It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is boring.

Last Saturday I decided to treat myself to a Starbucks coffee, a bike ride to get me there, and some Kindle time reading a new book. Everything was going great until Rain man dropped by. I took me only a  minute to realize that I had met this guy about a year prior (during my last quiet vacation to Starbucks). Like most people of his…ummm…type, he didn’t really care that I was reading a book or that the other two guys he decided to regale with his abilities were conversing. His shtick was the following:

- He could tell you the number of counties in any state of the union

- What day of the week any date that you gave him fell on.

- Year that each state joined the Union.

He proceeded to ask me and these other two guys a million questions simply so he could answer them and theoretically amaze everyone. The problem is that I didn’t want to be amazed and I’m also a skeptic. I theorized that all of this guys “knowledge” could be had by most people if they decided to waste a lot of time memorizing useless facts. What day of the week was March 13th, 1967? Monday. You know how I know? Google. I didn’t have to spend the better part of a portion of my life figuring out how the calendar works and factoring in leap years.

I kind of felt sorry for the guy and especially sorry for the other two guys as I clicked the power off on my book and said goodbye. I realized on the bike ride home that these “Rain men” are not so cool anymore since the proliferation of the internet and instant answers to everything. Like me, others are not as impressed that off the top of his head he knew that there were 102 counties in Illinois. Oh well…chalk it up to another lost art form humbled by the internet.

Taking the plunge

As mentioned, Sam wanted everyone to jump in the pool with their clothes on for his birthday. Why? Who knows. This kid is the product of some very goofy genetic code. We will likely be repeating this next year. Better to preserve a relatively tame tradition than to leave it open to his creative imagination to come up with something that might be more daunting. As promised, here is the video.

Will you still need me?, will you still feed me?...

Today is Sam’s birthday. Grandma and Grandpa Carroll are here. The weather is great. I think Sam picked a perfect day to join us 6 years ago. This is also the 1 year anniversary of my dad finishing his chemotherapy. It’s already been “one of those weeks”, but as I type this I know that things are ok.

 

 

Stay tuned because one of Sam’s wishes for his birthday is that everyone is to jump in the pool with their clothes on. I’m not kidding. I think this is best served by video.

Heat miser is coming to town

It’s getting to be that time of year here in Florida. Bizarro time. Most of the country waits until summer to have fairs, beach days, vacations to the theme parks, but in Florida we treat it like the rest of the country’s winter. Everyone waves goodbye to each other for the summer and disappears into the air conditioning. When fall rolls around we all gather back out in front of our houses and talk about what a hard summer it was. We don’t trade stories of shoveling snow or skidding our cars into ditches. We talk about when little Timmy thought it would be funny to pull the thermostat off the wall and we had to wait 4 hours before the air conditioning man could make it. We almost lost poor ma. We tell the funny story of how dad still has steering wheel marks on his hands from the third degree burns he received when he forgot to check how hot it was inside the car. Oh sure we sometimes run into each other at the super market, but instead of parkas and snow boots we walk quickly across the parking lot to avoid having our shoes melt, or picking up a quick forming melanoma. Well it’s been nice getting back to writing here, but I have to go throw some freon in the old AC. Don’t want to get caught in the scorcher of ‘10 without some planning ahead.

Hell’s bells

I was riding my bike this week to get my daily average above 2/10ths of a mile per day, when I encountered an interesting cultural clash. Being the polite and informed bike rider that I am, I gave a friendly and safety minded “ching ching” bell ring to a couple that was walking ahead of me on the sidewalk. In Europe I found that this was meant with complete indifference, a friendly wave, or even a “here’s some more room” maneuver by the warned party. In Land O Lakes, apparently, the sound of a bicycle bell means “Look out I’m going to kill you by running over you with my bike” because that is the reaction that the lady closest to my bike at the time, had. She must have jumped 20 feet and likely peed her pants. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out, I just gave them a wave and yelled, “Sorry!”. Curiously this reminded me of a similar issue the last time I gave another walker a bell warning on the same stretch of sidewalk. Basically the same circumstances, but I could only make out a curse word or two after I zinged by. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I was the recipient of the curse words. If these people think it’s an affront or a scare tactic to have a bike bell aimed in their direction, just imagine their surprise when they get a load of the air horn I just bought. If they are going be all freaky about getting warned off I’m gonna have a little fun with them.

