Fortune and Fame and smooth starting...

Hey, I actually got cited!! Too bad the U of A link to my capping paper is now dead. I should probably find a new home for it, but I have a terrible admission to make: I don't think I kept a local copy of the files. Which would mean pulling out my comp copies of The Progressive Librarian and retyping it all, then marking it up in html. Which is a project that I do not think will get finished anytime very soon. Oh well...I'll keep you posted.

Adventures in Car Repair this week. Poor Macha was long overdue for servicing, and her starter was sounding strange, so I took her into Michael's garage to be tuned up, inspected and repaired. Well, when I got her back, the starter, which had been replaced, sounded about a hundred times worse! It was so bad I wasn't even confident about the car being able to start reliably. I really don't like spending $200 on repairs just to find that I'm worse off afterwards, so I took her back. Well, if they'd done it right the first time and rebuilt my old starter rather than replacing it with an inferior one everything would have been fine...which it is, now that I have the old (fixed) part back. Somehow I think I'm going to be back on the trail looking for another new mechanic...sigh.

Michael and I are leaving Friday morning for ALA in Orlando. We have a pretty busy schedule there, and we'll be meeting up with Cynthia Wilson to let her photograph us for her I am a librarian project. I also plan to hit the job fair at least once...cross your fingers for me and maybe I'll find a good employer in the Pacific Northwest that's hiring.

Stormy weather

Well, the rainy season has finally arrived, and after a couple months of relatively enjoyable dry heat we are back to the normal summer conditions. Which means oppressive mugginess, and spectacular daily storms. Makes getting around Broward kind of interesting sometimes....one moment you'll be high and dry, the next in the middle of pounding rain so heavy visibility is restricted to about 30 ft. The storms are so local that you can literally be in a situation where your front windshield is so covered with water you can hardly see, and your rear windshield is dry! Amazing...

I remember the first time Michael and I went to the Everglades, we were woken in the middle of the night by a thunderstorm. Incredible lightening, deafening thunder, and winds so high we thought the roof might come off. We didn't get much more sleep that night! Kind of gives you a new respect for the power of nature.

Not much other news. I have been reading wedding planning books and they are making my head fuzzy. But in a good way, really! :)

stepping closer to financial freedom

Well, I did something exciting today. No, I didn't get an engagement ring or set a wedding date...I paid off my car! Doing it early like this will put a bit of a dent in my short term funds, but free me up to put my monthly payment amounts into savings for the events of the next year or so. The cheque, as they say, is in the mail.

Michael and I decided to set up a separate site for information and conversation about our wedding plans. Hopefully this will prevent our regular blogs from becoming boring for those of you who don't want to read all about the details of our planning process! It's called The Big Event, and I've got a link to it on my blog sidebar. If we can find a place to store photos and images, we will include some of those, too.

Big news and post-weekend catchup

Well, Michael and I are back from the Everglades. And we have some really exciting news to share: we got engaged on Sunday by Florida Bay! It still hasn't totally sunk in for me yet, I think--I kind of feel like I'm walking around in a bit of a daze most of the time. Strange how life can be the same yet totally different all at once... Those of you who know me know that I have wanted this to happen for a long time, and that I was actually starting to think that Michael would never be ready to propose! Happily, I was wrong, because he says he decided to ask me in the Everglades right after I suggested the trip. It was not a big, staged event or anything...I think he just waited until he felt like the moment was right and then asked me. Which is really, in my mind, one of the best ways to do it :)

Anyway, we haven't made any specific plans yet as to where and when and how, so I don't have very many other details to share. A lot will depend on where we eventually end up, and things like that. More information will be forthcoming, though I promise that this will not become a boring blog devoted to the minutae of the Wedding Experience. Sites like Going Bridal do it much better, and much funnier, than I ever would!

Anyway. About the rest of the trip. The weather was hot and sunny the entire weekend, with record highs for this time of year topping out in the low 90s. We took our time getting there on Friday, stopping at Homestead for lunch and antique browsing, and at Robert is here, the famous local fruit stand, for Strawberry Key Lime Milkshakes. We stayed at one of the cottages at Flamingo Lodge, which was walking distance from both the main lodge with the pool and the visitor centre and Eco Pond, a reclaimed area that helps filter local waste water and provide a home for wading birds and alligators. Because of the hot weather, we actually spent more time at the pool than we originally planned--the area was surrounded by bug screen walls and ceilings, which lowered the temperatures and kept the mosquitos and biting flies away. We did wander down some of the trails and boardwalks, though, picnic-ed in some of the rest areas, and spent a couple of hours canoeing in the Flamingo canal up to the backcountry. We wanted to take the boat up into one of our favorite ponds from last time, but we couldn't because the lakes were still dry! The rains have been late coming this year, which means some areas are still closed. Makes for good alligator viewing, though!

Our second night was interesting. A vulture flew into a park transformer, starting a fire and knocking out the power for about 14 hours! So we gathered with other guests by the pool and grilled our dinner on the communal barbeque. Things were back up by about 10 the next morning, fortunately, so we didn't experience too much discomfort.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good trip :) We wished we could have stayed longer, but it was back to work on Tuesday morning so no chance there. Anyway, the pool and much of the lodge is closed for the summer after June 1. We were also surprised to see that the Sunset Bay cruise (on an historic sailboat) and the 4-hour backcountry boat trip we took the first time we visited had both been permanently cancelled! Too bad, because we really enjoyed both trips. Guess it's good that we went when we did.

To end, a collection of links gathered from my catch-up on various emails and friends' sites:

• My latest Pause newsletter had links to the Slow Food and Slow Travel web sites. The last one looks particularly interesting. I've always thought that one of the best ways to travel is to take your time and actually get to know part of a place, and it's nice to know there are resources to help you do it.
• Randy notes that SCTV is up and ready for DVD sales. Yay for good Canadian Comedy!
• And also from Randy....make sure you're sitting down and not midway through a snack when you watch the video of Leonard Nimoy performing his seminal work, "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins". It's funny enough to be dangerous to your health otherwise!