The Weekend: Sunday

Bright and early Sunday morning I was up and off to work to tend to my consultancy samples, then it was back home to get ready for Church. We went to Creekside again and this time found that the Pastor was finally teaching. I think that we both like it there, even if the pastor is a little dry (personality wise). We'll keep going as we both feel that multiple visits paint a better picture of a church.

After church we discussed our chores for the day. Jenee wanted to have another look at the entertainment center at Pier 1, and I wanted to get my new toys properly set up and calibrated. Before all of that, our stomachs called out to us, so we ate out at a new (to us) place called Zaxby's. Not overly a fan of what I had but Jenee said that her meal was good.

From Zaxby's we walked across the parking lot to Pier 1 (a retail chain that sells furniture and decor) and unanimously agreed that the Balinese Entertainment Center was worth saving up for, especially since it is a matching piece of our Balinese bedroom furniture.

Once we got home, Jenee decided that she wanted to move some of the furniture around. It started with a couch, and then the desk, and before I knew it, she had talked me into completely rearranging the entire lounge room. It took the rest of the day to finish and tidy up one enormous mess but we managed to complete it, right before Brandon and Krista arrived for the evening. The good news is, that we made a lot more space and we should now have space to store the bikes.

We had a great time with Brandon and Krista and shared a meal and a few games of Rummyking, ending the evening by watching my Australian version of Monsters Inc. Next weekend we are painting the kitchen and dining area and then I will take some pictures of all the changes of the apartment. I know that some of you haven't seen it yet, so if you can wait a little longer, you will see the final thing.

Sable relaxing on the balcony after a hard day of sleeping and eating.

Wow, what a weekend. We were both exhausted from all the activity, but were praising the Lord for all the wonderful things that He has given to us and done for us. This week Jenee has to study for her SAT re-test because apparently they expire? Meanwhile I have a list of chores as long as my arm to do while she studies. If you can remember Jenee in your prayers while she studies, that would be great.

The Weekend: Saturday

On Saturday morning I was up at the crack of dawn to get free trees with Brandon. Yup free trees. You see, GRU, our local utilities supplier gives away free trees every year and I went along to help Brandon with his tree count. It was very funny to see how serious this was for some people. We got there at 6:45 am, and people had been lining up since 6. We waited around for about 45 minutes until finally they opened up the gates and in we filed. First we got our GRU bills stamped, then we got the checked with highlighter (like at airport security) which made me laugh. Then we went to the tree master who we told which two trees we would like, and then we were given receipts for these trees which we could then go and get. They even stamped our hands so that we couldn’t comeback with a different GRU bill and get more trees. LOL.

Waiting for our trees with 500 other people.

Well after that early morning adventure, I returned home to a cooked breakfast by my darling wife (Cocoa Pops / Crispies) and we called my parents. I had a good long chat to both my parents and it was wonderful to hear that Australia is finally getting some rain for the first time in a long time. Hopefully that will start to alleviate some of the drought. Praise the Lord.

After chatting to the folks, we got ready, I went to work to tend to some consultancy work, and Jenee went to the beautician (not that she needs too) and then picked me up where we headed to Ocala to pay a visit to Hobby Lobby (aka Holly Hobby to those in the know). Jenee was in paradise, so much so that when we walked in the door she got so excited that she had to make her first stop the bathroom.

We walked around for an hour, and bought some picture frames. One of these days, we will actually print out some of the pictures I have taken and put them on the wall. We also found a really nice kitchen shelf that we would like to get to put kitchen stuff on. A quick stop at Starbucks and we were back in the car, heading back home for the most exciting part of the weekend for me.

What was so exciting? Well I got to finally buy a DVD player and A/V receiver! I had debated long and hard about how much to spend, what brands to buy etc, but I finally settled on good ol’ Marantz, like I had before. I am very happy with it. The best part is, the DVD player can do the following: play DVD’s from all regions, inc Australian Region 4 DVD’s, automatically convert PAL to NTSC color codes and upscale DVD’s to high definition signals. Yay x 10! At first, I couldn’t get everything to work together, but then I realized that I had to connect the AV receiver to the TV. Duh.

The new reviever and DVD, under the TV, and my Krix Speakers!

Needless to say, I am very giddy and Jenee humored me by watching some or my favorite movie, The Fifth Element, to celebrate the new toys!

The Weekend: Friday

Well what an exciting weekend we have had! We have excitably been waiting for our tax return for the last month and on Thursday night it was electronically deposited into our bank account. We had predestined that 1/3 of it would go straight to our savings account and the other 2/3rds would be used to buy some items that we have both respectively been waiting for. The wish list was checked on Friday during lunch, and decided that we would celebrate straight after work.

