Home for a While

We're back in Zephyrhills to stay for at least a few months. Maybe that will give us enough time to empty at least some of these bins filling up the entire Florida room. Yesterday I finally had a few minutes to haul off all the scrap metal that has been piling up with all the renovations we've been doing. Thanks to the metal thieves, that is now a long, drawn-out process. I had to show my photo ID not once but twice, give make/model/year and plate number of my vehicle, be photographed, thumb-printed and have a complete physical description recorded in the scrap company's computer system. All for $10.51 and a tee shirt. Damn metal thieves. I started joking around with the scrap guy about how it was easier to open a new bank account that it was to sell off a few pounds of scrap metal, but it's only funny in a sick sort of way.

Today I had an early appointment for some more lab work for an up-coming doctor visit. I just about screwed the whole thing up royally. See, I still have some lingering doctor appointments and such back in Sanford trying to figure out some weird things that showed up in a couple of my routine blood tests. I'm keeping those appointments because of that whole not-changing-horses-in-midstream thing. But when I made the appointment for the labs, I decided to just use a local Labcorp office instead of driving 100 miles on Death Highway. The problem was that I had completely forgotten that I did that. For the last couple weeks, we've been making all sorts of plans for things that I would be doing this morning while back in Sanford. It finally hit me last night while setting my alarm for 4:30am cussing myself out for making the appointment so fracking early in the morning that my appointment was only 10 minutes from our house. I'm certainly glad I realized that before driving across the state.

Unfortunately, the 10 minute drive turned out to be more adventure that I thought possible due to the World's Worst GPS, otherwise known as a Magellan. I hadn't done a Google map like I usually do because of all the chaos with moving and traveling around the country, but I shouldn't need to: I paid a bunch of money for a crazy lady in a box. I'll use that. I would have had better luck throwing knuckle bones to determine my route. It tells me to make a left turn. I make a left turn. It screams at me to make an immediate U-turn. So I do. The screen literally spins around a full 360 degrees, then takes a full minute to re-orient itself, then crazy lady starts screaming at me to make a U-turn. So I do. More spinning around followed by the little arrow that's supposed to show my location going cross country through some woods. Meanwhile, the crazy lady is screaming at me to make random turns down non-existent roads. I decide that it will be easier to just drive to the general area where I think the place is, then call for directions. But the screen finally catches up to where I am, and after I start screaming back at the crazy lady, she finally shuts up. Maybe now this stupid piece of crap will work? At least the green line looks like it's going where I want it to even though crazy lady is now sulking and fails to verbally inform me of the next two turns. The problem is, the green line doesn't take me to Labcorp, it takes me past their road, then a boulevard left, dumps me in a Bealls parking lot, then out the truck entrance, back across Labcorp's road into their parking lot and finally crazy lady stops sulking long enough to announce that I have arrived at my destination. Good God. At least the blood draw was uneventful, as was the ride home with the crazy lady in a box safely unplugged, turned off, and stuff under all the other useless junk stashed in the Durango's armrest. I'm so glad we have all this technology to make our lives simpler.

Speaking of technology, I'm a little late with this because of all our traveling, but here it is:


The most complex landing ever attempted and it went off without a hitch. Sweet.

Meanwhile, mostly forgotten on another part of Mars, Opportunity continues to collect data and take fantastic photos:

Looks like the ol' girl needs a bit of dusting. But not bad considering she was only supposed to last 90 Martian days and just clocked in day 3,038. I wish I had that good of luck with cars.

In any case, I need to scream at stupid people on the phone, get some furniture on Craigslist and unpack what I can while Debbie is working. And trim the grass. And do some raking. And dumpster more useless crap left here by our predecessor. And... well... yea.