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Skipped lunch today.  I’ve been at the office for nearly 5 hours now… 600 minutes…and my nifty little phone system says I’ve been on the phone for 418 minutes this morning.  It’s the end of the month and I haven’t got anything done.  Ok, that’s not entirely true.  Those were actually some very productive  minutes.    And that doesn’t count the call I took at 7:30 from the warehouse before breakfast!

My back aches today.  I’ve got a freezy pack I’m sitting on which seems to help.

Not sure what the weekend holds.  I might try and head to Gainesville to see the Snake Charmer.  Kind of wait and see at this point.  I can send messages to him through the hospital…I don’t know if they print them, or if someone heads to his room and reads them to him.  I’ve been sending him snake jokes…

What’s a snakes favorite subject in school?    Hissssss-story

And my favorite…. Which hand do you use to pickup a dangerous snake?   Someone elses!

My otherwise nice Thursday was interrupted by news that my brother lost an arm wrestling challenge with a coral snake.  I’ve talked to the hospital and he’s doing ok, kind of awake but completely under the control of the venom.  It ain’t good.  But he’ll be ok.   I’ve taught Lily the little rhyme about the coral snake…

Red on black, he’s a friend to Jack.

Red on yellow, you a dead fellow.

We’ve looked at the picture of a coral snake and I’m confident she won’t be handling a snake without me.

The Tampa Tribune sent a photographer to my house today to take pictures of my backyard.  I might have mentioned that our backyard was given a certification as a Natural Habitat.  Which only means I have nice areas for animals, birds and critters to feed, hide, breed and otherwise hang out.  We walked the yard, took some pictures and almost like I planned it – two baby bunnies scampered across our feet.  The bird feeders were full of birds and the squirrels were running around like they’d found a coral snake up and down the trees.

I took Lily around running errands this afternoon.  She took a good nap today and got to stay up a little later…until 8pm as a reward.

Tomorrow is Friday!! Woo hoo!  I’ll put up an update on the Snake Charmer when I hear more.

Hope this Thursday finds you well.

Not a bad morning here – feels a bit cooler thanks to some cooling rains late yesterday afternoon.  We didn’t get any…but they were all around.  Supposed to rain today thanks to some a large tropical system moving in.

Speaking of large systems, I beat the Babe here again today.  I knew I would – I was catching all the green lights on the way here, I got rock-star parking at Starbucks and there was no line.

I’ve got an idea… I’ll bet they could patch any problem on the space shuttle with an old, sticky Rice Krispie.  I don’t know why, but the little buggers keep popping up on my clean dishes when they come out of the dishwasher.  I think when I’m not looking, Diane is dumping a handful of them into the dishwasher’s rinse cycle.

I complained enough about my shoes yesterday that we went out last night and got me a pair.  Then I wore the ones I was complaining about this morning.   Why be predictable?

I’m just going to apologize right now.  I’m the guy who had his stereo on a little too loud at that intersection this morning.  I got in the car and while I usually have a country station on, apparently Lily and I were rocking out to some 80’s yesterday.  And the station was in the middle of 80 minutes of the best of the 80’s.  I put that 12 speaker Bose system to the test.  Def Leppard, Tom Petty, the Romantics and then, one of my favorites…Men at Work.   There’s just something about 80’s music every now and then.  Makes me want to head home and dust off my parachute pants and have Diane comb bangs into her hair….oh, wait…nevermind.

It was a hot weekend.  No rain since Thursday night so the heat is really building up.  I think we hit 92 yesterday.  This is just about as hot as it gets here – especially when those afternoon storms aren’t around to cool us off by 3 o’clock.  The pool was nice and warm – about 86 degrees.  Lily and I swam for 3 or 4 hours yesterday.  We even swam with the iguana!  Why not?  She likes to cool down too!

I smoked ribs and chicken yesterday.  Love the ribs!  We ate all of them.  Froze some of the chicken.   Lily was asleep by 7:45p and then someone had the great idea of Rootbeer Floats!  MMMM…… I don’t know how I’ve avoided adding a few pounds during this pregnancy, but I have.  Rootbeer floats, Skittles, ice cream and Cheetos.

