Hot Wing Weekend

This weekend was very much like an all-you-can-eat hot wings buffet: while it was great at the time, I know that later I will pay for it deeply. The last few weeks have been horribly busy with papers due, reading, reading, and more reading, work... and everything else. At times in the last month I have felt like riding my bicycle up to the seventh floor of the parking garage and pedaling right over the edge. Mostly just because that would be funnier for whoever found me and the people reading about it on the news websites. So having this weekend with nothing immediately due was a great opportunity for me to do just that – nothing. And now as I sit here trying to focus on “retained life estates,” “reciprocal transfers,” and “grantor’s retention of control,” I find it very hard to care what those all mean. Monday is officially five weeks until the end of the semester. Five. I’ll say it again, because I love how small that number has gotten. Five.

Anyway, what we did do with the weekend was spend it outside, enjoying the last warmth of 2008. You won’t believe this, but I actually had to sleep under the covers last night… I know, it was that cold. So it’s good to feel the sun a few last times before winter.

Well it was a relaxing weekend while it lasted. And now... taxes... equally as fun. Or maybe not.

Quantity over Quality

Even though there's not much interesting to say in this post, I thought I would update it anyway, because at least it gives me a break from school and you something to waste your time reading. And who doesn't love pictures of small children:

Anyway, we went out to the playground by the apartments and Paul found this old, dirty, beat up tennis ball, probably left behind by a slobbery dog. I never actually saw him put it in his own mouth, but I don't doubt that it happened. He did carry it the rest of the way home though, until I sneakily chucked it into the bushes. Once he gets his mind on something, he doesn't like giving it up, so you have to get rid of things when he's not looking.

Also, Paul got a hair cut this week, as you may have noticed. I had the joy of holding him while the lady viciously attacked him with her scissors (or so he thought). Actually he did quite well at first, but he wasn't down with the whole buzzer thing. He did, however, like holding the water bottle and spraying himself. Go figure.

Finally, a day off...

Last weekend was not much fun, thanks to school, so we decided just to take Saturday completely off this weekend. We ventured out into the Florida back country again (I know, that's unusual for us). Today we hit O'Leno State Park near Gainesville. A river comes up from underground in the park and makes it's way through the woods, even generating some "powerful" rapids along the way. There was the typical stuff: docks, bridges, canoes, tons of kids running around, people with dogs, gators lurking in the water waiting for people with small kids. There were even tons of minature frogs jumping around, and Paul and I tried to catch them! But we failed. Not because they were hard to catch, but because we were afraid they might be deadly toxic flesh-eating frogs, and we value our digits. But we did take tons of photos though, check it out:

Don't worry, Paul gets his fair share of ice cream, and he got over it. Also, they weren't kidding with the sign, the score at the end of the day was: Gators 3, Annoying Park Kids 0.

The fall season of Paul TV begins... now.

In this episode of Paul TV, he shows off his nose, ear, and eye identification skills. He does make a mistake in the middle, but he's figuring it out. I finally found a way to reduce the size of our videos, so hopefully we'll be able to upload these a little more often. This video was originally almost 50 mega-bites, but I got it down to 12 with this free program I found. The quality is reduced a little bit, but the sound quality seems to be good. So check it out!

For our older viewers, make sure you pause the music player to the right, or you won't be able to hear anything. I say this because otherwise one of you will complain, "I couldn't hear him say anything, there was some song playing the whole time..."

We're still here...

It feels like forever since our last posting, even though it's only been a week and a half. But it feels great to be done with that week. Too much work to get done in too little time meant I spent pretty much every day from dawn to dusk at school. It was great. But we did find a moment here or there to hang out in the park. Check out how tall this kid is:

He had a doctor's appointment this week and topped off at 34'' in height. They say that if you double the height of a two year old, you reach their ultimate adult height. So as of right now Paul should be at least 5'8'', but he still has 8 months until he's two years old! So at this rate, he'll top out at 8'3" and we'll have to special order size 24 shoes for his freshman basketball season.

He did get a chance to get buried in the sand one day while I was buried in the library. As always, it looks like he had a good time. And he's become quite the mountaineer of late. He scaled a large playground slide by himself, and then attempted this curved wooden contraption.

It got a little dangerous at one point, and he did fall through the cracks leaving a large bruise on his leg, but that's exactly what you want before you take him to the doctor. We want people to suspect that we abuse him I guess. Of course, we would never have to actually abuse him, because he's farely good at abusing himself. The doctor said she could tell he was running around like a big kid due to all the scrapes and scratches all over his knees. But when you take off like a 75 Dart every time you hit the ground, it's no wonder.

This is Fall?

Because it sure doesn't feel like it. No leaves changing colors, no snow spitting down on us, no waking up in the morning and finding frost on the windshield. I mean... come on, that's what fall is all about, right? But we really haven't seen real fall in quite some time. It is getting cooler though. For the first time the other day I stepped out and said, "Wow, maybe I need to wear socks." That's how you know that winter is coming in Florida. But the sun has been out today, and it's been another beautiful Saturday afternoon.

It's amazing after more than two years of living here we can drive around this city and still see things we've never seen before. It's a really big city, I know, but we have done a ton of driving around it. Probably 50,000 miles worth of driving around it, if you look at the odometer on our car. But we stopped at Riverside Park today in historic Five Points for the first time.

Paul and his mother hit up the slide and swings for a bit, and I hid in the shade to keep from burning my bald spot. You may think that's funny, but it will hurt for days, and that's not something I laugh about. I buzzed my head yesterday (as I feel stupid paying someone $15 for 5 minutes of work... uh, even if lawyers charge more than that) but I stopped short of shaving it all off, as I have been threatening to do. When I remembered that I'm abnormally pale, and that I live in the Sunshine State, I decided it was best to have some hair to cover my sensitive scalp, to keep it from being continuously bright red. If I wasn't careful, it would burn, peal, and burn again pretty much every day. So for now... and probably forever, I'll just be hiding here under this tree.

Paulmo's World

As many of you know, Becky is currently enrolled in an online photography class. It's a great opportunity for her to get some tips, take some pictures, and post them online for instructors and classmates to comment on. This week's lesson was on group shots.

Of course, when you abandon your family and move to Florida, it's a little difficult to find willing groups who actually look like they belong together in the same photo. So we had to improvise. Basically it was a lot of her pushing a button, running, and leaping into position as the camera snapped. But overall it turned out good, and she got plenty of exercise (as if watching Paul all day is not enough).

Paul also found some time to hang out with his favorite weekday morning character, the always enjoyable, and often annoying, Elmo of Sesame Street fame. It's actually amazing that the show is still on after all of these years, and it's still fairly entertaining. Especially when compared to all the other annoying garbage they have on Saturday mornings. And he'll sit through the whole show, which is also pretty incredible.

I still love the Cookie Monster myself, even though he exposes kids at too early an age to the life-long struggles associated with addiction problems. He was never the same after Keith Richards presented the word of the day back in '74. We all know "cookie" is a metaphor for crack cocaine, you wigged-out, shag blue hand-puppet... you can't hide those freakishly large pupils.

This post was brought to you by the letter M, the number 17, and contributions from readers like you.