Blueberry Breakfast

From A:

Taking advantage of seasonal fruits, J and I stocked up on blueberries earlier in the summer. J's favorite use of our frozen blueberries has been in his mixed fruit smoothies:

My favorite use of the blueberries has been in blueberry pancakes, which we have had the past two weekends. This weekend, we had a sweeter take on blueberry pancakes, adding cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla extract to the batter:

Yum!

Nature!

From J:

Let me preface this with a disclaimer: no bloggers were harmed in the making of this post.

A and I were driving home from dinner yesterday when I spied something out of the corner of my eye in the stagnant pond of our condo complex. What could it be? Yes! An alligator!

Trust me, that speck in middle of the pond isn't a log. Sorry, my iPhone doesn't have any zoom features. Now, cue the Jaws theme:


Closer...Closer...
CLOSER...

Oh hi! I can haz fingerz?

I took this photo right after the alligator yawned (the yawning shot was, unfortunately, blurry). Yes, a fun fact! Alligators yawn. After this, it mostly just kept an eye on me. I moved to a slightly different location and...

...my new alligator buddy followed me. All-in-all, a pretty exciting evening with real live nature! This is a reminder to all of our non-Gainesville readers (which is pretty much all of you, I think) that we live in an actual swamp. A couple of shots to close out the post:


And one from another location (yes, the gator moved again to watch me):

Accents

From J:

Accent walls are hot right now. So hot right now. Every time my wife turns on HGTV they're painting accent walls. So we figure, why can't we get in on this action? I give you the fruit of our labors this morning:
This color is called "Soft Camel." That doesn't really tell you anything about the actual color, which is an important feature of paints. We painted a wall in our bedroom "Natural." I would expect natural to be greenish, but no! It's a very light tan.

An accent wall was an excellent solution to our paint woes. A has lived in this same condo for about 4 years now. As would be expected, the walls have gotten dinged up a bit during her tenure, especially the flood we suffered last Christmas. About two weeks ago, I embarked on an ill-fated mission to color match some paint an do a bit of touch-up work. The paint color didn't match, so I ended up having to paint the entire wall to cover up the touch-ups. But it looks great now, right?





(Yes, it does.)

Evening lols

From J:

It's time that these gems finally made their way on to the internet.

First up: Sad scooter. This is the best photo that I have ever taken.


At Michael's:

A man who needs no introduction: (Tim Tebow fact: Tim Tebow avoids Ballyhoo so people don't get any photos of Tim Treebow with Tim Tebow.)


And one more to close out the post:

Saving Lives

From A:

Every 8 weeks, J is a donor at our local blood center. I went along for moral support this trip, although J is so experienced in his blood donations that he doesn't really need it. But, since I was with him, I was able to get a picture of the action:

And, another donation means another blood donor shirt. J has found these shirts come in handy to deter unsolicited Jehovah's Witness visits to our condo complex. And, if that wasn't enough of an incentive, there's also the fact that his donations have the potential to save someone's life (or multiple lives, depending on the cirumstances).

A, J, and J+A

From A:

To my surprise, our wedding photographer not only took some good pictures of J and I together, but she got some good separate pictures before the ceremony. Here is one of me (the cross in the background is actually a reflection from the front door of the chapel):

Here is one of Jason. He looks so dapper:

And, since it was our wedding after all, here is a picture of both of us. This is right after the ceremony as we were leaving the chapel (and were so relieved!):

Paint

From A:

J and I have been doing some painting in our condo. We started in the guest bath, getting a color match to repaint it the same color. Here is J beginning to paint the long wall:

Here I am working on the short wall:

And, continuing with our wedding photo posts, here is another of our favorites:

Another Haiku

From J:

I'm in a haiku kind of mood tonight. An ode to PhD studies:

Part 1:

Academia
Single word lines simplify
Thesis, here I come!

Part 2:

Boss wants results fast
Time to plan experiments!
...minesweeper distracts.

Part 3:

Finished with devices
Scanned for 6 hours, got data
Results don't agree

Part 4:

Complete data, check
New Google Scholar search time
Already published :-(

Part 5:

Tweak topic, rewrite.
Submit it ambitously
Accepted! Cloud nine.

A Memorial Haiku

From J:

For Bullet (Summer 2004 - Summer 2009):

You were a good fish
Always begging for food, glub
We overfed you.