 gallon. He's been coming out more now that Chris is feeding him raw fish.

Well we made it out of Hurricane Frances unscathed. Power flickered a few times but other than that we made it the entire time. Winds were ranging between 40-60mph with gusts at the worst times and just lots of rain. Actually today was probably the worst day of weather we've had in awhile and the storm isn't even here anymore. I guess a big downpour for a long time, coupled with already saturated grounds just left the area flooded. Cars are stalled out on the side of the road and the parking lot was flooded to the point I almost didn't think my truck would get through one area. We even went to Walmart after dinner tonight and no one was parked in regular spots because there was about a foot of water in the middle and closer areas. Insane!

It was back to work today. I've got a lot of houses on my list to stake out but one of them has a nuisance alligator. It was there last week and still there this week and we can't, or I guess we could, get out to the back area to stake out for the owners to put their silt screen in. Plus now that the north and central parts of Florida are overloaded with water the S.Florida Water Managemetn District has opened the flood gates to the 'glades which means higher water for me to traipse in at work. yippie. I'm ready for cooler weather. No rain and no mosquitos!!!!!!



September 2nd, 2004
Right now the storm has taken a slight jog to the north moving from WPB to Ft. Pierce as a landing point. However that has changed a lot lately and a new high pressure should be settling in soon as well as this storm is slowing down movement wise. We started feeling some increased winds this afternoon making it from the normal stilness we usually have to quite breezy. I've brough the majority of my plants in. I have a few to grab tomorrow if needed. Right now the cats think they are in jungle heaven. The plants are piled up in both the living room and the spare bedroom/computer room. Samson I know is really in heaven because he used to spend hours on the porch in Melbourne eating plants, rolling around and being a cute 'lil tiger! ;) That's it for now. More tomorrow.



September 1st, 2004
So far landfall is around Melbourne again, back north from Ft. Pierce/WPB area it was all day. For certain we should know tomorrow night. I actually think it'll make land fall around WPB. That is 70 miles from here, but it's a huge storm. We're supposed to bring stuff in from outside when they issue Hurricane Watches, per the apartment complex. We've got 9 gallons of water, plus Aquafina bottles, 4 5 gallon gas cans plus a few of the littler ones, extension cords, a generator, another cat cage for the cats. We've got plenty of food. Well we could use more meats but we'll be ok. Just need the plywood and well we hate to spend $100 and have it go another way. Yes, I know, spend $100 to save thousands. But still. Perhaps this will become a Hurricane journal in the next 48 hours.



August 30th, 2004
Not much here.
If you really want Gmail email me. I've got it and have five invites left. Please be desperate or really want it. Don't wanna waste the invites.

Hurricane Frances is coming. Hopefully not. But looks to be. We've got most everything to bunker down. And we're gonna stay no matter what Cat rating she is. Crapiola. I'll keep you posted.

August 27th, 2004


I'm back! :) Nashville was nice and Tennessee is beautiful! So nice and mountain-y and now I'm back in flat Florida. I learned a lot at the conference but I don't know how much of it will help me at my job. Just glad it's the weekend and I can rest. It was a long drive up and back. Ugh. Anyway, I'm home. :)



August 21st, 2004
We saw Open Water last night. It was very realistic and you could feel as if being stranded in the ocean after a dive could happen to you. A worst nightmare situation. The actors who portrayed the couple that actually got left did a good job and I could see them being me and Chris out there in the ocean. I don't suggest the movie if you get seasick, or are afraid of the ocean already. But, overall it was a good movie!

I'll be out of town this week in Nashville, TN for work. I am leaving tomorrow at noon to drive to near Atlanta and stay the night and then onward to Nashville the next day. I'll be back Friday afternoon. I may or may not have internet to check in but I may see if I can find an internet cafe one day and write a blurb or two. If not, "see" ya when I get home!



August 17th, 2004
Alright, I will fill you in on the rest of my trip.

Saturday
Saturday began with me sleeping in to at least nine. I didn't want to get up as I was thoroughly exhausted from the week already. What I had to look forward to was my massage appointment with Erika, Crystal the other bridesmaid, and my mom. Originally Erika's sister was to come with us but she backed out when she found out that you had to be mostly naked to get a massage. So, Crystal went in her place. I had a massage at this place, a massage school, for my wedding two years ago and that was the first and last time I'd gone. We all went in and the hour passed way too fast for my taste. I could have had another straight hour or so on my calves and shoulder/neck area. They were very good about being modest and trying to cover everything up. We got done with that and I went home and Erika and Crystal went to get nails and hair done. I ate lunch and then went to place a geocache with my mom at a nearby park. We'd bought some items to go in her first cache container on Thursday and I wanted to place it with her. My dad went with us and we got the coords, placed the cache. We detoured on the way home to a shop in the mall for me to get the Rangers hats I wanted, and then to Starbucks where my parents got frappacino's. We came home and set up the cache to be approved and then I took a shower. I had decided to do my own hair for the wedding which was probably not a good idea in the end. I'd done my hair for maritime ball three years ago and it turned out well and I hoped to do a repeat job. Well, my hair is shorter now and I got mucho frustrated but luckily my mom came in to save the day! She did a good job and Erika and her mom thought I'd had it done. LOL, took me by surprise. It wasn't bad looking, just wasn't looking like the others. Anyway, I was pushing 5 o'clock and I flew through painting my nails and headed over to Erika's house to help her and her folks load their cars with stuff for the wedding. We got to the hall and it had not been cleaned up yet so we couldn't do any setting up, even though they'd told her that she could come at 5:30. So we sat around for a bit, trying to look things over. Time really flew because the wedding was supposed to start at 7:30. We got dressed, put our makeup on and dressed Erika. She started getting anxious and weepy right before the wedding asking for her mom and her "babes". We reassured her that she'd see her "babes" in a few minutes and we went to get her mom. We left her and went downstairs to get our bouquets and to line up in the foyer. I was just about as nervous as she was (ok, not quite but I know what she felt like!) and the wedding started. It was a beautiful wedding and there were about 60 people or so there. The reception was great too. It was a sit down dinner with fillet mignon, chicken and some potatoes. The white wine was actually good and I hate wine. It also put me to sleep and I had to go get coffee to wake up. I sat with my parents, my friend Stephanie who was one of my MOH along with Erika at my wedding and Steph's mom. I got to see several college friends but barely got to talk to them too much. The cake was delicious and had a slice of each! ;) I even got the guts to do a little speech after the best man did a speech. They left around 11:30 in Erika's car with Erika wearing her dress. It was a sight to see with her dressed all poofy. And that was just about it. I came home and was still wound up.

Sunday
Sunday I slept in a little bit, til about 9 or so. I vegged on the couch for awhile and packed up a little bit so I wouldn't have to do a lot of it in the afternoon. We had to leave at about 11:15 to get to Dallas to meet my MIL, and my two friends AJ and Michelle and her boyf JP for lunch at Freebirds. Freebirds (.com) is the best burrito place on the planet. They started in College Station (Aggieland) and now have branched to locations in Houston, Dallas, Ft. Worth and Austin. Nothing like eating a humongo burrito out of some foil. It was good to see Michelle and to finally meet JP who she started dating over a year ago. They are getting married in April. We sat there for a few hours until we had to leave to get back to Ft. Worth so I could visit my grandmother for a little bit again and then finish packing and then head to the airport. We didn't stay long at my grandmothers, maybe thirty minutes. She tried to convince me to not leave, insisting that our area had no electricity and water, which was untrue because we were at least two hours from where the problems were from the hurricane. I know she knew that, but she wanted me to stay. I got some cuttings from her yard to see if I could grow anything. Then I had to go home and rush and pack. I said goodbye to my doggie Sandy who is now blind, pretty much deaf and is getting old. I also said by to Izzabelle, my brothers Boston Terrier, and I climbed under my mom's bed to reach a few goodbye pets to Yoda, the girl cat who hides constantly. My parents dropped me off at the airport and that was that. I'll take DFW airport over Miami airport any day. Chris was glad to see me, but I wasn't glad to be in humid Florida again. Our plane was late 30 minutes leaving so I didn't even get in until 11:15 that night and home by midnight and asleep by one. The cats were happy to see me and Leo is crazier than ever. Samson is still cute and cuddly and a good Papa Sam. :)

Alright that is about it for my trip. I'll be posting pictures within the coming days.



August 15th, 2004
12:24 am
Since I am still wound up from my friend's wedding I figured I might as well blog what has happened while I was home in Texas. So I shall do a day by day synopsis in case you are interested.

