Ever since I have known Andy, which is almost six years now, he always seems to be on second shift during Halloween, and I always end up home alone. There has only been one Halloween since we met that we were both home for trick-or-treating, and that was five years ago. I hate to be such a party pooper, but I actually hide out every year for Halloween. With all the dogs, it just isn't practical to try to hold them back from escaping out the front door while handing out candy, so I don't even try. There aren't many kids in my neighborhood anyway, so I don't feel too bad about it.

This Halloween follows tradition, and I will be here alone again while Andy is at work. This year I have even more of a reason not to pass out candy; it is because I have to wake up at 1:50 to be at work at 3:00am and work twelve hours tomorrow. I may be going in at three all week long, but it is too early to tell just yet. So here in a couple of hours I will be turning off lights in the house and hiding upstairs hoping people think I am not home. Pathetic, isn't it?

I have been playing around with my new camera and have taken tons of pictures, mostly of the dogs. Andy says "Great, now we'll have a whole computer full of dog pictures." They do make good models though. I haven't quite mastered the new camera yet, but I am getting there. I need to figure out how to get greater depth of field in my photos.

After yesterday's super early start (I had to wake up at 1:50 am to get to work by 3:00 am), I was too tired to even blog last night. We had a "morale party" yesterday afternoon at work where we went to a pavillion in a park on the space center property and were treated to catering, music and beer. I only stayed a couple of hours and then came home to all the animals and an early bedtime. We had to get up at six this morning to take Cody, the diabetic dog, in to the vet for his monthly glucose testing (it was good this time, yay!) and we brought Annabel, our newly rescued poodle, along for Dr. George to give her a look as well. He said she had a yeast infection in her ears, so we got some cleanser and drops for that, but overall she looked good. I am thinking of taking her to some obedience classes and then for agility training as she seems to be a natural athlete. I think she would love it.

This week was an interesting one at work. As sort of an "extra curricular" volunteer thing at work, I have served on an awards board for over three years. This past year I have also joined the next higher awards board as an alternate, and have been enjoying that. We give out some very prestigious awards consisting of beautiful trophies, money, and in some cases, space flown items to deserving employees in our company each month. Some of you may remeber that Andy was the recipient of one of these in August. Since there are many thousands of people in our company, the awards are quite competitive, and I enjoy serving on the boards.

So anyway, the chair person of our board is stepping down, and the clear choice for her successor is, believe it or not, me. The official vote will be Tuesday, but chances are that I will be running unopposed. If I do get the chair position, I will become the primary representative for the next higher board (instead of the alternate) and will also be on the highest board of all, the one who makes the final choices for the winners each month. I know it is confusing as hell, but there is a whole hierarchy of boards. In any case it is a really good thing for me professionally because I will be networking with higher ups and that could be a good thing as far as future job opportunities. We'll see what happens on Tuesday.

Tj at Zazzafooky.com wrote an interesting post here, and it made me think about how the tooth fairy and Easter Bunny and Santa Claus were ruined for me as a kid. My parents were always great, but there were times they slipped up on this kind of stuff. The first one I remember was when I was four and I came out of my room in the middle of the night only to find them putting together my Easter basket. They tried to justify it somehow by saying they were helping the Easter Bunny or something like that but it just didn't fly. After that disappointment they went to great pains that year to convince me that Santa Claus was still real and they almost had me but there was still that suspicion in the back of my little five year old mind.

The funniest though was when they were so overtired (they worked hard) and forgot about the "tooth fairy." I would wake up in the morning and my tooth would still be there and I would ask what had happened, had the tooth fairy forgotten me? My dad would come into the room and mysteriously "find" a dollar bill on the window sill or some other silly place and they would tell me that the tooth fairy was getting senile or something. It was cute and funny that they tried.

I got the opportunity once to be a tooth fairy myself while I was a camp counselor. I took my responsibility very seriously and evertything worked out great. I didn't want to be the one responsible for destroying the illusion for a little girl. What about you, at what age did you find out that it was all just your parents' doing?

