Pictures

the front view


kitchen
land of Joe
and our back yard
walk area

Lobster Season

Monday and Tuesday we had survival training for teachers. It was good information, but real boring. It reminded me of how much I hated being in school. We went by the school Tuesday and got the keys to our classroom. The reality of the situation scared me to death. It's a big room and has a projector and computer so that's cool and the view of the baseball field and the Atlantic ocean took some of the sting out. But it was still difficult to breathe.

I borrowed a tank from my neighbor and he told me a place to go get lobster on Wednesday. About 200 yards from the house. I loaded up the Kayak and paddled over to where the place was suppose to be. It was big concrete slabs just on the other side of the channel in about 10ft of water. To make a long embarrassing story short, I didn't find the structure or see any lobster.

I had grabbed the wrong fins, so my feet went numb. I wanted to get out of the Kayak where I could stand up so I could get my gear on without drowning or loosing the net, a tickle stick, bags, paddle and everything else that didn't need to be in a small kayak. The current and wind was going the opposite way that I needed to go. So everytime I let go of the Kayak it was blown out of reach, so I had to swim it down. I had to sit my scuba gear on the bottom to get the rope to tie the kayak to me , but by the time I was able to tie the kayak to me, it had floated away twice and then I had to go back to find my SCUBA gear, which then I was thankful for the bubbles coming from all my leaks in my equipment. My scuba gear was leaking in multiple places, due to the lack of use.

The visibility was less than 5ft in that area due to boat traffic and silt still coming out of the canals because of Dennis. So I swam for about 30 minutes thinking about the Bull shark staring at me 6 ft. away, watching huge dive boats speeding by with 20 people on board watching me swimming against the current on top of the water wearing dive gear pulling a kayak and a dive flag. I finally stopped in fear of the possibility of amputating some toes because of my wife's fins. I threw everything in the Kayak and started paddling home acting like a local who got his limit to all the dive boats passing by at that time.

And that's that.

I did meet Joe. The guy that lives behind me on the other side of the canal. Very interesting fellow. He's got a flats boat and a deep sea fishing boat. He took me out to find some "bugs" Lobster, which we proceeded to go to the slabs of concrete. I didn't tell him anything about my previous excursion. He couldn't find it either. Too cloudy. He hated all the people and raid we could get some bugs when everybody clears out. He has a lot of money and was showing me his trolling motor on his boat. It could be controlled by a remote control that he wore on his wrist. I thought that was cool. Then he told me that the best thing about it was when he falls off the back platform into the water he can drive the boat around to pick him up. His already done it twice. I can tell he is going to provide good blog material.

Key Day +9

Drove into Key West to get a TB shot for work, which took an hour to wait for and 15-seconds to get. Went for a bike ride down to Mallory square and watched a cruise ship leaving. I think that says a great deal when you live in a place where cruise ships stop.We also looked at a house for rent for $1,400 it war nice, but very very small. When we drove back to Big Pine Key we jumped in the canoe and paddled out to a sand bar that is a few 1,000 ft from the house. We sat in the water and played with our dog, it was a nice day in the front water.

The next day we got our vehicles registered and I got my fishing license:) I wasn't suppose to get it until after 6 months, but I guess something happened and they gave me mine. We had to go buy me some shorts for school, because my wife doesn't want me to wear my shorts, which are all board shorts. Even though the lady at the Monroe Education place said we can wear anything we want. She might not have known who she was talking to.

I also talked to our neighbor who has a 14ft row boat from the 50's, all aluminum, with a 20 hp Johnson on the back with less than 20 hrs. Our other neighbor said he probably wanted to sell it for a $1000.The guy really was wanting more, but he said he will think about it. Both guys are nice and easy to talk to. One is married and the other has a girl friend.

My wife really hasn't fallen in love with Kayaking so we might need a motor if we want to explore. But we are at about -$3,000 after the move down.

key Day +7

This is catch up day on the computer. We are going to get internet today between 8-10 AM so I’m chilling.except for finishing transmission fluid in Nissan.