Tuesday evening
Chris took me to the airport about two hours before my flight. However we left around rush hour and this was our first time at the airport. It is incredibly confusing in the Miami International Airport. I flew AA so I tried to find the domestic flights but I swear that is like tucked away in the recesses of the international flights. I finally found the spot to go and realized I had to check in with the e-ticket thing. I had never done that before and since I was checking two bags I was a little leery. It ended up working out and I went to my terminal to wait. I was hungry but the food was overpriced for what it was so I settled on an over priced Coke and sat and read until my flight. I mostly read during the whole flight, taking breaks to chat a bit with the woman next to me who was coming back from Grand Cayman with her family back to Oklahoma. Landed and my parents picked me up and we got my luggage and went to Arby's to get some grub. My friend Brooke and her husband were waiting at my house with their baby Justin who was born back in January but never got to see. He is so ADORABLE and cute and handsome! I just wanted to eat him up. They stayed for an hour or so while I held the baby and watched him crawl around and roll over a bit. That was about it for Tuesday evening.

Wednesday
Had to visit the wonderful "female doctor" in the morning. I'll spare you the details on that. Afterwards I was going to head over to my grandmothers to see her but I happened to see my brother's girlfriends place of work and saw her truck in the lot so I stopped in and said hello. I was thinking a ten minute thing but stayed for an hour catching up. After that I went to my grandmothers to see her. She's not doing so well. She had surgery on her eyes back a few months ago and also carpal tunnel surgery too. She is really down about this because she can't do much with her hands and she loves to garden, shop and crochet. We think she may have fibromyalgia like my mom but we aren't sure. I saw her for awhile and I wanted to spend more time with her but needed to go see my friend Erika who was the primary reason I came into town. Went over to her house and sat with her for awhile while she pondered her to-do list and told me all her nerves etc. Went to pick up my mom from work and then my grandfather came over to go to dinner with my mom, dad and me at a bbq place. He gave me a quilt that my grandmother, who died before I was born, had made. It was a very special moment and I was very surprised to get the blanket. I'd wrote him a little bit asking to get some information or pictures of her and them as I am working on our genealogy. Anyway, we went to dinner and then I went out with my bro's gf again to do a bit of geocaching. Then I had to pick up Erika to go to my friend Stephanie's apartment since I hadn't seen it yet and just to gossip and talk. I got home really late and was pooped when I got home.

Thursday
Got to see another doctor, this time for my asthma. Then my mom and I went to this HUGE dollar store that used to be a Kroger's. OMG I have never seen such a huge dollar store and I am a dollar store junkie. It was all I could do to refrain myself since I only have two suitcases I can check at the airport! I bought a few things and my mom got some succulents that they had so she could start a succulent pot. After that I'd called my friend Brooke with the baby to see if she wanted to go to lunch and to see the baby again. We didn't hear from her right away so we headed to the mall to do some lingerie shopping for Erika and to get her and her now hubby a wedding present. We finished at the mall for the lingerie and then went to get Brooke and Justin. Had some Mexican food for lunch at this yummy place called Mexican Inn. They don't have the normal tortilla chips, they are more like Frito's but homemade! To-die-for! This is the kind of place that you just go and buy chips and salsa and take home. After lunch my mom and I headed back out and went to Bed, Bath and Beyond to do the wedding gift shopping. That was fun and I am so wishing I had a house to outfit so I could go and shop there. I wish I'd registered there when I got married. Such cool stuff! After that I was exhausted and so I came back and took a nap for an hour or so and then got ready to go out for the "bachelorette" type party. It ended up only being five of us and we went to Olive Garden, then to bowl for two hours on these fabulous coupon my mom had which was $19.99 for two hours, your shoes and a pitcher of Coke. We had to wait for about 30 minutes for a lane since the leagues were just finishing up. We played until about 11:45 and then our old highschool friend Sean came by to see us and we ended up going to Steak and Shake for dessert. I'd only been to Steak and Shake the week before for the first time so I had no idea the service was so horrid. We got in and they hadn't cleaned the tables off in who knows how long. It took forever to order and I only ordered coffee. Two ordered fries and someone ordered a bagel/egg thing and pancakes. It was ridiculous and the shakes got taken off the list for being so long out and just a big mess. Luckily Sean ended up paying for it all so we didn't have to worry too much about the mess. By then it was about 1:30 and I crawled into my parents house around 1:45.

Friday
I woke up with a nasty headache. I am not a super late person, I mean I'll stay up late but I don't really do it that often anymore. I had to go to the dentist so that was even more wretched to have to deal with. That was done and over after about 45 minutes and my mom and I spent another 15 talking to the lady who did my teeth because we've been going to her for like 20 years. After the gossiping Mom and I went to finish our shopping. We didn't get to go to Bath and Body Works the day before so we went back there, only after getting a Frulatti at the food court. I mulled over buying some Texas Ranger hats that were on sale at a kiosk in the mall. We went to Old Navy and walked around. I came out with only a tank and a pair of shorts. Browsed through Pier 1 and ooed and awed at everything. Again wanted to outfit my apartment. Then stepped into Ulta to get a purse brush since mine was stolen (GRRRR) and I ended up getting some face wash and some of that Blonde highlighting shampoo stuff. My dad had called by then and met us for lunch at Red Robin. After lunch mom and I went to Hallmark and got a few things. Then it was off to nap land again because I was tired from the night before. After my nap I got up and got dressed to go to the rehearsal dinner at Erika's house. Her dad cooked brat's and burgers and her now hubby and his friends played in the pool. We did the rehearsal later that evening because a wedding had been going on there earlier. Rehearsal went well and it was a lovely day.

I think I will leave it at that now since I am tired. I will get back to you on Monday probably with details of Saturday and Sunday and hopefully put some pictures up on the photo section. :)



August 8th, 2004
I grabbed this from Dovie
5 words that describe you
1.: Talkative
2.: But Quiet
3.: Creative
4.: Imaginative.
5.: Sensitive.

5 websites you visit daily
1.: Hotmail.
2.: Yahoo.
3.: Avonlea Forum.
4.: Gardenweb.
5.: Underwater Times.

5 CDs you couldn't live without
1.: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy by Sarah McLachlan
2.: Wide Open Spaces by Dixie Chicks
3.: Home by Dixie Chicks
4.: Live at Billy Bobs by Pat Green
5.: my wedding cd mix I made.

5 favorite books
1.: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
2.: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
3.: Anne of the Island (and rest of series) by LMM
4.: Fire in the Turtle House by Osha Gray Davidson
5.: Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

5 favorite songs
1.: Fields of Gold by Sting
2.: Possession by Sarah McLachlan
3.: Sunset Grill by Don Henley
4.: All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix
5.: The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby

5 random facts about you
1.: I don't eat fish caught commercially.
2.: I love softball.
3.: I taught myself to do a front handspring.
4.: Pickles are the bestest food ever.
5.: I used to work at an aquarium.

5 countries you would like to visit
1.: Scotland.
2.: England.
3.: France.
4.: Australia.
5.: Ireland.

5 words or phrases you always use
1.: "Bugger!"
2.: "Goosey Pots!." said to the cats
3.: "Turd muffins." said to the cats
4.: "Crappiola"
5.: "GRRR!"

5 articles of clothing that are your favorite
1.: A pair of Express jeans that are now too big, have many stains and are fraying
2.: A maroon baby tee type shirt with some stripes on it. It's getting thin now.
3.: My summer cruise sweat shirt from six years ago.
4.: one of my many tank tops.
5.: some new Old Navy shorts I got for my bday

5 favorite movies
1.: The Philadelphia Story.
2.: Finding Nemo.
3.: While you were sleeping.
4.: Pride and Prejudice.
5.: Roman Holiday.
5 things you are obsessed with
1.: Electing GW Bush out of "office".
2.: Reading.
3.: Eating.
4.: Plants.
5.: Chocolate.

5 girls names you like (even if you never want children)
1.: Shelby.
2.: Elisabeth.
3.: Caelin.
4.: Laura.
5.: Shannon.

5 boys name you like (even if you never want children)
1.: Noah.
2.: Benjamin.
3.: Gregory.
4.: Jackson.
5.: Morgan.

5 hobbies you have
1.: Reading.
2.: Scrapbooking.
3.: Crocheting.
4.: Gardening.
5.: Painting.

5 foods that are your favorite
1.: Fresh strawberries.
2.: Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas.
3.: Texas Peaches.
4.: Feta Cheese.
5.: PIckles.

5 boardgames you like to play
1.: Trivial Pursuit.
2.: Monopoly/Bassopoly/Aggieopoly.
3.: Battle of the Sexes.
4.: n/a.
5.: n/a.



August 6th, 2004
NOTE: New Geocaching Photos under "Photos".

Today is Retro Misti day. That means you get a peak into my real journal from November 24, 1997. I was gonna do it for today in 1997 but there wasn't one. So, I figure I will bring you to the entry that describe the weekend I met Chris. There may be some crafty editing but we'll see......cue wavy tv screen and imagine almost 7 year ago...

