Glow In The Dark - Stereo Edition

Recently my husband and I had to take a late night drive a few hours north to pick up my daughter who was returning from a vacation.

We made our usual stop at our usual rest stop about half way through the trip.

If you've been to Florida, you have certainly seen these little brown Gecko lizards running across sidewalks and up walls. Sometimes they run in mini herds in front of you. My cats love to bring them in the house to us. You have to be careful how you grab them because if you get the tail instead of the body, they will drop their tail and run off, leaving their still-wriggling tail in your fingers. Kind of creepy. But they are just harmless lizards, as common as flies or mosquitos and just a part of living here.

However, at the rest stop, late at night, under the harsh lights, these two guys looked like they were glowing. 

 

Hopefully they've not been bitten by any radioactive spiders.

 

Lizards and Spiders and Bears, Oh My!

Just another perk of living in Southwest Florida :

When your mail carrier asks you to kill the brown widow spider in your mailbox.

Snark of the Day

So, if you're in the business of Restoration and Mitigation, don't you think you should know how to spell LIGHTNING??

The Office comes to The Office

Our office copier was making odd noises last week and we called our copy repair center to come take a look. While the repairman was tinkering, he said he needed to make 50 copies of something to make sure the problem had been rectified. One of the girls in the office gave him a ream of unopened paper.

The repairman was enthralled with our paper. As my boss was walking towards him, he held out the paper and asked "When did this become a real thing?" I was thinking, "What, paper? Copy paper for a copier? Why is that weird?" The repairman continued to chuckle over the paper and took a picture to send to his wife. He started reading quotes off the paper wrapper. Again, I wondered why the paper was so wonderful.

After the repairman left, I took out another ream of paper and read the wrapping to see what was so marvelous about it. I found nothing. It looked like a standard ream of paper to me.

Then I googled the paper company name and learned it originated from the television show "The Office". Since I don't watch that show, the significance was lost on me.

At least the copier repair guy got a good laugh out of it.

Don't Like the Weather? Wait a Minute

Florida has always had odd weather, but it can generally be considered (in my head) either Rainy Season or Brushfire Season.

Thanks to El Nino (according to my local television meteorologist), we are experiencing some extreme weather. Here in Southwest Florida, we enjoy abundant warm sunshine until Christmas time, when the temperatures dip a bit. However, this past Christmas week, temperatures were 20 degrees warmer than usual and we were on track to tie the record high of 86 on Christmas day.

Then we had some of this, which I am calling smog:

 

And then some of this lovely rain and fog:

 

 

 

And last weekend, for the first time, I actually received a tornado warning on my cell phone. A confirmed F2 touched down a few miles from our home on 1/9/16: 

 

 

I've not seen this many blue roofs since we moved to Florida just ahead of Hurricane Charley in 2004.

 

On 1/14/15, we experienced sonic booms from naval air operations.

 

Then, this past Friday 1/15/16; all of us in the office received tornado warning alerts on our cell phones. We closed all the outer doors and prepared to take shelter in the restrooms if necessary. My daughter texted to let me know her school was lining up in the hallways for the tornado alert. An F1 tornado touched down a few miles from my office:

 

Notice the wooden boards driven upright into the ground.

On Sunday 1/17, an F2 tornado tragically claimed the lives of two residents in Duette. The couple's son and grandchildren were able to crawl from the wreckage. Also on Sunday, severe storms caused a "meteotsunami" in Naples. The water depth rose from average top of 4 feet to 7 feet:

 

A meteotsunami? Really? I've never heard of such a thing. My spellcheck doesn't even accept it as a real word. What is going on in Southwest Florida? It's not even rainy season! Not even close! 

 

Many times I've joked that the world is becoming just as "The Day After Tomorrow" predicted, but now I'm wondering if that is really a joke at all.

