one of the perks of living in south Florida

A sweet woman at work brought me mangos today!!!  Fresh from the tree in her yard.

I can't even tell you how good they smell.  I was SALIVATING the entire drive home.  I'm posting now because my hands will be sticky and covered in juice for the rest of the evening.

TTYL.

it rained all day

Ok, I'll say it, there isn't much to do in South Florida on a rainy day.

This is the activity I came up with for today.  I literally cleared my shelves and started from scratch.  It took me all day.

That top shelf doesn't look like it's enjoying the weight of jeans, pants, shorts, long sleeve t-shirts, and sweaters.  I have to put my valuable up high though or else the detective climbs up and shoves everything off the shelf to make room for his daily nap.  At least now he's limited to shoes, underwear, and pajamas to stomp all over.

Now the question is do I continue with my cleaning streak and attempt to tackle the bathroom or do I call it a day and enjoy the rest of my Saturday night?

one of each

Jeanne sent me this picture that she snapped in the drive-through of an In-N-Out in California.  It wasn't that long ago that I received a message from Chana saying that she spotted a Blount plate in NYC too.

I'm actually relieved when I see a non Blount plate as it proves there are other places you can live in Tennessee:

I know it's too blurry to tell because my phone auto focused on my dashboard instead of the car in front of me but that was a plate from somewhere other than Blount in Tennessee.

A part of me wanted to pull up next to them and congratulate them on not being from Blount.

this guy

I was in traffic with this awesome person on my way to work.  It's a cockatoo and two parrots and then underneath it said, "My Feathered Family".

He got away from me before I could see who was driving but I'm assuming that it was the coolest guy in south Florida.  Someday I hope to be just like him.

Go Monkey Go: UPDATE

source

In August I shared with you all this story that Meghan had sent me which pleased me to no end.  UNfortunately Eliza just sent me this update which I fear means bad news for everyone's favorite outlaw monkey.

I can relate to that monkey.  Eventually you feel like you can get away with anything and then the next thing you know you're chewing on a lady's head and getting thrown in to the bushes.  Before you know it you've gone from lazily eating fruit in the backyard to checking over your shoulder for the police every time you leave the house.

If you're reading this monkey, make your way down to South Florida and you can seek refuge at my place.  Just please don't bite my head.  Thanks.

these guys

I managed to survive 8 years living in manhattan and it's only taken a year for Miami to kick me in the balls and leave me for dead.

And yet I still love it down here.  I mean, I was not expecting iguanas on my walk to get coffee this morning.  Don't get me wrong, I love pigeons, but there is something thrilling and exotic about iguanas.

Although I didn't really need to take the zoom in pic:

Not the most flattering.  But I was excited!

Jed told me that there was a frost a few years ago and it killed most of the iguanas, as they are cold blooded.  He said that it was quite a problem as the larger ones would freeze solid in a tree and then fall down, often damaging cars underneath.  Would that be covered under insurance?  I doubt it.

Anyways, I'm glad to see that they are back to running amuck down here.  It reminds me of why I came down here and why I still love it.  And I do, I do still love it, although nyc is looking more and more appealing these days.

Life is just so much simpler there.

the cancer is spreading

I received this picture in a text message from Chris along with, "it doesn't stop..."

Unfortunately, it's true.  For those of you not in the know, here is my original post about the whole Blount thing.

Truthfully though, that's putting it mildly.  It's become so much more than "the Blount thing" for me.  I mean honestly, I have stopped going out of my way to take pictures of them myself because I get at least one a week from one of my friends down here that they saw in traffic.  Besides that I get a lot of, "bro I saw one of those Blount license plates but I couldn't get a picture of it".  I'm looking at you Eduard.

The picture above was from Chris.  He emphasized that he got out of the car in the middle of traffic just to take that pic, but to be honest I've been so overwhelmed with the Blount I wasn't really even impressed.

It wasn't until a few hours later that I got a text from Kelly with this picture:

with, "thought of you here in AC"

That's Atlantic City, New Jersey.  People, we have an epidemic on our hands.  There is seriously something going on in Blount County and I am determined to get to the bottom of it.

