Toodles for the weekend!

As I'm going to a lingerie party for a bride-to-be this weekend, I shant be here for a bit. They've extended the Sunday evening shindig for the whole weekend. Sounds like fun, and since we're going to the beach, I shall probably from Monday forward be referred to as Rock Lobster. We know the translucent white legs well, people.

We are also going (gasp) clubbing, I think. If I don't knock myself out with -- a club -- I will be back to share my escapes -- oh, I mean escapades ... wish me luck!

Ewww ...

This is just disgusting.

Book, anyone?

I've decided to start a book that I bought while book shopping during lunch with L -- Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, by Allan Gurganus. I've only read 9 pages of 718, but it's very good. And Christen, who doesn't read (gasp), said he might like to borrow it when I'm done because the only kind of book he reads is the war novel, which this kinda is. I don't usually read war novels, but it doesn't quite come across like that. I'll let you know.
Also, on my trip I reread Pat Conroy's Beach Music, which is beautiful, Nine Parts of Desire, which was obsessively interesting, and News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which was also quite good.
While we were waiting for the mall to open in Gainesville (so I could buy my bookworm teeshirt, but the place didn't have it anymore) we stopped at Books-A-Million, and I read Kathy Buckley's autobiography and bought Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch and a history book called Modern Times by Paul Johnson.
Happy Reading!

Long lost me.

So I'm back from vacation. I'm not sure if I'm thrilled about that or not; I had a fabulous time and wish I could be gone forever, but you know. Things to do; people to see. I'm leaving early for work to see if I can figure out where I am in terms of work -- there's always a million things to do there, so I'm sure I'm up 5 million in the hole to catch up on. And I missed my family. I'm going tonight to go visit them.
But vacation was so great! Saturday we drove all day and got to North Carolina around 5pm; we stayed at Jones Lake State Park and relished not having to be home. It was very pretty. The next day we drove to Prince William State Park in Virginia which is about 30 minutes outside of DC but in a whole other world -- you drive 5 miles into the forest to get to the campground. We saw beautiful deer out there - they don't even run up there! They just look at you and you look at them and they go back to nosing about in the woods.

We drove around DC at night Sunday night but we got stuck on some parkway and ended up outside of the city and just decided to go back to the campground. Monday we walked all around the city and saw as many monuments and museums as possible -- we went to the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of American History. They were awesome (and they were free! Who'da thunk it?!). I wanted desperately to see the Library of Congress but it was closed. I don't think I'd be allowed in based on my obsession with books; I don't have a congressional pass.

The second day around DC we were on our way out but we went to Arlington Cemetary. I have relatives there but you evidently have to know the year they died and their full name, and I just know I wasn't born yet. So I couldn't find them. I took a picture of a bunch of headstones and my mom can just pretend one of them is Mike. Arlington was very beautiful, and we were there the day before Renquist was buried.

After that we drove down the west side of Virginia and stayed at a little park called Claytor Lake and then continued on to Tennessee. In Tennessee we went to Fall Creek Falls State Park, and it was gorgeous! We stayed in a walk-in campsite so we weren't all around the RVs and hiked to see a gorge

and a waterfall (the highest waterfall east of the Rockys).

There was another hike to another waterfall, but it was across a suspension bridge to a 12-mile loop,

and we decided we just weren't up to that sort of activity that late in the day. We saw a lot more deer in Tennessee, and of course I took pictures. Did I mention I take pictures of everything? We had a raccoon nosing around our campsite one night and woke up to pawprints all over everything, and what did I do? I took a picture.

After 2 nights in Tennessee we went to Jackrabbit Mountain in North Carolina. It's right on the border of NC and Georgia, and if you stay on the other side of the mountain you're in Georgia. We took a 2-mile hike on the mountain and then settled in to watch the sunset from our campsite.

Our last night we stayed in a park in Georgia, and it was hot and mosquito-ridden, and the campsites didn't have much shelter from the other campsites (hey, reminds us of home!). But we listened to the Ga/SC football game on the radio (as the only two people in Georgia rooting for the Gamecocks) and went to bed early to escape the mosquitos that are entirely immune to Deet. Sunday we came back home and decided to go out to eat for dinner since we had nothing in the house (I made sure of that before we left) and found a great Chinese place not far from home. We've been looking for a good Chinese place on this side of the Bay, and I think we've finally found one.
And thus endeth "What I did on my Autumn vacation". Thank you, and good night. :)

Rock you like a hurricane.

So the hurricane missed us ... again. I can't say I'm upset, but I do feel bad for those hit. Hurricanes bite. This one I actually didn't know about until I was on the phone with a body shop in Jersey and they said ... okay, I'm borrowing from MooCow for a second and sock puppet theatre this one:

Body Man (not to be confused with Mountain Man, or James Taylor's Walking Man): Yer in Florida?
Me: Yesseree I am
BM: You gonna get hit by that hurricane?
Me: Hurricane? Oh, you mean that thing out in the Atlantic. Yeah, that's all the way on the other side of the state. What's it called? Katerina? Some figure skating name. Russian, maybe.


So then I came home and asked Christen:
Me: Is there a hurricane?
Him: Yeah, I don't know. I think so. When isn't there a hurricane?

All this was Friday. Now I'm looking at the pictures of New Orleans and Mississippi and I feel bad. Hope you're all alright!

Fine: $114.50

So there are these signs all over Safety Harbor: Do not block intersection; $114.50 Fine. How do you come up with that amount? I giggle every time I see one.

We've decided where we're going for vacation, so Washington D.C. here we come! I'm so excited; we've decided to camp in Northern Virginia or Southern Maryland and go in to the city for a couple days and then heading to Tennessee and Fall Creek Falls Park for the rest of the week, stopping for a night here and there between destinations. I promise to take as many pictures as my memory card will allow, and I'll buy another card if I need to :)

You'd think, you know?

You'd think I had something to talk about. I mean, crazy things have been happening. Like my job -- I might not have one anymore. They are "reorganizing" and moving my department to New Jersey. I might be able to find a place down here, but the ratio doesn't support it -- there are more than 70 of us looking to be absorbed into about 12 jobs. So in the meantime, I must look for a new job. I do have an interview (with my own company) for another position today, but almost everybody in my department applied -- so may the best person win. It'll at least get me used to interviewing again, which I may be doing a lot of in the next few months. A few friends are looking for places for me in their own companies (thanks so much, guys) and I'm out on Monster, but .... I'm starting not to sleep. It'll be fine, I know. But there's always that anxiety ...
I'm also going on vacation. A real, honest-to-god vacation. We're going camping again, in Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. I'm so excited it's all I can do not to look at a map everytime I'm home. I'll be gone Sept 3-11. Hoorah!
So you'd think I had stuff to talk about. But with all this in my head it just wants to bounce around rather than come out here.