Wilma is long gone now and the weather behind her is much cooler and beautiful. It was in the low fifties this morning and the air was much drier. This is the first time we have seen temps below 69 or so in almost a year! Lucky me, I don't have to go to work again today, because Kennedy Space Center is still closed. Andy had to go in this morning at eight, because he is a member of the DART team- Disaster And Recovery Team that has to go in first to asses the damage after the storm and make sure it is safe for everyone to return to work. Hopefully he will be home soon. I have been around the neighborhood and most of the mess is cleaned up already- just some small trees down and the like. The worst I have seen is at a small business just up the street, Walter's Orchids. The entire greenhouse is completely smashed flat. It is pretty sad.

Well Andy just made it back from KSC and work starts back at six am tomorroow, so this will be our last "free day." The windows are open, the day is beautiful and I for one, intend to enjoy it!

I say almost aftermath because although the rain has stopped, the wind is still blowing quite hard. We went out and started dragging some of the fallen branches around and surveying the damage. It looks like damage to the house was limited to a window screen being torn, and damage to the yard includes the loss of a few plants, a lot of palm fronds and some papayas. Click on the photo above for a slideshow of the pictures I took around the house when we finally emerged.

Well, I think we are in the full fury of Wilma, as least as bad as it is going to get here. There is a little water coming in our french doors even though there is a huge covered porch over them. Our papaya tree is losing a lot of leaves, and there is all kinds of crap in the pool including half of one of our plants that broke off and fell in. According to our electronic rain guage we have had 3.94 inches of rain since midnight. The wind started blowing through the dog door a little while ago, and I had to close it off, but the weird thing was that the wind that came in had a really strange smell to it. I guess it is the smell of the hurricane.

OOHHHH- our big heavy cabinet on the back porch almost blew over and we had to make a rescue mission to save it. There is starting to be the sound of debris hitting the house. It is getting a little scary out there. We are now up to 4.29 inches of rain and counting.

Hurricane Wilma has been moving closer all night and luckily we still have power and get some "breaks" of less wind and rain between feeder bands of the storm. We are under tornado watches now for the next couple of hours and one touched down last night in an area called Cocoa Village that is only a couple of miles from here. We saw a transformer explode last night in the distance and flash blue-green light. The power flickered off here about five or six times, but always came back.

If the storm wasn't enough, last night I was brushing my hair and something went dreadfully wrong with one of the muscles in my upper back near my left shoulder. It is a pulled muscle or something like that, but more excruciating than I have ever felt. It feels like I am being stabbed in the back of my left lung. It was almost imposssible to sleep or sit or move, etc. So I have that to deal with as well. If I find the perfect position to sit and don't move at all then it is okay, but I can't just stay still all the time.

The worst of the hurricane isn't expected to be here for another couple of hours, but it looks like we already have some trees down in the neighborhood, as you can see in the picture I took out the window. All in all we are faring pretty well so far; I will keep everyone posted.

These are the pictures I took the first day that the in-laws arrived, which was the only nice day weatherwise of their trip. We got to hang out a little in the backyard while Louie, the black dog showed off and made everyone play fetch with him. In the pictures are Andy, his mom and dad, and his grandparents.

We don't get snow days here in Florida, but tomorrow we are off work for a hurricane day, which is the only natural disaster we get out of work for. Believe it or not, last year we got ten days off work paid for hurricanes. This year this is the first time we have been able to stay home for a storm, and the whole county and a few neighboring counties are shut down with no school and no government offices and most businesses closed. The storm is supposed to move fast and by Tuesday the weather is projected to be nice, and it is even going to be cooler finally.

I am not really worried about this hurricane. It is coming from the west coast of Florida, and we are on the east coast and it is extremely unlikely to do much damage in our area. I seriously doubt we will even lose power- we are on one of the strongest power grids I know of. Even last year after all the hurricanes we went through, we only lost power in one out of the three of them, and then only for about 24 hours, while many around us were without for weeks. I think someone important, like a high ranking person in the power company's organization lives on our power grid. That is the only thing I can think of. I mean last year, our power was brought back up before the nearby grocery store's, and the gas stations' and everything.

