• This is interesting: Duke University just completed the largest study of it's kind on low cal diets vs. low carb diets. They discovered that restricting carbs is no more effective than restricting calories. The ironic part? The Atkins Foundation sponsored it.
• Our church is full of goofballs, that's what I've decided. I can't remember a congregational meeting I've ever been to in my life that was filled with so much laughing. For that matter, I can't think of any other congregational meeting where everything went so smoothly. Nobody argued, nobody objected, nobody had anything more than kind words and minor curiosity. I think we spent more time eating and socializing than we did conducting business.
Well, today is Monday so I have to get back to work. *sigh*
• Hot dog! My last day in Florida and with one last chance to see if the alligator was sun tanning we swung around the front pond and sure enough there he was. This time I had my camera ready so I climbed down on the bank and took about 4 or 5 shots. Unfortunately I didn't have my sisters nice digital camera, so I had to make due with my moms old film loaded camera with no zoom. We'll have to wait and see if any of my shots come out when I get home. But I got 'em...I finally got him.
• I can't believe tonight is our last night here. When I wake up tomorrow, it may be the last time I ever see my grandfather. I don't like that thought, but I know it's true. He even admitted at dinner tonight that he woke up last night with such terrible chest pains he thought it might be the end already. It breaks my heart to imagine that day. So anyways...this morning we woke up early and headed to the beach. The waves on the gulf reminded me of Lake Erie. They were pretty weak. We hung out for a couple hours there before coming home for lunch where I wandered out back while I waited. Wouldn't ya know it, just as I looked up an alligator was entering the water. I noticed it just in time before it sunk below the surface. I was so excited that after we ate my mom and I went out for another bike ride (just as I had hoped we would), but to our disappointment we didn't find another one. I did peak my head into two culverts hoping I'd find one...I'm not sure if that was brave or stupid, but he wasn't in there either way. I was feeling pretty sick early this afternoon, so we spent it watching the Peterson trial. Me and gramps were surprized they convicted him with the way things seem to go nowadays. After the conviction we decided to go out for dinner before coming back for our last set of pinnochle. I teased that since they let us win the first game to draw us in they should let us win the last game to get us to come back. We played the game of our lives and actually won. It was close, but we played our hands just right and held them off in the end. It was great fun! Our plane doesn't take off until 5pm tomorrow, so we'll have the morning and early afternoon to relax and say our goodbyes.
• I slept in today until 9:20am and woke up feeling worse than yesterday. But I did see the alligator chilling in the ditch as we set out for running our errands in the morning, and that cheered me up quite a bit...except I didn't have my camera with me. He was only about 4' long, which my grandparents insist is small, but I wouldn't want to dance with him, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't either. So our errands brought us across the bridge into Punta Gorda, right on the Gulf, where the hurricane hit the hardest. It's normally a pretty hip place where tourists come, but it's looking a lot like a ghetto right now. After we took care of business and did some touring of the devastation we came home for lunch where I had Limburger cheese for the first time. I can't explain why, but I've always wanted to try Limburger cheese ever since I was a kid. I think it might have been the mystery of it all, knowing that it was so smelly and could gross people out. I knew grandpa loved it too and had grown up eating it, so I figured this would be the best time to finally give it a go. I was enjoying so many other firsts on this trip already it just seemed appropriate. Now let me tell you something about this cheese. I had never even smelled it before today and if I hadn't been forewarned as a child that it smelled so bad it could have ended WWII, I might have heaved when Grandma opened the package. The fortunate part is that I was prepared for a bad smell, but the unfortunate part was that I didn't expect it to smell like dirty underwear. It was so horrible to the nose that I had to stop using it to breathe! But I closed my eyes, hoped to god that it didn't taste anything like it smelled, and I'll be darned, it didn't. It was actually pretty damn good. I even had two sandwiches. But I gotta say the smell lingers on your hands all day, and even now, 12 hours later I can still smell it on the tips of my fingers. After lunch I rode the bike behind Grandma and Ma in the golf cart and went alligator hunting again, but this time armed with our cameras. We didn't find him out there but we'll try again once more tomorrow. After dinner we played some more pinnachle and this time we almost won. We lost 2 games to 1, but could have won 2-0 if they had filled me in on all the rules. I missed out on an opportunity because they forgot to tell me that a run only counts if you call trump. Cheaters. Anyways, it was fun but we still lost. Maybe tomorrow night...
• I was wrong, my Aunt Mary doesn't live in Orlando, she lives in Dayton. Her house is right on the river, just before it hits the ocean. Sitting on her couch means you're staring straight at the water where you are guaranteed to see a dolphin jump out every five minutes. It's absolutely amazing. They live in a three story house built in 1916 with creeky wood flooring and a private dock which we used to fish off of today as it poured buckets on us. Mom, Christy and I all caught one, but Christy clearly did the best by nearly catching several crabs. At one point a dolphin swam as close as 20' from our dock. What would have been cool is if it had jumped out of the water and put on a show for us, but instead it only broke the surface with its dorsil fin and swam by like a shark. I thought that was the neatest thing I'd ever seen. The ride from the Tampa/Sarasota area did take us 4 hours like expected, so we arrived at 1:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday. I have so many stories from that one day that it would be insane to even try and tell them all here...at least now. I'll have to do it one by one. I'll be satisfied just saying that they've all grown so much since I saw them four years ago, and they've turned out extremely well so far. I told Ashely ten times that she should think about being a model. She's 5' 9" at 14 years old, slender athletic type build, blonde hair, and just beautiful. I told her "listen, at your age right now you don't realize what you have, but believe me, by the time you're a junior you will...and you'll be stoked." Each one of them girls has got it too. Anyways, it's getting late and I'm still not feeling well, so I'm gonna log off now. I'm supposed to get out on the back nine to find that damn alligator tomorrow. I want to make sure I'm up for it by getting a good night's sleep!
