The Ides of March

OK, the title of this particular blog entry is a little misleading. However, it has been raining quite a bit. It kind of reminds me of the NW, except when it rains here, it's like 65 degrees outside. The rain is good, because FLA is still trying to recover from drought-like conditions over the last couple of years.

Since the last entry was back in January, I should probably give a brief recap of what we have been up to over the last month:
1) We went to Tampa/St. Petersburg over one weekend. That was a lot of fun. We visited the Dali museum (largest in the US) and the Pier in St. Pete. We had dinner at a GREAT tapas restaurant. KC still talks about the shrimp ceviche. We also visited Honeymoon island, which is just north of Tampa. We wanted to at least take a look at the water on the Gulf side of the state. We did a bit of shelling on Honeymoon island, before we ended up heading back home.
2) Due to health concerns, KC had left her position at the pre-school in early February. She is feeling a lot stronger now, so it was definitely the correct decision. She can now concentrate solely on school. She is really enjoying her classes, and feels like she is learning a lot this term. And yes, she is applying what she learned already. I wouldn't say that I am a guinea pig or anything, but....
3) A Dim Sum place has just opened up in JAX. This was HUGE news for us. We have eaten there several times now. The chef is from HK, so the quality of food is quite good. We also managed to find a really good Korean BBQ place down in JAX as well.
4) We have been working on home improvement projects. We painted the master bedroom, and have installed some new lights in our dining room and entry-way. I'm not going to tell you any details, out of the hope that some of you reading this might feel intrigued, and feel obligated to come and visit us!
5) KC is visiting a friend this weekend, down in San Antonio. Based on an e-mail that she had read to me, her friend plans on taking her to see the Alamo, the Riverwalk, and some sort of caverns. When she gets back, I promise to pester her to blog about the trip.

Slow Recovery

KC is still recovering from her surgery. She is still experiencing a good deal of pain (1 1/2 months later), although given the severity of her endometriosis, I guess that should not have been too surprising. Nevertheless, she is a little bit frustrated because it is taking longer than expected to heal. Fortunately though, she does appear to be healing (per a series of invasive tests), just not as fast as she wants.

I went walking with her last weekend. We walked a long loop through the neighborhood, probably about a mile or so. She was walking at a fairly fast pace, stopping only to look at various neighbors' yards. I believe that she has palm envy (we don't have any palm trees in our yard).

A funny story - probably typifies what it means to live in a small town in the South. We decided to go to a local restaurant for wings (over 31 different flavors!). We ended up sitting in the bar section. A family with a 6 month year old baby ended up sitting to the right of us (Look, it's a baby. IN A BAR). I looked straight ahead, and there was a 6 year old kid, sitting on a barstool, talking to his dad. To the left of us, was a mother with her 3 year old kid. A few minutes later, a policeman walks into the bar to order some take-out. The cop walks by the baby, the 3 year old, and the 6 year old. He waits for his food, pays, and then leaves the premises. The cop NEVER SAID A WORD!!! I guess, it shouldn't surprise me, since this is the same place that will serve you a mixed drink in a styrofoam "to-go" cup.

Two Thousand WHAT?!

We are in year Two Thousand What? How did Christmas blow by? What about New Year's? It seems like it was just last week that I had a surgery (and the surprise) and my finals while I'm on pain killers. Once I released the CO2 that the doctor pumped in, my in-laws were here and 3 friends from the NW came soon after.

We had a Great time with everyone. I do remember having a great Christmas with Stakit's parents here and celebrating New Year's with our very, very close, special friends that came all the way across the country... We were having such a wonderful time that I had some scary rash all over me on New Year's day from some yummy fudge BUT I didn't even care. 'cause we haven't had good times like that for a loooooong, long time. It was fantastic! It's like a beautiful dream. Wait, was it a dream? I'm confused. I really think it was real. I would like to thank Stakit's parents, T, G, & B came out and visited us!

It looks like we really are in Two Thousand Eight.... (I still don't know how that happened) so,

To my loyal readers (it always warms my heart when I look at the log and see that you have stopped by to read my blog. Thank You!):

HAPPY NEW YEAR! May you and your family have a wonderful New Year with Happiness and Good Health!