The first stop was a nice dinner at a our favorite casual restaurant, the Gainesville Ale House. This was followed buy a leisurely walk over to Best Buy. Jenee as been asking for a TV for the bedroom from some time and I finally agreed. She likes the noise and ambient light, as it helps her go to sleep. I didn't believer her at first until our last visit back to Texas where she has a TV in her old room.

I thought that a nice 19” / 48cm screen should do the trick, but apparently it was too small. We looked around the store some more and finally settled on a 26” Sharp LCD. It was the last one and it was the display model so we got a $175 gift voucher too. I also bought Jenee a DVD player so that she could enjoy her beloved Disney DVD's. We used the gift certificate to buy a 4 year service plan on both the TV and DVD. So we spent a little more than planned but there are no regrets.

The new TV and DVD player!

We also bough the cats a few treats, like a new low mess, low smell litter box, collars, name tags and wet food. They are so spoiled...

Perhaps more importantly than the TV/DVD we bought our Monster Truck Jam Tickets! 7:30 this Saturday – Yehaaaw!

Canoeing will the Alligators...

It's Sunday evening and we are settled in for the night. We have had a nice weekend, the weather here has been nothing short of beautiful. Its been so comfortable that we haven't wanted nor needed air conditioning.

Jenee and I again attended Creekside Community Church. This week we learnt that the Church is very focused on evangelism and missionary work. We like this aspect of the Church and will probably attended again. Funnily enough, we still haven't heard the head pastor preach. Maybe next week?


After Church, we signed on for another year at our apartment, and then met up with Rob, Mike, Jason and Mandy. The plan was to go to Lake Wauberg and canoe the afternoon away. Due to the fact I felt like I was toying with disaster, I didn't take the camera on the canoe, but I did take a group shot of us afterwards.

Lake Wauberg is full of alligators however, I am sad to say that we only saw the splash of a baby dashing gator, no actual visual contact with the beloved mascot. Well here is a picture of us. From left to right, there is Rob, Jason and Mandy, Mike, Jenee and Me.


I want to go back within the next few weeks to see if I can get some wildlife pics...

Nate

Our Health

I thought I would post an update as to how we are going health wise. You probably remember a few weeks ago, I hurt my back pretty badly. Since then, I have been to the Chiropractor 3 or so times and received treatment. Well, I am happy to say that I am feeling much, much better. I have very little discomfort and I am feeling my old strength coming back. I have more drive during the day and I am sleeping better. I am praising the Lord for his kindness towards me. During this weeks visit to the Dr he mentioned that I had maintained alignment in C1 (good thing) and that I was needing less adjustment in the other problem areas.

Jenee is getting better too, and is needing less and less adjustment. She is, however starting to feel some pressure with a full work schedule and then school and some homesickness. If you could remember her in your prayers it would be most appreciated.

Praise the Lord for all his provision and healing power.

Adobe Photoshop = Digital Love

Most of the images you see on this site from my camera have at one point or another been through Adobe's Photshop CS3 digital image editing software. Photoshop allows you to do just about anything imaginable to a digital picture. Whether you want to put your own head on someone else's body, design amazing graphics or spend hours pouring over a photo that you took, correcting color balance, contrast, hue, tint, sharpness, or remove a parking cone that's a distraction in fore ground of an otherwise well composed F-16 image or converting it to a striking black and white image.

You can even write and run macros which are self executing mini-programs for handling multiple files. For example, the "Heart of Florida Air Show" pictures were taken in whats called a RAW format, similar to a film negative. I used Photoshop to convert all 490 of them to jpg format, then I used a sharpen command, and then I resized all of them so that they would fit into a small file for the slide show. All I had to do was tell it what to do and an hour later it was all completed.

If you happen to use Photoshop and you don't know how to do something that I have mentioned, send me a message or email and I will do my best to help you out.

Air Show Goodness! (PICTURES ARE UP NOW)

Well, we are back in our apartment, after a long long day in the sun. The day started off early for me, I got up at 7 and headed off to work to tend to samples from 2 separate experiments. An hour later I was back at the apartment, and hour after that, we were at Gainesville Regional Airport for the "Heart of Florida Air Show".

After a brief and exciting ride on a tractor pulled wagon we were there! The organizers had a great assortment of modern fighter jets, old and current stunt planes, historical military and civilian planes. You can see the slide show below, but we spent a good hour walking around enjoying the atmosphere. I love it cause you can talk to anyone, ask questions to pilots and have a great time together.

