this makes me uncomfortable

It's amazing what you see with a fresh pair of eyes.  After having been gone for almost 5 days I was walking around checking on my plants when I noticed this.

I'm not sure when this appeared or what it even is but it certainly brings a lot of images to mind.  This is the same plant that I had in NY that now belongs to Dan and I know I never saw anything like this growing out of mine.

I'm anxious to see what it turns in to.  I'm hoping it will become something beautiful, not just get more and more engorged.

Spread your wings and prepare to fly, for you have become a butterfly...

such a perfect blendship

I love them!!!!!!

I don't however love the nasty woman in the background talking about getting on her back and shit.  I also resent that she clearly ignores the guy when he first is trying to tell her to pay attention but then she all goes over and gets her big head all in the frame as if it was her idea to make them play together all along.

moral of the story, less gross women, more adorable cats and dolphins please.

Thanks for sending this to me Andrew!

a tervis for every occasion

I'm glad that I can convey my feelings through my cup.  I can finally be like those cool kids from high school who showed up to homeroom with a glass of juice from home.

Only I get to take it even further and pick out my cup for the day that best reflects my mood.  In this case, it's crabby all the way.

las vegas

I'm going to do my best to make this Vegas post interesting, though to tell you the truth my heart's still sad from yesterday, and my body is still sick from my trip.

I feel that my immune system has gotten complacent from living in Florida and I can no longer handle being trapped in confined spaces with sickly people for several hours like I used to.  I think my greatest fear is going to be realized, that I will have to wear one of those masks when I travel to keep from getting sick.  So embarrassing.

Anyways, besides the fact that I couldn't eat or drink anything the entire time I was there without immediately throwing it up, I had a really fun time.  When I first arrived Jon's whole family was there to celebrate his brother's wedding so I got to meet all of them and hang out with family time which I love. They were staying at the Hard Rock so I stayed there with them the first night.  I hadn't been to the Hard Rock before because it's actually not on the strip proper, but it's pretty cool.  They have a lot of fun music memorabilia as would be expected.  I was particularly excited about this:

As well as both of the britney outfits that I found:

Little did I know when I was snapping these pictures that Ms. Spears was actually in the very same hotel as me.  Jon and I had found the only juice bar in Las Vegas on the second level of the Hard Rock Hotel and of course I was literally the only person who was interested in going to it.  So we were sitting at this juice bar which is across the hall from their club "Vanity" seen here:

That man would be one of Britney's bodyguards.  At first we couldn't figure out what was going on, there were just a lot of crew people walking around with camera's and lighting equipment.  We peaked in and saw some chick in black leather and a big black wig and immediately had to know who it was.  After much stalking and loitering we finally overheard enough different people reference Britney to figure out that it had to be her.  Unfortunately Jon and I are both too chicken to say anything, and we had to check out of the hotel shortly after this anyways so I guess it just wasn't meant to be this time.

We checked out of the Hard Rock on Wednesday and moved over to Planet Hollywood, which is where the picture at the beginning of the post was from.  That was the view from our window, it was pretty cool, probably more impressive at night but I couldn't capture it on my phone.  We could see all the cool hotels, New York New York with the rollercoaster, Caesar's, and my personal favorite, the Luxor.

And I was glad to have a comfy room with a nice view and an even nicer bathroom, since that's where I spent most of my time for the next several days.  I gathered my energy a couple times to walk around with Jon and was glad that I did.  Otherwise I would never had seen this:

the homage to Siegfried and Roy.

We also made the trek all the way to the Cheesecake Factory but they were horribly busy so we didn't end up staying.  I did take a picture of my favorite animatronic show:

If you ever plan to eat at the Cheesecake Factory you will become intimately acquainted with this show. Depending on how long the wait is to be seated you end up seeing it once if not twice before you even sit down, and then you no longer get to see the show, but still have to hear it going on over and over throughout the course of your meal.  It actually becomes quite hilarious.  You forget all about it and start to get comfortable with your inside voices when all of a sudden you see fire shooting up from behind the aquarium and hear Neptune's voice booming through the cavernous mall.  Uggghhh I want to go back now!