Love,
KC & Stakit

Surgery Update

It has been a couple of weeks since KC had surgery. She is feeling better but is still experiencing quite a bit of abdominal pain. By no means am I a comedian, however, when I make her laugh, she ends up being doubled-up in pain and has to tell me to stop. She is a lot less bloated now, and is happy to begin wearing her own clothes. For a while there, the only thing that she felt comfortable wearing was a pair of flannel boxers (which were even too big for me), wool socks with leg-warmers, and her favorite white sweatshirt. It kind of made her look like she was wearing a kilt, so she often times would talk to me with a Scottish accent.
A couple of days ago, we had the post-surgical consultation with her doctor/surgeon. The doctor showed us a sketch of the endometriosis as well as pictures that he took with the camera (through her belly button - which KC has mentioned, will never be the same again. She actually took a picture of it before the surgery as a keepsake). After viewing the sketch and the pictures, I completely understand why the procedure took 4 hours - there was so much of it that he had to take care of. He felt 99% confident that he managed to excise all of it. He also mentioned, that by excising the endometriosis, there would be an extremely low likelihood that it would come back in the excised area. This was good news, because we both had feared that KC might have to do this again every couple of years or so.

Surgery

A couple of days ago, KC was scheduled to have a lapraroscopy to remove 2 cysts, a fibroid, and to determine whether or not she had endometriosis. She had been experiencing a lot of pain, and her doctor recommended this approach to alleviate the pain.

The procedure was scheduled to begin at 2:30 pm. Of course, it did not start until 4 pm. However, the procedure ended up taking 4 hours (we were only expecting it to last 2 hours or so). It was determined that KC had Level IV endometriosis (the most severe). Fortunately, the surgeon was able to excise the endometriosis - he believed that he had managed to excise all of it (along with removing the cysts and fibroid). In any case, due to the severity of her endometriosis (she had some on her liver), the procedure took a long time.

The surgery concluded at 8 pm. KC was admitted to a hospital room at 2:30 am after the nurses determined that she was way too dizzy, nauseous, and dehydrated to send her home. We finally left the hospital yesterday (at around 4 pm).

Thanksgiving Trip

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

This year, we did not have any planned turkey dinner, no family or friends around. We decided to go for a long weekend trip. We went up to Atlanta and stayed at downtown Atlanta for 4 days! It was fun but just too short ;)

Atlanta is about 5.5 hours away. We drove up on Thanksgiving day and stopped for supper. Of course not many places were open and we didn't expect too much on food. We didn't even think we would have any turkey until we get to Atlanta. We stopped at Cracker Barrel and it turned out they have Thanksgiving dinner! They were not bad! We giggled the whole time. This is the first Thanksgiving dinner I didn't have to do Anything. I enjoyed cooking but I also enjoy not having to do anything :)

When we arrived at our hotel, we discovered that they just finished their Thanksgiving party (that we could have got to) They had a lot of good food and it's for Everyone! Oh well, we were tired from the drive and wanted to go for a walk anyway. After we checked in, we headed toward Olympic Park and had dinner at McCormick & Schmick's @ CNN center.

On Black Friday, we (I) had to go to the Mall (of course). We visited 2 malls: Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza (I did go to Tiffany but didn't get anything this time). In the evening, we checked out a cute neighborhood, Virginia Highlands.

The following 2 days we visited the High Museum mainly to see the impressionism and the Louvre exhibits, Atlantic Station, and we even had Dim Sum!!

That was a great trip! just too short! We still want to go visit the Georgia Aquarium. I guess next time.

Finally feels like Fall

Highs around 70s
Low around 60s

Summer. Still.

Weather report:
Highs: mid-80s
Lows: mid to high 60s

We are pretty much done with the whole summer thing. I'm in shorts. Students are still wearing their beachwear. Yes, they go to classes in beachwear. I don't dress like they do. I could..... and I will just look funny walking around on campus. BTW, the university is 10 mins away from the beach. That reminds me of what Stakit saw. There were a couple of kids, waiting for a bus with their surfboards.

We haven't been to the beach lately. There was a red tide warning. We heard there were people out at the beach; they're most likely from out of town and not aware of the red tide. We are going to wait a little while before we get out there again. Regardless of the Perfect beach weather, not too hot in the sun and not too cold to swim, we are going to just wait.

Right now, we are just very ready to have cooler temperatures, jacket temperatures. Cool enough that we would need a jacket.

