Brian's plants are still growing

Here are some pictures to show you how the plants are growing. As you can see, we have some new zinnia blooms (the orange ones). The marigolds on the crazy stems are also doing well. Some of the pictures are a little blurry--sorry about that, the sun was setting, so the light wasn't very good. And yes, we do have pumpkins already. Now we just need to decide what images to carve.

Ferrets like the fall

The ferrets are really enjoying the cooler weather we've been ahving lately. We have been taking some walks around the neighborhood, and sometimes we take ferrets along. We can't do that in the summer because they overheat and need to get back inside quickly. Rex went for a walk with us over the weekend.


(Brian and Rex in Myers Park, which is a couple blocks north of the house)

Another thing the ferrets like about fall is that it is cool enough to have the windows open. With the windows open, all sorts of sounds and smells come drifting in, which makes them very curious. The ferrets enjoy climbing up to the windowsill to look around at the outside world.

Brussels is still suffering symptoms (mainly his tail hair continues to fall out). We are monitoring him pretty closely. It would be best if he doesn't need surgery (since the recovery can be stressful on him), but it is still possible. Here is Brussels relaxing on the couch.

Last day of tennis

Sadly, today was the last day that Vincent and I will play tennis together. He is moving to Miami (I think) for work. We have been playing tennis together since early this year, and we've been getting better slowly. Brian and I will miss him.

This picture shows Vincent at the high school courts (Leon High), where we played quite frequently. I told him to pretend he was playing tennis, so here he is mid-swing.

Obama Rally

Today I went to an Obama rally. It was at FAMU, which is the university in town that is closest to my house. It was a nice walk to get over there (less than a mile, I'd guess). Michelle Obama and Jill Biden were there to talk to the crowd.

This first picture shows one of the large buildings on the FAMU campus. The podium for the speakers is located under the "Change" sign.


FAMU had it's giant torch on for the event (like FSU's, but a lot less flashy). The Tallahassee Obama campaign folks brought out a sign as well. Lots of people took pictures with the sign.

In this last picture, Michelle Obama is speaking. Unfortunately, she is directly behind the tall cameraman in the white shirt (at the bottom right corner of the "Change" sign), so you cannot see her. The media, with their large cameras, formed an inpenetrable line at the front of the crowd that totally blocked my view. But it was still quite exciting to hear Michelle Obama speak live. She said that since Barack had worked in the community after law school (instead of going to work at a large law firm), they had student loans that they were still paying off until just a couple years ago, when the earnings from his book allowed them to finally pay them off. I feel like we will probably be in the same boat

Flower update

Brian has been watering the flowers in the front yard faithfully to make them grow, so I thought I'd share some pictures of his success with you. On either side of the front door, Brian planted some flower boxes with various seeds. It took us a while to ID some of the plants because they grew crazy long stems before blooming, but we now know that some of them are marigolds. In this picture, you can see one of the marigold stems hanging down below the box with a nice orange bloom on the end. There is a close-up of the flower below.

The flower box on the other side of the door has flower stems growing in a similar manner. Most of these plants seem to be zinnias. We also have some zinnias planted in the yard.

Our lantanas are also looking really good right now. They are blooming like crazy, which attracts many butterflies to the yard. This is especially nice in the morning--it is relaxing to be greeted by butterflies on your way to work.

More buds!

Finally, I wanted to post an update on the snapdragons we planted after Fay to replace the marigolds. The snapdragons all had lovely flowers on them when we planted them, but after planting, all the flowers shriveled up and dropped off (despite daily watering). I think they were just protesting their replanting. Anyway, they are finally starting to bud again, and the first flowers are coming out--pink.

The bush we planted at the same time is also growing well, as seen below. It's flowers did not fall off.

Cilantro

During Tropical Storm Fay, our cilantro plants were covered in water and they died. Brian planted some new seeds soon after, I am happy to report that they are growing well. The first picture shows the sprouts on September 11. The second picture shows the plants today.

hand mostly back to normal

Since Monday when I burned my hand, I have been unable to cook like I am used to doing because I couldn't cut things or put my hands in warm water. So last night, to celebrate my hands return to normal function, I did some serious baking. The grocery store is starting to stock foods that remind me of fall, including many types of squash. Squash is a tastey and cheap fall food--it's too bad Brian doesn't like it. So now we have a fridge filled with meatloaf, baked potatoes, cinnamon squash, and pumpkin pie. Yum!

