Christmas 2019

Instead of doing one blog post for each activity, I'm going to combine several Christmas events into one blog post and call it Christmas 2019. I fell a little behind bloggin' this month so we'll have a long blog post here instead of multiple posts.

Ethan got pictures with Santa this year and was happy to do it! I couldn't post the ones from last year, he was screaming!

We went to the winter festival and tree lighting ceremony in the park near the house.

This is sledding in Florida. We have to import our hills and make our own snow. 

It took a minute, but Ethan figured out which side to stand on for pictures. 

Not the best picture of the tree, but I got some fireworks in the shot too.  

Not much later, I decorated the house. Pretty similar to last year except this time, we added a new inflatable decoration. 

It's a Christmas jack-in-the-box and has a separate motor for each, the bear and the box so he pops in and out.

There he is!

What is Christmas without a Christmas llama mug? I had to drink something while the Christmas turkey cooked. 

This is most of Christmas dinner. We had an 11 pound turkey (for five), stuffing, sweet potato, cranberry sauce, vegetable rice (for Ethan), and two pumpkin pies. Well, we ate the first one at dinner, the second was for leftovers. 

Finally, here is Ethan's favorite Christmas present. This year he figured out that toys are wrapped in the boxes with wrapping paper. He's playing with his little train set. 

Toys for Tots 2019

This year I participated in the annual Toys for Tots Christmas toy drive at work. The other person who helped me organize and recruit people for donations retired earlier in the year. She did a lot to encourage people to donate in one of the offices we collect from. 

Donations were down slightly overall but up in one of the three offices I collect from. All in all it was a good year for us, however, when we dropped off to the USMC Reserve Center in Hialeah, they said that collections had been slow coming. Maybe it was just that we collected a week earlier than usual.

Like I said, it wasn't a bad year. We can't break personal records every year. I'm sure we'll have more next year.

New PC Keyboard

We converted my old office space. I had previously used half of the Florida room for my office space and playing video games. It had been like this for several years, ever since we remodeled it about a year into living in this house. That space has now been converted into Ethan's toy/play area where he has his toys. Now his toys are not in everyone's way and his toy box is not the focal point of the house when people walk inside.

Secondly, he has been sleeping in his own room for a while now which has freed up space in the master bedroom. This extra space has been converted into an office area for me. Now I can pay bills, write, blog, eventually do eBay again or whatever else I need to do without being disturbed in a common area. Ethan also won't play on the swiveling office chair anymore.

Now that I can write more, I wanted to upgrade some computer hardware. Let's face it, the keyboards that come with computers today are functional but are as cheap as possible. It's not like people type much anyway. If they do, they tend to do it at work in an office setting, then use the PC at home for other things. Hence, low quality keyboards standard with new PCs. The keyboard that came with our HP was pretty small. The keys were shallow and stiff. It was not easy to type on. I would often have to press hard to get a key to work and the spacebar was stiff too. There were a lot of corrections to be made because of the stiff keyboard, not from striking the wrong button.

I decided to upgrade to a larger, ergonomic keyboard. While in the area of Best Buy, we stopped in for a look. Ethan was in the toy section with his mother. He was distracted so I had about 10-15 minutes to check out what might work for me. I looked around at the office style keyboards. They weren't anything special but were definitely upgrades. There were one or two that I'd be satisfied with. Then, on the next aisle over, I saw some keyboards with other gaming hardware. I wasn't sure I wanted a keyboard that lit up or anything gimmicky but I had a few minutes and I was in the store already so I checked it out.

I looked at the PC gaming keyboards and was blown away. Why would anyone who writes or types a lot use anything else? These are the best keyboards I have ever seen in my life. I've been working in office settings for years. I've typed countless reports. I know what a ergonomic keyboard should be. These gaming keyboards are the best keyboards I have ever seen in my life. I wrote that again on purpose. I might be sounding repetitive but just look how long this blog post is now compared to other posts about more significant events.

The keys are better, the layout is better, it looks better, it has special keys. There is a Windows button cut off button! Yes, now I no longer hit the Windows button by accident and have to see a pop up window. Thank you gamers. There are also special keys which can be programmed and extra keys for recording live streams. I don't plan on using these special buttons, but for typing, this is the best keyboard I ever had and I got the cheapest one! Why should I pay twice as much for top of the line office hardware when the gaming hardware is better? I spent about $40 on this keyboard which is just above mid range quality in the office style keyboards, but this is better than the top of the line keyboards over on the office side.