Hope that's the last box

We have been in this house for over a year now. Some rooms are painted; our rooms have been rearranged for hundreds of times; we are half way through changing out all the light fixture; this past week, out of the blue, I had this idea. I wanted to turn one of the rooms in to an art / project room. Before I do anything, I want to clear out all the Stuff in that room. We have managed to piled a number of things in this room (we barely can touch the wall). This evening we were uncluttering and we were getting almost to the wall! There was a box sitting in the corner....still taped! An Unopened box from the move? You gotta be kiddin' me.

I was hoping it was something good in this box. No, just some stuff from my old busniess that I had been looking for. I hope that's the last box.

Birthday

I had my b-day last week. I was hoping I will be another year wiser but I don’t see that happening ;) My Birthday week was pretty crazy.

My Birth-DAY itself was good but too short. That day was the busiest weekday in the week and also my longest day at school. I’m (far) away from 7am to 7pm. I felt like only the evening was my birthday; a 3-hour-long birthday. During the day, I managed to squeeze in a little spa getaway during the day between classes. Stakit and I went to a French restaurant in Fernandina’s Historic District for dinner. We also had a bottle of bubbly too. That was nice.

Even though I didn’t get wiser, I’m overall pretty happy. I’m very pleased with my back-to-school decision. I thought about having a day off from school but why? That’s what I wanted to do. So, I went to school and enjoyed it. Come to think about it, it has been Four Weeks! I have been with the new routine, school & work, for the whole 4 weeks! I am keeping up with it ok.

As I mentioned, this week was crazy. We got a new car a month ago but it’s in the shop right now. Already! I know! (eye-rolling) Someone backed into my new car at my work’s parking lot. It had not been even 2 weeks old, we are still trying to come up with a name, have not had 1,000 miles yet….. The person hit it did write me a check for repairing and a rental car. It went into the shop last week and I was trying to save that person on the rental expense. I thought Stakit and I can work out with one car for 3 days. We had all our rides lined up. The car was supposed to be ready last Friday. When Friday rolled around, of course the car was Not ready. They said it’ll be Monday. Well, we will see.

One last week of my vacation

I have retired from the IT world for 1 year and 5 months now. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. I started my "retirement vacation" in Portland, ORE by hanging out with some of my closest / 'best-est' friends for a few months. I had a blast. I was not ready to move across the country.

We moved to the sunshine state about a year ago and had a very tough transition. We have been all tied up with the new place, new culture, and the new house. We had a hard time. I really appreciate our friends that are still in touch with us and try to be supportive. Meanwhile, I was still searching / narrowing down what I want to do. As of spring this year, I was down to 2 possibilities. Yes, school is one of them and that's what I'm planning to do. The classes I signed up for really excite me. The tough part will be the GRE test.

I'm going to continue on the preschool this year. The preschool will be a good laughing / balance place for me. However, I won't feel like this is my vacation job anymore.

School (and that drive, 40 miles one way) and work will keep me plenty busy! All these will start one week from Today!! Say Bye-Bye to my extended vacation!

What I have learned - 1 year later

KC-Star and I have lived here now, for over one year. I thought that I should blog about some of the things that I have learned:

Yuengling beer - my initial though upon hearing about this was something along the lines of "hey, that's pretty cool that they have a Chinese beer out here". This brand is all over the place down here in the South, as it is brewed in Pennsylvania somewhere. It is not a Chinese beer. It tastes like Budweiser.

Pimento Loaf spread - I believe that this is a combo of cheddar cheese, mayo, and pimentos. It tastes pretty good, but can't be very healthy.

Cracker Barrel - at first, I thought that this was related to Hickory Farms. Nope, it's an extremely popular restaurant chain out here, that specializes in Southern homestyle cooking.

Thunderstorms - when it rains here, it really pours dramatically for an hour or more. The streets are flooded with water, the thunder will rumble over and over, and generally, you can see lightning in the distance (hopefully, not very close). Just trying to drive in this is near impossible.

Fireflies - I had never seen them before. During mating season, we can see them every night, twittering about - little orbs of light.

Frogs - during the summer, we can see tree frogs stuck against our living room window. When we go walking at night, we generally see a couple of frogs sitting in each driveway. I like to nudge them with my sandal, until they go hopping into the grass. For the record, I said "nudge" and not "kick".

