You've seen them before; they're everywhere. You may even have a few yourself (we have one). They are the magnetic ribbons adorning cars all over the country supporting causes such as breast cancer, and groups such as the U.S. troops in Iraq. They are so common that you probably don't think twice when you see them; I know I don't. Except today, this afternoon as I was on my walk I passed a parked truck with a few of the ribbons on the back of it. I don't know what made me stop to look, perhaps it was the strange colors of these ribbons, turquoises and purples. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the ribbons read: Support Pimpin', Support Lap Dances, and Support Strippers. Not your average charitable causes, for sure! Here's one you may not have seen either, Support our Ribbons. Now we have ribbons supporting ribbons- where does it end?

This morning I was hanging out with some co-workers and few of us were talking about how our holiday weekends went. One of the guys commented that he had seen a really strange vulture type bird while they were out shopping. I piped up "Oh, you mean a Crested Caracara" and suddenly everyone looked at me like I had two heads. "Yes" he said. "We looked it up in a bird book when we got home. How the hell did you know that?" I had accidentally let it slip that I know about birds, not that it is any real secret or anything, but I am sure they think I am a mondo nerd, which I try to downplay, generally. If only they knew that I can also identify many birds by their calls alone, and have traveled to many far away places just to look at birds. If they could only see my well worn bird guide with its special cloth cover and each of the bird species marked by me as winter resident, summer resident or permanent resident. If only they could decipher my well worn lists of birds seen on various trips tucked inside the front pocket of my field guide, then they would know the true bird nerd that is me.

So Thanksgiving is over now and it is time to move on to the Christmas season. This is one of my favorite times of year, and I totally missed it last year since Andy and I were so worn out and disgusted from the pool building fiasco that we had no energy to even think about decorating for Christmas. It is really neat this year though, to unpack all of the great ornaments that I had forgotten about. I am totally anal about my Christmas decorations; everything is carefully packaged in tissue paper, bubble wrap and carefully labeled boxes. it is so much fun to "discover" all the ornaments again, as it has been two years since I have seen them.

I love decorating the tree, and Andy always bitches that I never let him help, but the truth is that he is always busy with something else and misses out. I waited for his ass today, but it took him forever to get ready to work on the tree and it was tough not to just do it without him. Men are pains in the ass. Here are some Christmas tree photos. As always (okay, most of the time) click on the photos for bigger pictures.

I haven't touched an Apple computer since grade school, and I can only barely remember it. Despite that, I have to admit that I have been a bit intrigued by them and ever since I got my iPod last year and started using iTunes software. I have really wanted to try an Apple for a while; they are supposed to be very good for artistic pursuits and Apple users display a type of fanaticism that makes me wonder what is so great about them. Well, finally I am getting my opportunity. This morning I saw that iBooks were on sale at the Apple store and I took the leap and ordered one. I can't wait to try it out. Maybe I'll turn into a crazed Apple fanatic now too.

Charley was feeling exceptionally photogenic and decided to show off a little today. I swear, that bird has no idea that he is a bird. He thinks he is a little human boy. I never knew before Charley how very demanding birds are, but I would have to say now that they are even more needy than dogs. But what other pet can tell you that he loves you, or say "Hi Mommy" or "You're so pretty?" He is a lot of fun.

This morning Andy gave him some of one of his favorite foods, pomegranate. If you aren't familiar with pomegranates they are a red juicy fruit filled with little "beads" inside that you eat. The juice from them is bright red and stains. I went into the room where Charley's cage is just a little while ago and it looked like a murder scene- there was red juice all over the tile floor. He can spray it about ten feet from his cage but I have no idea how he does it. I think he is really proud of his food throwing and spraying abilities. I am forever picking pieces of fruit out of the dogs' coats on their backs where Charley throws it. He lures them over to the cage and then throws fruit at them. It looks like quite a good time.

So anyways, here are his pictures from his photo shoot today (click the pictures for big). He is a real ham and loves to have his picture taken. Sometimes he likes to try to bite the camera as well, but we are working on that. He says the craziest things and is always talking. Well, except when people come over, and he clams up and won't say a word, but that is beside the point. Before we had Charley, I always thought that birds were very interesting and neat pets, but I didn't realize that I could actually love a bird. It turns out that I can. I really love Charley and despite the fact that he is messy, needy and loud, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Four years ago today Andy and I were married here in our own back yard. We had a small casual backyard barbeque style wedding, at very little expense, and it just goes to show how the type of wedding has very little bearing on how the relationship turns out, because even though we did not have a big formal fancy wedding, we love each other more every day and look forward to spending the rest of our lives together.

