Guess I should throw something up here to let you know I'm alive. Been one of the most stressful weeks ever. JonMichael has been sick, which has thrown both of our work schedules off. I've had lots happening with work and on top of it all I'm supposed to preach Sunday night. I'll make it though.

I'm almost finished cleaning out the old house which will be a HUGE weight off my shoulders. Every time I go back in the old house to do stuff I get all stopped up within a few minutes, I don't know how I ever lived and breathed in that place. I'm loving our ceramic tile more and more, I'm not sure I'll ever want any carpet again.

This myspace thing is cracking me up. I started one to catch up with a few old friends, most of whom I've found by now. But people will see that you started one and send you a request to be added as one of your friends, even if they never were your friend to begin with. Not that they aren't nice people, that's not the thing at all, but it's just funny to me. "Hey, I used to park next to you in college, let's catch up!!" So if any of those people who are wondering why I haven't added you as a friend yet have found your way to my blog, don't take it personally, I don't even leave comments on my "friend's" pages.

MacGyver was my hero as a kid, so I was pretty excited to see that you can buy 5 seasons worth on dvd! No, I won't be buying it for myself, but a couple of years ago someone bought me a lava lamp so I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe...

Easy come, easy go. The plan was coming together nicely to buy another Jeep, then we moved into our new house. We love everything about it, but having neighbors will take some getting used to. We've got a pretty deep lot, but not very wide and the houses are pretty close together. Basically you walk out the door and you're hanging out with your neighbors, and my backyard feels almost like their backyard too. Thankfully we've got really nice people living next to us, they're our age with a 2 year old as well. The house on the other side isn't finished yet but I've started praying for our new neighbors already.

We've known that we were going to have a fence but I had just figured on chain link or weld wire, nothing too expensive. Now I'm seeing that I won't be happy unless I've got a tall wooden privacy fence. Not that I don't like people, but I do want my backyard to be mine.

The couple next door had some friends bring their tractor and bushog over on Saturday to clear out the backside of their lot and they did ours as well which was super nice of them. So now I can see what other equipment I'm going to have to rent to get the land prepped and I'm calling around to get estimates on the fence.

The Jeep can wait, I've got more important things to spend my money on right now and I'm happy to keep plugging along in the Jetta.

March is a pretty big months for us.

March 9 - Our wedding anniversary(4 years now)

March 13 - We closed on our house

March 19 - JonMichael's birthday(2 years old)

It's been a very busy past couple of weeks and I'm worn out.

Sesame Street gone bad? I'm starting to wonder...


JonMichael loves Elmo. He's ok but I was partial to Grover playing the part of the cute furry monster myself, but that's not the point. Someone gave him an Elmo video that is a full length movie called The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland.

It's all about how Elmo's blanket is blown down Oscar's trashcan and it gets sucked into a portal into Grouchland USA. After it ends up in Grouchland, this mean man named Huxley takes it from Elmo. Huxley is a greedy type who takes anything he sees and it becomes "mine". Elmo yells many times in this movie "Give Elmo back his blanket!" and "Elmo wants his blanket!". You did know that he only speaks of himself in 3rd person, right? Pretty stinkin annoying.

The point of this is that a couple of days ago I took JonMichael's blanket from him so we could do something and he yelled at me "Give me back my blanket! I want my blanket!" just like Elmo does.

So that video is trashed and the blanket isn't too far behind.

In this week's edition of "Keep Your Day Job Michael!", Michael discovers the exciting world of oystering!

There's a man in our church who's wife died about a month ago and he and I have been spending time together. He started talking to me last week about picking oysters and my mind rushed back to scalloping, which is one of the best times I've ever had. He said he was talking with our music minister the week before and that he was going to take him out to get oysters and asked if I wanted to go too. I jumped right on it and we set a date for today. Then he asks if I even like oysters and I tell him I don't know, I've only had 1 before but my friend loaded it down with hot sauce so I wouldn't really taste it. I tried to tell him that it didn't matter if I liked them or not, I'd still love to go with him. But oh no, he wouldn't have it that way. He gets up and goes to the fridge and pulls out a container full of shucked oysters and sets them in front of me. I ate about a half dozen with no ill effects so he said he'd take me.

Let me give you the abbreviated version of it...it's hard work. I was wearing a glove on one hand and with the other hand you beat them with an iron file when you get them because so many are stuck together. I cut my un-gloved hand a few times and whacked my gloved thumb twice. After 2 hours, I had 5 gallons to his 10. We were just walking on the oyster beds at low tide and gathering what we could find and it was stinkin' hard. Then I would look across the water to the guys out there on boats in deep water with the long post-hole digger looking things who were doing this for a living...eh, no thanks.

Some thoughts about the house and being a brand spankin new home owner...


It pretty much rocks.

Everything is clean. This is a big deal considering we have been living in an older home that, no matter how much you clean, you can't get it clean.

I can walk barefoot outside and not get spurs because we have beautiful sod.