Whatever happens with Wilma, we are prepared. We have a generator standing by in case of any outages, it has it's own electrical box where it plugs right in to the house. We have a window a/c unit that we can use so that we don't have to run the whole house central a/c on the generator, which would probably work, but would suck down a lot of gas. We have 20 gallons of gas in cans and both vehicles nearly full for the generator. We have flashlights and batteries and radios and rabbit ears for the TV if the cable goes. We have plenty of groceries and propane for the gas grill as well. So we are all set. No need to worry at all. I am just going to sit back and enjoy the fact that I don't have to go to work tomorrow!

I try to eat very healthily pretty much all of the time. I eat whole grains and only good carbs and no sugar and no caffeine. My one little thing is that I like to chew sugarless gum because the allergy medicine I take makes my mouth dry. Well even my sugarless gum is out the window now. Someone brought in to work an article from the internet that they had printed out about the dangers of the artificial sweetener aspartame. The article can be found here. After reading about it, I will never consume aspartame in any form whatsoever again- it is some scary stuff. And it doesn't even seem to help with weight control either. In one study the article states that a control group converted to an aspartame-free diet lost an average of 19 pounds. So now I can't have my gum anymore. I swear I am headed toward an all natural macrobiotic diet one of these days. My mom is the same way- she and her friend are even milling their own flour and all. What next?

Our next door neighbors sold their house and left for the last time today. They have been great neighbors and friends for the past four and a half years and it is really sad to see them go. They are moving a couple hours drive away, so we may not see them again, and I know we will miss them.

We met the couple that bought their house this weekend and they seem nice but they are not able to move yet due to the fact that they have a son in college who does not want to move. They may be renting the house out in the interim, so who knows who will be living there, or if it will stay empty. It is just so strange not having Kaye and Jerry there anymore, I can't get over it.

Rebecca, my very first blog friend has tagged me so here goes:

Ten years ago: I was still living in the Virgin Islands although I was getting close to coming back home.

Five years ago: I was living in Merritt Island in a rental house on a canal with Andy. It was only a couple of months before he asked me to marry him.

One year ago: I was fighting with our horrible pool company to get them to finish the damn thing already!

Five snacks: Cheese sticks, sugar-free Russell Stover peanut butter cups, Dr. Kracker flatbreads, salted pumpkin seeds, and macadamia nuts.

Five songs I know all the words to: I know lots of songs but I am completely drawing a blank right now for some reason.

Five things I would do with $100 million: Build a fabulous log cabin on the property we just bought in North Carolina, Buy and restore my favorite airplane, a Beechcraft Staggerwing, adopt ten more poodles, buy my sister a new house, and get a plasma TV.

Five things I would never wear: Black nail polish, heels, vinyl, fur, plastic shoes

Five favorite TV shows: The Real World, Survivor, House, The Simpsons, Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals

Five biggest joys: Andy, my poodles, Charley the parrot, my home, my work (when I feel that I have made a real contribution).

Five favorite toys: Laptop, Digital SLR (new Nikon D50), Pocket PC, Bluetooth cellphone, iPod

Five people to pass this on to: I am not going to obligate anyone because I am not sure who has done this. If you are reading this and want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged.

Yesterday afternoon when I got home from work I found a wrapped package on the table. Andy was still at work since he is on second shift still, but shortly after I got home he called, and asked if I had noticed the package. Of course I had. He said it was my birthday gift, but my birthday isn't until November 4th. I asked why it was there now, and when do I open it. He said "whenever you want" and I was amazed because I am the most impatient person on the planet and normally he makes me wait to open gifts. Did I wait to open it?

I am on hiatus tonight. So very sleepy. I'll be back tomorrow.

...or they'll be false to you, as my grandma always says. So this afternoon after work I had a dreaded dentist appointment. It was just a cleaning, but I still hate it. This was only the fourth visit I have had to the dentist since I took about a seven year hiatus from going at all. I know, that is pretty bad, but I didn't get a single cavity in that time and my teeth weren't even that dirty. But anyway, now I have really good dental insurance, and I am forced to do the right thing and go to the dentist every six months even though I don't like it.

My dentist is really cool, he is a fun person, not at all serious. His office used to be right across the street from where it is now, and it was right at the edge of the Indian River, so you could sit back and look out at the boats on the water. The new office is nice too, but I miss the view, it was calming.