KC-Star can swim - before we moved out here, she was very apprehensive when swimming. First, she claimed that she couldn't swim (she just lacked confidence). She generally stayed away from the deep end (anything over 4 feet deep). Now, she's swimming laps, either breastroke or freestyle. Of course, now she's complaining that her arms are getting too muscular. Mr. T. and Dunester should be very proud of her.

College

It’s official! I had applied and been accepted to be a post-baccalaureate student. I’ll be a college student again. I got my classes for the Fall semester and everything went very smoothly. I am very happy to see how this school is having good use of technology. Especially since I live 40 miles away. Since I started the whole application process, I haven’t been to back to the campus yet. Everything can be taken care of online. I could get the textbooks for my classes from the bookstore, parking permit, add/drop classes, pay bills, check status / progress… the most impressive part to me is their portal. It certainly does make everything easier. However, I do miss the human contact. I am glad that I didn’t sign up for an online program for sure (even the online program will be easier to get in, save me 1 yr, and also minus the GRE).

Stakit was very excited about my new phase. We went out for dinner to celebrate.

Inner Tubing the Ichetucknee

A few weeks back, our friend Mr. Jonathan had mentioned an inner-tubing outing in Central Florida. KC-Star and I thought that it sounded fun, and wanted to give it a go. All of our schedules worked out on Saturday, so Mr. Jonathan, his daughter, and KC-Star and I headed out to the Ichetucknee State Park. The park opened at 8 am, and given that Park Rangers only let 750 people inner-tube the entire river, we needed to be there early (the river averages 5,000 inner-tubers a day). Which meant, that KC-Star and I needed to leave the house at 5:30 am (2.5 hrs drive). On a Saturday. Fortunately, we arrived there early enough (#466-#469). We rented some inner-tubes at a nearby inner-tube rental shop and then prepped ourselves (i.e. sun tan lotion) for the adventure.


The water on the Ichetucknee river is fed from a series of nine springs. The head spring of the river was declared a National Natural Landmark by the U. S. Department of the Interior. The water is approximately 73 degrees year-round. When we put our inner tubes into the water and jumped in, it was a bit chilly, but not too bad. From where we put in, we were told that it would take us approximately 3-1/2 hours to float down to the take-out point. Personally, I thought that 3-1/2 hours on an inner-tube might get old after the first hour or so, but the entire trip seemed extremely quick. There was very little paddling involved - the gentle current slowly keeps you going down the river. The actual river was fairly narrow - maybe 50 yards at it's widest. There were numerous logs and overhanging trees along the sides of the river that kept the trip interesting (you had to at least be aware enough not to bonk your head on a tree limb). The water was fairly clear, and it was shady during parts of the trip, so we weren't exposed to direct sun all of the time. We saw numerous birds, turtles, and fish. It was a lot of fun, and as it turned out, it exceeded both of our expectations. We are both ready to go back and try it again!

Happy August!

Wow! It’s August already! No work! No School (yet)! Almost a whole month that I can kill! Sweet!

For being the first day of the month, this is not bad. I have gone to Aqua Aerobics class this morning. I completely forgot about Aqua Aerobics until we talked about it at yesterday’s playdate. I figured today is the first day of the month (my last free month); I should do something fun. The Aqua Aerobic class was fun but hard work. The weather was beautiful. Warm in the morning just around 80s, not hot. The water at the pool was perfect. I think this is it! I’m gonna go back.

Another accomplishment I have today is…. I submitted my school application for post-baccalaureate study. They are just waiting for my transcripts. I have requested them but they take a little while. Hope this first step will go smoothly.

Right now, I’m not going to think about it. There is nothing I can do. I’m going to get ready to go Dancing!

We have been here for WHAT? One year? Already?

We moved in to our “vacation house” exactly one year ago. We still don’t have full time neighbors right next to us but we have some very good neighbor friends very close by. One year later, we have a better understanding why Stakit’s company wants us to relocate. One year later, we are starting to accept the fact that we live in FL. Realistically, things / friends just don’t stay the same, we started to accept that now. Although, I’m very happy to see a lot of you are still staying in touch. One year later, we are going to slow down on traveling. Yes, this is still our extended vacation and we will start to spend more time in this area.