Lily has art class today – her last one.  She starts “summer” school in two weeks.  Hopefully this will get her adjusted before the official first day of school in August.

A few months ago, my yard was declared a National Wildlife Certified Habitat…or something like that.  I don’t know what all it meant, but basically i recognizes our use of native plants, composting, avoiding pesticides and other chemicals, keeping areas available for animals to nest, hide and feed… Anyways, I got a call this weekend from the Tampa Tribune – they want to come out and take pictures!  Cool!

Last week of June!  Next week is vacation week!

I just checked out my blog stats.  Unbelievable.  I’ve got 121 people who read this blog daily in their RSS.  I just got done with my busiest 5 days for the year – almost 300 visits  (if you go to the blog three times a day from the same computer, it only counts it as one visit.)

There are 5 countries who visit this thing… US, Canada, Australia, Poland and the UK.

There are 11 states… Florida, Georgia, Texas, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Alaska, California, Kansas, Colorado and Ohio.

Don’t ya’ll have anything better to do?

Our Saturday is half way over.  We’ve made blueberry pancakes (standard operating procedure for Saturday mornings) and went to Lowe’s for their Kid’s Clinic.  The Lowe’s clinic can’t hold a candle to the Home Depot clinic but HD’s is once a month.  Lowe’s is now twice a month.  Today Lily made a wooden frame that holds a card with emergency phone numbers on it.

We hit the grocery store (I love the look and feel of a refrigerator full of groceries).  Lily is such a celebrity at Publix.  The meat manager is one of her favorites.  He must be the hardest working guy in the grocery business- he’s always there, always hustling and always takes a minute out to talk to the little kiddies. We came home for lunch. (PBJ and watermelon)  Lily is taking a nap so she should be good to go the rest of the afternoon whatever we decide to do.  Mom is resting also and said something about heading into town to Pottery Barn.   That means one thing…someone better sell some pineapple this week.

I’ve got some paint touch up to do, and one cabinet to install in the bathroom.

Nice rain shower last night – about an inch of much needed rain.  Made for a good lightning show too.  I was sure all the booming was going to wake up Lily, but she slept right through it.  And it was enough to get the pool level back to where it should be.  I hate filling up the pool only to have it rain and fill up on its own.

It’s nice to have the yard work done – today would be a hot one out there!

I’ve had a solid 8 days in a row (maybe more) of getting my parking spot…uncontested – no matter what time I show up.  And I think I’ve noticed that the Babe’s car is gone!  No more Babe-a-licious??  Could the parking spot be mine?  Did I win the battle?  And the War?

The Lone Ranger and Tonto walked into a bar and sat down to drink a beer.

After a few minutes, a big tall cowboy walked in and said, “Who owns
the big white horse outside?”

The Lone Ranger stood up, hitched his gun belt, and said, “I do,…
Why?”

The cowboy looked at the Lone Ranger and said, “I just thought you
would like to know that your horse is about dead outside!”

The Lone Ranger and Tonto rushed outside, and sure enough, Silver was
ready to die from heat exhaustion.

The Lone Ranger got the horse water, and soon, Silver was starting to
feel a little better.

The Lone Ranger turned to Tonto and said, “Tonto, I want you to run
around Silver and see if you can create enough of a breeze to make
him start to feel better.”

Tonto said, “Sure, Kemosabe,” and took off running circles around
Silver.

Not able to do anything else but wait, the Lone Ranger returned to
the bar to finish his drink.

A few minutes later, another cowboy struts into the bar and asks,
“Who owns that big white horse outside?”

The Lone Ranger stands again, and claims, “I do, what’s wrong with
him this time?”

The cowboy looks him in the eye and says, “Nothing, but you left your
Injun runnin’.”

I’ll say this one time…  the number 109 should be read as “one – zero – nine”…not “one- oh – nine”.

