Smelled something burning today at lunch. It instantly reminds me of the smell of my burnt up car. Certain smells stick in your head like that. Our basement growing up had a unique smell that I will never forget either.

It seems like we are back to more normal Florida winter weather. I had the A/C on after going to the gym over my lunch hour.

Last night we managed to get a 20 foot high queen palm tree from Home Depot to our house and unloaded in one piece. It was a great price and a beautiful tree so I had to jump on it. Unfortunately I won’t have a chance to plant it till the weekend.

Joe Millionaire last night. He cut the cute but annoying chick that talked like she was 15. No loss.

NASA memo figured wing damage#BODY#BODY Here is a clip that very clearly shows the foam hitting the underside of the shuttle’s left wing. It HAS to be connected.

Scotts Weblog My “sister” site. 🙂

Fishy appears to be recovering. He ate all of his food and is acting more normal again. Betta pellets, the miracle food…..

A great weekend. Perfect weather, low 70’s and sunny.

Friday was a bit stressful. Since I got the letter from code enforcement I have until this coming Saturday to get my Buick either in my garage or off my property. 2 guys in the Tampa area were interested in it. The one I know, and has helped me out multiple times with Buick questions. The other guy knows this guy and lives a couple miles from him. This guy seemed to be a bit of a double talker and wanted to give me one dollar amount if the title comes back as salvage another price if it comes back as clean. The guy I already know didn’t care and offered the same money as the other guy’s non-salvage title price. So I am selling it to him. He is supposed to be down Friday to pick it up, right before the deadline. It will be nice to have it all behind me, I’ve had quite enough of looking at my car’s dead carcass everyday. 🙁

Saturday morning I went to fly my RC planes with Mike. Great flying weather, some 20 degrees warmer than the previous Saturday morning. We had good flights until Mike had a control issue and wound up crashing his 600 dollar RC helicopter upside down. It was a pretty nasty crash as the blades shattered and various parts were bent or sheared. It is repairable but will just take some TLC and a few parts.

On the way home I heard the radio news flash about the shuttle. I was in disbelief. I remember how I felt when Challenger exploded. I got home and flipped on CNN. The constant video loop was playing where you see the remains of the shuttle streaking through the sky like a comet. The pictures of debris on the ground were coming in. Surreal. I don’t think this had quite the impact of the Challenger explosion because first it has happened before and second we didn’t have such graphic documentation of the explosion happening as we did with the Challenger. Regardless it is a tragic event and it will be quite interesting to see how this impacts the Shuttle Program. I certainly hope it doesn’t turn out that the debris that hit the shuttle during launch was not a factor in this. Space travel is inherently dangerous and incidents like this are painful reminders of that constant chance of disaster.

Saturday night we watched Signs. Similar to UNBREAKABLE, the movie was quite good but then started to come loose around the edges at the end. Poor Mel is looking his age. A good acting performance by the entire cast.

Sunday was a laid back day except in the afternoon we decided to hit Home Depot to get the materials we need to get our rain barrels set up. We broke down and finally picked up a compound mitre saw while we were there. It is fantastic to work with, effortless, perfectly square cuts. So much better than trying to eye it up with a circular saw. A purchase well worth the price, it will see heavy use over the years. We got the hardware mounted on the barrels and I had the big stand almost completed before we ran out of daylight.

We made a vow to get to the beach next weekend if the weather is good. Hard to believe we live so close but I’ve not seen the beach in at least 2 months. Inexcuseable.

Fishy ate! He seemed to not just be digging the bloodworms I used to feed him. On a whim I dug out a small sample bag of tiny Betta pellets. He seemed to like them. First time I saw him eat all week. There may be hope yet.

Got home last night and found a pretty piece of paper jammed in my door. The nice folks at code enforcement have given me a week to get the burned out Buick off the property or into my garage. If I don’t it is a $250 fine. Great….. I am hoping I have a buyer for it. He may be able to get it tomorrow. If not, I have to get a flatbed out here to load it up and dump it in my garage. Pain in the ass.

This weekend will be busy, we are rounding stuff up for a yardsale we are gonna have in a couple weeks. I have a bunch of little things around the house I need to get done. It seems the only time I get all the stuff done I want to during a weekend is if I write it out in a list. Otherwise I get sidetracked and/or forget about it. I guess there is something to the idea of writing out things…. motivates me to do it, to conquer the list……

Anyone see Russ on the Bacheloreete the other night? He looked like he was gonna crap his pants during the rose ceremony. Tip to Russ, chicks don’t dig guys that are desparate to be with them.

I got my settlement check for the Buick yesterday. It took a little less than a month so that isn’t too bad. I’m going to use the settlement to pay off some short term debt. We should come out of it in a much more favorable financial situation so at least that is something to be upbeat about.

Still feeling a bit off. Whenever I get this way it is normally a result of me dwelling on or thinking about things that only depress me. It comes and goes. I wish it would go.

Fishy is still not eating and being very lethargic. I’m sad to say I don’t think he is going to pull out of it.

I want to be a good citizen. I am interested in what the Prez has to say, but that State of the Union address is the most frustrating thing to watch. The applause after every other sentence is maddening. I don’t understand why he cannot simply make his address and then let congress applaud afterward. It really is distracting and makes it difficult to take in what he is saying. As expected I agreed with some of his ideas and disagreed with more. I was surprised he endorsed the idea of gasless automobiles, his oil buddies can’t be happy. I am glad he is determined to get rid of Saddam. That should have been done in 91. It was so funny watching the gratuitous shots of the audience. The close up of the ancient couple when George was talkin about health care for seniors. The close ups on Hilary and Lieberman when Bush was talking about the economy. They were golf clapping as they made sarcastic remarks to each other (you could tell) I hope his economic recovery plan actually works, but I am afraid all it is going to do is make the rich, richer and bury the US in tremendous debt. Sounds like the war starts in February, for sure…..

Homey hooked me up with some hosting space to offload my videos that I have on my site for RC stuff and vball. Big thanks to him!

Jon Carl’s site has been updated!

Down to 3 chicks in Joe Millionaire. He got rid of the ultra-conceited one last night. No loss

Tonight you get to see more bad singers on American Idol. Followed by the state of the union address. I’m sure the pres will be laying on the rah rah war talk heavy. Just get it over and kill the bastard. I can’t believe we haven’t done so long before now. I wonder how Dubya is gonna talk up the economy? It has fallen off the table since he took control and it looks like his plans will basically bury us in deficit spending again. Great plan George.

Great weather today. 70 and sunny.