Jobs, Car Accidents (almost), and so on

It seemed like time for a general update. Mostly, things are going pretty well here. Our plants outside are mostly all doing well; some flowers are blooming by the "pond" we made and some are also blooming from the porch planters. The cilantro I replanted are also coming back up.

Inside, things are going similarly. Our macroalgae in the little tank has been growing like crazy and everything else in the two tanks seems also to be doing pretty well. We just cut a bunch of it off and gave it to two friends with tanks. We are planning to buy another few pieces of live rock for the big tank and then add a fish or two, a few coral, and perhaps a few inverts. We are battling a hair algae problem in it from when we were out of town and a sea urchin or a sea lettuce slug is the prescribed remedy, or so I hear so far.

Tennis has also been going well; we still play weekly with friends. The guy I usually play with is more consistent than I am, so he usually wins when we play. But I won a half-set today and the first set was 6-4, many games going to deuce. So it seems that is coming along too.

Work is going okay. I had about a two week period where I could work normal hours, but that is over now. I have major projects from here to November, so that's too bad.

I'm now actively searching for jobs. I submitted to the national law school faculty search and we will see if I get any interviews in November. It is a long shot, but I'm still giving it a try. I don't expect anything but I am still pursuing it actively. I will also send out LLM applications this month, and apply for some teaching fellowships. Lots of application fees and what not, but overall it's okay. If I don't have one of these lined up by, say, December I will have to consider other options like staying at the Court or doing appellate practice.

We've also had to replace a few things here. My second monitor had been dying for months and it has finally died. My razor needs new blades as well. It seems our router just died too. Hanneke bought her year's worth of health insurance and we bought our car insurance again (with added roadside assistance). Plus the $300+ for the law school faculty app and now all the LLM app fees. It's been an expensive set of months. Thanks, dad, for sending the "proceeds" you sent; they're helpful.

We also just about needed a new car today as well. We were driving home from the office supply store where I was buying some resume paper when the car about four cars ahead of us decided to do a U-Turn on a 4 lane divided road/highway where the speed limit is 45. They braked suddenly and the 3-4 cars behind it shuttered to a stop. I had just been thinking, before it happened, that I should give myself more distance and had been backing off. I was a fair distance away, fortunately. We were going about 45 or so at the time and the car in front of us went from close to 45 to 0 in a second or two. I braked, the brakes locked, and I pumped the brakes and tried to stop. There wasn't enough time, though, so I had to e-brake as well. I've never had to use the e-brake. Hanneke looked away because she was sure we were going to hit the car ahead of us and until I hit the e-brake, so was I. Fortunately, we did not. As the four cars, five counting ours, came to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke, the woman in the car ahead finished her u-turn and passed us on the other side, looking over at us sheepishly. It is good we avoided the accident; as a rear end collision, I can only assume it would have been my fault in the eyes of our insurance.

Well, that's all for now. Back to cover letters.

Storm watch

We are watching the storms headed our way (mostly using the noaa website). In case you have not been keeping tabs on the situation, I grabbed a few maps from online to post. First, we see Tropical Storm Hanna. We aren't really worried about this storm hitting us, but it's path does go right over Myrtle Beach, SC. So Dave, be careful up there.


The other storm we are watching is Hurricane Ike. This storm is further out in the ocean, so it will take a few more days before it gets close to the US coastline. The problem with Ike is that it is quite strong already, so it may have the potential to do a lot of damage. Also, this storm seems a lot more likely to hit Florida. Things like this make me happy that I do not own a home here.

New flowers

The powerful rain we got from the tropical storm really battered our marigolds. So we picked up some new flowers on Labor Day to replace those that died. The choices that were available were snapdragons and mums. We got some pink, yellow, and white snapdragons. We put them in last night. Once again, we were reminded just how buggy it is in our yard, especially in the evening (even when the sun is high). We got all the flowers in, but we also got several mosquito bites each, especially on our backs (I think they can sense our vulnerabilities), despite using lots of bug spray.



After we finished, Brian put out our sprinklers to water the new plants. He also tried to disuade the fire ants that recently took up residence on our front steps, but in response to his efforts, they started swarming towards the door. It was a heated fight, but I think we can conclude that Brian won, since there are many fire ant carcasses on our steps today.

Overall, I am happy that we got the new flowers in. I was startled by a toad who was nestled under one of the snapdragons (I found him when I pulled the flower out of its planter)--it was a big toad! He hopped off to hide in the bushes. Oh, along with the snapdragons, we also planted a bush with red flowers (see picture above).