Mostly I was just struck, as usual, but the beauty of everything.  I just love all the attention to detail, every single casino is more fabulous than the one before it.

When I look at how big these building are from the outside I think why would you ever need something so huge.  Then I remember as soon as I walk through them, because inside of the casinos they have things like gardens:

with ferris wheels:

or rivers, heavily trafficked by gondolas:

And yes, that is the painted ceiling up there, it is not the real sky, though it looks identical to the pictures above which are of the real sky.  

All in all I had fun, I got to do some shopping that I desperately needed to do, and I gambled a little, though I made some pretty stupid choices.  I guess the biggest mistake I made was not trusting my gut and sticking to my all time favorite machine:

Oh well, next time kitty glitter, next time.  

: (

This morning Ms. Mariah Kitty passed away during her surgery to get fixed.  Apparently she had an enlarged heart.

I know you're up in heaven now with florida kitty, at least now I know she has company.

I am heartbroken.

hard to say goodbye

I'm leaving today and won't be back until Saturday.  Clearly these guys can't even handle the thought of living without me.  It exhausts them just to imagine it.

I'm headed out to vegas to meet up with Jon for a few days and I've decided that I'm not bringing my computer.  My hope is that I'll win big when I'm out there and I'll be able to buy a new computer and do an inaugural blog post sometime in the next few days informing you all of my glory.  So if you don't hear from me just know that I'm coming back penniless.

I'm excited about vegas regardless though.  Having been there with Jon back in October I feel like I am better prepared now.  But it's still always sad to say goodbye to all my Florida friends, even if I'm only going for a few days.  From those nice kitties to all the fish in my dad's fish tank, especially this nice starfish who seemed to be saying, "ooooohhhhh beeeeeeeeeennnnnnnn,  iiiiiiiiii'mmmmmm gllllaaaaaaadddddd yooooouuuuuuu caaaaaaaaaammmmmmeeeeeee toooo viiiiiissssiiiiiiitttt meeeeeeeeeeee.  Haaaaaaaaavvvvveeeeeeee aaaaaaaa ssssaaaaaaaaffffeeeeee ttrrrriiiiiippppppp"

I even got a grand Florida farewell from some green parrots in the front yard this morning:

There are two of them, I know it's not the best picture in the world but I still thought it was pretty cool.  I wonder what I could do to encourage them to hang around the house more.

I really am going to become an animal hoarder.

belated birthday at myakka

Due to my stupidity I had missed most of my sister's actual birthday and told her that I wanted to make it up to her one day with a special brother sister activity.  That day came on sunday and I took my sister to myakka.

We drove around mostly, we walked down one trail and then went out to the dam that I seem to always find myself going to.  The trail we walked down was the first one we got to and was chosen rather arbitrarily.  It ended up being a great walk though.

The path kind of rambled along side the river and had it not been for the water being there I'm not sure we would have felt comfortable trekking as far as we did.  Especially because myakka isn't like disney world, there is no barrier between you and the wild.  At one point I looked across the river to find this:

So creepy.  It looks like a dragon or something, all you can see is the huge reptilian tail curled in the grass.

There were more people at the dam area, some even brave enough to be out in boats even though it was quite windy.

And over at the dam there were a couple families fishing so of course there was a crowd of hopefuls gathered around the pier including this guy who was a lot bigger than he appears in this picture:

I should have gotten a bird in the picture or something for reference as to how big he was.  He was just camped out there right underneath where some children were fishing.  So hopeful.

Allegedly on our way out there was a baby alligator in the grass along side the road but neither my sister nor I saw it so I am not going to count it on our list of things we saw at myakka.  So overall the adventure wasn't terribly out of the ordinary, but it was a great way to spend some time with my sister just talking and enjoying the sunday morning drive through the country.