This weekend was awesome. I went to A&M-Galveston on Friday and Sasturday night. I flew down there by myself. I got picked up by Amy a girl who had given me a tour a month before. Two other girls were there one goes to Country Day and one lives in Ranger, Tx. I got down there and met Autumn (last name withheld)who lives in Lake Travis. Then there was a drunken party in the dorm I stayed in. I was tempted to try it but I didn't. we did some neat things throughout the day. The best part was leaving. Yeah, I know most of the time people don't like to leave. But there was three of us who had to be on the 7:30 flight on American Eagle to DFW. One was Meredith (last name withheld) who goes to Trinity and knows Joni, and the other one was Chris Little from Plano. He goes to Plano (Heroin) high school. He is really sweet. Of course I flirted with him and he flirted back. We met back up with Mike who had to go to Phoenix on the 8:30 flight so we hung around Houston Hobby for 2.5 hours. We played charades in the airport. Chris made me do the stupidest things, but it was hilarious. When we went to check in we got our seats to sit next to each other. (inserted here is a crafty drawing by me of the seats on the plane). We had pillow fights on the plane. He went through my wallet and found a love poem of mine. HE didn't seem to care. He got my # and I got his. His excuse was he needed a peace bear beanie babies. God he was hot and nice. I found myself not thinking of Clint, but me and Chris. He wants to go to A&M and be a marine biologist. He's 18. Hopefully I will find him next year. Well, that's most of my details. ~Misti. (added on the next page as a sort of PS) I wonder if I'll ever talk to him again or if it will work out. Man, what about Clint? What do I do. Well I have Clint for now.

So, there you have it. My first sappy little diary entry about meeting Chris. Little did I know he'd be sitting on the computer next to me 6.5 years later! ;) I don't know how many Retro Misti's you'll get but I've been wanting to write this one for awhile. Oh, I was 17 when I wrote that.



August 4th, 2004
Aside from wanting to jump in a river and sit on the bottom I am doing alright! It's been raining here like crazy but today was mostly sunny, however there is thunder in the distance. I had to dump water that had pooled in most of my containers so my plants wouldn't drown. I don't think I'll need to be watering for a week!

Today we had to take the airboat to get fixed down in Homestead and on the way back we were almost to the reservation when my co-worker turned the car around. I thought he was going to talk to his buddy but he ended up pulling over and getting a turtle that was crossing the road. :( It was bleeding and would not stick his head out for the life of him. We took it to someone in the office who's boyf works for an animal rehab place. She said it would more than likely die but she'd try. Then, on the way home there was a larger turtle on its back in the middle of the road. We all drove over it but then I decided about a quarter mile down that I'd turn back. Well, some people were coming the other way and the first person missed it but the second person skirted it with their tire and it went flying like football across the road to the side where there's grass. It landed on its back again and I pulled over and got it. Poor thing was scared to death. I reached in and made sure it was alive but I think it was freaked out. I put it as close to the canal as possible so that it would get in the water. It really sucks because that is a high wildlife area and things always get hit. There was an alligator on the road this morning. The worst are the vultures. Big, ugly suckers and they are nasty. Yesterday my boss took me to drop something off at someone's house that lives down the road and we saw two deer, two racoons and a little bitty turtle. It was pretty cool! I want a turtle.



August 1st, 2004
We've decided we really don't like Miami. The only advantage to living here is that we are close to the Keys. What goes against Miami? A lot of things: traffic, idiot drivers, people on street corners begging for money for all sorts of crap, thieves breaking into your house, no new homeowners or rental insurance being written by major insurance companies (a rude awakening we found out about), rude people, Spanish speaking people who do not want to learn English and are rude to you if you don't speak Spanish (last I checked the majority of the country speaks English), prices of homes are off the charts and you get zero yards and then if you do buy a house or townhouse there are dumb associations you have to join usually, there are no good parks really in this city. That's just some of it.

When our lease is up in April we are going to look into moving to north a county. We spoke with a fellow geocacher who lives in Plantation in Broward county and they said that southern Broward is really an extension of Dade county. We don't really mind Spanish speaking peoples, but it's the crime that we don't really like. And the traffic.

Yesterday we had our South Florida Mexican Fiesta yesterday. There were about 40 people who showed up and we got to meet a lot of different folks. I was a bit worried the restaurant would be upset with us becaues I'd reserved it last weekend for 25 people and then this week more people RSVP'd. But it worked out and the waitresses were great and we really enjoyed it all! We ended up going caching down in the Homestead area. We took everyone out to RV Ghost Town first and then we all kinda split up and did different things. A small group of us went out to a cache in the middle of nowhere and did a bit of offroading and found the cache. Then we headed over to the Everglades National Park to do a virtual cache (a cache that isn't placed but has you go to a monument or place of note, then you email the owner of the cache with a vital piece of information to get credit). We had three cars and we get to the entrance and found out it's $10 per car. This was a surprise considering that the cache page didn't tell anyone this. Then we get out there and I swear there were more mosquitos there than anywhere I've ever been, save behind Pelican Island in Galveston. Everyone sprayed with deet when they got out but I decided against it because I was being a bit vain and didn't want to smell like Eau de Deet. I stopped to read a sign and two minutes later I was attacked by a swarm of 'skeeters. HOLY COW! I quickly grabbed the Deet from our cache friends and plastered it over my body. We rushed down this little trail to this really DUMB DUMB DUMB cache. I swear this was the DUMBEST cache ever. We couldn't believe we paid $10 to get in and get our blood sucked out of us for this. All it was was a little placard describing a Gumbo Limbo tree. We had to get the name of the two common names which were "tourist tree" because it has red, peeling skin, and "naked indian" which was something the South Americans named it when getting here. RIDICULOUS. This tree is all over S. Florida. I thought we may have been going out to the Royal Palm tree island that the sign I'd been reading was describing. That at least sounded cool. The area was beautiful but we were too involved in swatting mosquitos off each other that we didn't enjoy it. We piled back into the car and drove as fast as possible with the windows open to get rid of the mosquitos.

After that we left to do a few more caches. We do not have any really good or unique caches in this area. Ok, we have put some out ourselves, but there are not many good ones. When we came here from Melbourne we were amazed at the lack of creativity. Hopefully people will start to come around and get some new ideas.

That's bout it for now!!!



July 28th, 2004
A few notes:
-The stink about Theresa Heinz Kerry is overblown. Puhleeze. I'd tell dumb journalists to shove it too.
-Barack Obama gave an excellent speech at the convention last night. I see him as a potential nominee in about 8 years to take Kerry's place when he's through!
-Rain and more rain here.
-Home in two weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-I have put pictures of my cats, garden and wedding/honeymoon up in photos. I am wanting to scan more wedding photos soon.

Until next time...:)



July 26th, 2004
Ok, I've added to the Goals page and I've added to the photos page. You will find Everglades photos. And the garden photos have some but they are old so whatever you see is not exactly what I've got now! ;) Not much else to say. Tired. Nighty!



July 25th, 2004
This weekend was too short!

How does my layout look??? LOL, I decided I wanted frames! :)



July 22nd 2004
I have only one regret in my life. It always bugs me to think about and I can't stand thinking about it. I graduated college. But I didn't graduate with a GPA that I approve of. I tend to think of this at times when I get in the "look into gradschool" mood. In highschool I had this plan. My plan was that I'd get my degree in Marine Biology, then move on to graduate school where I'd pursue my PhD doing research of some sort. I had no plans to marry or have kids. I'd be married to the deep blue sea. The fishes, dolphins, plankton would all be my children. I envisioned myself in wind shorts, a tank top, hair pulled back in a pony tail with a hat on, lest my fragile nose get sunburned one too many times, and doing research on a vessle in the ocean. I'd be pulling in samples from the deep, or watching whales mating or giving birth. So, this was probably a teenagers dream, especially any teenager who wants to be a marine biologist.

I got to college and quickly learned that marine biology isn't about Shamu, or diving in the ocean daily. The first two years of classwork primarily suck. Basic Biology, Chemistry, throw in some Physics. Organic Chemistry is what killed me. To this day I despise the fact that I did not drop the class when I had the chance. I knew I was borderline F/D. I thought my professor would be gracious enough to curve enough to give me a D. I could live with a D. I hated studying for that class because I felt so lost. I didn't know what the heck chiral meant, or any of those dumb equations. My friends weren't very good at helping. They were too lost themselves to be able to expalin something to someone who was so far gone she should have dropped the class. So, when grades came out and I saw I had an "F" I was highly dissapointed. Dissapointed in myself mainly. I brushed it off and came back with an "A" the next semester. It didn't really matter in the end, it equaled a "C". My GPA went kaputz.

If I could change college I would take 12-14 hours a semester. None of the 16 hour stressfulness. I'd of not graduated in 4 years. Technically you shouldn't do that because marine biology majors have the highest amount of credits to earn, a whopping 140. Instead, I did bring in some credits from highschool and also took summer classes. I wish I'd of studied more. Gotten into study groups or gone to mentoring. The truth is, to me grades reflect very little of what you learn. It's frustrating to have to tell people you made a "C" in Invertebrate Zoology, but how many people can honestly juggle that wretched (but interesting) class with three or four other classes and work? How about memorizing taxonomy all semester and having to know details of what each Phylum, Class, Order, Sub Order etc and their characteristics. Each test is comprehensive too. It's mindnumbing. The thing is, a "C" in that class is an "A". Of course there is that rare summer in which a crap load of people got "A's and B's". But that is because they took it in six weeks, lived it, breathed it and didn't work. I could have done that, but how do you expect to pay bills if you don't work? Some things are unfair. Some things are my fault. I'd like to change them.

