Suzanne Calling

From the moment I saw the signs, I knew that I'd make the jump to DSLR. Glorious neon, lovingly maintained. That the sign belonged to a business that is very rare to find in the 21st century just made it even more appealing. When we moved over here, we noticed many local businesses with signs created with tubes of the inert gas. It was obvious that these are at least 40 years old by the quantity of bends in them. Last I'd checked, back around 1990, neon was going for $500 a bend. So, I left class tonight and made way over to US Highway 92. These are the first of many that I know I'll be taking of these signs.

Chef is an avowed soup fiend. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, because there are not many soups I don't enjoy. So, the child is especially happy when I make some at home. I had a couple of pounds of boneless chicken breasts that had to be used today (as in I'd had it in the fridge for a few days), and today's plans upon arriving home were studying, studying and more studying. I would have been happy to make something labor intensive, but I really didn't want to put an hour into making dinner. Usually, I cheat when I make homemade chicken noodle soup in that I buy a rotisserie chicken, pull all the meat off the carcass, then boil that until it falls apart. I skim the bones out, then add veggies, chicken and egg noodles into it. The typical batch of homemade also includes copious amounts of basil because chicken and basil go together so very nicely. I wasn't sure how much depth of flavor my soup would have without the bones, that thoughts turned to w...

Last August, we spent the day in St. Augustine with Donna when we were returning from our trip to NY. That day, we walked St. George Street and visited the Castillo de San Marco. Unfortunately, the skies were threatening and lightning had been viewed in the distance, so we couldn't visit the top of the fort. Today, the weather was gorgeous and we spent the majority of our stay topside enjoying the view. Our arrival time was perfect for seeing re enactors set off two 6" cannons. While this docent spoke in English, the reenactment itself was in Castillan. That was pretty cool. Watching them push the cannons to the wall looked similar to curling Cannon powdered, loaded and fused. Waiting for inspection. Cover your ears! It was great spending the day with Donna and seeing a piece of history relived.

Tomorrow, the kids and I are heading up to St. Augustine to spend the day with Donna. It'll be good to see my BFF and spend some time walking around the historic city. She reminded me that the last time we did this, I lamented the lack of a 'real' camera. It'll be good to spend the day shutterbugging with my two favorite kids and my best girlfriend. The bonus? I was double checking to ensure we weren't going to meet insane crowds because of some event going on, and found that their Christmas light display in the historic district is continuing through the 31st. If we do dinner down there, we'll leave the restaurant to the display of many tiny lights. Cool.

Or, "Why lousy typography is hurting real estate sales" (Or really, 'I love when something that nagged me for months dovetails nicely with my lecture topic.') Every day, on the way to GameTeen's school, I pass this absolutely gorgeous house that has had a for sale sign in front of it since day one of school, so at least August 17th. It has great curb appeal and it drew my attention because it is a colonial that's situated on the lot in the same exact way a certain house on Ocean Avenue in Amityville, NY sits on a similar lot. You may know that house as 'the Amityville Horror' house. I'm a nosy sort, I admit it. I wanted to see what that house was selling for. Too bad the realty sign was unreadable. Seriously, since August , I was trying to read the froufy, embellished script that was the realty's name. You tell me that you could read this, driving by a house on a busy street when you're going 35 miles per hour: I admit it, last month...

We went over to campus tonight to see Duff Goldman (of Food Network's 'Ace of Cakes' show) as part of the University Lecture Series. The boys and I did this last year to see Grant Imihara and Kari Byron, but I posted some mediocre pictures and had a good time. This year, Ed was with us, we had better seats and I got better pictures because I now have a better camera. Oh, and we had an awesome dinner, too. Anyway, when Duff came out on stage, he told the audience of his first trip to Tampa: 20 guys, two 15 passenger vans and a bunch of hockey gear, all because they had a match against USF (so I'm assuming he was on the UMBC team). They thought they'd cream them, because what would a bunch of guys who live in perpetual summer know about hockey? They got spanked. So, the moderator presented Duff with a Bulls hockey jersey and Duff said it would be very bad if his fellow teammates see him wearing this, since they got beaten by the team so handily back then. Guess ...

The day started with an 'Oh SHIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTT!' I saw 7:32 on the clock, I needed to be on the other side of town at 8am and did I mention I was supposed to drop Game Teen at school, too? Thankfully, Ed took the child to school. Yes, that committee I was on as a student representative? We've reconvened and now I'm the graduate representative. I got there fifteen minutes late and they'd already reviewed half of the candidates on our new list. About 2 hours work completed in twenty minutes, it's what happens when you are working with prepared and motivated committee members. The end result? We've got another day of interviews set up for Tampa next week. So, the meeting is over (in Lakeland) and you have a 5pm class (in Tampa), what do you do? If you're me, you drive over to the other campus and settle in for a day of studying. Apparently, while I was busy reading a chapter in the textbook that touched on SIX previous psychology classes, doom an...