We decided we didn't want to spend our anniversary cooking, so we ordered a fully cooked turkey dinner with everthing from Publix, the grocery store here, and all we have to do is heat it up. It is just the two of us this year, so we are going to have a ton of leftovers, but that is okay. I hope that all of you are able to spend this holiday with someone you love too. Happy Thankgiving to everyone and enjoy your day!

We have a real problem at our house lately. It has been going on for a couple of months, but the frequency has increased. You see we get these phone calls in the middle of the night, and when we answer, there is only a slow soft beeping; no one is there. It is not like the beeping or screeching of a fax machine, we have a fax line too and it doesn't sound anything like that. I have described it to people who have told me that it sounds like a computer auto-dialer. It calls about three or four nights a week, in the middle of the night anywhere from ten at night to three in the morning and it always calls twice, spaced exactly five minutes apart. It shows up as unknown on the caller ID, and the number can't be blocked because it is unknown. I have contacted the phone cpompany several times to try to figure out what to do to make it stop, and at first they suggested their service that will not let any calls through unless they are identified on caller ID. We had this service a while ago, and had to cancel due to the fact that we were not getting some important calls because they were blocked. So, we don't want to do that again. They suggested call trace, which requires you to dial *57 after the offending call and it sends the trace to their annoyance call center. After three traces, you can turn it over to law enforcement. The guy at the phone company assured me that you can trace any number.

Well, as I found out last night, you can't trace any number. At around 11:40 last night when I was awakened by the usual call, I tried the trace feature and it said "We're sorry. The star feature cannot be used to call this number, trace this number or add this number to your list." Dialing *69 gives the same result. I was livid. I called up the phone company again today and asked what was going on. The crappy lady on the phone said "oh, they must have blocked the number." Well, no shit lady, but what the hell is the point of having call tracing when the shit doesn't even work on a blocked number? She was most unhelpful and graciously offered to change our phone number for us for free. Woo hoo. Then all I have to do is call the two million places and people that have out number and change it with them, and order new checks with the new number printed on them and order new tags for my dogs' collars with the new number, etc. No thank you.

She told me that my only other option was to contact law enforcement and see if they will do anything about it. It is considered harassment when someone calls you like that. Doesn't it seem crazy that the phone company can't figure out who is calling me? What if I was receiving bomb threats or something? I bet they would find out in a matter of seconds where the call came from, blocked or not. And what is law enforcement going to do? Don't they have to go through the phone company as well?

Before you ask, we have considered other options, such as turning off the ringer at night, but I would never remember to turn it back on, and there is the fact that Andy works second shift, and if anything were to happen I want him to be able to reach me.

I find this crap to be really infuriating. I get up at around 4:45 each morning and therefore have to go to bed early to get enough sleep. When I get these calls in the middle of the night, they disrupt my sleep and startle me so much that a lot of times it takes hours for me to fall asleep again. Lately with it happening more and more frequently, I am so ticked off when I am awakened by one of these calls, so fuming mad that my general pissed offed-ness keeps me awake. I feel like I want to reach throug the phone lines and grab someone by the neck! Solutions anyone?

This weekend we have spent time prepping for next week when we will put up the Christamas tree. There is a lot more to it than one would think. Last year we did not put up the tree at all because we were so worn out from dealing with having our pool built and doing all the landscaping and everything ourselves, so we just said screw it.

So, in the time since we last had the tree up, a few things have changed. We got Charley, our large parrot in his large cage that now resides where the Chrismas tree goes in the Dining room. He loves to throw his food and is extremely messy, so this weekend Andy spent hours scraping dried fruit and such off the walls behind and around his cage and repainting them. He also made a large plexiglass guard for the cage, so that Charley can't do that to the walls again.

So then, Andy and I started shuffling the furniture around, trying to figure out how we could fit everything in the dining room. The tree has to go in there, because it has a really high ceiling; it goes all the way up to the second floor, and our tree is over nine feet tall. Charley's cage has to go in there too, because it is the only place it fits. We also have a pen for the two youngest dogs to go in when we are not at home in the dining room. I know, it sounds like a zoo, but it really isn't that bad. And then of course there is the dining room table, and a small cabinet that matches it for storing extra dishes and such. Fitting all of that stuff with the tree in there is going to be a challenge. I think I would really rather make it into a sitting room or something other than a dining room, because we hardly ever sit in there to eat. We always end up sitting at the bar in the kitchen. It is kind of a waste of space to have that big old table in there anyway. I like the idea of having a small dining table with a couple of comfy chairs and a nice area rug.