This all come down to grad school. I've tried twice to get in. The first time I tried to go to Florida Tech with Chris. I honestly can't remember what I applied for. I was just so anxious to get to Florida, be married and wanted to be in grad school at the same time. I'm glad I didn't get accepted as it was a private school. The second time I applied was for this past spring to the University of South Florida. I even met with a professor last summer who did microbiology work and I thought it was going to be interesting. It sounded promising, like she would accept me provisionally until I could prove myself in classwork by making a "B" or greater. I knew I could do it. You learn so much more after graduating college, knowing the mistakes. In a way I know how to study now. I didn't get in. I have and had almost written it off. I still have this yearning to be in grad school again. I want to go to school. I want a Master degree. I have found a program at Nova Southeastern University for what I think I want to do. A M.S. in Coastal Zone Management. It's on Davie, which is near Ft. Lauderdale, so not far. They offer the courses on evenings for three hours a week, whichever class. It sounds like I should be able to get in provisionally as my GPA is high enough for that but I may have to retake the GRE again to improve my math score. I hate math. It is the bane of my existence. The program is catered to professionals seeking to get a higher degree and you have to do a capstone review paper. I know I can do it. I don't seem myself doing this or attempting to do this within the next year, but maybe in Spring 2006 after I have worked awhile and saved some money to pay for tuition.

This is my little rant for today. I got the info in the mail yesterday about the program and while reading it at work today I started thinking about it and how I can't stand to think about my GPA from college. So, I had to write it down. Ok, I'm done now.



July 19th, 2004
Happy Birthday to Riley Elizabeth, the newborn daugther of my friends Meredith and Toby. :) They don't read this blog, but I felt the need to post that anyway. I should be awaiting the phone call of Connie's husband here in about a week to find out if little Gabriel made it here alright.

I got a late birthday present today from my father-in-law and Chris' step-mom. They send me giftcards for books usually on my birthday and at Christmas which is the perfect present for me! Ok, don't get me wrong, I'll take just about anything, but I like to be able to say "Hey, I've got a passport to free books!". It's almost as good as $2 bag sales at the library! Since I have decided to relearn French I got a book called The Ultimate French Review and Practice, Theodore Rex since I have wanted to read up about Teddy Roosevelt, my favorite President, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and The Other Boelyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (that's so close to Gordon for all you Anne of the Island fans out there). I wanted to get at least three other books: a medieval/rennaissance history book, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood, and Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon. I think I have enough on my plate now. OHHH, I forgot I saw the "sequel" to Pride and PrejudiceMr. Darcy Takes a Wife. I almost got it, but I haven't made it through P&P yet, though I know the story since I love the BBC movie version. So, I figured I should read P&P the whole way and then go out and get that book. LOL, but I was so antsy to try to read it! I was also concerned that I could not find any LMM books in the children's section. I searched all the possible areas and then some and didn't find them. There were LHOTP books and all those types where I usually find Anne books. :( I was looking for any of the LMM books I don't have yet. :( So sad.

Last night I decided that since I'd just finished this one book called Highland Legacy a Christian historical type novel, I should start another book. So, I pulled out The Lovely Bones which was all the rage a few years ago because it was one of Oprah's book club books. I'd gotten it at the library book sale one of the times and it had been sitting there. I was immediately engrossed in it. It's a very good novel and I am just waiting to hope that the murderer is revealed!

Well, that's about it.



July 16th, 2004




This is the blanket I made for my friend Connie's baby boy, Gabriel Scott. He's due to appear here at the end of July. I finally finished this evening! Sending it out tomorrow! May be a bit hot for July, but I'm sure it will be used! I hope! lol!



July 14th, 2004
New pictures of my plants

Someone finally found The Elusive Coelacanth. Finally someone found it! Now maybe people will calm down a bit.

Not too much else to say. Had a great steak at Roadhouse Grill tonight. YUMMMY! They have great yeast rolls too!



July 11th, 2004
Happy Birthday to me!!

For my birthday Chris got me two half barrel of whiskey barrels for planting. He said we could go to the nurseries up the street, there are tons here in west Miami, to get some plants for them. He also said that we could go and get an orchid. So, today we went and got an orchid at one of the orchid nurseries down the road. There were a lot there and they were so pretty! I'll post a picture of it tomorrow. Then we went up the road to another nursery. We decided to make one of the pots a fern pot and had stopped at Walmart earlier to get an Australian Tree Fern. We didn't realize it got super large until we saw some about 6 feet tall at the nursery!!! We also got a Swiss Cheese Plant and what appear to be colored peace lilies. I am also throwing in some caladiums with that pot. The fern pot ended up getting more ferns for it at Home Depot when we stopped to get potting soil, peat moss and manure compost. It looks pretty cool. Oh and I got a $2 hibiscus too at the nursery down the road. I ended up finding out there were two in there and splitting it. Pretty cool! I'll take some pictures tomorrow of all these. We went to dinner at Olive Garden. It was pretty good. I haven't had any in awhile. Long wait. Ugh. And because parts of the Everglades are on fire now it was incredibly smokey! Smells like campfire! Well that's about it. Little Leo is growing bigger! He's a pain in the rear too.



July 5th, 2004

The first day


The cats playing


Together sleeping on our chair

Just a few pictures. More tomorrow.

July 4th, 2004
Leo has settled into the house now and Samson has taken to him pretty well. The first night or two consisted of growling, hissing and overall curiosity between the two. By last Friday night and Saturday they had become play buddies, rough housing with each other like a coupla boys. Samson has taken to "mothering" Leo by actually giving him a kitty bath. Leo is squirmy and Samson has to hold Leo's head in his paws to force him to stay still while he licks him clean. Scrunch your noses up girls (and the guys)...Samson even cleaned Leo's rear end! EWWW! They are both sleeping on our bed now, but Samson is a big tail wagger and Leo things it's a toy, so there's still some hissing and low, guttaral growls coming from Samson late at night when Leo doesn't understand not to play with Sam's tail.

My Dad was here this past weekend. He was here last weekend when the mess with Chris' car happened, then went to Orlando on business and now he came back for the weekend and flew out this evening. We went to On the Border Friday night...YUMMY! And yesterday went to Key Biscayne to the Cape Florida State Park and hung out for the afternoon and then came home and went to Dave and Busters up the road. I'd never been, but it's a pretty neat place. Finished watching "We Were Soldiers" that I'd started on the way back from Marathon last weekend on the laptop, and this morning we watched "Master and Commander". Both "boy" movies, but pretty good. I could have used a little more plot, but that's alright. I liked in "M&C" how they went to the Galapagos Islands. That was pretty cool!

Chris and I went to see fireworks this evening. Our little area had their own private show so we tried to find out where to go but finally figured out on the community board to go to some area to park and they would provide a shuttle. So, we did that after getting some blizzards at Dairy Queen. The place was bustling with food ranging from people cooking out, pizza, iced lemonades, and other little venues. A band was playing some classic rock. The area is around this big pond/lake and we walked around that for a bit because if we sat still the gnats got to us. At least they weren't mosquitos. The fireworks started about 9:30, later than we thought they would start. Since we were so close, the closest I've been to a fireworks show, they were pretty loud and you could feel it vibrating through the ground. We both layed down on the grass because it was easier than craning our necks to see straight up. I got to thinking while it was going on how mistaken so many people are about the dissenters in the country not being patriotic or feeling that deep, unspeakable love for ones country. Before the fireworks started we walked back by the band but they happened to have someone playing patriotic songs on a trumpet and the Star Spangled Banner was going on. My eyes got misty (that should be an "i". Maybe I should challenge this with Webster's?) and I felt like I know I would if I ever won the gold medal at the Olympics when they play the Star Spangled Banner. I'd bawl my eyes out. For all the tragic and crappy things we've done to this country and to the people who've lived here, we've done a lot of wonderful things and I can't help but to be thankful and joyful for the fact that I get to live here. I realize, though there may be Americans out there who do not, that there are several other countries in the world that support the same democratic methods and means that we do. I'm not saying we are any better, but this is the place I've lived my entire life and well, I've grown to love it. There's so much here to explore. So many different peoples and cultures. I do love this U.S. of A. If only others felt or knew how I felt and could understand what it is like to live here, to be free and to be able to choose (most of the time!!!) who will run the country for you. And when I say this, I am speaking to those who do not know what democracy is in this world. Those who live under tyranical rulers, poverty, or religious intolerance.

I got my new voters card in the mail on Friday. I changed my address so I could vote here in Miami now. So, I want to remind everyone to check up and make sure you are registered to vote. And vote. I don't care if you really don't like either party for president, pick someone, or at least vote for whatever else is on the ballot.