I bought the Corsair K55 Gaming Keyboard

At first I thought the background lighting was a little gimmicky. When I am typing in the low light of the bedroom at night, it makes it easier to find the keys. 

If I ever need a new mouse, I am going straight for a PC gaming mouse because this gaming hardware is legit good. 

Movie: Midway

I haven't been to the movies in a while but when I saw an advertisement for Midway (2019), I thought it would be a great movie to see with my father. Then, the week of Halloween, while he was visiting, he mentioned that he was interested in seeing it. We made plans to see it opening weekend but, due to flu season, we had to postpone the trip to the movies one week. Fine with me. We enjoyed it on a weekday without a crowd.

It was worth seeing in the movie theater. It ended up being one of those war movies that was part story, part documentary. It took me back to my sophomore year of college and my U.S. Naval History course for ROTC. The story was large in scope and attempted to be an accurate depiction. That was fine with me. I didn't need to see a war movie drama about a cast of damned characters. 

Of course I saw the 1976 version several times in the 80s and 90s. That movie had an all-star cast of 60s & 70s actors and it even had actual WWII footage cut into the movie. I didn't watch it as often as I would have liked. While both movies were about 2:15 hours long, watching a 1976 movie on broadcast TV took over three hours due to commercials. That's just too long. 

Audiobook: The Time Machine

I have a meditation app that reads soft stories as a way for people to fall asleep. They don't put me to sleep but they do relax me so on the way home from work, I listened to one. It was the first two chapters to The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. I knew it was a classic novel but had never known the full story. The first two chapters were intriguing so I wanted to hear the rest. With a lot of driving necessary, I decided to download and listen to the full audiobook. I finished the book the next day.

Written in 1895, this novel can still stand as a work of science fiction. It seems like most science fiction has to do with space travel and aliens, yet this story remains on Earth. Additionally it is set much, much further into the future than contemporary science fiction. In this future, Earth is very alien indeed. However, much like contemporary science fiction, The Time Machine is an allegory about society.

In order to achieve a lasting Utopia, the human species split, fracturing society between the haves and have-nots. Each living in lasting harmony until life became unbalanced as it always does. At this point humans degenerated into two unique breeds, both of lower intellect than modern man. Having conquered nature, these species no longer needed the intelligence humans rely on today and these species became blissful imbeciles with their own problems. H.G. Wells continues the story to the last days of the Earth where man himself, and all intelligent life forms have been forgotten where the Earth has ceased to rotate. It is a significantly different version of the future compared to other well-known science fiction stories.

I haven't quoted a book so far, but I had to hear the final line of the epilogue several times:

But to me the future is still black and blank—is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers—shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

The flowers were a simple gift to the time traveler who had brought them back in his pocket to Victorian England. Though humans of the future became simple or ugly, their morality endured. The human heart bearing compassion and gratitude, born millennia ago, persisted thousands of centuries into the future.

Kayaking in MacArthur Beach State Park

My sister visited me and one of the things I wanted to do with her was go kayaking. The weather cooperated and I was able to go kayaking for the first time since Ethan was born. By the time I got to the park and had to unstrap the kayaks from my truck and put them in the water, I paused a moment. I didn't care if I went kayaking or not. Whatever happened, I would be happy. It was the first time I had been in the moment for a long time. I had the whole day ahead of me and felt completely relaxed.

We didn't go anywhere in particular or do anything special. The plan was to paddle around, take pictures, eat lunch, and come back.

No motorized boats were around just kayakers and paddle boarders. 

I did plenty of this. 

My sister took out our shorter kayak (10 feet) which is the same size as hers so she was used to it. 

Crossing under the bridge to the road above. 

We stopped and took breaks at several mangrove islands. 

Just another spot to walk around. No one but us and the birds. Lots of fish too. 

More pelicans. 

This was taken at the public kayak and paddle board boat launch. 

Horseshoe crabs were here. 

There were plenty of places to take a break and walk around so we were out for several hours.

The tide was going out so it exposed a sand bar and I walked to see how far I could go. This shot is actually zoomed in.

We ate lunch near the sand bar in the shade.

During low tide it got hard to paddle because the water became so shallow. That was fine because it was late afternoon so we were on our way back anyway. We took some extra time to go to the beach while we were at the park. 

The ocean was calm and very blue that day.

There is a beautiful nature trail on the way to the beach. 