A beast of a feast…

I have an obligatory post due today regarding my visit to Sam’s school and their “Thanksgiving Feast”. Jen had to work, Sara had school, but me and Sam had a good time. I wonder what those people think of me? Maybe it’s a tad conceited to think that they pay any attention to me at all, but I drop Sam off and pick him up pretty much every day. I show up in the middle of the day in shorts, T-shirt, and in need of a shave. I’m sure most bets are on “unemployed slacker”. I guess they would be half right. Anyhow…here are some pictures of “The Feast”

It wasn’t me officer

So remember the people who were calling my phone? I have another story of mistaken identity.

We moved here in 2005, settled in, got ourselves established as the Carroll family on Hawk Hill Loop. Excited to get mail at our new address I would diligently retrieve the mail every day and was pretty excited when in no time I started to get mail addressed to me. I kept thinking it was strange that after all of these years people would still send mail to JOHN Carroll. I’ve worked hard to establish myself as the “No H” Jon Carroll. Even funnier, I thought, was that the mail kept coming to our house at 22711 even though the JOHN mail said it was supposed to go to 22811. By now, being the smart people that you are, you have determined that there might be more going on that just a simple misspelling or address issue. You would be right. Curiously this is what was occurring. Here are two residents of Hawk Hill Loop and their addresses.

John Carroll – 22811 Hawk Hill Loop

Jon Carroll – 22711 Hawk Hill Loop

Haha, this is funny, strange and confusing as hell for the Postwoman. The one additional side note that made me a little wary and concerned for my own identity is that I got a couple of “Notices to Appear” for the “H” John and I can’t really remember how I found out, but it was for Possession of Marijuana. This hasn’t been a problem yet, but I envision the day when I’m tooling around Land O Lakes on my scooter, minding my own business, when I’m surrounded by Sheriffs deputies in a weird episode of COPS. Remember this when you are watching late night TV and you get to point at the screen and yell out “I KNOW THAT GUY!”

Garbage Sale

The community garage sale is coming up in a couple of weeks and I’m having mixed feelings about it. On one hand I want to dump all the crappy things I own and don’t use on someone else and on the other hand I don’t want to deal with the people who would buy my junk. 80% of the things people put out at garage sales they would just give away if you asked for it. Putting a 50 cent price tag on it just makes you seem greedy. Then you have the people who will offer you 25 cents for your 50 cent item. I wonder if I could make more money off my junk by just putting a tip jar on the table. The other thing I think is funny is that I can’t leave my garage door open during a garage sale. If you do then people always want to buy the stuff in your garage. “You sellin’ that there freezer?” I’m surprised I don’t get people wandering through my house when I’m not looking. I’ll update you on the actual sale when it goes down. I’m sure there will be photos to be had.

The redcoats are coming!

I guess technically Orion’s colors are scarlet and black, but it doesn’t sound as cool when you say “The scarlet coats are coming!”

Larry and Wilma will be visiting sunny Florida in a couple of weeks. They are going to be in the area for almost a month and give us all a chance to celebrate together for many occasions…including Tim’s birthday, even though he won’t be here to help. He doesn’t know if but we celebrate his birthday every year, it’s just more fun when he isn’t here for it. We all buy each other gifts in his honor and have red velvet cake. (Just kidding Tim!)

We don’t have a lot of details yet, but we hope that this visit will allow them to enjoy the weather here and relax a bit away from home. I’m sure it’s a bit scary to travel after all that has happened over the past year, but it’s time. The plan is to get rid of the cooking, cleaning, doctor visit routine and replace it with more interesting things. Kayaking, swimming, maybe a little hang gliding.

Sunny is looking forward to seeing them again and Sam says that grandpa owes him a quarter. I don’t know what that’s about, but bring your quarters Larry.

Ringo shops here

I noticed that it has been a lot easier to park at one of our favorite lunch spots around Land O Lakes. The thing I noticed second is that it is because half the businesses in the plaza are boarded up. How is it that the crappy old pet store in the same plaza opens up day after day selling parakeets and gold fish, but Quiznos and a liquor store are closed down? I’m always amazed, especially in this economy, that there are certain businesses that are open that make no sense to me. I’m going to have to start taking pictures of them and we can all speculate together what is keeping X store open when Y store closes. Example: There is this little hobby shop down the road. They sell old train sets, remote controlled airplanes, and other gizmos. Right next door is a music shop selling sheet music and drumsticks and not the finger licking kind…unless you’re weird. How do they do it? Maybe I need to sit and talk with the owners and find out.