Anyway, back to the holiday planning. The nice thing about not putting up the tree last year is I forgot about all of the cute ornaments we have. I started looking at some of them today and am excited to hang them. My favorite ones are the Boyd's Bears plush ornaments that are little bears dressed in holiday costumes. They are all ready to come out of their boxes and tissue paper next week. What about you? Are you ready for the holidays? Do the holidays force you to rearrange your house like we have to?

I am pretty excited about getting some time off work for Thanksgiving. To top it off, Andy's and my anniversary falls on Thanksgiving day this year, so it will be really nice to celebrate that as well. But, it left me with a bit of a dilemma as far as what to get him for our anninversary. He didn't want me to spend much money on him for our anninversary because he is drooling over a laptop computer that he wants (and actually needs) for Christmas and would rather I saved for that. But still, I have to do something for him to show I love him. I came up with something that didn't cost a cent, and has some thought put into it, so he is bound to like it.

I painted this portrait of our newest dog, Annabel that we rescued almost two months ago. We have a whole pet portrait wall that contains paintings of all of our pets, past and present and the new painting will be a quite appropriate addition. All of the portraits are painted on wood, including the one I just did, so I was able to use scrap wood from the garage. Some of the portraits were done by me, and some were done by our favorite artist in Cocoa Village, the same one who painted most of the birds that appear in my blog templates (all of them except the toucan, so far). Here is the portrait wall, and the larger paintings are the ones I did. The little boxes made up uf several tiny paintings were done by Lori Prell.

Does that sound like it will make an okay anniversary gift when I am not supposed to spend much money? Do you have an idea for something better that I should know about?

Since I have lived in Florida for most of my life, I forget that a lot of people don't consider it normal to be supporting non-paying squatters in their homes. The squatters I am speaking of are the geckos that share our house. They are kind of cute little lizards about two to three inches long that usually only come out at night and eat bugs. What more could you ask for really? They are better than a lot of the roomates I have had.

One time Andy's aunt and uncle from Ohio were here "visiting." Actually it was more like a free vacation for them; they were just using us as a hotel, basically. His aunt saw one of our geckos in the bathroom one night and FREAKED OUT. She was appalled, first that there was a lizard in the house, and second that we knew about it and told her to leave him alone. Little did she know if I had to choose between her and the gecko, the gecko would stay. At least he ate bugs, and he didn't leave a pile of sand in the bottom of my bathtub either.

Just like the Beatles song. No really, my blog designer and I have been working on a bunch of skins and there are now four choices and I change the default template from time to time. I am not sure if I am changing the defaut template correctly, and I can't seem to check it on my own computer, so tell me what blog template you see. There is the original green, then the lovely pink and yellow, the new and exciting orange and blue, and the latest, the red one with the toucan that yours truly painted. You can pick your favorite in the sidebar and skin the site however you like it best.

The people in the very first house in the front of our neighborhood must be awfully pissed about something. They have gone and started painting their house the most hideous shade of reddish orange (for a house) that I have ever seen in my life. When I turned into the neighborhood this afternoon I almost ran off the road when I saw it. What on earth would posess them? The only thing I can think of is that they may be doing it to piss off the woman who lives next door to them who is a real bitch, and probably told them to clean up their shit because she is about to put her house up for sale. If that is the case than they fixed her good because no one is going to want to live next to that. They have only just started painting, too, so it is only going to get worse as more orange is applied. They are even painting the soffit and everything. I gotta get out of here; these people are crazy.

Today at work I was part of a convoy to deliver a large piece of flight hardware to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) where it will be put back on the orbiter. We took the Forward Reaction Control System to OPF Bay 1 where it will be installed on Atlantis. The piece we were transporting goes on the nose of the shuttle- you can probably sort of recognize it. Our convoy could not go faster than 15 miles per hour and we had police escorts so we got to back up traffic on the space center for miles. It was such a production, as always, and I took these pictures so you can see what it was like. We had one motorist violate our convoy and they were slapped with a $250 ticket. Ouch!

