Archives February 2003

Still in the process of cleaning up the mess left over from whatever tweaks my host did. The message board was hammered since yesterday. The Frontpage stuff is slowly being put back together. Evidently, they had someone spamming off the server I am hosted on. To troubleshoot, they disabled a bunch of stuff which in turn broke a lot of things. Nice huh?

Our outside storage shed is on order. A 12′ x 20′ behemoth that should be delivered within a couple weeks. It was supposed to be a surprise for Ali but the shed company blew my cover when they left a message on the machine at home about delivery. She is happy none the less but I was really going for the surprise factor on Valentine’s day. Bummer. It will allow us to really clear out some stuff from the house so we have 2 fully functional spare bedrooms.

Fishy has made an almost complete recovery. He is acting normal again and eating well. (on the new food) I suppose rumors of his imminent demise were premature! 🙂

Homey has been filling me in on how nasty the weather continues to be up in PA. Sub freezing for a long time now and snow scattered throughout the forecast. Worst winter up there in quite a few years. I’m happy to miss it! 🙂

My ISP has been having some issues that have caused my multiple headaches over the past day. They broke a number of things I had setup and I’m slowly putting it all back together. Annoying.

Not much to talk about except Joe Millionaire was a total waste last night. The entire show was just a recap. If it is going to be a recap they should advertise it as such and not try to squeeze one more show out of it. Pissed me off.

Beautiful weather here again.

France & Germany are trying to trip us up anyway they can in our preparations for moving against Iraq. I hope our leaders don’t soon forget their lack of cooperation.

Test entry

Pics from February 2003 I posted some pics of our weekend projects. We finished the rain barrels, planted a queen palm and built a plant table.

We also hit the county fair on Saturday night. It was quite busier than Tuesday as expected, but we still had fun. I bit the bullet and plopped down 10 bucks to ride the “special attraction” ride. I have to admit it was worth it. 150-200 feet arm with a car on either end that swivels as the the entire arm rotates. Unlike any ride I had done to date. It was a blast but I am glad Ali declined to go on it with me. She would have been terrified and traumatized. 🙂 We watched the high wire act again and were disappointed to find out the amazing Luiz falls down EVERY show and gets back up. Part of the routine. 😉 We split a funnel cake. It seemed like a good idea at the time, afterwards we vowed to never have one again. Sits in your gut like cement.

We were gonna do the beach on Sunday but we both had some mild sunburn going on from working outside Saturday so we decided to pass. Ali had heard that red tide was rolling in again so that was another reason to not go. Red Tide is some sort of reddish algae that kills fish but also emits something into the air. Last year we were at the beach during red tide and EVERYONE including us were constantly sneezing and coughing from the stuff. It was AWFUL.

I had to expel a snake family from our downspout this weekend. I felt bad but hopefully they will relocate somewhere else. Pictures of them are on the link above.

We watched the third Austin Powers movie this weekend. It was good not great. I guess the jokes starts to wear thin by the third movie. The gold member character is the dumbest and least funny of any that Mike Myers has played so far in the series.

This upcoming weekend we are having the long awaited yard sale. I am hoping to move a ton of unwanted stuff to clear up some room and make a few bucks. Crossing my fingers for good weather.

Hmmm been a few days. We went to the County Fair Tuesday night. A rip roaring time featuring a high wire act, motorcycle stunts, magic show, rides, animal exhibits and wrestling! It wasn’t full so we had full run of the place. The one downside is when there are few people, the carnival people jump on you like vultures to play their overpriced games to win worthless junk. We get free passes for being right next door. We may try it again this weekend.

Reality TV briefing. Russ on Bachelorette got the axe finally, about time. Now he can go write another book. Celebrity Mole is a VERY funny show. But the big deal was the Michael Jackson special. OH MY GOD. I knew he was eccentric but had no idea just how much so. I don’t think he is a child molestor by any means but his obsession of being with kids is very very odd. Heck I don’t want to grow up either but that doesn’t mean I want to spend all my time hanging with kids with single digit ages. It sounded like his dad had a huge part in why Michael is as weird as he is. That face! Man it is just brutal, brutal! The money this man spends is beyond belief. If you didnt see it, you need to find someone that taped it. It is THAT weird.

This morning my car was trailered up and hauled away. I sold it to a guy up in Tampa. I was sad seeing it go. I really enjoyed having a classic car again. I hardly got to enjoy it. Next time it will have an extinguisher in it. It will be a relief to not have to see the tarp covered carcass there tonight. It could have been worse, I could have not had it insured.

This weekend we are finally getting a gas grill. I look forward to my first burger or steak off the grill. It’s been a long time, since we lived in Wernersville. We are also plan ting our big queen palm as well as finishing up installation of our rain barrels. It would be great to be able to hit the beach as well. I am a little gun shy since my skin cancer screening. The doc at the health fair there said I had 3 or 4 that I should get checked. I went to my Doc and he said they looked ok but I should just keep an eye on them. So this weekend, out comes the ruler. I get to measure my blemishes. Getting old sucks.

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.