‘Oh’ is a letter.  Zero is a number.

Wow…15000 days old is just around the corner.

I had a very nice birthday…thank you to the 19 people who remembered.  And that’s counting the two Happy Birthday’s I got at the restaurant last night from the two old people who over heard Lily singing Happy Birthday to me.  You know you are being loud when old people can over hear you in a restaurant.

I got a wonderful watermelon cake with 3 candles.  Why three candles?  Because Lily is three, that’s why.  And we all know – it’s all about Lily!

The Horoscopes usually have a “If today is your birthday” section.  For those born June 20th, it says you are “logical and easy to get along with.   You have stone chiseled good looks”.  If you’re born June 21st is says you are “a bit whimpy and you look like you always need to shave”.

Anyways, it occurred to me – I don’t really feel old.  But I have other things going on that someone would look at and say, “whoa, this dude is pushing 40″.  For one, I like a nicely ironed shirt.  I don’t know why.  And I don’t know why it didn’t matter to me in my 20’s that my shirt looked like a wadded up piece of aluminium foil.  I also don’t remember the last time I wore two socks that didn’t match.  Yes I do…it was in my 20’s.  I did wear two different dress shoes to work one time – but that’s a different story.

You know how you can tell women are getting old?  They start hanging towels in the bathroom that you aren’t allowed to use.  I have a bathroom filled with soap that we don’t use because it’s in some fancy starfish or seashell shape.

First of all, I’m not happy with the post office.  I use their “subscription” service so that every month, they ship me a roll of stamps.  Nice and convenient, and I always have stamps which I never, ever, ever steal from work for personal use.

Anyways, postage rates went up last month and the geniuses at the post office still shipped me a roll of $0.39 stamps.   I sent my trusty and very capable assistant to the post office to return the $0.39 stamps and pay the difference to buy a roll of $0.41 stamps.  No dice – they wouldn’t accept back an unopened roll of stamps.  Fine…I’ll buy a whole bunch of $0.02 stamps.

I fixed the subscription service and promptly received a roll of $0.41 stamps which I’ve been using for the last several weeks.  But not alone…I’ve been putting $0.02 stamps AND $0.41 stamps.  No reason – just wasn’t paying attention.

Not the smartest thing I’ve done this year.

Well, I’m 37 today.  Happy Birthday.  I was born at 10:28am at Tallahassee Memorial, now known as Tallahassee Regional Medical Center.  I weighed 8lbs 14oz. 

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Forget any idea of watching your weight around my house these days.  The question isn’t “do you want ice cream tonight?”…it’s “how much ice cream do you want tonight?”.

We went for ice cream after Lily’s art class again this afternoon.  We go to a place called Marbel Slab which I hate.  Not as much as I hate Carvel  (note:  NO CARVEL CAKE FOR MY BIRTHDAY!).  But I digress….

Marbel Slab has great icecream – althought I suggest not mixing gummy bears with chocolate icecream…yuck.  And the gummy bears turn into frozen pieces of colored tar.  Impossible to chew and they ruin the whole experience.  Anyways, I digress again…

I don’t like the Marbel Slab’s size breakdown for their cups of ice cream.  In a knock-off of Starbucks, (which prefers you call their sizes  Tall, Grande and Venti),  MS calls them “Like It”, “Love It” and “Gotta Have It”.  Sorry – you just sound stupid ordering a “Like It with white chocolate chips and Oreos”.

Let’s see…what should we talk about today?

I was convinced we needed blueberry pancakes again this morning.  Now, I don’t want to say Lily has me wrapped around her finger…but…ok, she does.  She was good this morning.  She got to go to Starbucks with me and to the office while Mom had a Dr. appt.  She looks like the little girl in the Coppertone Tanning ads – bleach blond hair, tan lines.

Department of Labor released some statistics on the increasing cost of our groceries.  Number one on the list, up 28.5% since May 2006 is Orange Juice.  Kind of funny that the number two item for biggest DECREASE in cost since May 2006 is chocolate chip cookies.