Andy comes from a very small town in rural Ohio, where most of his family still live. He talked to his parents this weekend and they mentioned something about the fact that they weren't sure if they were going to go to church anymore. It seems that the issue of gay marriage came up in the church, and the local chapter of the church decided for some reason that the congregation needed to vote on whether or not to allow it. This despite the fact that the vast majority of the people in the church, or even in the small town have never met anyone that is gay. The people got so up in arms about it and apparently almost all of them felt so strongly one way or another that it completely tore the church apart and hardly anyone attends now. There is even talk of disbanding the church altogether.

I think this is completely crazy. Many of these people that are feuding have gone to church together for decades, and now they won't speak to one another, over an issue that doesn't even personally concern them. I just can't understand how people who believe themselves to be good Christians could treat other people like that. I guess just going to church doesn't make you a good person!

I saw a bit of a show on the Discovery Channel or something that was about some of the studies that are done to simulate the long term effects of being weightless in space. They were saying how these studies were important, especially if we are to venture farther and farther away, for the astronauts bodies have to be able to withstand the extended durations in space. Without gravity, bones get brittle, blood pressure gradients throughout the body are messed up and who know what else goes on.

The part that fascinated me was the part where they showed one of their simulated microgravity studies on healthy volunteers. The volunteers were wheeled around on gurneys and had to remain essentially motionless for months at a time. Can you even imagine how horrible that would be? Where do they even find people that would volunteer to do that? How much must they pay them to stay still for months on end? Would you ever participate in such a study for say, three months, and if so, how much would they have to pay you to get you to do it?

Hooray! I was chosen as "Queen of the Week" by Ellen over at The Reign of Ellen. Click here to read my interview and while you're there check out Ellen's wonderful blog. She is a super talented cartoonist and is a great writer too, and I know you will want to blogroll her site if you haven't already!

My sister Alison finally came to visit us today for the first time since we have lived in Central Florida, which is about five and a half years. She has a good reason for not visiting up till now and that is that she has been busy with her two small children Lauren and Jakey. But today the three of them and Alison's Father-in-law's girlfriend came over and Andy and I took them all to the zoo. I don't have too many good pictures of my neice and nephew, so I went a little nuts with my new camera taking tons of pictures of them throughout the day.

The kids were funny. Lauren carried a package of salt water taffy that she got yesterday with her all day like someone was trying to take it from her, and every time Jakey saw an animal he would point at it and yell "doggie!" What a trip. Click on the photo above for the slideshow.

My oldest dog Ollie will be eighteen years old in January. He is doing well despite being deaf and having osteoporosis, but he has definitely regressed in his housetraining as of late. He is usually headed in the right direction when he poops, but often doesn't make it quite far enough. He goes out his dog door and heads across the porch and usually that is where he goes, right there in the middle of our covered porch.

To deal with the little poop nuggets left in the middle of the porch we have a small "poop rake" that is only about eight inches across. We use the rake to fling the crap out into the yard, and it is quite an art to do it correctly. If your arc is too high, you hit the ceiling of the porch and the poop comes thudding down, or worse yet, sticks up there. If you swing too wide to the left you might hit the house. If you don't get enough distance, you have to fling again. If your form isn't good, you could cause breakage, and have lots of little pieces of poop to fling. You must wait until the poop is dry enough, so you don't leave a skid mark. You have to make sure the rake is under the turd before you swing or you might strike the just edge and cause the poop to roll around. You have to make sure the intended path for the poop is clear of obstacles before you fling, because you wouldn't want to hit a dog with a turd.

It is almost a sport, I tell you. This could be the next big thing. There is nothing like watching a little dog turd fly through the air end over end in a perfect arc into the yard. Pure comedy, it is.

At work we all know that change is coming, in big ways. NASA is already in the earliest beginning stages of transitioning to the new vehicle, called the CEV, or crew exploration vehicle. We have known this for a while, but it only seems to really sink in little by little. This morning at our regular morning meeting our manager discussed some things that are coming down from upper management about the impending transition and some changes to come. He said it is suggested that we keep ourselves informed about the CEV and learn as much about it as possible. Our goals and objectives this year are to diversify our skills to ready ourselves for the change.

It is a little strange to think that all of us will probably be split up and working in different areas, but it is also exciting because it will be the beginning of something new and historic. A lot of the guys that I work with have worked together in the same area for more than twenty years, so it will really be tough for them. Changes may start very soon; at the area where I work we will be finishing up with the majority of our flight hardware work somewhere around May and some of us may be shipped out to work in other areas as early as then. I can't wait to see what happens.