My dental hygenist is nice too, but can be a little rough with the floss. I was telling her today how at my very first dentist visit at age four, I talked the hygenist into not polishing the backs of my teeth because it tickled. My mom was bit ticked off at me for that one. In contrast to my very early history of tooth care, Andy never went to the dentist until he was in the Army. His parents never took him. I can't believe that.

I told my hygenist that when she flossed my teeth that I had a mental image of two men with one of those two handled saw sawing into my gums. She laughed and I think she went a little easier on me than usual. She'll be working on Andy's teeth tomorrow morning, so hopefully she will go easy on him too.

Today was a bad day all around. When my alarm clock went off at 4:37, I apparently turned it off and didn't get up until an hour later, and then had to rush to get ready in time. I had a big zit on my face, so I was already not too happy about that, but at least my hair looked nice after I curled it. When I got to work, I knew something was wrong because all of the doors of the building were propped open. It seems that the air conditioning was not working and hadn't worked since Friday night. Our air conditioning is some kind of strange heat exchage system and when it doesn't work, it is actually like the heat is on. Outside it was in the mid eighties with near 100% humidity, but actually was much cooler than inside, so when I stood outside to cool off, the humidity made all of the curl in my hair fall straight out and my hair looked like shit for the rest of the day. After suffering through our morning meeting in the stifling conference room, I retreated to another building that had functioning a/c until things were fixed. The rest of the day was unremarkable and then when I came home from work and set out on my afternoon walk/run, I hit an area of broken asphalt, turned my ankle and managed to scrape up my shin and hands in the process. I should have known, when I didn't get up on time this morning, that I shouldn't have gotten out of bed at all today!

I am the main decorator of the house, but the garage belongs to Andy and he has been working fixing it up for quite a while. One of the things he has wanted to do for a long time is this weeks's project, the garage floor. He is painting the garage floor with that Rustoleum Epoxy Shield stuff, so it looks like I will be parking outside in the driveway for the next two weeks or so. He is doing half of the garage at a time, because we have so much crap in the garage that he has to shift it all to one side, paint it and then shift it all to the other side and paint it. We have to let it cure for seven days before we can drive on it, so my poor Jeep will be out in the elements for a while. The floor is looking good, though.

Here is what the epoxy shield looks like in the grey color. It comes in tan as well, and the little colored "sprinkles" are included in the package for you to sprinkle over the paint while it is still wet.

This is the new door we just put on the side of the garage that we picked up on clearance for forty bucks. Not bad, huh?

Here is a nother view of the half of the garage that has been painted. Tuesday Andy will move all the crap over to that side and finish the job.

And this is the silly note that Andy put on the door leading out to the garage from the kitchen so his idiot wife (me) wouldn't forget and step out onto the wet paint.

Today is Charley's 2nd hatchday, meaning his cute self broke out of the egg two years ago today. He was hand raised by a sweet couple who had to feed him every couple of hours for several months until he got old enough to be weaned. We got him when he was a four month old baby, in February of 2004. I had gotten the idea that I wanted a bird, and ran the idea past Andy. He thought it might be cool, so I spent several weeks doing research to try to find what kind of bird would be the best for us. We settled on an Eclectus parrot, but we were going to get a female, until we met Charley. The females of the species are bright red and blue, and the males are mostly green. Charley was the cutest sweetest thing, and had been raised well, so we decided to get him instead of a female. We already had a cage at home waiting for him, as well as toys, dishes, swings, etc.

That first day he was so timid, but very sweet. The only noise he made for quite a while was "haw." Whenever he would call out to us, we would say "hello" and he quickly learned to say it. After that we taught him "Hi Mommy," and "pretty bird." We haven't tried to teach him to say anything since then. We haven't had to, he just picks up things that we say a lot. Actually, things that I say a lot. He always wants to copy me. His current vocabulary consists of somewhere around sixty phrases, which is quite impressive. His voice is clear and childlike. I have included links to recordings I made with my iPod of Charley talking one morning. The recordings are several months old and he talks much better now, but you will get the idea. He is also shy in front of recording devices, so it is not his best talking. They are kind of quiet recordings, and they start off slow, but give them a chance. You won't hear anything until about 30 seconds into the recording, and a lot of it at the beginning is gibberish.