I have to go buy a sprinkler today, because you know, I've got beautiful sod.

Ceramic tile is hard on barefeet. I think I'm gonna have to get some house shoes or some sandals that I only wear inside. Interesting story as to how we got tile. Our kid's doctor recommended that we not get carpet because the kid's and I have allergies. So the only option available to us was to do vinyl flooring thru the whole house. Not attractive, but my plan was to put in the laminate wood flooring after we moved in. As the house was being painted we started noticing cigarette butts on the floor but it was pretty dusty so we didn't notice until after they cleaned it out that those butts burned the floor in different places all over the house, about 10 burns in all. And in case you're wondering, no, you can't detect any cig stink at all or we wouldn't be living there. Anyway, it was going to take a very long time for the builder's to rip up all the vinyl flooring and put down new stuff so they offered ceramic tile to us at an insanely discounted rate and we jumped on it. So thanks to the smoking painters for getting us a sweet deal on ceramic tile.

Living in a neighborhood is going to be interesting and will take some getting used too. I like my space but I had to give that up in order to get this place. I've been joking about being the only guy in the neighborhood that will have a tall wooden privacy fence that incloses not only the back yard but the entire front yard as well. I enjoy shooting dogs and cats who wonder into my yard with a pellet gun. But now this will be very hard if not impossible in this new neighborhood. A sacrifice I am willing to make.

Air conditioning is of God. We had it in the old house but it never was very strong. The house wasn't insulated very well, and on a cold day if you stood in front of several windows you could feel the draft. We also had zero shade in the old house and because of the way the house sat the sun was always blasting thru the windows. But this new house is sealed tight as a drum and the sun only comes thru our bedroom window early in the morning, but other than that it doesn't shine in the house at all. All of this leads to a very cool house and I expect to be saving money on my electric bill. That money will then be dumped into my increased water bill because as you know by now, I've got beautiful sod to water.

OK, now for the rundown on the house...IT'S GREAT! I was up till 1 Sunday night and got up at 5 to go seal the grout in the tile, so going all day on 4 hours sleep was difficult. Thankfully we had read all the paperwork before closing and had our few questions written down so that part was easy. The only aggrevating part was that I was wanting to skip the common chit chat and hurry up but that's impossible when you bring your adorable 5 month old daughter who smiles at anything to closing with you.

A friend loaned us his large enclosed car trailer a couple of weeks ago so we already had lots of stuff loaded. Then I had several guys come over after church Sunday night to load as much as possible. They didn't have school Monday so those guys came back the next morning to help move. Didn't take too long and we stayed in the new place Monday. Yesterday Audra's mom and grandmother came to help get organized and last night I got pretty much all of the pictures on the wall so it really looks and feels like home.

After having a good night's sleep Monday night I was feeling pretty good yesterday. It was around lunch yesterday, that's when it started to began to sink in - we live here! The whole "King of my castle" thing started to hit pretty hard.

Today is the day I thought would never come. In 13 minutes I'm supposed to be at the attourney's office to sign on the dotted line(about 72 times, +- a few) and the house will be all ours! I'll be taking today and tomorrow off to get us moved so perhaps by Wednesday or Thursday I can put up some pics.

Some probably wonder why I would worry about a Jeep so much, why spend the money, why not just get a normal car and drive it. Here it is, vehicles are one of my only hobbies. Look at the stuff you enjoy and the money you spend. For some it's sporting events, maybe their music collection, and I know plenty who drop loads on the coolest technology. For me it's cars, and thankfully not the kind that cost big bucks either. I prefer older machines and I actually really enjoy driving my '87 Jetta right now.

The average person makes payments on a vechicle that costs around $10-12,000. That's not an official number that I found somewhere, just a good guess that I came up with and it's probably a conservative guess at that. However if I spent just $4,000 I could find a really solid Jeep, give me another thousand and I could build it to suit my needs perfectly. It won't take the Rubicon Trail, but I don't need it to.

Thankfully Jeeping is something I can share with the family. Not too many ways I can think of to spend a Saturday that are better than loading the family up and heading to the beach.

Audra wants another Jeep too, so that pretty much settles the issue. I've decided not to go with the one I found. When I first talked to the guy he said $2000, and so thinking I could get them down to maybe $18-1900 I thought it was worth a shot, but on Tuesday he said $3000 which is way too much for that one. It's in great shape no doubt and because I know the previous owners I know it's been taken care of. But the older 4banger just isn't worth it.

So here's what I'm looking to do...wait a little bit. I'm going to be patient and find just what I want. I was happy with my 93 4 cyl when I had it, but the 6 doesn't do much worse on gas and in the long run I think I'd be happier with it, so that's what I'm waiting for. It must be at least a 91 for the mpi, but I'd really like a 94 because it has an external slave cylinder on the trans, plus they started with the full roll bar back in 92. 95 would be great for the stronger u-joints, but due to the lack of rocks here in FL it's not a deciding factor. Besides, if I ever pulled the front apart to put in a locker then I could upgrad to TJ shafts and u-joints anyway.