Lots of vegetation and wildlife on the nature trail. We saw some big crabs, lizards, and of course birds. 

It was a full day in the sun by this point and we were on our way back from a nice day out in nature. 

November Audiobook: Conversations With God

I listened to most of this book in October but finished it in early November, so it counts for November's submission of my finished Audiobook.

This month I listened to Conversations with God:  An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch.

In the past I may have dismissed listening to this book because I would not have believed someone sane and worth listening to would believe that they had conversations with God. I decided not to judge whether or not this should be considered fiction or non-fiction and I only listened to the message. The origins of the message are inconsequential, the content is what is important and that is:  whatever we do should be done out of love because that is what God intended.

Naturally there is much more to this book including the logic of dogma vs. love. Ultimately this book is not about driving people away from a specific religion but rather towards a place of peace and love.

Revisiting the Norton Museum of Art

In a previous blog post from April 2018, I wrote about visiting the Norton Museum of Art. It was under renovation at the time and had a limited capacity for exhibits. Now that the restoration is complete and the full museum is open once again, we went back for a tour.

We saw what we could. It was hard to appreciate the exhibits with Ethan who acted like a two year old normally acts. He wanted to run around the open areas. We made due and spent nearly two hours there. We didn't see many exhibits but made the most of it.

Here is what we did while there:

This is the new facade of the museum.

This was the first exhibit we really saw. There is a lot to look at here and we spent 15-20 minutes in this room. The room was dedicated to the hand-blown glass artwork in the ceiling. The colors were lit up by the sunlight and each object is unique. The glass sculptures were meant to represent sea life. 

We spent a while in this room because it looked nice and it was an open area. There was nothing to break. Ethan ran around in this room for 19 of the 20 minutes we were in there. We had to strap him in the stroller to go to another exhibit and he was upset. The staff kindly suggested touring the sculpture garden outside. They were not trying to kick us out, and honestly, we appreciated the suggestion. We spent over an hour outside. It was nice weather to tour a garden in Florida during the mid-day so we didn't mind at all. 

Ethan liked the giant heads. 

More than just sculptures, the museum had a wonderful garden. 

Everything was so new and well manicured. The garden itself was an attraction as much as the sculptures that were a part of it. 

This is part of the old entrance of the museum and seems to have been annexed by the garden.

I'm sure we'll be back again to visit. I would have liked to have seen the artwork inside. Fortunately museum benefactors have made admission free to the public on Fridays and Saturdays so we had no remorse about not whether or not we got our "money's worth." We definitely enjoyed what little we did see. There will be plenty more to see and do next time. 

Halloween 2019

Halloween 2019 was celebrated all week long. It began the weekend before with "Boo at the Zoo" on Friday. Then the fall festival at the park on Saturday. Sunday we went to "Spookyville" at the Fairgrounds where historic houses were decorated for little kids. Finally by Thursday (Halloween), we went to Trunk or Treat at a local high school followed by a trip to the kid's park where we also heard a live Aerosmith cover band play.

If any of this sounds familiar it is because we always go to the fall festival. We went to Boo at the Zoo last year as well as the trunk or treat activity at the high school. 

Boo at the Zoo in his Astronaut costume and my matching NASA shirt.

Trick or treating at the Zoo.

I'm posing for pictures. Ethan is wondering why he is in this outfit. 

Look! A jaguar in the background. 

At the Fall Festival the next day. Lots of musical performances. 

Just a random decoration in the main building that Ethan really liked. The eyes lit up and the cat moved its head. 

Free petting zoo at the park that day. 

More performances. Fire dancers in the back. 

 It was really wet and muddy. The ground was like a sponge but at least it didn't rain while we were there. 

Last picture of the night with Ethan's red lips.

 Touring the sights at Spookyville now. It was a drizzle after about an hour. 

Then it poured about 3 inches in two hours.

Everyone there either left or huddled under the main pavilion while it rained. 

We watched a kids concert. It was a packed house. The poor guy had to perform his solo act to a crowded audience for five hours!

This was Ethan on Halloween. He refused to dress up anymore. He wouldn't even get in an orange Halloween shirt. He gave up on trick or treating. 

After getting candy at the high school in this picture, we went to the park and he ran laps for over an hour while we listened to the Aerosmith cover band perform. All he wanted to do was run. We were wet with sweat by the end of the night. So that means we got wet each day we had a Halloween activity from the rain or from chasing Ethan.