This past year, we have been traveling quite a bit. We have been to

• DisneyWorld for a few time, like Eight times, hee hee
• Savannah, GA 4 times
• Jekyll Island, GA a few times
• St. Simons Island, GA a few times…

We have also visited:

• Bahamas - the blue water was incredible
  
• St Augustine, FL - the oldest city in North America
• Atlanta, GA
• Charleston, SC
• Washington DC
• Daytona Beach, FL - made it to the America's Top Ten Beaches List in this year
• Vegas, NV
• The Northwest and
• Hawaii

We are a little burnt out. I think we are going to stay in for a little while. I have decided to go to school starting this Fall. Yes, even though it will be a long drive (40 miles one way) to school and there is some work to do to get into the program that I want. However If I don’t do it now when will I? Plus the program really excites me! I can’t wait.

I do have to say it’s very nice to live here, especially in the winter, very lovely. I can see why people buy their vacation houses here. Summer time, now, it’s not too bad either. Last summer was unusual, this area didn’t have the regular afternoon rain (for 1 – 2 hrs) that I always heard about but this year… we have it! I kinda like it. It cools down quite a bit. Plus, I don’t usually go anywhere in the afternoon anyways. Rain or shine, I am planning to stay inside (anywhere with A/C) for July and August. I don’t mind that at all. The rain is good for the lawn and the garden anyway.

Speaking of staying in, here is how our place look likes now. I’m just looking at pictures from a year ago.

The new walls (with the contractor’s paint) were driving us crazy. I was so unhappy about anything and everything then. We still have some more work to do but at least it feels like home now.

A painful weekend

My abdominal pain came back and I was in bed the whole weekend. I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t sit; I couldn’t do nothing! Sunday afternoon, I finally caved; I took some Vicodin (from the ER Dr.). I could finally sleep last night. I'm going to switch back to Ibuprofen today. Hope the pain will go away soon.

Summer Camp

These 2 weeks I am helping the summer camp at pre-school. Last week they were all 2-yr-olds. So the theme was diapers! This week we have 3 & 4-yr-olds; although, I don't have to go in everyday. So today I get to pull out my toys and install pretty things around the house.

Before the Summer Camp started, I went back to the NW for my cousin's wedding and visited a lot of family for about 2 weeks. It was way too short but I can't leave Stakit unsupervised for too long ;)

I came back and he thought that my tan has faded! On that Saturday, we went to this beautiful beach, Huguenot Memorial Park, FL with Jonathan and his 6-yr-old daughter. The water is so clear and the sand is so fine. We were playing in the water and hanging out at the beach.
Storm was rolling in. We packed up and left soon after these pictures. It turned into a little Tornado at Mayport military base. Also, 6 people were struck by lightning at the beach just north of Huguenot Park, Little Talbot Island.

Although the clouds got so thick and dark and the lightning was scary, we got back just fine. That day, I still had jetleg and I asked Stakit, "can I just close my eyes....." I passed out for An Hour in the car. I woke up and we were very close to home.

ER Scare

I had been having a lot of abdominal pain. I went to a doctor last week. After an hour of questions asking, checking here and there, he sent me to the ER. He’s worried that my appendix is causing all that pain. Apparently, people can die from appendicitis and he made sure I got that in my head! So, did I get scared? Guess! I called Stakit but couldn’t find him; later on found out that he’s in a meeting. I managed to ask a friendly neighbor friend ;) to take me to the ER. She stayed until Stakit showed up. I guess she could tell how nervous I was. I was there for hours and hours for a CT Scan. 6pm rolls around, I hadn’t had any food (dr. didn’t allow me to eat) but they piped in a lot of I.V. in me plus the intestinal dye (just given by mouth and injected into a vein But no enema!) Good times, Good times! Result came in, no appendicitis, so no surgery! It was something else that will go away over time. I have been trying to rest and cure the pain at home.

The Dye that they injected into my vein got me kind of sick but I'm better now. I gained back my appetite but I still can’t sleep. I get up at 3am or so and can’t go back to sleep.

A little too Warm today

It has been pretty...ummm. "warm" here this weekend. Our highs are in the 90s already. Today was the hottest day for the last 365 days, high was 98. Last month, May, was perfect. Beginning last month, we started swimming at our pool. This month we are avoiding the Sun-burning hours. We just swim either early in the morning or in the evening. When we are not swimming, we just stay indoors. I guess we could take our beach umbrella, hang out at the beach, and enjoy the seabreeze.

Good news is by 11pm, we will be Down to 80!