• Today was pretty mellow. Gramps and I didn't feel very well, and I'm pretty sure I'm fighting off a sore throat. I ended up taking a two hour nap this afternoon that pretty much wiped out the day. Grandma over heard me talking to my mother early this morning about how we beat them last night at pinachle and ran in the room running some smack of her own. She let us have it good too. Sure enough they ran the table big time tonight. We didn't even come close. Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Orlando, which is about 4 hours away...well, I'm sure it'd only be 2 - 3 hours if they'd let me drive, but I don't expect that to happen. We're going to see my Aunt and 5 of the six girls. Uncle Scott is traveling and Mandy is living up in NY still. We haven't made it out to the back nine holes yet to see the aligator, but I told Grandma I won't leave here until we do. They say it isn't too big, but an aligator is an aligator when you come from California. Speaking of which, we went to a joint called The Navagator for lunch today. It was just like Sharkies, but they have a swamp behind it which supposedly harbors some gators up to 12' long. I didn't see any though. But we did try some fried gator tail as an appetizer which was okay. The lady brought them to the table and says "here ya go -- the best tail in town!" I looked up and said "well shoot, there ain't much competition either!" Although, I bet there are some older "babes" (as gramps would say) that beg to differ. Anyways, my grandparents are doing their job well because I can feel myself getting fatter here already. I'm going have a lot of work ahead of me when I get home.
• It was great to see my Grandmas competitive side take over just about the whole day yesterday. See, while everyone our age is playing poker nowadays, her age group is still playing pinachle. She sat there and bragged for a whole ten minutes before we played about how she won all these tourney's. But this night would be mine. If you know anything about pinachle, you know it's played with partners. So, it was me and Ma verse Grandma and Grandpa. I took some wild chances (read as: fubar'd and got lucky), and we pulled out as victors in a best out of three match. I'm surprized my Grandma managed to sleep last night after that. She thrw the cards on the table and roled her eyes. She couldn't believe I could forest gump my way to victory over the neighborhood champions! Ha ha!! Can you deal with that Grandma??
• Today I noticed how being in Florida makes me feel like I'm in a Seinfeld episode. I think it has something to do with the east coast. Old people from the north east really are like Jerry said. I spent the early afternoon, after golf, at the pool side with my Mom and Grandma. Sunday afternoons is old man pool-volleyball day. There were about ten or eleven old men, most of whom couldn't even stand up straight on dry land, bobbing up and down in the shallow end of the pool with their arms crookedly raised above their heads in hopes of hitting this little air filled nylon ball in a some what straight volley over a floating net. But what I saw, as a young and (mostly) healthy (nearly) 30 year old perspective, was an amphibious Home Room 101 gym class. I say that jokingly of course, because I truly admire these painfully old folk enjoying their retirement. It was a lot of fun listening to them all yell at each other because they're either deaf or didn't really like each other. You'd think by 80 years old these people would have nothing left to prove, but they pretended as if they had everything left to prove. While we were at the pool my Grandmother had done the only curtious thing and introduced me to the loudest and most flamboyent gentleman in the volleyball troup, which led to about 20 minutes of non stop badger from his side of the net begging me to join the game. I countered each one of his first 50 requests with a new half wit excuse until, quite frankly, I had run out of them. After that I just pretended I was as deaf as the rest of them until he got the picture.
• My Grandma is an anomoly. When I was in junior high she beat every male in my family one by one in arm wrestling -- an hour after she broke her arm sliding into home plate during our family soft ball game. At seventy some odd years old and retired she has to take a vacation from her social life just to accomodate her daughter and grandson while we visit. She takes me out for a round of 9 holes of golf today and walks away with bragging rights. *shaking head in astonishment* I don't know which is worse: getting beat by my grandmother, or shooting a 55 in 9 holes. We went into the final two holes seperated by only stroke. I even made the mistake of envoking a challenge -- "Only one stroke Grandma, you got what it takes? I only need to bogie on both holes and your goin' down Grandma. You're goin' down!" So did I choke or did she come through on the clutch? I'm not gonna say. All I need to do is tell you that the score didn't end up as close on stroke. But dinner is ready so I'm logging off for now.
• Well, Mom and I arrived in Fort Meyers last night around 10 or 10:30. I thought I would have a problem adjusting the first few days to the time change, but I fell asleep around 12:30 last night and got up at 8:15. It felt like 8:15am. And that's a good thing considering it was really 5:15am to me. Grandma and I are getting ready to go golfing right now, so I should log off. I'll keep adding more throughout the vacation. I can tell already there's gonna be plenty of stuff to talk about.
• I found a pile of Modern Reformation mags that I've had since 1993, '94, and '95. I chose to read an article out of the October '95 issue since that would mark a nice round number of "what was happening way back when". The article was on postmodernism...go figure. It seems like a popular word still. I have no idea what postmodernism really is, and I'm not sure how interested I am either. To me, it's just a big '-ism' word that people throw around too much to the point where it has lost all appeal. It's kind of like when a band writes a really good song and all the radio stations play it 20 million times a day. The song just loses it's appeal. It hasn't lost any of it's quality, but you just can't hear it anymore. You're not just sick of the song, you actually don't like it anymore. Postmoderism is like that. When I first heard the word it was all fancy and sounded smart. Now it's on par with puns and nicknames like Taco Hell, or Saddlecrack.
