Rules of Jacksonville
My friend Loopy sent me this, so I thought I'd share... and I added a few of my own.
1. You must learn to say the city name correctly. It is referred to as "Jax".
2. You are either a Gator or a Nole. There are no other schools.
3. Forget the traffic rules you learned. No one pays attention to them here. Merging, yielding, and right-of-way are completely foreign terms.
4. To find anything in Jax it is required that you know where the Regency Mall is. It is the Alpha and the Omega; the beginning and the end.
5. Directions to anywhere may, and usually do, make a reference to "the old Pic and Save".
6. The morning rush hour is from 6am to 10am. The evening rush hour is from 3pm to 7pm. Friday's rush hour starts Thursday morning.
7. If you stop at a yellow light, you will be rear-ended, cussed out, and possibly shot.
8. East Rd. meets West Rd. on Beach Blvd, but they both run North and South.
9. Normandy Boulevard, State Road 228, Cecil Field Road, Maxville Road, and Post Street are all the same road.
10. Hartley Road, Shad Road, and Hood Road are all the same road. Hartley Road is the western part of the road, and Shad Road is the eastern part of the road. Now don't be confused about this Hood Road. This is the West-East part that is in between Hartley and Shad, not the North-South part that starts out as Old Kings Road South, changes into Hood Road South, and ends at Losco Road.
11. Construction is a permanent fixture in Jax. The barrels are moved around in the middle of the night to make the next day's driving more exciting.
12. Watch for road hazards such as deer, skunks, dogs, barrels, cones, cows, horses, pot holes, cats, pieces of other cars, single shoes, truck tires, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, crows or vultures feeding on any of these items.
13. The minimum acceptable speed on JTB is 75 mph. Anything less is considered downright sissy. This is Jacksonville's version of NASCAR.
14. Never honk at anyone. Ever. Seriously.
15. If you are in the left lane, and only going 70 in a 55 zone, you are considered a road hazard and will be "flipped off" accordingly.
16. Ground clearance of at least 12 inches is recommended for city driving.
17. If it's 100 degrees, Thanksgiving must be next weekend.
18. There are only two seasons: Summer and January.
19. There is a Westside high school that has a confederate flag as its school flag, an image of a slave plantation owner as its mascot, and Dixie as its school song. Just accept it.
20. Ponte Vedra is to Middleburg as oceanfront is to double-wide.
21. If you choose to live in Orange Park, or, God forbid, Middleburg, plan to leave for work at 4am and return home around 11pm. Otherwise you may get caught in what can only be described as "the world's longest left-turn lane".
22. Don't get here late and expect something to eat. After 9pm, your choices are Famous Amos and Village Inn.
23. You can buy a million-dollar condo downtown on the river, but you have to drive 10 miles for a loaf of bread, and never after dark.
24. The Landing is an interesting place. Every time you visit, there will be a whole new set of restaurants, fewer stores, and less parking. Hooters, however, is a permanent fixture.
25. All city council decisions must be signed off on by First Baptist Church.
26. You can't drink alcohol and see naked girls at the same time. But, if you agree to drink Diet Coke, you can see them fully nude.
27. North Philips highway. Don't go there. Unless you are looking for motels that charge by the hour.
28. Learn all of the lyrics to every Lynyrd Skynyrd song.
29. If you like southern-style barbecue, there's a restaurant on every corner. But they all close at 9pm.
30. Convenience stores are EVERYWHERE, unless you live in a million-dollar condo downtown
Mine:
31. School zones are two blocks long... one block before the school and one block after it.
32. No restaraunts know what white gravy is, don't ask for it, they will look at you like you are stupid.
33. If you are from texas, or love Tx BBQ, make sure to avoid the mustard BBQ sauce they serve here....
34. If you are mexican or "texican" do NOT eat the mexican food here, you WILL be dissapointed.
35. To register a vehicle, you must show proof of Florida insurance... To insure your car, you have to get an "inspection" verifying the condition and current registration of car. *See how to register a vehicle*
36. Fresh Fruit cost an arm per pound. Why? because Florida exports all of their fruit, and imports California's. (I just learned this info this past week)
that's all for now, I will probably think of more later. :)
6 more years....
today, tony reinlisted... I'm so proud of him. I'm sure he had many second thoughts... :) he's so awesome.... Congrats baby! I love you!
i'm tired... i'll write more this weekend...
hmmm
tony has duty today... :( i'm watching king of the hill... the episode where Peggy joins the "metalife" pyramid scheme... lol just chillen with my friends Ben and Jerry... haha, oh and Carlee too. she's keeping herself entertained right now though, surprisingly enough. :)
nevermind... now she's in my lap lol... night.
