Back from Holiday

Well today is the last day of my holiday before going back to work. The house is almost done, still a good 5-6 hours of work left but I'm very pleased with the progress. My goal to return to work with a clean and organized house in my wake is nearly there. There are some concessions I'm making - like the kitchen. That's always going to ebb and flow in it's organization since I use it so much.

But it's been a great, eventful time. J's family was here and we had a great time in and around O-Town (so stupid a nickname). I took gobs of short videos and gobs of pictures. Pictures are going up on Flickr and videos are going up on a webpage (of which my techie friends will probably think is about as lame ass as one can conceive) but that will be a project for later on. House comes first!

But of all the pictures taken this week, this is my absolute favorite.



It was taken at Blue Springs State Park which is a natural manatee refuge. I stress natural because the manatees are not relocated there but migrate there. It's a natural warm spring that sits at 72 degrees year round. The manatees go there in the winter because they prefer the warmer waters, naturally. The St Johns River can get pretty cold as it starts up in Jacksonville (at least) and it gets ccccold in Orlando. They are safer there as well as when they are in the springs, there are no motor boats and no real threat (except alligators though I'm not sure if alligators will try to eat a manatee..they don't look like good eating). It's amazing to see SO many of an endangered species in one area and in the wild. It's not exactly the wild though, I still say the most incredible was finding them in a little offshoot canal in Brevard County's Banana River. That was amazing because that is not a refuge but the true wild - but that was some 20 years ago.

Speaking of the rivers, we also went to Kennedy Space Center and driving over the causeway to Merritt Island/Cape Kennedy we saw TONS of porpoises. That was so beautiful as it was early morning, the sun was shining and they were rolling around and playing in the water. I'm not sure if I have ever seen that before. KSC was great as always. I took a video fo me walking the length of a Saturn V rocket. It took - at an accelerated walking pace - 1 minute and 21 seconds for me to walk almost the length of it (I had to stop right about 20-40 feet because of a barrier). People who know me know I do not walk slow (maybe slower than I did when I was an urbanite) and have a fairly long stride for a gurl. But, that was amazing.

Disney was very strange and perfect at the same time. NO crowds at all. We really didn't wait for anything at all. In fact, the characters (da Mickey included) was beckoning us in to take pictures, Aladdin walked around Morocco with us.. Very strange. It was a nice trip and everyone had a good time. But I'm not sure everything was even-steven between R and A so I have lost some sleep over that ;-D

Well back to my 5-6 hours of housework.