I did some re-working of the website. I hope you all like it. I want to re-do my links sections, but I am not sure what to do at the moment. Also, I know I am a terrible slacker on the jobs blog for all of us, but I promise to get on it this week. I may have some downtime at work and I will probably play around with some HTML codes on my Notepad on the computer.



July 3rd, 2004

You're Texas!
You aren't really much of your own person, but everyone around you wishes you'd go away, so you might as well be independent.  You're sort of loud-mouthed and abrasive, but you do have a fair amount of power.  You like big trucks, big cattle, and big oil rigs.  And sometimes you really smell.  But it's not all bad, you're big enough to have some soft spots somewhere in all that redneck madness.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Now, how cool is that? I take a quiz to find out what country I am and I'm the best country there is, TEXAS! "and God blessed Texas with his own hands...." ;)

I'll have more pictures tomorrow of the cats and some other things to write.



July 1st, 2004
Happy 21st Birthday, Bro! :)



June 29th, 2004
I HAVE A BEAN! That's right, you read correctly, I am now the proud parent of a bean pod! :) WOOHOO! LOL! Ok, so my lima beans have sprouted a bean pod! Now, I'm not sure what I am supposed to do with one bean pod, I can't exactly boil it up, salt it, and eat it can I? So, I shall take a picture tomorrow of it and I guess I will pick it. Maybe I will freeze it and wait for some more? I would be sad if I didn't get any more!

Well, my friend Connie is due in a month. And my other friend Meredith is due in two weeks approximately! YIKES! Babies galore! And I get to see my friend Brooke's baby Justin in August when I go home.

I ran tonight! Go me! Hmmm, I wonder if I can get up in the morning to go again?



June 28th, 2004
This weekend has been interesting. My dad came in on Saturday and we went to lunch at Quiznos and then went to South Beach to check it out. I hadn't been over there yet since we've moved here, just over to Key Biscayne. Chris and his friend Casey went to the Keys to go diving. South Beach is an interesting place. It is definetly for the rich, beautiful and the young! Lots of cafe style eateries, mainly right outside of hotels. The beach is nice. Topless beach also. That was interesting. We walked down Ocean Drive just to see the sights and see what was there. Nice little hotels, condo's, and bungalows. We walked by this one house, a gigantic Italian looking place that had a big brown gate with little roped off area in front. People were outside taking pictures so we figured it was some historic house or something. Only later on the way back did my Dad mention to me that he saw in an art gallery we went into that it was Gianni Versace's house where he was murdered at! It was interesting to say the least. I had no idea it was actually on the beach like that. All in all, the South Beach area is alright, but parking is horrible. Most people just cruise up and down the road, I suppose looking for Mr. or Ms. Right...or Mr. or Ms. One-night-stand. We were supposed to go to back yesterday to actually get in the water and lay out but there was a change of plans and ended up sitting by the pool and cooking hamburgers and hot dogs.

I popped in Pride and Prejudice on Friday evening while Chris and Casey were out snorkeling over on the beach. I was looking for something to watch, since the five stations we get didn't have much on, while I was crocheting. I love me some Colin Firth. I wish there were more of him in the movie than there is. Really now, I could do without Mr. Collins. And Lydia is just so stupid. And Mrs. Bennet. What a gossip! I love how she just changes her mind about Wickham to make herself look better. It really is funny to watch. Poor Mr. Bennet.

Looks like Farenheit 9/11 did well at the box office. I suppose we will get out and see it soon. May be just me but Chris said he would go just to see what Michael Moore had to say. I meant to go to a John Kerry meetup on Thursday evening last week but I ended up taking a nap when I got home because I've had a cold for the past week almost. I think I either caught it from someone at work or my allergies finally caused my throat to become infected. I'm feeling better though; I've been popping Motrin, Alavert and I just found some antibiotics that I had and have been taking them. It's better once I get up in the morning and get going.



June 22nd, 2004
I'm very sad. I called my best friend (one of them) while in line at Wal-mart an hour ago. The lines were huge. Yeah, she's in Orlando, three hours away. I'm sad because I have to work and it really isn't feasible to get up there. She's at Disney World with her folks and her niece (and I think her sister). SOOOOO SAD! I haven't seen her since Thanksgiving. I'm one of her bridesmaids in her wedding in August and I guess that will be the next time I see her. :( :( :(

A few pictures:

Jorge

Reef Tank

Pelicans in Melbourne, Sebastian Inlet in April

Samson being cute!



June 20th, 2004
We went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban this afternoon. I loved it! I didn't see too much difference between the first two and this one, other than a new Dumbledore. Even then I couldn't tell much of a difference, though the voice was different, not that wavery, Dumbledore voice we are all use to. I also didn't think Dumbledore was in it as much as he should have been. There was also more to the Hermione thing than we saw. It's been awhile since I read POA, so I can't tell you exactly what was missing, but I do know some was. I thought Professor Trelawney was great! And Lupin. I loved his character. Not enough Snape. And Sirius Black will be great in the next two movies! Let's hope JK Rowling can figure out a way to weave Sirius back in for book six.

I went running this evening for thirty minutes! I figured since I'd bought new shoes I should wear them. Plus, we caved and bought this combo thing at the movies: two soda's (i got diet), a humongo popcorn, and free skittles. I ate most of the Skittles. I haven't had them in ages! They were a staple in my diet during middle school and some of highschool. The run went well, but I think I tied my shoes too tight because my little toes were going numb! I loosened them up a bit half way through but didn't do much. I even bought a size bigger than I was aiming to get because they didn't have them in an 8.5. So, who knows. Maybe it was the new shoes thing.

We bought another beta today. His name is Jorge. Originally Chris wanted George, but I said that was too common. I wanted to name him Cherry or Tomato because his red. Chris said I needed to stop naming things on how they looked. So he came up with Jorge, which I saw a fitting as we bought him in Miami. I wanted to get this cat named Limpy that was at Petco. Something was wrong with a foot or something, but he was this big, fat thing and looked very lazy. He liked to have his head petted though. Samson needs a buddy! There have been several neighborhood cats around and one in particular has come around a lot. My computer butts up against the back window and Samson crawls under to jump on the window ledge and he looks out for hours. Well, he watches the birds on the feeder and just enjoys staring outside. So, this one calico comes up and he goes crazy with meows. Then the cat actually comes up to the window and Samson has a fit! The cat walks away but then goes into stalking mode regarding a pigeon on the ground 15 feet away. He tries to get it, but of course misses and then plops down on the leaves and rolls around a bit. It finally left, but Samson either wanted to go out and play or wanted to attack the cat for being on his property!



June 18th, 2004
Bad blogger! That's me!

Yes, I know I promised some details on the conference but I don't have my notes with me to quote numbers etc. They are at work at the moment. Basically I can tell you to stay the heck away from farmed salmon. Mainly women and children. Men can pretty much go for it if they are older, say over 50. Reasons being is the dioxins, mercury etc. Oh, stay away from tuna, and other large game fish. Honestly. Do it. Don't listen to political pundits or the industry. The science is sound. It'll do some nasty damage if you consume too much of it and especially if you are planning on having kids. Bad for the kiddos in the womb!

What else? Not much. I bought some running shoes at Payless yesterday. We, my co-worker and I, took the Expedition for work in to get an oil change and the brakes checked. We ran over to Payless and Wal-mart to kill time. I was pleasantly surprised to find Payless selling "name brand" running shoes and cross trainers. The two brand were Champion and Spaulding. Prices were from $20-$25 but there were some cross trainers on sale for $9. I needed running shoes though and I am considering going back and getting the $9 shoes because my normal shoes are already worn out. I'm keeping the running shoes for running and I am making a serious commitment to start running again. With Chris working now I think I may start getting up at 6:15 and heading out the door at 6:30 to run for thirty minutes two mornings a week and the other two days I would run are weekend. Since I don't have to be in to work until 8:30 this would work out well for me. Now, if I can get my groggy butt out of bed.

FYI to the gal's who want to do the work blog thing. I'm working out kinks at the moment with the password coding. I've tried blogger and I've tried a geocities site but am having some problems. I'm sure it is something minor that I am missing so I'll try to have something up and running soon.

Tomorrow or Sunday: pictures and an entry about our geocaching adventure we are going on tomorrow....wooohoo!



June 15th, 2004
Tomorrow I will have a review of a conference I went to this week and one of the discussions. It was about contaminants in fish (ie: the recent studies on salmon and methyl mercury, dioxins etc...) and tribal impact. Very interesting and I think knowing stuff on the inside will change your view on it and the media. More tomorrow...