If you need me I will be consulting with the detective about what we should pack for our road trip up to Tennessee.  That's right, I'm going to the source to get to the bottom of this.  Just you wait.

it always happens like this

Looks like a beautiful day for the beach eh?  That's what I thought too.  In fact, I started preparing for my beautiful Saturday off as early as Friday evening when I unwrapped the roadster and got it all cleaned up.

You can imagine my displeasure sitting in the beach parking lot where the view out my passenger side was the one above, and the view out of my drivers side was this:

In that Florida style, the rolling thunderheads were nowhere to be seen on my entire drive to the beach. As soon as I parked, however, they blocked out the sun and brought that cold wind that often heralds the impending storm.

After some consideration I decided there would be other days for the beach and I gave up on my grand plan.  I instead spent the day cleaning.  The good news is that I have clothes to wear to work now!  The  bad news is I didn't get the golden tan I was hoping for.  When I travel to other places how will people know I live in South Florida?!

I guess it only takes a brief conversation to figure out somebody is an insane Floridian.  And sometimes, it doesn't even take conversation, as this man learned recently.  Since I'm not tan I'll have to use that as my topic of conversation with strangers I may meet in the coming days.

It's either that or talk about the weather.

a friend I made

I went on a whole new adventure with my run the other day and I ended up making a new friend, as seen above.  Well, you can see his tail anyways.  It was a giant bright green iguana!  He was nice and gave me a very suspicious look.

I reached a new milestone with my running that has led me to be able to change my route.  I now get to run directly along the beach!  I feel very Florida now.

Especially stumbling upon iguana's too, it's everything I'd hoped living in south florida would be.

some more Blount

Driving Sarah around all day on Friday meant plenty of opportunities to run in to my old friend Blount.

As usual these pictures are only a fraction of the total number that I saw.

the Blounts keep coming

I've actually seen a couple but this was the only one I was able to take a picture of.  Thankfully I now have other people keeping watch for me.

I got these two texts from Rebecca:

Please note that the sedan is IDENTICAL to the one I saw at night, but the license plates are different.  I really don't understand.

And it seems like when I rarely do see a car from somewhere else in Tennessee it is always something completely different than a Chevy hatchback.

Like this:

I will not rest until I get a satisfactory explanation for all of this.

the most disturbing email I've received in a long time

Protect the Pie Hole

Inbox

x

RedCap	12:26 PM (1 hour ago)

As all of us have heard by now that there was a gruesome attack on a homeless man by a guy that was under the influence of something clearly not of this world. The crime was very serious and obviously 100% avoidable had the guy in question not ingested 4 lbs of bath salts. Hey kids, guess what? Bath salts make you completely insane. And as you have grown accustomed to, we do not endorse mishaps that are 100% avoidable. Starting today, we are taking a hard line stance against Zombies and are pleased to announce our newest guarantee: No Zombie Eating Cannibals Guarantee (we're working on better name) when using a RedCap Driver. Rest easy friends. Then we thought, we should revisit the Zombie Preparedness plan we created last year. In 2011, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) released a Zombie Apocalypse preparedness plan as a publicity stunt to bring attention to the need for always being prepared. Naturally, we released our version of the preparedness plan known as the RedCap Prepare Yourself for Awesomeness Plan or RCPYFAP (pronounced: erc*pie*fap) for ease of language. And it goes a little something like this. Boom. Zombie avoidance complete, awesomeness in effect.

The email goes on to talk about the company and what they do and how great they are at driving your car.  

I mean, I like the zombie apocalypse as much as the next guy but this is just confusing to me.  

what the Blount is going on?

At some point, I want to say before I even moved down here, I was driving around and saw my first license plate from Blount county Tennessee.  I wouldn't have really noticed had it not been for how unfortunate that name is.  Blount.  It sounds like something you'd get removed by the doctor.

Because of my dislike of the name I, of course, would notice anytime I saw a license plate from Blount.  And it happened frequently.  A little too frequently.