Click here to hear 'Charley Talking'
Click here to hear more 'Charley Talking'

I have heard it said before that the lowest form of blogging is posting about blogging. I am going to do it anyway, so oh well. For quite a while now I have felt like I know my audience, that the people who would read what I wrote would be Glitter, Patrice, Rebecca, the other Rebecca, Missuz J (also a Rebecca), Ramblin Girl, Katy, Jeremy, Gabsmash, Allison, TJ, No-L, Shannon, absent.canadian, Mary, Ellen, Poppy, NME, Valerie, Amy, Windigo, Srini, Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, ben.run, Erasmus, Stacey, and a few members of my family. Forgive me if I have left anyone out.

I have gotten a few comments lately from some different readers, that have apparently read a good bit of my blog but I never even knew they were there, which kind of surprised me. Actually it surprises me that anyone reads my drivel, but that is beside the point. So, if you are one of my readers that has never introduced yourself, feel free to leave a comment and let me know that you are there; if you have a blog I would like to check it out too. If you have just been lurking in the shadows and not commenting, well that is okay too, but it would be nice to "meet" you.

I guess sooner or later it happens to us all, but I have been so busy with the new pup, work and such that my mind goes blank when it comes to posting right now. All I can think about is our new family addition, so I am sorry if it is too much of the same. Thanks to all of my great readers for the well wishes for our newly rescued poodle, Annabel. She is still doing very well, but it is going to take a while and a bit of work to get her fully ingrained in the pack and trustworthy. She spent a lot of her young life kept in a crate, and now she is a bit clingy and follows me or Andy like a little shadow. She is mostly potty trained but gets a little confused sometimes. There is also the issue that she has a had a lot of names, and I am sure that is befuddling to such a young pup. The name on her "papers" from Argentina (she was originally brought here from Argentina as a baby) was Brisa, which is kind of cute. I just discovered that yesterday because her papers are all in Spanish. Then the old lady in South Florida who had her and kept her in the crate all the time named her Yumm Yumm. I know, it is horrible. When she was taken into foster care with the poodle rescue group, her foster mom said that the name "Yumm Yumm" had to go, and renamed her Annabel. Fortunately when a dog is given up a lot of times it is a good idea to change their name so they don't associate the old name with bad experiences and can start all over. I liked the name Annabel a lot and didn't want to confuse her further, so Annabel she is. But she still doesn't seem to fully realize that her name is Annabel. The funny part is, that although she doesn't know her name, our parrot Charley does. Last night Andy called for her and we heard Charley say "Annabel" right after Andy said it. We were pretty surprised since she has only been in the house for a couple of days. That bird never ceases to amaze me.

Everything went well with Annabel's first night with us. She slept snuggled up next to me and was a very good girl. Today we showed her how to use the dog door again, and she wasn't as scared as before. I went out back without her where I could see her through the French doors, and it was like a light bulb went on in her little head when she figured out that she could be outside with me if she used the dog door. She came racing out very happy with herself. She also has been playing with Louie, the dog closest to her age, and while Louie is really concerned about not being the baby anymore, we can tell that he really likes her. It is like she has always been here already.

This morning we received the puppy to transport down to the foster home where we were to pick Annabel up. The four month old puppy was named Ladybug and was a wild little thing. I had to struggle to restrain her from running all over the truck. She was great and cute, but made me realize I am not prepared to take on so young of a puppy right now, with Ollie being so old (almost eighteen years) and Cody's diabetes. It would be too chaotic. When we got there and met Annabel, it was as though she knew we were there for her and she took to us instantly. She is the sweetest and cutest little thing. She was an angel for the whole trip home and is already fitting into our "pack" well. She moves like a gracefull gazelle and can jump startling distances off furniture, and she loves to play with our flip flops. We are still finding out what she is like, but we know we love her, and that she is a very good girl. It was hard for me to get a photo of her at all because she is rarely still, being a puppy. More to follow.