June 12th, 2004
So, I had yesterday off. We got a memo in the office on Tuesday saying we had the day of rememberance for Ronald Regan off. YAY woohoo free day! OK, so I kinda felt bad that I'd be using that day to sleep in, slack off and pick up the place. Well, I ended up not doing that. That same day Chris got a call from a recruiter about a job. He went on an interview with the company he'd be working for and then on Friday (yesterday) he had to meet with that guy's boss and then called the recruiter and they wanted him to come in and fill out paperwork! So, after six months with no job...he has one! He'll be doing groundwater and soil sampling on an old dump that is leaking chemicals. I guess they are trying to figure out how to remediate it. It's in North Miami Beach and with traffic it'll be about 45 minutes to an hour drive...it's only a five mile difference from my job and it takes me 30-35 minutes to get to my job. But, I drive to the Everglades which is west of the city and there's no traffic except for tourists with license plates from all over and they are always looking over to see the alligators in the Tamiami canal. Ok, there are a ton of alligators people, stop rubbernecking and drive. Or better yet, pull over and watch them. So, yay maybe we can stop being poor in a few months, pay the credit card off and save some money for a house! WOOHOO...or maybe save for a vacation....wow a vacation that isn't at home sounds great! So, yeah yesterday we went and did the interview, tried to do a few caches before we found out he had to go into the recruiters office too. We came home and promptly took a three hour nap (him a four hour one).

I hate that we have so many trees around the apartment that half my plants that need full sun aren't doing so hot. I moved a few of them to the front porch area this morning because that gets more morning sun. Not to mention this rain has taken it's toll on my gladiolus. :( And the morning glory that was doing so well, yesterday I went to check on it and the leaves were all wilted. I think something was eating at the base of the vine and it was weakening and not getting nutrients. I put more soil on top so that the green parts will start rooting or something. Hopefully that will work. I'm learning that I'm going to have to plant what most people typically plant in spring in the fall when the rains aren't around as much. And the heat. The tropicals will probably do great all year round. What I'd really like is to find a native plant nursery and get some plants I know will survive here. But, I really like all that cool stuff that people just a few zones away get to have. Really isn't fair. I guess zone envy occurs even if you are in 10B.

Well, that is about it for now. I refilled the bird feeder and we've got blackbirds, ground doves and bluejays flocking. Oh, I forgot to mention the other day I saw a Red-belled woodpecker> I can't wait to have a garden and backyard of my own so I can attract all kinds of birds and butterflies!



June 6th, 2004
Done with S2 of Alias. Will now have to a: wait for S3 to come out on DVD in September or b: hope ABC runs re-runs this summer. I now have free time again! :) YAY!

We put out a geocache today and did a cache today. The cache we did was pretty fun, though the coords and hint were not very good for the first stage. The second part required a mile walk to and from. We passed a few apiaries (bee hangouts). Overall it was a nice walk in the woods. We've decided we do not like one couple that geocaches. They cache under two separate names, yet log each others caches even though each one might have been there for the set up of the cache. It's really a cop out their reasoning: to get it off their status page. *rolls eyes*. They also seem to be notorious for giving blatant clues on caches that they have found. I understand giving a smidge of a clue or something, but these are HUGE clues. The only saving grace is that they are encrypted, but STILL. And some of their pictures show the cache sites. I mean, not the cache itself set off in the woods like some people do, but like the actual site it's hidden at. Again, the only saving grace is that they actually label it. We've decided to boycott all of their caches (though we have done three of them already before we realized what they do) and have made the statement that if they do any of the blatant statements of where the caches are we will delete their find and email them the reasoning why. Some people cache really poorly. And if you are completely lost by now at what "caching" is, go to Geocaching.com and find out more. In fact, invest in an $80 ETrex and have some fun caching yourself! :)

Goal: lose 10lbs by my friends wedding in mid-August.
Achieve goal: Run three-four x's a week 30-45 minutes, abs/weights three x's a week. I've been slacking for too long and now is the time with sunset at passed eight pm I can do it again.

Finally getting some rain around here. Getting antsy at how my plants are going to thrive. To go with the blue jays and doves we've got I spotted a red-bellied woodpecker today. Pretty cool! :D



June 3rd, 2004
I have no motivation. I come home. I am tired. I am bored. I have things to do. I do not want to do them. This could be because I just want to watch Alias. I hate my job practically. It's so boring. Ack. I need to run. But don't. I have a blanket to crochet. But i haven't. I could scrapbook. But I haven't. I could paint. But I don't. Some of my plants are dying. I don't know why. Heat or humidity. Choose your pill. One of them is doing it. I did check out the CIA to see how I could be an officer/spy. Yeah. I'm dumb. Wayyy not smart enough for them. You have to speak like a bazillion languages. I only speak one. And cat talk. But that doesn't count. But they do have other desk type jobs. So, no, I'm still a lowly environmental worker person who has a boring job. I saw a dead alligator today. On the road. Hit by a car. The vultures were eating it. Ew.



June 1st, 2004
I am Alias Addicted. Make that Alias Addicted. I really started watching this season. I think I remember being bored on Sunday night after Charmed went off at 9 and I began watching it. I'd watched one or two episodes previous seasons but I was completely lost. So, after becoming Spy!Addicted and watching the season finale a week ago I decided to rent the Season 1 this weekend. Turns out my co-worker has both S1 and S2 but he forgot to bring it on Friday so I ended up renting S1. Now, to make matters worse I was furious that the DVD player hadn't been hooked up yet. And cables were missing. Well, lo and behold at 10pm Saturday night I end up finding a cord that looks like it goes to the set up. Sure enough it fit. So, Around 10:30 pm I put episode one and and was totally addicted. I went to bed at 3am on the futon. LOL, I couldn't put it down! I'd only rented the first volume of the season so I had to go back on Sunday evening to get the last two volumes. I ended up finishing them Monday around 2pm.

Talk about being engrossed in a tv show. Don't tell anyone, but this show is better than Friends. Ok, well, they are in two different categories, but if I have to rate it against another drama it's 10X's better than ER and Buffy. My new goal in life is to be Sydney Bristow. LOL, ok so really not, but it's like a book that you can't put down and you are so inspired to be that person. It sticks with you in the shower, wondering how it will end. Like Harry Potter when a new book comes out. You read it, eat it, sleep it and breathe it. You become Hermione because it's totally cool to be so smart. Just like it would be totally cool to be Sydney Bristow and be Super!Spy. And SpyDaddy. Whew. Add Victor Garber to the older man hottie list. You can't even explain the awesomeness between those two actors, Victor and Jennifer. They are Jack and Syndey Bristow. And if the talk about Lena Olin being the best SpyMommy ever, well I shall have to see when I get to start watching S2.

So, my new crazed fascination of the moment is Alias. I'm surfing all these websites one being the Television Without Pity Boards but another one I found at www.sd-1.net (or .com can't remember). All these speculations. Man, how cool it would be to be a writer on that show. Let's just hope the writers are smart to keep Lauren dead. Ick. The sad thing is I even kinda liked her a bit. Don't hit me with rubber chickens you guys!

So, that was really my weekend. I did go to the mall and walked around. Nice mall. Old Navy. Tried to go to a scrapbook store but they were closed. Did some chores. Work is so boring. I am so frustrated. I was warned by my co-workers that it gets slow and that my boss likes to do a lot of the work for himself. Stuff I could do. I hate being bored. It's like you come in and you really don't have anything on your list to do, you just wait for him to tell you something to do. Last Friday we took some measurements on some house sites that some people requested for some fill on wetlands. We have to go do the measurments and draw up an AutoCad drawing for it and then we submit it to the business council for review. Well, we started working on it but the guy I supervise said that sometimes AutoCad messes up with the numbers and things don't always align properly. So we have to go out and get new measurments. Sure enough we were supposed to do that today. But no one told me that he is always gone on the first day of the month to take care of some personal business. So this morning I didn't know where he was until I asked our secretary and she told me. Well, the drawing was on his computer and I didn't want to get on it without his permission and I'm not exactly familiar with AutoCad yet. He ended up coming in at 2pm and we worked on it for a bit and then went and got measurements. It got turned in by the skin of it's teeth at 4 by my boss so it could be reviewed for tomorrows meeting. This is the kinda of stuff I don't like. I spent most of the morning trying to figure something out to do. My boss came in late around 10:15 or so, so I was just typing up plant common and scientific names for reference to kill time. I also played around with my Nextel to try to determine if I could break into the voicemail as I don't have the password. Finally I decided to work through the AutoCad book since the cd-rom I did two weeks ago made no sense. It made some sense but I was sooo bored. I hate it. I came into this job expecting to be doing something useful and I feel so not useful. My boss is going to be gone from the 3rd to the 14th and I know I will be sitting arond bored again. Unless we get requests from any tribal members for some fill requests I know I will be doing not a lot of stuff. I guess I will try to talk to him tomorrow and see what he says. I don't want to do nothing for a week. When he gets back I'm supposed to go to a conference in Ft. Lauderdale all week. I dunno. I hope something changes.



May 24th, 2004
No poison oak yet!