5+ fillings....
Today I had another dentist appointment. :( Had five more fillings done... FIVE!!! grr... I hate it. I already have another appointment scheduled... I can't wait til this crap is over. Tony had duty yesterday, then today was a work day... we're so tired of it here. It's rediculous. I feel bad because I know work is sucking for him right now, and I can't do anything for him... Carlee was really good today. She even ate creamed spinach for dinner! (blech!) lol... she didn't seem to mind it though. Guess she's like her grandma eating that nasty stuff... haha...
Last night I was invited over to Loopy's house. She made yummy lasagna... it was SOOO good. Got to visit with friends for a long while. I'm jealous of E's html skillz... haha... and hopefully I'll be getting a sewing machine soon, and A is going to teach me how to use it, and then I'm going to help with her business, so that will be exciting. On a not so good note, another friend's son was in the hospital last night... it got pretty scary from what I understand, he had a really bad concussion, but the last I heard this morning, he should be okay. Thank God.
i'm back.... finally
Today was pretty good, I actually accomplished something. I wrote up 6 listings for ebay. Some of Carlee's clothes she's outgrown. Starting them out at .99 I just need to get rid of a bunch of stuff. I've been feeling so overwhelmed because I have so much stuff I need to list on ebay. So today, I picked out ten things and said I would write those listings up and take it a little bit at a time. Well, Carlee let me do 6 but it's a good start. I'm finally starting to feel back to my normal self....I just confided this in tony the other day... After Carlee was born, I didn't think I had post partum (sp?)... I didn't consider myself depressed... but just recently, like within the past two weeks, I woke up one day and just felt better, more like my normal self. And as soon as I felt like that, I realized how crappy I've felt for the past 7 months. :(I realized I hadn't done much of anything beyond taking care of Carlee. I didn't cook, I didn't clean the house very much, I hated doing laundry, even hated doing the dishes... Tony was cooking most of the dinners, or we'd order in. At the time, it seemed so overwhelming to me... and I had absolutely no energy whatsoever... I was relying on several cokes a day to give me bursts of energy. A constant up and down cycle throughout the day... All of my attention and energy was spent on taking care of Carlee, I didn't have anything left in me... for the past seven months! I still don't believe I was ever depressed. I didn't have anything really to be depressed about... overwhelmed? yes. completely unsure of myself as a mother? yes. Inadequate? yes. unattractive? yes. stressed? yes. But I feel 1000 times better now. I can do the dishes again and talk to to Carlee in her highchair... I can listen to her crying fits and not feel like my head is going to implode... lol... I can do a load of laundry and not feel like the ceiling is going to collapse on my head. Which reminds me... I think there's still a load in the dryer... crap... guess i'm not over my scatter brain-ness. LOL... anyway... My point is I'm feeling back to my old self... finally! Maybe I'm getting better at this motherhood thing... and quitting drinking cokes has helped alot too....
this morning
so thursday I wasn't in the best of moods, and the news wasn't helping either... yesterday was fun though. :) I met up with K and L, we went and did a few caches, then met up with a bunch of other geocachers for lunch... then found a few more caches. I had fun, and it tired Carlee out. lol...
Tony got in this morning around 2:30 am... exhausted... and so was I because Carlee was having a horrible night... I'm hoping to go to a caching dinner event tonight... we'll see.
the local news tonight....
a mother on trial for shooting her two sons...
a homeless man beat to death, 2 others hurt severely...
taxi cab driver murdered...
a couple found murdered in a nearby forest...
15 year old died after being struck by car (this happens ALOT here...)
huge cocaine drug ring bust...
Florida is trying to pass a law to make it illegal to sell violent games to minors... (don't get tony started) LOL...
Smoking while pregnant is a risk to your baby... No $h1t... "it can give your baby extra fingers and toes..." oh yeah, don't worry about her little lungs, or brain development... geez...
this is why i usually don't watch the news... i'm changing the channel right now. grrrr
Frustrations.....
UGH! I'm so sick and tired of mail services slacking off! and this is from a receiver's perspective, not senders... I live in a third floor apartment... We had a Christmas gift from Tony's parents that should have arrived over a week ago... No notes on the door, no calls from the office, nothing.. and I know I didn't miss it, because I'm a stay at home mom... and I'm ALWAYS home. So, on a whim I decided to check the front office just in case... "Do I have any boxes here?" I asked...
"Yes ya'll do! The DHL lady brought them a while ago, and said she wasn't taking two boxes up to the third floor..."