Today at work the pain in the ass that I work with brought a giant bowl of nasty fish soup in to our tiny office and heated it up in the microwave so that the stink filled the whole end of the building. He offered to share but I make it a point not to eat things that smell bad. It was so pungent I couldn't even eat my lunch in there and the smell lingered until the end of the day despite air fresheners that were sprayed. And that was one of the better parts of the day if you know what I mean. Tomorrow HAS to go more smoothly!

You may have noticed the recent transformation of my blog. It looks pretty good, huh? Well, more changes are to come. My fabulous blog designer, Gry from D-Eskimo, and I have been putting together a whole slew of "skins" for my blog, and there is going to be some variety here. Every design will still be available by going to the skin chooser in the sidebar, so you can decide for yourself which you like the best. New designs are in the works and you should see them soon.

Only a few of my friends know I have a blog. Only two of them know the address and have visited the site. I was talking about blogging one day with one of my work friends who "doesn't get" blogging and his question was, "How can you be friends with people when you have never even met them and don't really know if they are repesenting themselves correctly? How can you be friends with people you don't even know are real?'

I couldn't think of a good answer for that, but I am one that does consider blog friends to be real friends. I think that it is great that I have found people that like to hear what I have to say and vice versa, and some of these blog friends and I e-mail each other outside of blogging from time to time, and I feel like I know them. If I were to travel to where some of my blog friends lived, I would definitely want to meet up with them, and if they were to visit down here, I would welcome them.

My very first blog friend was Rebecca, then Ramblin' Girl, then Glitter, and TJ, and Patrice, Ellen, Stacey and the other Rebecca. These are the blog friends that I have actually conversed with. I hope they consider me a friend as well. There are lots more that I would love to be blog friends with, and I am sure in time we will get to know each other better.

What do you think? Are blog friends real or is it just strictly entertainment? Would you ever meet your blog friends in real life if the opportunity arose, or have you met some of them already?

This morning Andy and I were at the grocery store in the cleaner aisle contemplating the different detergents and such. This funny little old lady said to us, "they told me to get Palmolive, but look" and she pointed to the shelf that contained about fourteen different types of Palmolive, from "aromatherapy" to "cucumber melon." There were too many choices for her.

Andy and I were just talking about that the other day, how lately there seems to be a veritable "explosion" of new products. Where there used to be just Clorox bleach, there is now Clorox 2, Clorox bleach pen, Clorox wipes, Clorox bath wand, and half a dozen scents of Clorox. Think about ketchup. You can now get it in organic, low carb, flavored, in squeeze bottles, etc. We were at Lowe's last week and went past the Christmas stuff and they had all kinds of neat innovative new stuff like a little cylindrical zippered bag that held four reels for storing your christmas lights and garlands. Did you know they now sell little packets of catalyst in the paint department that you stir into any can of unwanted paint to make it harden, and then you can throw it away in the regular trash?

And if you go online you can find even more innovative stuff, like magnetic doorstops to keep your doors from blowing shut when you have the windows open, wireless pool alarms that you can put on your child's wrist or pet's collar to alert you if they fall in, and so on. Even companies that are famous for just one thing, Like Jelly Belly is with jelly beans, are now branching out. Jelly Belly now makes JBs, which are chocolates coated in some of the most popular Jelly Belly flavored coatings. They even make something called Sport Beans now, that are formulated with electrolytes and vitamins C and E.

With all these new products mushrooming around us, look for some of your old favorites to be discontinued. They can't possibly put all of this new stuff on the shelves at the store and still have room for all the old stuff, right?

It is my birthday today, and I worked so much earlier in the week (going in to work at 3 am) that I have the day off, so I am hanging out with the dogs. I just went out to check the mail a few minutes ago and in addition to a couple of birthday cards there was this official looking mailing, you know the kind that means something is wrong. It was one of those forms where you tear the stub off the end and peel the first layer back. On the front of it it said "WARNING: $2,000 fine or five years imprisonment or both for any person interfering or obstructing with delivery of this letter U.S. Mail TTT.18 SEC.1702 US Code." My heart started racing as I walked back to the house. I got inside and carefully opened the correspondence, only to find out that it was JUST AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR A MORTGAGE COMPANY! These people should be shot. They have devised more and more ways to give me heart failure when I check the freaking mail. Don't they realize that if they kill me I won't be able to respond to their damn ads?