Then one day I was driving with Jon and we spotted a Blount license plate.  I told him about how it irritated me and how I couldn't figure out why every single car with a Tennessee plate could possibly be from the same county.  I was beginning to think that maybe Blount was the Tennessee state motto, or an anagram for it, or something.  Jon did a google search on his phone and pulled up this blog post.

I was both relieved and further confused.  At least somebody else had noticed the omnipresence of Blount license plates.  There are even some hilarious comments from others who have also become aware of the rising Blount epidemic in South Florida.

So I decided to document this phenomenon.  I hope this gives you some idea of what it's like down here.  Ok, so that picture at the top I took on March 30th of this year.  I think my intention was to do a post about it but I never ended up doing it right away.  In the meantime I started taking pictures every time I would see a Blount license plate.

(I have blurred out the first and last character on all of them but rest assure, they are all different.  I never got the same car twice.

What I also noticed, which I think somebody else points out as well, is that all the cars are American made, and seem like they could be rentals.

The problem with this little project is that it quickly snowballed out of control.

I had to set rules for myself.  I only took a picture if I could do it safely, ideally if the cars were parked.

I did my best in traffic but I really didn't want to get in an accident and have to explain what I was doing instead of paying attention to driving.

That being said, I would guess that the pictures I have here represent about 50% of the total number of Blount license plates that I have seen.

And remember, this is only going back to March 30th.

For once I wasn't exaggerating.

Oh look, we must be in May by now, that's the hood of the benz.

Ooh a cadillac, do we think it's a rental?

I'm running out of things to say.  It's just overwhelming.

WHAT IS GOING ON?!

Ok, that's the end of the pictures I've taken, I'll throw in one more for good measure that was sent to me by Carlos:

Which he said he almost ran off the road trying to get.  So I hope you're happy Blount Tennessee, now you've got my friends involved in all of this.

Oh, also, to help put things in perspective I decided that I would take a picture of every Tennessee license plate I saw, Blount or not.  I didn't want to make it seem like you never see a non-Blount plate.  So here:

That's it, one car from Knox Tennessee.  I want to say that I saw one other one once in traffic that I couldn't get a picture of without smashing things, but that's it.

So there you go, frankly I'm glad to have this burden off my chest.  I intend to keep photographing the Blount plates as I have, but now that you know the deal I don't have to do a post like this again.  Hopefully.

But with Blount you never know, I could see 15 more cars on my way to work today.

I'M NOT KIDDING.

adventures at Home Depot

First of all this is some Sybil shit going on here and I like it.  Whether he's Bob, Tom, or Clay II, I trust that he does in fact purify the air.  I mean he is essentially a real life Mr. Clean so I don't see why it's not possible.

Florida is a funny place in that there are all these gigantic stores that were built because of unlimited space and budgets, but now sit empty because they won't hire anybody to work in them.  Best Buy has about 15 registers but I've never seen more than one person working at a register at any given time.  Home Depot on the other hand always seems to be teeming with employees, milling about and cracking jokes like it's Showtime at the Apollo.  They all seemed really interested in why I was taking this picture so I finally said, "I just like that he purifies the air" and this one older guy looks at me and goes, "Oh he does a lot more than that".

Other gems from our trip to Home Depot included this guy:

I wonder what makes it macho.  Or is it all an act?  Like when Edd picks fights with me when we're drunk and then rips off my necklace but immediately starts blubbering like a baby and apologizing for it. Reeeeaaaal tough guy you got there Ariel.

But the real icing on the cake that was my adventure yesterday was when a certain special surprise came whipping around the corner in the appliances department.  The woman pushing the cart did not seem to be the nicest person ever so I decided to try and take a candid photo instead of asking her outright if I could.  Here's the best that I could do:

There are three of them and they are wearing matching pink sweaters with rhinestone collars and I swear every single one of them looked me in the eyes and smiled at me.  I want to be her when I grow up.  After she left the appliances area I could still figure out where in the store they were because I would just hear gentle grumbling and snuffling coming from the aisle next to me or wherever.  They were so nice!!!!!

And they say New York is full of characters.  NYC has got nothing on southern florida.