So there you go, just for the 1 reader who understands all of this and the 2 or 3 who would understand half of this.

Found a Jeep yesterday. It's local, price is right, it's in great shape, and I know the previous owners and know how well they took care of it. Only a few setbacks really. First is it's an '89 with 4 cylinder which means it's tbi rather than mpi(so Ryan, give me your thoughts...), and since it's an 89 the rollbar doesn't cover the full back seat area. Probably wouldn't be a big deal at all, but it would still be nice to have. It also needs a new top, but the seats are mint and the back seat is fold and tumble. Plus it already has the tub lined so I wouldn't have to do that again. What to do, what to do...

I just talked with a guy for quite a while and the discussion turned to military service. He mentioned a few things about the military and about fighting and losing friends. Before this point I didn't realize this man was a veteran. I asked him if he served in Korea or Vietnam and he said, "No, the fighting I did never officially took place." He went on talking and later said that he was part of the Bay of Pigs ordeal. Wow.

I can't believe that I forgot the best part about my Charlie Moment yesterday! Read this post if you need to get the background for this situation, but basically my zipper was broken and stuck open and I didn't know it until after the first service and we were going to Sunday School.

Well I'm in the hall with Audra trying to fix it and we decide to go into an empty girl's Sunday School room. The girls were meeting with the guys yesterday. So there we are, giving it a good team effort to get my pants zipped up when the door flings open and 2 teenage girls come bopping in. We freeze, both with hands on my zipper, and then start bumbling for an explaination about how my zipper was stuck and we were trying to fix it. They just gave us this "Riiiiight, whatever..." look and head down the hall.

I'm a big softie really, especially for the down and out, even if that includes a dog. I had heard for a long time about different greyhound dog rescue groups, they save retired racing dogs from an abusive life after their days on the track are gone. Yesterday while I was at the Cordova Mall in Pensacola there was one of those groups there and they had several dogs that you could interact with and I could not believe how incredible they were. They were the sweetest dogs I've ever seen and their hair was softer than any dog I ever felt, so now I'm on a greyhound kick.

In case you need one more good distraction for your day, here's one bought to you by Heath.

And by the way, I'm sad that my post about the injured bad video has been banished to the archives, so I put a permanent link on the sidebar for now until I can think of a more fitting permanent tribute.

Jeff started this and I thought it was pretty cool so here's my list of the last 5 things I bought on eBay.

1 - River Raid II - an Atari game
2 - cell phone stuff for Audra
3 - a big bumper for my Jetta
4 - a high speed buffer/sander
5 - a rotary tool

Sunday School just ended and all of my students are now out in the parking lot hanging out. I'm always out there with them, but I'm not going today.

The second service is about to start and I usually check to see if by some strange and rare chance any students might be in there, but I'm not going to the second service either.

Instead, I'm just going to hide here in my office. That's right, hide. Why? I just discovered that at some point between getting dressed this morning and the beginning of Sunday School, my zipper broke and is separated in such a way that I can't get them zipped.

Charlie is contagious.

When RyanG was talking about losing weight and the discussion turned to cokes, I was reminded of how I don't really drink sodas much at all. It's kind of funny really, I backed off of them because of an experience I had during my first semester of college.

I started noticing that my hands were shaking, I couldn't keep them still for anything and I've generally got pretty steady hands. I figured the problem would go away but it only got worse. I was starting to get pretty worried as fears of parkinson's disease ran thru my head. Then one day it hit me and I instantly knew what the problem was.

My mom, desiring me to have all the comforts of home, sent me off to school with 3 flats of rootbeer, Dr. Pepper, and Pepsi. I had a small fridge in my room that was always stocked full and it became a habit that as soon as I walked in my room, I grabbed a can of coke and when I finished that one I'd get another. My supply eventually ran out so I went to Walmart and bought a few flats of cheap brand sodas and kept the addiction going. I also drank nothing but cokes at lunch and dinner.

Once I realized what was happening to me I quit cold turkey, resulting in a raging headache for a couple of days. Probably wasn't the best method of coming off the stuff but at least my hands quit shaking.
Even now I'll drink one every now and then(maybe once every other week) but for the most part I just have water sitting on my desk.

I'm a pretty picky eater and always have been. I don't mean to be and I wish I weren't but I can't really help it. I will try new things though to see if I like it. Last night I had brussels sprouts for the very first time. I heard they were like cabbage which I'm not real fond of, but I tried it anyway. They weren't bad and I finished my entire serving with no adverse reactions. Not something I found really delightful but I thought I might be able to acquire a taste for them in time. Everything was cool until I woke up at 1AM, feeling like I was about to puke. I never did but I was up for quite sometime trying to feel better. I don't know for sure if that's what made me sick but right now they seem like the easiest target so I'm blaming the sprouts. No more for me.

Someone just sent this to me, it's not your average graffiti.