Oh, Glenn!

Hey Everyone!

Let's see - this week was a rather quiet week for me, but a more interesting one for Glenn.

First of all, earlier in the week, they had a Relay for Life celebration at Glenn's office with an 80s theme. I suggested he go as Slash - the guitarist from Guns 'n Roses, a popular heavy metal band from that time.

If you aren't familiar with Slash (and you should be, because GNR was AWESOME back in the day), here's a pic of him.

So Glenn surprised his staff by dressing up as him at work.

Not bad, right?

You'll note he donned some fake tattoos as well - including, which you can't really see here, a skull on his neck and a spider on his temple.

After work, he changed, but did not feel like removing the tattoos before we walked the dogs. Of course, a neighbor returning home in a suit stopped to say hi to us. I really wanted to explain about the fake tattoos, but could find no way to do so without starting a random and awkward conversation with the guy. So now our neighbors probably think Glenn is a thug. Ah well.

On Wednesday through Friday, Glenn went to Daytona for work and got off to a rocky start. First, he drove to the car rental place at 5 am (he rents cars when he has to drive long distances) and discovered he had forgotten his wallet. So he had to turn back around, drive back across the bay to home, get his wallet and go back, pick up the rental car and then drive to Daytona.

When he got to Daytona (now late for his meeting) he worked all day and then checked into his hotel. When he popped the trunk for the valet, the trunk was empty. He had left his suitcase back in his truck in Tampa. So, while he had grabbed his suits from the backseat, he had no shirts, underwear, toiletries, etc.

I'm starting to think he should not travel alone. ;-)

Here he is, after buying some clothes from the only open store on Daytona Beach that night.

Not really work attire...

 Later, he found a Super Target and was able to make it through the rest of the trip clothed.

He also left the power cord for his computer in his hotel room. (A friend on Facebook asked, "So if you live a certain amount of time in Florida, do you automatically become an old person?")

He did manage to snap some pics of Daytona Beach.

See the dolphin?

Saturday night, we had a fun dinner with Chad and Lisha at Seasons 52 in Tampa. Sadly, we took no photos.

We were having trouble deciding what to do on Sunday, because it is spectacularly hot. Glenn and I took an oath when we moved here to never to complain about the heat, so I am not complaining. I am just stating a verifiable fact. We have entered into a whole new dimension of hot here. So hot, that we couldn't do our normal hike in the woods or whatever, because we would die. August in Florida. Who would have thought?

So we decided to go to John's Pass at Madeira Beach - a turn of the century fishing village that's been converted into funky shops and restaurants, etc. We figured we could walk around and duck into air conditioned shops every few minutes. It was a fun little place that definitely made us feel like we were on vacation.

We had frozen pina coladas here to keep us from spontaneously combusting.

Afterwards, we drove to nearby St. Pete Beach - we had been wanting to see the inside of the Don Cesar Hotel (the Pink Palace which has been featured in this blog before), so we went there to suck up their air conditioning. It was pretty (and cool!).

After that we drove to Clearwater Beach (the full beach tour in one day!) and had dinner at Crabby Bills. Mmmm - that spinach and crab dip is amazing.

So that's it for us for this week. I figured I'd close with one more sunset from our front porch.

Life is good. Take care, everyone!

Whirlwind Tour of South Florida

Hi All -

So this past week, Glenn took me with him on a rather hectic work trip through Southern Florida. It was pretty exhausting, but it was fun getting to see some new places in Florida and getting to spend the time with Glenn.

Wednesday morning, we got up bright and early and drove to West Palm Beach. I brought my laptop and worked in the hotel room all day, while Glenn went to the office there. That night, he and I went to the famous Breakers Resort in Palm Beach for dinner. This is a beautiful resort that has been in Palm Beach since 1896.

Sorry, we're a bit blurry!

The hotel is aptly named because it is right on the breakers.

We had a nice dinner at a restaurant called the Seafood Bar, and sat at the windows overlooking the water.

A bit ominous, wouldn't you say?

After dinner, we stopped at a trendy shopping complex called City Place near our hotel.

My favorite pic of the week I think...