Heart of Florida Airshow 2007

Our favorites? Well, I have to admit, the big ticket to me was to see a real deal in-the-flesh A-10 Warthog, and I have to admit, in the air A-10's are incredibly maneuverable and you can see how lethal they would potentially be to land targets in service. On the other hand the noise, violence, grace, maneuverability, speed, and violence of the F-18 was astounding. And then there was Jurgis Kairys' Sukhoi Su-31. One word - WOW. Jenee's favorite was Patty Wagstaff flying her Extra300S stunt plane. She threw that little thing all over the sky like nobodies business. It was a very spectacular show, she was flying 50ft off the deck, and then the next moment she was whizzing up into the sky spinning around and around, and then she would be back playing near the ground.

Our Impression? Personally I thought that it was a well organized fun day out. One thing I will confess to though, is that from now on I will listen to the gene in my wife that says things like "Shall we take chairs?", and "Let's take some more food and water!". I confess, I thought that chairs would be extra weight, and a pain. Wrong and wrong. We came home after six hours in the hot Florida sun, happy but rater sunburnt, well at least on Stevens was ...So, who's up for the Sea and Air Airshow in May down in Ft Lauderdale? (me me me me me me me!)

Why I Love My Cousin Eugene

Cause he makes me laugh when I needed it...


All you fans of Weird Al's "UHF" will enjoy these pictures...

Above: Weird Al as Indiana Jones, and Rambo.
Below: Wheel of Fish and Conan the Librarian.

Easter 2007

So how was everyone’s Easter long weekend? Well ours has been long and fun. On Wednesday and Thursday I had to attend our bi-annual Industrial Advisory Board Meeting where research from our department is scrutinized. It went very well, I had my undergrad presenting and also one of the grad students that I work closely with present. Overall, it was very successful. Jenee left on Wednesday for Texas, so after IAB I rented a car and drove to Jacksonville to catch a plane to Texas. Now we are very lucky to be flying on air miles, so don’t take this the wrong way, but I really don’t like American Airlines. For some reason this airline is unorganized to new heights. I don’t necessarily think it’s the staff, I think it is the underlying companies protocol that makes their service so bad. You don’t get a free snack on the plane, they want $3 for a bag of potato chips, they bumped our return flight with out telling us and they changed our seats so that we had to ask other passengers if they minded switching so we would be together. The only redeeming feature of the trip was one of the air hostesses cared enough to ask how I was and how my day was.

Easter 2007

Friday, Jenee mowed the lawns of her parent’s house and I picked up sticks and chew toys from the yard that the dogs have left. After our morning garden work, I dropped Jenee off at her Aunt Karen’s house to spend time with her cousin Majedah and her cute little boy, Zade. I hung around for a while and talked and even risked playing with Scarlet, Aunt Karen’s cat. Scarlet is sweet, but is known to be bipolar. I snapped a picture of her in midair pouncing on one of her toys. After an hour or so I split and headed off to Arlington Camera to put my name on the 4 month wait list for the Nikon 18-200 VR. (Warning: "Boring" camera discussion, feel free to skip) This will be a great lens and replaces two lenses (18-70, 70-300 VR) with one. I also got to play with the Nikon 80-400 and the Tokina 12-24 lenses. I loved the Tokina, and for 50% of the purchase price of the Nikon equivalent, I think I have found the right lens for my landscape photography. As for the tele-Nikon, it was nice but I would rather a different approach for my telephoto wants.

After the camera store I went to Fry’s (a boys paradise electronics warehouse) to buy some more memory for Jenee’s laptop. It now has 1.25 GB of RAM and runs much better. I also went over to Uncle Tony’s to pay a visit. Jon and Ash are now working for UT. They have sorted out the office with new furniture and new computers. It looks great and there is a picture of their office in the slideshow I posted. Jon and I joked around with SuperSonic (UT’s new nickname) and got up to our usual tom-foolery. Before I left to pick up Jenee, Ash said something really bizarre… The weather bureau was forecasting snow flurries for Saturday. SNOW FLURRIES IN APRIL.

Well Saturday morning we woke up to snow flurries, just like weather bureau said. Now if you don’t believe me check out the slideshow. And what’s more, the snow flakes were big. It snowed for a good 5-6 hours at one point and on and off for the rest of the day, but because the ground was warm the snow didn’t stick around long. While I was taking the pictures out the back of the Masri farm, something else caught my attention. Sure enough, the hummingbirds were out feeding from Momma’s feeder. I snapped a few pictures of them, they are such amazing little birds. I snapped the pictures from 1/250^th to 1/500^th of a second and the wings were still moving too fast for me to capture them. All that means is those little wings flap really, really fast.