Baseball, apple pie, and Batavus…

I’m at one of those points again where I THINK I have nothing to write about, so I just start typing. Things seem a little mundane or I’ve already gone on about whatever is in my head too much. It’s been nice to relax as summer ends here in Florida and we are looking forward to the, usually, temperate fall and winter. I am enjoying the baseball season as the Cardinals have pretty much run away with the division and I’m trying to get Sam into baseball by way of talking him through a game or 10 on TV. He seems to get it, but like most kids, gets bored with it over time. I guess it takes years to appreciate a 3-2 fastball that freezes the hitter and gets an emphatic “Strike 3” from the umpire. We aren’t even close to talking about the squeeze play.

Since most of my posts haven’t had photos to accompany them I am attaching a picture of me and Sam watching a Cardinal game. It is pretty boring, but it has all the elements. Bag of chips, remote control, Cardinal attire, and proper reclination. It’s a new word. More soon….hopefully.

The Emperor is all around me

For those of you that don’t know, my home, Land O Lakes, FL, is the nudist capital of the world. I’m not sure how provable this is, but that’s what they say. The reason I mention this is that me and Jen have a running conversation when we think we spot these people. Contrary to what you might expect you don’t spot them because they are the only ones standing in line at the grocery store with all their produce out for everyone to see. We spot them, which is kind of funny, by their clothes. You see….nudists have the worst taste in clothes. Think about it. How good are you going to be at coordinating your outfit if A) You rarely wear clothes and B) You literally don’t like anything you try on? These people obviously don’t spend a lot of money on clothes and very rarely buy new ones, so what you get is a bunch of overly tan people in ill fitting, out of style, crappy clothes. How hard are they to spot now? The challenge is spotting them in Wal-Mart where that description applies to more than nudists. I think it would be hard to be a nudist. I would be watching where everyone sat when they came over and think twice before I sat in the same place and there’s never any change hidden behind the couch cushions. I heard the UPS guys talking one day about delivering packages to the nudist resorts and they said that after one day the interest wears pretty thin. The chances of being unpleasantly surprised greatly outweigh any possible benefits. I’m not sure they will appreciate it, but I’ll get some shots of possible nudists roaming the Land O Lakes streets.

Getting there

It’s hard to get used to posting some info. when I don’t have the entire morning to do so. You people who check in every morning are bound to be disappointed in me. We are settling into life post-exchange / post-Europe and are REALLY trying to make some changes. I have ridden my bike to our local grocery store now a couple of times since it strikes me as ludicrous to drive the car there. We are using the pool more since we have a new found appreciation for it. We had the neighbors over for a nice visit and a few beers. So all in all we are starting to get back to normal. It’s a little hard to come up with my goofy observations in what seems almost a normal world again. We did do one silly thing…after living in Sweden for 3 months what is one of the first stores we visited here? IKEA. The bad part is they don’t serve beer in the U.S. version of IKEA. We need to get with the program.

More later today after I wake up.

HOME!!!

Finally

After our usual rounds of plane, train, and automobile frenzy we are finally back home and full of additional stories. Let me tell you…the 9.5 hour flight was the worst for many reasons. When you finally get to the point where your brain is ready to be home you don’t want 9.5 hours of sitting in a cramped room full of strangers between you and the finish line. I think we are going to beat the jet lag simply by good timing. We arrived here at around 6:00 p.m. and were running on adrenaline. That works out to be about 11:00 p.m London time, so we just sucked it up for a couple of more hours and then crashed. I had to be up this morning for work, which is quite a shock, but it’s off to the races. I will try to update pictures and stories through today and the rest of the week.

Thanks again everyone for their support and help. Stay tuned.

“The list”

Things I’m going to do when I get home

1. Probably gain 10 lbs. I’m committed to changing our “eating out” lifestyle, but we’ll probably have to get a culinary tour of Land O Lakes out of the way.

2. Get our bikes in working order.

3. Figure out where we’ve gone wrong with the electric bill. All my electric bills since we’ve left and the Europeans have taken over, have been much lower.

4. Solve our cell phone situation. This one needs sub-categories, but we spend way too much money on cell phones. In a strange twist the only recession hit we are going to take thus far is that my company has determined that I don’t need a cell phone and they aren’t paying anymore.

5. This one isn’t this far down the list because of importance. See my mom and dad and anyone else that will have us.

6. Get a haircut from my favorite barber without resorting to hand signals.

7. Wander the aisles of Publix.

8. Take a big long swim in the pool.

9. Thank the neighbors for their help while we were away. They’ll say they didn’t do anything, but I’ll buy beer anyhow.

10. Start real life again….ugh.