The next day Glenn and I worked until around 2, and then drove to Miami. The drive to Miami was terrifying - we drove for over 2 hours in the most torrential downpour I've ever seen. Most of the way on a 4 or 6 lane highway. I was very frazzled. (Glenn remained his calm and cool self.)

As soon as we checked in, we had to change and get ready for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer kickoff event that was happening in the hotel. It was nice, but probably twice as long as it needed to be. Lots of speeches in the freezing cold air conditioning. I met a lot of nice staff people that work with Glenn.

After the event, we stepped outside of the hotel and Glenn got some shots of downtown Miami.

Fortunately, I had made us late reservations for dinner at the hottest spot in town, a restaurant in Miami Beach called Yardbird. It was rustic, kinda like an old barn on the inside, and we had a good dinner there.

Lots of southern Bourbon.

And a chandelier made out of mason jars.

Then back to the hotel to bed.

It would have been fun to explore Miami a bit more, but we left bright and early the next morning to go back to West Palm Beach, where Glenn and I put in a full day's work at his office. (He found an empty office for me to work in for the day.)

After working all day, we drove to Delray Beach. Delray is a cute little beach town where we decided to spend our one vacation night / morning.

As we walked across this bridge, I looked down and saw a potted orchid that was laying half in the water and half on the rocks under the bridge. Glenn decided to rescue it so he walked down and went over a small fence and scrambled over the rocks to get the poor thing. (We don't know if he jumped or was pushed from the bridge. I suspect foul play.)

At any rate, Glenn named him Horatio (like Horatio Hornblower, since we rescued him from the sea) and we rinsed the saltwater off him and took him home. Now, we just hope he survives.

We spent our final morning at the pool before the next round of storms moved in.

Soon after lunch, it clouded back up and we ended up spending the next 4+ hours driving back home in the pouring rain. Ugh.

Fun little adventure, but I was very glad to be home!

Hope you all are having a great week so far! Later, gators!

Little Baby Blog

Hi Everyone -

This week's post is going to be shorter than most - we had a pretty quiet weekend since we're headed to West Palm Beach and Miami later this week.

We did receive some fabulous news this weekend though. Justin and Liz welcomed Logan Russell Dunmyre into the world!

He looks like a little glow-worm! :-) (The baby, not Justin.)

(Anyway, I hope you guys don't mind me sharing these on the blog, but I've been holding myself back from the social media, and we only have a few family members on here. You guys look so happy! Glenn and I are thrilled for you. Presents are on the way!)

All the rest of our news is downright boring, but I will share with you anyway.

For Glenn's birthday, our friends Matty and Julie sent Glenn a drone. Yes. A drone. A flying saucer of sorts that not only flies, but....wait for it, takes PICTURES FROM THE AIR!

It's every boy's dream present.

Can you spot the drone?

And here are some of the pics from the drone. Probably good enough quality shots that Homeland Security will eventually come and take this away from us.

Where else will you get aerial views of our neighborhood?

Glenn did accidentally land the thing on the roof of one of our neighbor's houses and also got it temporarily stuck on ours (yes, another ladder incident), but he loves it. Maybe we will eventually get some pictures of startled-looking birds.

When Glenn and I got Justin's call on Saturday, we were out biking on the Ream Wilson Trail in Safety Harbor. It's nice because we can ride to this nearby trail right from our house.

Taking a break in the shade!

A fish and a turtle!

That night, we went out and enjoyed our new front porch furniture and watched the sunset. Nice that our house faces west.

Cheapest show in town!

In a similar vein, last night we decided to go down to the Safety Harbor Marina to see the "Super Moon". (If you did not hear, the super moon occurs when the moon is closest to the earth and supposedly looks the largest. It is a bunch of malarkey.)

Sadly, the Super Moon was a bust. Completely covered by clouds. We saw it later that night at home, but it wasn't anything to write home about. 

Still it was a pretty night to go out on the Pier. 

Kinda cool that all of this blog post's pics (with the exception of the baby photos) were taken within a mile or two of our house. Not too shabby!

So that's it for this week. Hope you all are doing well. Take care!