OMG She's here!

So my friend Anne has arrived for a 10 day sojourn in the Florida sunshine... If you don't know her you can become acquainted at her blog (The Day After Yesterday), if you can't be bothered let me give you a few details to introduce her to you

1. Anne is a gadget geek... she has to have the latest phone, laptop, camera etc and always the best available for the money... however Anne is absolutely rubbish at taking care of her gadgets.. she gets drunk and loses her cameras, she's on her third iPhone after dropping one at least in the toilet and one in the fire (doh). She's destroyed three laptops, one by wine, one by coffee.. one a friend shattered a screen (so she says!) ..

Today her latest $2000 laptop has been shutting itself down and overheating. She has been beyond traumatized..  we've been emailing Sony, and coincidentally 500,000 of her model type were recalled ... it wasn't looking good...

'When did you last clean it?'


Blank stare

'Are you telling me you've never cleaned it?'

Blank stare

I whipped out my bottle of

Whats that?

'Anne you use it to spray the dust out of your fans'

She sheepishly lifted her laptop up and I gave the fan vent a quick spray. When the dust settled we listened, the fan had stopped whirring and the laptop purred contentedly... amazing me..

2. Anne is in love with all things American for breakfast..

I don't need to say more

3. I have to effectively coddle her to make sure she gets to the airport in time and has all the items she needs in her hand luggage actually in her hand luggage! (This is what happened last time she came)
I check her in online and fill her online visa in for her... I even send pictures of which shoes are still here from last time so she can pack light...

If she doesn't take them back this time I'm garage sale'ng them

She made it without any trauma this time.. thanks to my planning and attention to details - I'm anal like that!!!!

Lastly something you all should know if you are one of Anne's blog followers...

SHE BLOGS NAKED

I'm back and in shock!

OK firstly... sorry.. I haven't been blogging.. I could blame my busy schedule blah de blah however truth be told my blogging juices dried up. I was happy being a 'lurker' on my friends blogs and just generally mooching around on the Internet. Then today a friend told me she missed my blogs.. I mean its not like missing chocolate or something, but she missed my blogs.. so I had to make a decision, either get back on the bus or pack my blogging bags and leave town.... so here I am back on the bus...we'll see how it goes..

Anyway, what stirred me into action was a headline on the BBC website today (for all my American readers it's where you can go to find out what is ACTUALLY happening in the news around the world... its very informative and I don't watch the new here anymore)

Great white sharks in Mediterranean made 'wrong turn'

Errrrrrrrrr double take....

There are Great Whites in the Med? Eeeeeeeeek

I have a shark phobia... numerous trips to Australia give you a sense of foreboding about this magnificent fish.. especially on each of my trips this year someone has been attacked whilst I've been there (and died!) My swimming in Australia is limited to swimming pools and knee high wading in clear sea water.. and that's it period! But surely I was safe whilst I was snorkeling on all my French holidays..?

In the Mediterranean Sea there have been 31 confirmed attacks against humans in the last two centuries, most non-fatal... err MOST?

OK  I need to do some investigation

OK the Med seems relatively safe..The most recent attack took place on June 15, 1983 near Riomaggiore (Italy), where a scuba diver Roberto Piaviali was molested by a 3-meter long aggressive white shark while diving 5 meters down. Piaviali fled to the next submersible where the shark was driven away with wooden poles.

But Florida seems a different prospect altogether!



The odds of me dieing at the beach are pretty slim (2000 figures below)

Drowning and other beach-related fatalities 1 in 2 million

Drowning fatalities 1 in 3.5 million
Shark attacks 1 in 11.5 million
Shark attack fatalities 0 in 264.1 million


However Volusia county (Florida... where we would sometimes go to the beach) is apparently shark attack capital!

Volusia shark bites

2001 22
2002 18
2003 13
2004 3
2005 9
2006 12
2007 5
2008 24

at some times of year in Florida swimmers are warned out of water because the sharks are feeding on migrating fish... shudder

I love sharks... by that I mean i find them fascinating.... but I am now even more scared of frolicking in the sea... I think I'll have to stick to the pool... (plays out to JAWS music!)

I'm torn...and then there are the suicidal iguanas...

Today I am torn between my arty shots of our trip in the bright sunshine to the local National park and the freezing temperatures that have hit central Florida...I think, as with most peoples posts, that the weather will win. 

As I write we in Florida are thawing out from the longest freeze that anyone can remember around here for years. Most of you (Anne) associate Florida with beautiful sunshine, beaches, swimming and palm trees...this week it has been winter coats, ice (no snow though), frost bitten lawns and dead plants....

The rest of the country is being hit by another hard winter storm and we are due to drop into freezing temperatures again by Saturday.. my scanty underwear is just not up to the job and I think I need to go to buy some long johns! I shouldn't complain ..as you can see the rest of the country is struggling  (these are the forecast lows for tomorrow)...and Anne... these are Farenheit...for those whose math isn't the best .. the -23f is -31C. I'm not sure how I would cope in temps like that...I'd definitely have to buy a coat..something I don't currently own!!!

Travel here is hanging in there...certainly surviving better than in England. I've just discovered on the internet that my parents flight out of Chigago this evening is delayed 8 hours because the plane was delayed leaving London ... England falls apart when a single flake of snow falls, and they've had days now. My friend Anne is snowed in in her village, and is surviving on pre-packaged curry.. If you see a slightly orange person on the outskirts of Oxford, sledging in her blue sled, it's her.. throw a snowball for me.!

Disturblingly the Kamikaze Iguanas are falling from the trees....they are supposed to urban legends but the freezings temps means they go into a forced hibernation and fall from the trees! It's quite amusing!

My husband has already returned to Jacksonville so I'm weathering this cold front on my own, well I do have Gary to curl up with me at night and as he does not snore and pinch the quilt things aren't too bad . I have to go back out now and cover the plants up again, but here are some pictures to prove it actually does get cold in Florida. Keep warm wherever you are and try not have to many nightmares about my cold extremeties!

An idiot (man) stroking his fountain...weird

poor cold little birdies

this happens when you leave the sprinklers on to try and protect the plants

My first post....

Ok..new to blogging that I am, this maybe short and sweet...or it might ramble on for ages..you never know!

My friend Anne runs a blog for her furniture business, http://baumhausltd.blogspot.com/ and I've found myself inexplicably drawn to it everyday to find out the latest goings on in a furniture wholesale business...sounds boring!! ..not really, she blogs on her life, holidays, her weekends and her dog George (yes his name is George!...naughty George to be exact).

Naughty George standing in front of Anne's new house

She has been trying to convince me to to start blogging for ages, so today, in a moment of boredom, I thought...why not!

What shall I blog on...everything and anything .. her idea was for my dog, Gary, to have his own blog, but there is only so much a Jack Russell can say for himself...to illustrate he is fast asleep on the bed at the moment..it truely is a dog's life!

So Gary will be part of the blog, but so will anything else I care to think about. I love to cook so I thought I'd post recipes here, and critic latest restaurants etc etc...I'm just going to talk about life really...it will be a way for my friends around the world to keep up with me and me with them!

For those who don't know me personally I'm of English descent, but live in Florida now with my husband and of course Gary..It was a big change upping sticks and moving here, but I love the sun, so it's mostly been all good! Also it seems that mention to anyone that you live in Florida and they have bought the plane tickets and are arriving next Thursday...so it has it's benefits!

Well enough for now...I was just practicing...let see if I can't get this think posted to the web now...probably more tomorrow!!!