 

 

 

 



The Things That Stick With You For No Reason

Two lovely ladies are retiring from our office. They work in Wisconsin, so I have not had the pleasure of meeting them. Our webmaster posted a photo of the ladies with their congratulatory cakes  on our intranet:

This is a very sweet picture but immediately I thought of Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer on SNL as NPR hosts Margaret Jo McCullen & Terry Rialto:

 

All that Midwestern wholesomeness just jumps right out at you!

Not Quite Chicken Soup

Sometime in the past I tried new recipes using Ditalini pasta, bow ties, and barley. No, not in the same recipe. Now I've got opened boxes of pasta and a partially used bag of barley in my pantry. I hate that. The last time I organized the pantry, I took out the opened items and left them on the counter, hoping that would inspire me to throw them into something. Of course that idea didn't work and I just kept moving them around on the counter when I cleaned. Then I happened to look at the box of Ditalini and lo and behold, there was a recipe on the back that used BOTH Ditalini and barley. So I made soup.

 

It was really quite good!  It also had potatoes in it. It looked like Chicken Noodle Soup but of course it didn't have that oily slick that Chicken Noodle Soup has that prevents me from eating it because I find it so gross. I thought it would be perfect for my vegetarian daughter, and healthy for my son the personal trainer. I had two and a half quarts of soup left after we tried it. And then we looked at it in the refrigerator for a week before I threw it away.

 

Sigh.

 

 

Tender Tears

Happy New Year to all of you! 

It now seems ironic that my first post of 2016 is somewhat melancholy. At work today we received an email from our corporate office letting us know that the mother/grandmother of some of the producers in that office had passed away on January 1st.

The obituary was so warm, and loving, and personal, that I was practically weeping at my desk. I didn't even KNOW this person, nor do I know her son or grandson, who both work for our company. I don't know if it's the Irish references, Betty's personality jumping off the page, the fact that I had words with a family member last night that may have left me in an emotional state, or a combination of all of these, but I was both tickled and saddened to read about Betty. Here is a little piece of the email:

A devout Catholic, Betty personified what it meant to be a member of the Greatest Generation; ever devoted to her family, faith, and country. Betty was a graduate of Holy Angels Academy and Marquette University where she was a member of Kappa Beta Gamma. While attending Marquette, Betty met John Kuhnmuench, and she agreed to be his wife right before he went off to serve in the Army Air Corp in WWII. Although Betty left her maiden name Kelley at the altar, she forever remained Irish through and through. She had an amazing Irish wit and one would certainly be remiss if they tried to pull one over on her although her boys never seemed to give up trying. Despite the obvious struggles that came with raising five boys, Betty never lost her balance but rather she firmly held her ground in doling out order. She also had enough wisdom to know that there is not a bad situation that cannot be resolved with prayer and a bit of Irish blarney accompanied with the warmth of twinkling Irish eyes and the charm of an Irish smile.

In the early 70’s Betty, along with three dear friends, began the Settlers Estate Sales partnership which was the first estate sale business in Southeastern Wisconsin to sell directly from a clients home, while also extending their service to leaving the house not only empty but also clean for the new arriving occupants. After Betty retired from the Settler’s she had more time to do what she enjoyed most, spending quality time with family and friends. During the summer, Betty cherished her time at the family cottage in Elkhart Lake, WI, where she and John attended many a summer party in the company of life-long friends. In addition, Betty loved traveling with John to Ireland, Europe, Russia, and the Panama Canal. In her later years, she enjoyed a nightly cocktail with John in their home on Spooner while watching Wheel of Fortune. A voracious reader, she enjoyed good books, history, and politics. Betty’s passion for Bridge was well known and she played at a championship caliber level for most of her 94 years. Until her last days with us, she always had a genuine concern for the well-being of others. Betty truly loved life and the companionship that came with loving others.
God Speed Mom;
Dad, and Bob have faithfully been waiting for you.

Doesn't it make you wish you had known Betty? That you could have been lucky enough to count her among your friends? It certainly makes me want to live my life more like she did. I hope my friends and family remember me with a smile, much as Betty's loved ones remember her.