Garden pics

Not much to say. Besides: WAITING 7 MONTHS TO WATCH S4 OF ALIAS IS RIDICULOUS!:D



May 17th, 2004
So, I may or may not break out in poison oak in a few weeks. Apparently there was lots of it around the area of a cache that me and Chris just rolled in. (not literally rolled...) We didn't know what it looked like though. And the pictures online I can't tell if it was something that we saw or not. So. At least I had jeans on! But my arms and face are gonna be one big rash. Althought we did roll around in poison ivy about a month or so ago back in Melbourne but we never broke out in anything. So, who knows.

Apparently, also, we've had cable tv for two weeks and didn't know it. We got our first cable internet bill and we thought it was pricey. So we went to see if the tv was on and sure enough.....That means I could have watched AND taped: Friends, Charmed, Survivor and Alias. Oh and watched Harry Potter last weekend. I've been getting along alright without tv. We have NBC so I get my fill of Dateline, ER and The West Wing (is that on NBC?). Oh and I should start watching Scrubs on Tuesdays again. I love that show. Probably the best not-watched show.

Didn't do much today at work again. Met my boss finally. Though, I'd met him in the interview but forgot exactly what he was like. Played with AutoCad again all day. Booooring. Saw the new building that is built for us to move into. We got screwed. Two departments moving into an unimaginable space. Ok, make that two scientific departments that need their files, maps, maps drawers, a huge plotter, printers, and all sorts of scientific books and crap and there is going to be no room. Good thing we got shoved into the southeast corner on the second floor. No one will care enough about us to visit us. Couldn't see us through the maps anyway.



May 14th, 2004
I know I am a crappy blogger lately. This week has been busy and I'm exhausted. LOL, I really shouldn't be exhausted because I didn't do that much at work this week. Let's see, I shall summarize what I did for you:
Monday: First day. Arrived at 8am though was supposed to be there at 8:30am. Oh well. Filled out tax forms and was sent to the clinic on the res and waited for like 45 minutes or so to get a pee test done. First time I've done a pee test with a person inside the bathroom with me. No, there were no doors on the stall. Just a single room with a toilet. Talk about performance anxiety! Holding a cup underneath to pee and squatting over the toilet is hard enough but while someone is half watching. Yeah. Luckily it ended up coming out and all was well. Somehow it wasn't as embarassing as I thought it would be. Then it was over to the police station to give my fingerprints. Then it was to the HR office again so I could be shown where my department was. My boss wasn't there just the environmental aide and a few people in water resources and wildlife. Basically I got to read two manuals that day, one procedures and the other the stuff about pay/leave/rules. Got a tour of the admin area. Met a lot of people that I don't remember their names. Basically that was all I did that day.
Tuesday: Got a call from my boss who was out of town. Chatted with him for a bit. He's an Aggie too, turns out. *hmm, wonder why I got this job* We had to drive out to Alligator Alley (I-75) to the res up there to check on some melaleuca trees that were being sprayed as part of the mitigation process for the tribe. We drove wayyyyy out in the middle of nowhere. Where probably not many people ever see. Got to take the swamp buggy, but it was dry so no mud flinging. Got to see some turkey eggs in a field. Pretty cool. That took most of the day. Just had an hour left and I started a GIS tutorial when I got back to refresh my memory.
Wednesday: Did the GIS tutorial all day long. Finished it. Did a few other things like getting some Right of Way papers signed. That's about it. Kinda boring.
Thursday: Back up to Alligator Alley to have someone sign something. Took up the morning. Drove back and had lunch. After lunch we took the airboat out into the Everglades. Really fun! Lots of birds, and lots of spider webs! You are going so fast you just run into all the spider webs (which I think a spider hitchhiked home with me and ended up in the shower with me!!!) and we "ran over" an alligator. He was ok. Pretty fun though. Really enjoyed it. It is so beautiful out there.
Friday: Today I didn't do much of anything. I chatted with the secretary and the wildlife guy for awhile this morning. Did a bit of reading in some files and a grant proposal. Just snooping around to see what goes on. Not really snooping, but going through the files in my desk and the other files I deal with. Read a few wetland plant books. In the afternoon I finally found the AutoCad book and tried doing the tutorials, but they are set up so much more horribly than the GIS and I've never even done AutoCad so I had no idea what I was doing compared to GIS. Didn't get far. Was v. bored this afternoon. I also had too many cups of coffee, decaf though.

My boss is back on Monday and I'm sure it will be an interesting week. I get very mixed messages from people regarding him. So, I guess I shall see. Plus we are supposed to be moving into a new building that just got built (four story, tallest thing probably in the Everglades!!!) sometime this week so I don't know how much I'll be doing with moving.

Well, not much else. Going to unpack the rest of the boxes this weekend. Don't have much left; Chris did a few this week. Hang some pictures up. Go to the post office. I'm going to start running again this weekend. It's been a month and a half since I've done any running. I'm out of shape again. Oh and the final thing, YAY FOR RUPERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



May 8th, 2004
Miami is insane. You get honked at if you hesitate .1seconds at the light when it turns green. Or honked at if you are waiting for the other cars to continue running their red light so that you can go on your green light. Insane. People here have no patience. And it's so weird but I feel like I'm in another country. If it weren't for some English being spoken and being written on some things I would guess I was in a foreign country. "White" people are the minority. Not that it is a bad thing, but it is just a different thing. It almost feels like Chile, because Chile actually had decent areas of town and seemed like a "normal" business center. It's not like Balboa, Panama where there is poverty at every corner, don't get me wrong there are some bad areas such as Calle Ocho (SW 8th St) which just looks kinda scary to go down at night. But, in general it's a nice suburb with lots of great suburbuan/city type things to do but wayyyy overcrowded. Traffic. Traffic. Traffic. I mean, I was used to DFW traffic for years but got used to the small town Galveston Island traffic and Melbourne traffic for the past six years. Now it's back to crazy city/suburbia and hello traffic.

We drove to Key Biscayne yesterday because Chris wanted to collect some water for the 180 gallon. It wasn't as big as I thought but we discovered that the Miami Seaquarium is over there and you have to cross a toll bridge to get to the island. At the end of the island is a state park where we went. Looked like a decent snorkeling area. Saw some needlefish, tangs, parrotfish, crabs, barracuda and seargent majors. Oh, and there are houses in the middle of the bay. No land around. Just houses sitting on stilts. They were probably a good mile or two away so we couldn't tell if there used to be land there or if they were built on purpose for the sake of tying your boat up and fishing for the week. But there were at least 10 scattered about on stilts. Totally weird.

The apartment is coming together. Just a matter of putting things away. Chris just tried to make some fried plantains. They were alright. Not too bad. The recipe he got told him to put s&p on it but it needed brown sugar or something instead. It's like putting s&p on your banana and that wasn't exactly the taste I was going for. Oh, we put a bird feeder up because we have a few blue jays and a ton of doves. Sam likes to sit and watch them. He's so funny. Sam also has a few cat "friends" that roam around. We've caught at least three different ones stealing the catnip off the porch. Well, gotta go.



May 5th, 2004
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Eat some fiesta food! We made turkey tacos for dinner...finally found the spices and a cooking pan.

I will write more details of the trip when I get around to feeling like it. I'm still in unpacking mood. Most of the plants survived the trip, a few crushed or mangled.



April 27th, 2004
Sorry I have not written much lately. I've not really been in a writing mood. Packing is going along ok. It's hard to pack so far in advance because the place is a disaster. And then you have to hold off on kitchen and bathroom stuff until the end too.

Today was my last day at work! Sad, but not really as sad. I had my sad back in early Sept when I was gone for the first time. I dunno, it was just different. Maybe because I know I am going to go to a job that I think I will like. Cross fingers!

I will not have internet from April 30th until May 3rd, though, I guess I really will becase we are having DSL installed in our apt in Miami but the computer won't be there until Monday and our dial-up here will be disconnected on Friday so we won't have really any access to it. I will update when I get set up, probably on Tuesday sometime. We are setting both of our computers up this time so that we can both be on and no longer arguing over who gets on the computer first! ;) But, sadly, we won't have cable. I'm hoping that we can pick up ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. Why? Because I want to see: Alias, Friends/ER, Survivor and American Idol. I will be begging for tapes of all fo these as I will be missing finales!! WAHHHHHHHHH! So, if someone knows of a way to watch tv via the internet, lemme know!



April 22nd, 2004

be sorted @ nimbo.net

Happy Earth Day!

April 19th, 2004
Moving is depressing. You go through all of your things and remember the past and wonder about the future. What will you be thinking of the next time you pack all these things up? I found Chris' letters to me. The first one still smells like the cologne that was on it when it first arrived six and a half years ago. I carried that letter around for a long time just smelling it. I'd smell it before bed, when I got up in the morning. I took all of Chris' letters with me to a tournament in Midland for softball that spring. I'm packing up most of my trinkets and such until I get a curio cabinet for them eventually. There is no real room for them and I'd like to have a decent looking apartment. I also have way too many candles. And books. But the books can stay! :D



April 15th, 2004
Hope you all got your taxes in on time! Our refund, the meager amount it is, is sitting on the kitchen table begging to be deposited. It won't last long in our bank account with the impending move upon us.