It’s amazing the number of houses for sale in my neighborhood.  Dozens and dozens of houses.  It’s almost sad seeing all the FOR SALE signs as you drive out of the neighborhood each day.  Sad because you never know who is going to move in!  Will they be mean?  Will they have a bad dog?  Will they be from New Jersey?  Will they be mean people from New Jersey with a bad dog?

Well, Lily’s friend Ms. Sarah couldn’t make it today.  She got hung up at work so we had to explain to Lily that she wasn’t coming.  Instead, we went to Toys R Us and then to the shoe store.

It’s hot today – 90 degrees…we are heading into the pool which is a nice, cool 82!

We were all up a little earlier than normal today – around 6:30 – thanks to Lily.  She slept good last night, just got up early.  So we made blueberry pancakes and we were done with breakfast before 8am. 

We went to the grocery store for the week and now it’s only 10am and we are done with a lot of our chores.

I’ve cleaned the kitchen and now Lily and I are going to run the vacuum cleaner.  Ms. Sarah comes over at 12:30 to watch Lily for awhile.  Diane and I are going to do some shopping.  Lily has been counting down the hours to Ms. Sarah’s arrival since last night.  Her favorite part of the day yesterday was “talking about Ms. Sarah coming to play”.

You can always tell it’s Saturday around here.  The house smells of pancakes and Diane is sitting in her chair guarding the TV remote making sure no one changes the TV off of HGTV.   I swear, I’m one episode of “Landscaper’s Challenge” or “Flip This House” from going off the deep end!

Well, here we find ourselves in the middle of June on a hot Friday afternoon. What to do, what to do, what to do?

If you have AOL’s instant messenger, my screen name is  floridafrt  .

I’ve got some projects to finish up at home this weekend.  I’ve worked on the laundry room the last two nights, so I’m kind of hoping to get that one polished off.  I have some work to do on one of the new cabinets I hung. And a little paint touchup.  Other than that, we have an almost entirely new laundry room!  It looks great – new washer and dry and cabinets up on the wall.  New coat of paint, new baseboards!  Almost makes you want to jump in there and wash some clothes.  Well, almost.

It was an easy week at work this week.  Nice having two people in the office now.

Oh, I think I’m going to try a lawn service for the summer.  It’ll be nice to not have to spent 5 hours of my weekend in the yard when it’s better off spent getting a few things done inside.  And, honestly, as cheap as this guy is – I should have done this years ago.  He’s doing my whole yard for less than half of what I would have paid!  Sucker!

It’s Tuesday. I’ve got a lot going on at work thanks to a screwed up warehouse. Long story. Let’s just say this warehouse is better off forgeting about computerizing and should stick with the ol’ spiral notebook to keep track of things. The only other thing that comes to mind is the old saying that at work “people rise to their highest level of incompetence”.

I had a nice lunch with Diane and Lily today out in town. I had a great club sandwich and a GIANT sweet tea with that good, crushed ice that you can only get out to eat. Lily is such a character now. She’s going on and on about us putting together a band and she keeps coming up with songs we should sing together. I guess Diane isn’t going to be in the band because Lily told me last night we could “sell Mommy a ticket so she can come to our concert”.

Here are some good news stories for your amusement.

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and finally, TODAY’S LINK THAT MEANS SOMETHING TO SOMEONE

Just finished four full days off…wow.  Kinda nice, actually.

Here’s a question… are you considered unemployed if you still get a paycheck?

OK, that’s enough…

Worked my butt off in the yard yesterday.  I think I only got 30 minutes of pool time.  I think I’m going to look into a lawn service for the summer.  We’ve got some interior projects to get going on and I need my weekends! 

Lily’s favorite part of her day yesterday was catching the snake.  She asked if we could go find him again this morning.

I got my parking space this morning.  In fact, I pulled in just ahead of the Babe so she got to watch me unload my car and come in while she hoofed it from across the lot in her 5 inch sparkling white heels.

Lily has art class today at 1:30…other than that, not too much else going on!