Archives October 2002

Last night Ali and I worked the concession at Teco Arena for our office charity team. It was a fun time. Unfortunately the event wasn’t very well attended and we only raised 100 bucks for 3 – 4 hours of work for 12-13 people. It was interesting to be on the other side of the counter. Got home at 10:30 and crashed. A long day. Our first cool front of the fall came through last night. The temperature dropped down into the 60’s for the first time in 6 months. A pleasant change. Since moving to Fla I actually look forward to the winters. A complete 180 from living in PA where I would be depressed for the next 5 or 6 months. We did tons of outside work on the house during the past summer, sweating our asses off the entire time. In retrospect it would have been smarter to put off a lot of those ass busting projects until the winter when the environment is much friendlier!

Played some UNreal on the clan server last night. The only time I enjoy it much is when I can snipe. Otherwise you just have freaks translocating all over the place. I just strafe while firing blindly hoping it will hit someone. Just constant chaos.

2 inches of rain the other night turned our property into a swamp again. Our front drainage ditch had about 30 dead 2 inch long fish in it. Where did they come from? I can only assume from the clouds. Weirdest thing.

The Dreamcast is up for sale on ebay. I am hoping to raise enough funds from the sale to pay for a barebones Xbox system. That is the only way I can swing it with a guilt free conscience. Ordered a Canon A200 digital camera with some of our air miles yesterday. Nice little 2 megapixel camera. I finally won an auction for a GS style steering wheel for my Buick. Can’t wait to get it!

This past weekend was our big anniversary weekend. We stayed up in Siesta Keys saturday night. I booked the placed through Expedia. It was 3 or 3.5 stars on their site. After being there I’d say it was closer to a 2 star place. It was clean enough and beachfront but it looked like it was built in the 60’s or 70’s and never updated since then. It reminded me of the Beach View in Rehoboth. But still I splurged for the ocean view and our actual room was fine so it wasn’t bad, just not great. We went down to the local shopping district where they also were having an art show. It was nice but we didn’t buy anything and it was very very hot. Then we hung by the pool bar, played some shuffleboard and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant.

Sunday we played in our volleyball tournament. We didn’t manage to win a game but it was still a good time. Ali has not played hardly any volleyball in the past 3 years. I just appreciate the fact that she was willing to go out there and play with me. All of my vball info is here https://blog.duf.net/vball.htm We were done by 2 and home by 5. A quick dip in the pool and then we just relaxed watching the Rams beat the Raiders. (good for the Rams!) A busy but enjoyable weekend. It’s nice to step out of the box and do something different once in awhile. Next weekend we get our new bedroom furniture!

CBT Cafe :: Flash MX 3D Text Animation Tutorial Wow this is a cool effect, look for it to show up on one of my sites soon. 🙂

This past weekend I had an interesting thing happen. I was mowing the grass, sweating my ass off. I got up to a dug out drainage area that was almost dried up. As I walked by I noticed something moving. Upon close inspection I realized they were small catfish! I retrieved 8 of them! I put them in our small artificial pond. How they got there I have no idea. One theory is they fell out of the clouds during a storm. I have heard that fish (very small ones) can get pulled up into the clouds. Another is they were in the underground water table. One time I found a 6 inch long one in that same area that was dead already but I assumed it was dropped by a bird.

The wildlife down here has been one of the most interesting aspects of living in SW Florida. We regularly see things we never ever saw before right in our backyard.

Today is our 4 year anniversary. Dinner at PF Chang’s, some marital relations and Survivior is on the schedule. Fancy? No but we are happy. 🙂 4 years so far. We continue the celebration by playing a vball tournament this weekend in Siesta Keys. Should be fun. We watched the wedding video last night.

Only played 1 game of Warcraft last night. An ugly loss with another one of those annoying partners. You know they type that constantly bitch and spend more time telling you what to do instead of working together. I hate that shit. I am scratching my way towards being a .500 player. Need to win about 10 in a row to get there. They just released a 1.03 patch. This patch significantly lessens the powers of Shamans. Unfortunately using Shamans was one of the reasons I had been able to win a few games. Guess it is time to find a new strat.

Saw a sweet deal on Ebay on a Sony Vaio P4 2.4 ghz for $995. I’d love to pull the trigger but had to realize there are other things I need to put that money towards. 🙁

Yesterday Ali and I decided to go practice for our upcoming doubles tournament at Lowdermilk Park, right by the gulf. Shortly after we started we saw a beautiful looking large bird flying overhead. Upon closer inspection we realized it was a bald eagle! We never saw one down here before and we weren’t aware that they even hung out in our neck of the woods. He landed on top of a tall tree and watched. As we practiced we started to realize how awesome it was to be practicing right by the beach, with pelicans flying overhead, the sounds of the water, right after work in the middle of October. It was one of those moments that reminded us of why we wanted to live here. We need to do it more often. Lately life seems like one long sweaty session of endless house projects, spending money, cleaning and maintenance.

Yep why not blog? Things happen to me too. I can be boring and drone on as well as the next guy so sit back, relax and try to stay awake.