I've decided I hate Miami. It is overly expensive in dumb areas that it needn't be expensive. Yes, I can see the beach area and downtown being a bit pricey, but when I'm so far west as being west of the turnpike and rent is still $1000 for a 2/2, that is beyond ridiculous. The other thing, and as non-PC as this sounds, is that no one [i]wants[/i] to speak English. It's like avoided. I understand it is a major entry point for Cubans and other Latino's but seriously, if you've lived here for a long time and haven't picked up English you've got a problem. What is especially annoying is that while we were at the apartment complex we are hoping to rent from, the guy who took us around looking at places was with us and the woman who I [i]knew[/i] could understand us seemed to refuse to speak directly to us and preferred to speak to our rental show dude in Spanish. Hello. What do you do if you don't have someone who speaks Spanish??? It is incredibly frustrating when you are staring quizzicly at the woman, trying to understand what she wants from you on the application while she's speaking Spanish to the other dude and trying to tranlate. It isn't like we are in a bad part of town or anything. It's a nice area. Ugh. I just hated it. And I hate the traffic. And what is up with people my age or younger driving BMW's and Mercedes??? Where do they get the money? How can they pay exorbitant rent and car payments??? I don't understand.

I've also decided that entertainers are WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY over paid. For what they do, it is not worth it. At all. Maybe I'm jealous, and ok, so I am, but why shouldn't I be able to have at least double what I will be making? I mean, did Britney finish highschool? She sings. She dances. That's it. She puts to use no education. Gah. So ridiculous. RIDICULOUS!

I'm just in a funk. I'll get over it.



April 12th, 2004
So, I start work on May 10th! Tomorrow we are going down to talk with some rental realtors to look for some houses to rent. We've decided we'd like to rent a house instead: yard, garage, MORE ROOM! It would be so nice. We figured it would be better to talk with a realtor since they know the area better and which parts of town are worse than others. I mean, Miami is very diverse. It's almost like Galveston, you go for one block and you are in ghetto-ville, you go four blocks and you are in multi-million dollar mansions.

I feel like such a bore. I have nothing interesting to say at all. I hope you like how I re-did the place. Looks much more appealing now, I hope.

I guess I will leave you with a few links to browse:
‘American Idol’ gives too much power to the People
Call for action over 'wasteful' discarded fish



April 8th, 2004
Well, for those who aren't on the forum, I GOT A JOB!!!! It will be in Miami working as an Environmental Specialist. I only hope that I don't mess up and that I know enough! We are planning on going early next week to look for rental houses or apartments. I have a few days off next week since my job at the lab was to be winding down anyway. The only thing I have to wait for is the Chairman of the tribe to sign off on it, but the HR lady said it should be fine. So, in a month I shall be moving! EEK!

In other news, there's really not much. Plants are growing like crazy! LOL, I took pictures a week ago but I should probably take more! I've not stayed too up on politics, just know "Condi" testified in front of the 9/11 commission today. I didn't see anything save the last few seconds when I walked in Subway for lunch at noon today. That woman scares me for some reason. I dunno. It's just weird.

And a bit of good news: Ridley Nests on Galveston's seawall! YAY!



April 6th, 2004
I apologise for not writing these past few days. My parents came into town early on Friday and they left tonight to head to the airport so they can leave in the morning. I spent Saturday, Sunday and today at the beach. I am red in most places, but turning tan in others. I did apply the SPF 15 everywhere and wore my new $2.50 green flowerdy ball cap from wallyworld so my nose didn't fry. The water is too chilly to get in, though my dad and Chris braved it a few times to cool off. Dipping my toes in or letting the waves splash on my ankles was enough for me.

I've decided to apply to two more school districts. Sending most things out tomorrow. Anyway. I will write more later. Need to do a few more things.



April 1st, 2004
So, I have no April Fool's joke planned for today. I could turn this place into something scarier than it already is. Yes, I know that the scroll bar is still shades of blue and clashes with the yellow. I'm too lazy to fix it. That and I have no cute picture to put on here so this place will continue being bland.

My parents are coming in tonight at around 11pm. But, they won't get to my apartment until around 1am. Talk about sleepy when they get here! They are here until early next Wednesday, so for almost a week I get to have some fun with the 'rents. Actually, they will probably spend most of their time at the beach or the pool.

I bought a trellis last night for the beans and the morning glory. I think they will like it. I can't wait for them to take it over and I'm ready to start raking in the crop. I took pictures of everything and I will try and post them tonight. I have to do a lot of picking up tonight. Dishes, laundry, dusting, vaccumming....ya know stuff you do when you have guests coming. I wanted to organize all of my books by subject. Get all of them in order. Right now they aren't in any particular order, though all of my LMM books are together. Which reminds me to start reading Pat of Silverbush because it is the Forum book of the month. I've read it once before but it's been two years and I can't remember enough details to adquately discuss it. Plus, it's that time of year that I usually start reading "Anne" books again. I also realized I have one of LMM's journals but have not gotten around to reading it. I couldn't believe it. I read the autobiography of LMM back when I was working at Michael's in Sept and Oct. Read it during my breaks. But I never picked the journals up and I really should.

I organized my scrapbook stuff the other night. Going through it all made me want to start scrapping again. I've been holding off until I finish the blanket I'm working on. I'm almost done. I actually could have finished last night if I hadn't of been lazy and sat on the couch for two hours. I had all intentions of getting up at 7 after my 20 minute watching of Charmed. Instead, I stayed right there. I really could have done a lot. Dishes, clean my car out, litter box change, dust, vaccum. Stuff that I have to do tonight, that would have been done last night. But, I am a procrastinator.



March 30th, 2004
So, while at lunch today I came up with this idea. It mainly stemmed from the necklace I am wearing today. On our way out of the Keys the other day we stopped at this small flea market north of Marathon. We'd always driven by it but this time we stopped. Plus, I'd won a bet with Chris so I got $10 to spend. I found this really cool, "artsy" necklace. It is on a silver chain, real silver according to the woman who made it, and it has these light blue stones like some earrings my bro and dad got me in NM, with the big part of the necklace being this oddly shaped copper or metal piece that had been painted and glazed. It was really funky and cool and I only had spent four more dollars than my allotted $10. Well, I got to thinking that I know I could make stuff like that. You can buy clay at Michael's and make your own beads and I also have tons of beads that I've gotten from my mom and brother. That lead me to start thinking about an art website to sell my art. I need to finish a few pieces first but I was like, "hey, I could sell stuff". LOL, my problem is finding people willing to buy my art.

So, I tried to see what geocities had already been taken by other domains and I typed in geocities.com/artbymisti. It came up with someone with some hippie name of Misti Velvet something or another Lake. And I thought my name was on the hippie side, Misti Dawn. LOL, this was taking it too far. Anyway, this "artist" does collages. They are kinda neat, but to me it looked like she just cut and pasted things together. A few things had sold but to whom, I don't know. So, there when that idea of a domain name. I don't know, I might sign up with geocities account just to have it for when I do have enough artwork to put on my website. I don't know would buy my paintings and jewelry but it is worth a try. So, yep.



March 29th, 2004
Sorry for being gone for a few days. I had an interview Friday morning and we ended up driving to Long Key for the night to camp and so Chris could snorkel. We got back Saturday evening and yesterday was spent mostly picking up.

Not much is going on. The Keys were nice. Reminded me once again that I want to live there. Just so beautiful, even if it is rainy and nasty outside. It was really windy all weekend so it was a kinda murky snorkeling. I didn't get in, too chilly, but Chris spend a few hours in the water Friday and Saturday. Our spot that we go to on the Ohio-Missouri Channel south of Marathon was beautiful like always. There were some sponges that had been washed up from offshore. Pretty large ones. I kept a few to use in the apartment later on. Also some crab trap buoys had washed up and I kept them. They will go good with decor eventually.

I don't think the interview went well. For one I was late 20 minutes. I called 10 'til to let them know I was gonna be late. We didn't hit any traffic until almost downtown Miami and then we had to take US 41/SW 8th St through west Miami. This is like little Cuba/Puerto Rico/name a Latin American city. Tons of stoplights. Pair this with the roads not being labeled properly to let us know we were on the right road we were behind. The reservation was about 20 minutes west into the Everglades from the turnpike. The interview was alright, there were three men and a woman. Two of them men and the woman were nice and fairly laid back but the one man who heads the department I'd be working for seemed too uptight and just lacked a sense of humor. I don't know how comfortable I would be working with him. Needless to say I left with a bad taste in my mouth. I don't think I want that job.

I've become an Alias addict. I've picked up on it a few times this season but have been watching a lot lately. I need to rent Season One from Blockbuster to really understand everything. I want to look as buff as Jennifer Garner! She is tough but feminine looking at the same time. No fair! LOL. In gardening news the avocado tree that we thought might keel over has sprouted some new leaves. Finally. Hibsicus bloomed again but has since dropped off. Beans are growing like weeds. Otherwise not much else is going on. I did find a few things of interest:

Gulf Base