Sigh... this AGAIN... Is it not their job to bring it up to my home? If I lived in a house they would knock on the door... This is the second time DHL has done this..
and even USPS has done it a few times before too... Which sucks because instead of checking to see if we're home, they put a "we missed you" note in our box (dated on a day I KNOW i was home...) And then we have to go drive to the post office to pick it up, which wouldn't be so hard if we didn't have only one car that the Hubby takes to work everyday (and works way beyond USPS hours...)
ARGH!!!! I know it's a long way up... I take the three flight trip every single day, many times with arms filled with a baby, or groceries, or boxes, etc. etc. etc. And I wouldn't even be so frustrated if the front office would actually call and tell us when we have things there... which I know it's not their job to do that, but why offer to let mail services to drop things off, if they're not going to notify the receiver?
AHHHHH!!!!!!! ok.... i'm good now. :)
Ugh.. now I'm not again. Tony just called... they're keeping him til 8pm... to do stuff that's not HIS job... GRRRRR I can't wait to leave this freakin stupid place!!!!!!
you know I never have one single subject...
Tony bought me Dance Dance Revolution for Playstation2... I love it! lol... it's so much fun.. I still can't get past the beginner's level, but hey... :) We bought the mats off of Ebay.... **I LOVE EBAY!!** lol... anyway, we got both mats for 22 bucks... You have a center square, then a right, left, back, and up square... and as the arrows come up on the screen you have to step on that square. It's supposed to be like dancing, but it sure would take alot of hours of practice to look like you're actually dancing... lol... But it's fun.I found another great deal on ebay last night. 3 nursring bras for 6.50 with 4.99 shipping... total that's less than I would pay for one at the store, and they're new with tags... However, I do wish SOMEONE would make prettier nursing bras... as soon as you put one on, it's like being instantly unsexy-ified... lol, that's another one for the dictionary... but they're necessary for a few more months... unless I get fed up with Carlee's current trick of biting me... she thinks it's hilarious.... yeah... funny... I think I'm going to change the background here again... I don't really like the black... kind of too dark. I liked the light backgrounds better. Just thought I'd try something different.UGH!!! we've been starting our overseas screening lately... OMG... Tony's got approved almost instantly, he just had to go get a checkup at the dentist... Carlee's got approved... Mine... well... yeah, NOT. The dentist won't sign off on mine until I get ALL my work done first. And I finally counted all the red marked teeth on my info sheet while I was at the office... yeah 12 teeth need fillings... still... OMG... So... I'm going to have to have around 4 more appointments to get that taken care of, and we're supposed to have our screenings done ASAP... :( great...that's all for now....
2 very happy years...
Today is our two year anniversary. :D yay! It's gone by so fast... it's been such a fun adventure babe, and I look foward to the rest of our adventures! I LOVE YOU SOOOOOO MUCH!!!
Ghost pics...
These are our two best pics... the rest are just random pics trying to get the orbs.. lol... with people all over, tombstones, but no orbs... This is one of the hospital beds... gives me chills just looking at it again. The second is of a tree that was in the first cemetary. It's said to have a lot of sightings in it of a little boy... I took a pic of it, I wasn't really even aiming because it was too dark to see what you were taking a picture of anyway, but can you see the face? ugh! wow. I thought it was so freaky!
Ripley's Pics..
Me in front of the Museum:
A Cannibal's "fork"... they didn't believe in touching the body they were eating, so they used this... ewww.... 
A "mermaid"... this was a bix hoax back in the 30s (I think.) This guy fused a monkey body with a fish body, and people believed it for the longest time, until he finally admitted what he did.
Replica of the world's tallest guy!
T-Rex and his breakfast... lol...
Those are a few of my favorites... I figured Blogger uploader out... I can only upload 1-2 pics at a time.. any more than that and it screws up.. grrr... lol
St. Augustine
Yesterday we drove down to St. Augustine, the oldest city. It was so cool. I love it there.... beautiful buildings, right on the water, old timey feeling, cool shops, sightseeing... it's so awesome! Anyways, first we went to Ripley's Believe it or Not museum... and that was so cool. I'm easily amused, but even if I wasn't, I think I would still find it interesting. We saw a replica of the tallest man in the world, canibal eating utensils (yikes!) replica's of 6 legged cow, a rooster that lived for 18 months after being decapitated!, Elvis' hair, a huge ship made completely of Jade, matchstick art... Everything was so cool! and they had these hallways that you walked through, and there was a tunnel around you that spun... ugh, made us so dizzy! lol... I would definately go back. :)
After that, we walked to the beginning of our
haunted ghost tour. It was sooo freakin awesome! We started out at this old hospital where the business is in the front room. We walked through the three other rooms. The first two nothing really happened... so I was starting to think it wasn't really real... then in the third room, the lady was giving her speech and the door opened about two inches!!! out of nowhere! and none of the other workers were out there! and nobody opened it from the inside either! So, I started to get a little freaked.