Later that day Jenee and I went to the most elaborate Easter party that I have ever seen. Organized by Lisa and Carl Cravens, we arrived to be greeted by a lawn mower train driven by Carl’s grandfather. He wouldn’t take no for an answer so we rode in the train and made a grand entrance in front of all the parents. Upon arrival, Lisa gave me camera duty, Jenee was given “supervise the girls” duty and Courtney was given “Easter Bunny” duty. Yup, Courtney was the Easter Bunny. Lisa had a huge egg hunt organized, two blow-up castles, a petting farm and enough sugar and juice to give the average kid diabetes. Well at least Mary Nelle who was so desperate for sugar, we caught her eating the freckles off the cake plates and sucking the icing off of the mini cup cakes. (Sound familiar Heather and Helen? What are you eating Nate? Noffink…)

We went to Babes for dinner and ate our selves stupid. Babes has only 5 options on the menu: Catfish, Baked Chicken, Chicken Friend Steak, Chicken Fingers and Pot Roast. Pick one and you get a good serving of bean sprouts, corn and mashed potatoes to boot. It’s a hearty meal but its so, so good.

Sunday we had church, which was fantastic as always, We just love Mansfield Bible Church. Greg has a wonderful gift for sharing the Word. I was amazed at how many people came up to me and asked me how I was and how my back was, not just out of courtesy, but out of genuine interest. I was really touched by the love displayed toward me. After church we came home and started to get ready for a big family Easter doo. Well, we had enough eggs for 5 kids, but only one came, Landon, Matt and Melissa’s boy. Poor Landon had to have some help carrying all the eggs. And mean Aunt Jenee put eggs next to the fence where the big bad dogs were excitedly waiting so he was a little scared. Luckily Matt and I were there to save him from the puppies and the eggs were safely collected. Linda put on an amazing dinner for all of us, and we settled in and sat around talking, playing card games and the boys watched Future Weapons. Future Weapons is well worth watching. Overall it was a really nice evening and we all had a great time.

Monday Jen and I ran more errands and stuff. If you asked Jen what the best thing about Monday was she would probably say: getting new thongs/flip flops and a shirt from the Nordstrom Rack outlet store. They have all sorts of great bargains there. I think I am going to save some money up and get some nice work clothes and maybe a watch. All of there stuff is “last season” which doesn’t really matter much because lets face it, men’s formal fashion doesn’t really change all that much. Highlight number two would have been that she got to drive a convertible 1988 Mercedes 560SL. Jenee was in heaven. She even coaxed me into the car and we drove home in 12°C at 105 km/h. Yeah, cold. Monday night we just chilled at home with Linda and Joe and watched “Dancing with the Stars” and “24”. I have to admit, I am becoming a bit of a fan of “Dancing” and 24 even got me interested for a little while.

Tuesday was a rush, we got up early to go to the bank, then Jenee and Linda got their nails done while I went back to the house and finished off the washing (and watched more Future Weapons). Nothing much exciting here, except as I wrote this on the plane, I connected to a wireless network approximately 30,000 ft up. Go figure? It wouldn’t actually let me load Google though.

Well, that’s about it, we are flying home as I write this, and looking forward to getting back to the apartment and seeing the kittens and restoring some kind of routine. I hope everyone had a great weekend and I’d love to hear from you. Email me!

Nate and Jenee

3 National Championships in 12 Months!

Well the Gators have done it again. Last night the Mens basketball team won their second consecutive national title. In January, the football / gridiron team won their first title in (I think) 11 years. Thats three titles in 12 months.

Excerpt and image taken from GatorZone

The University of Florida men’s basketball team capped another magical season Monday night, this time with an 84-75 victory over Ohio State at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta to claim the national title for the second-straight year.

With the victory, the Gators became the first team since 1991 and 1992 to repeat as champions (Duke).

Florida (35-5) won the final 10 games of the season, and now owns an 18-game win streak in postseason play (12-0 in the NCAA Tournament). Ohio State ended its season with a 35-4 record as the Gators snapped the Buckeye’s 22-game win streak.

Last year I was only "fascinated" with the sports activity of the university and enjoyed attending the basketball and baseball games. I have to say, this year I am a lot more interested in the teams and would claim to be a fan, though not a "superfan" like some Gators. These young men have such fantastic attitudes towards each other and their opponents and have won my respect. You should see how they play, their just amazing...


Nate