Then we all started taking pictures.... OMG! you should of seen what some people got on their cameras! You know on tv where they talk about those ribbon light things that are ghost energy? Well, a bunch of pictures kept showing them!!! I'm NOT kidding!!! And on others pictures there were a bunch of these little white orbs!!! We were all so excited!!! and the speaker was getting a little nervous too, she said there was hardly ever this much activity, but that it was probably because SciFi channel had been there earlier that day moving stuff around and testing the "hot spots" because they were going to be there the next day (today) for ten hours taping!!! and that the ghosts don't really like it when things are moved and/or changed!!!
So we were picking up a lot of activity on everyone's camera!!! Carlee started getting really fussy in that room too, so that freaked me out a little bit, because she was fine in the other two rooms, and fine again after we got outside! man! it was a rush... OH! and when we first got in that room, our camera batteries died out of nowhere, (and we had just charged them!) and as Tony was walking out of the room to get the extra spare set, a lady out there said, "That room drains batteries." Is that FREAKY or what!?!
This room was so scary... It had beds that the patients used to stay in.... actual hospital utensils they used to use back then... with no anesthetic OUCH! I can see why those spirits would stay there... man! it was all so scary....
after that we took a tour through part of the town... past by a haunted restraunt, and by two cemetaries. The first cemetary, I got a picture that there looks like there's a face in the tree trunk! I was excited because that was about the only good pic I got. We also got to hear a bunch of stories about the town, and one about the founder (his 2nd wife haunts one of the dorm rooms of a college there.) Man, it was soooooo awesome, and soooo much fun. I would go back and take the tour again in a heartbeat!
**Well, I was going to add pics, but Blogger.com is NOT working with me tonight! UGH!!!**
I got my blue star!
I finally got my 2nd star on ebay... :) the blue one. it's for 50-99 positive feedbacks. I've been trying to reach it for a while. yay... other news...
We finally used the new jogging stroller tonight. It's cool, needs some breaking in still, and it doesn't fold down :( ... but oh well. I ran three times around the parking lot, which is not alot... it's less than a third of a mile... lol... i suck :( but oh well... i'll keep trying.
Carlee now has two teeth coming in.
i'm taking an online drawing class. i'm excited about it. :) it's being taught by a lady in the art group forum i joined on ebay. i'm looking foward to learning some stuff and getting critiqued.
We found out why my food in the oven always burns.... the oven had the wrong knob on it. The maintainance guy came and looked at it this morning and said it had the wrong temperature knob on it... good grief... lol.... these apartments... i swear... **sigh**
We took Carlee to the playground today. She loves the little baby swings... and then we held her and swung/swinged?/no... swang? whatever... it was fun... the stupid apartments. they have one of those playground things where there's an upper level and a slide and a pole, etc... well, on the upper level, one of the boards is missing so it'd be really easy for a kid to fall off... all they have across it is yellow caution tape... uh... hello? younger kids can't even read that, and for those that can aren't going to pay attention to it. How hard is it to freaking fix it? geez.... i swear! I'll take a pic of it tomorrow... we were annoyed... these apartments suck...
that's all good night :)
Magical Memories
Well, I was feeling a lot better yesterday, which was good since we had planned on going to Disney that day since Christmas. lol... I felt great all day and so of course, I thought I was over it... then last night at the hotel it all came back and hit me. ugh.. it was horrible, not only did I feel icky, but Carlee had a rough night as well... she just didn't want to stay asleep! But we managed.. and now we're home resting up.
Disney world was sooo much fun! I'm glad we finally went, we would of really kicked ourselves in the butt if we left Florida without visiting Disney! We didn't get to ride any rides because of having a little one, but it was still fun to sightsee, watch a few shows, meet a few Disney Characters, and shop for little carlee. lol... It was beautiful. I'll post a few pics here, but all the Carlee related ones are on her site. :) (I know my shirt is huge... lol, but there was no way I wasn't going to be comfortable walking around all day.... haha)
Pirates of the Carribean show:
I'm sick
woke up this morning feeling ugh...
what a way to start the new year.
:(
Happy New Years!!!
Welcome into 2006!!!I hope this year is great for everyone!:DWe spent the night watching The Brothers Grim (boo) and then Tony played a new game, and I read ebay forums... what a pair of party-ers we are lol :) At the last thirty seconds we watched the ball drop on tv.... woo hoo! 2006!!! Anyway, we are just happy to be home together to welcome in this new year. Last year he was deployed.... so this means alot. :)