+2: Went Kayaking to Yacht Basin that was close by with my woman, water was real muddy there and iguanas were all over the place. Locals call it Jurassic park. It’s an abandoned yacht resort. Our dog joined us when we came back by our place again and she would ride with me and jump out to go swimming and then I would pull her back in. Tough on a tipsy sit on top. We came back to our house through the canal, which is on the back side, and it was really disgusting from the storm. Drank too may Margaritas because of my birthday and then went out in the canoe with Britain ,but she didn’t go swimming. My wife cooked Salmon, corn, and sweet Potatoes and it was the best. Then watched the movie Heat and fell asleep.

+3: Drove to Key West to check in with the board of Education and bought a water hose for the house. Continued to unpack.

+4: I went Kayaking over to no name key, which is in front of our place, saw some fish, not a lot though while snorkeling. I saw a 4 ft nurse shark while paddling, it was cool. Then paddled to big mangrove key and came home. Went to the store and bought weather stripping and Transmission fluid and came back to seal some big gaps in the back door. Sealed those and then felt a lot of cold air blowing out from under the house. Crawled under there and found some major leaks in the duct work. I fixed with Duct tape and sheet metal screws. Our Air conditioner was not turning off and we had it on 80.Then we rode our bikes down long beach road looking for a beach, didn’t find one.

+5: Started changing automatic Transmission fluid for Nissan and they didn’t have the gasket so that was on hold until Monday at 2pm (+7). Then we drove to Bahia Honda and paid $91 to go year round to all the State parks. The Beaches were great, we think it’ll be worth it.

+6: Went to church, made Brunswick stew, went fishing on no name bridge caught small snapper and jack, bought the movie hostage and smoothie mix.

Key day +1

Woke up with one thing in mind, turn power on. Called at 8:00am and Arleen said it should have been turned on yesterday, so she would call back when she found out the problem. It turns out the meters were mixed up and the wrong meter was with the wrong address or something, but it was going to be turned on today. I felt better because I thought it was my fault and I had let down my family with a very very important task. Then went into Marathon and got Drivers License and looked around. Came home and continued to unpack.

key Day

We left Pompano Beach about 0600 After looking for my sunglasses for an hour. My wife found them in the back yard with the flashlight. Great Start to a big hard long day. We got our storage on BPK and unloaded half our stuff and it fit with room to spare. We had it unloaded by about 10:00 and it was already hot and humid. We dropped the truck off at our place ready to unload and then went to get a bite to eat. It was the waitresses first day, but we finally got something to eat after an hour, 3 order confirmations, conversation with Dave the marine biologist who came ordered, waited, and left, got the wrong orders, they didn’t have what we ordered and finally just ate what they brought us.

Started unloading and realized that the water was turned off. The power was off too because of hurricane Dennis, but I knew that because FPL came and took the transformer. I told my wife to go find the water company and get us water. She jumped at the chance to sit in the air conditioned car. It was hot and humid and I was pumping about a quart of water through my skin every 30 minutes. Water man came and turned on the water, thanks to my wife. She returned and we made the final push to finish around 6:00 pm.

We took the truck and trailer to the chop of place and went to grocery store and was seriously hoping for power when we got home. The transformer was up and there were no generators running at our neighbors so we were happy. It lasted until we but the light switch and nothing happened. No power! So we lit the letters and watched the sunset and hated the hot sticky night that laid ahead.
My wife had been suffering from a sinus cold all day and had taken some medication that made her completely restless, so after about an hour of sweating and bouncing around she dozed off from exhaustion and I went and laid down on the porch to take advantage of a cool breeze that blew every now and then.

events of 2005 part 3

Honduras was a nice break from our uncertain reality, but as soon as we came back we realized that we were not returning to our own place, but staying with my parents, it was tough. My parents did a great job making us feel at home and were great host, it was just tough because we were newly weds and successful engineers who found their independence hammered.

I was getting a lot of calls about engineering jobs, but none of them were in Florida. We were getting a little impatient and nervous about running out of money, so we thought it best to start listening to what recruiters had to say if they were located in a reasonable place. We went to the beach with my parents at the end of May for a week. Trying to save as much money as possible.

While I was at the beach a company from Florida wanted to interview me, but first I had to take a problem solving test. A headhunter also had a great slot for me with an aircraft company in Georgia that I was very excited about, but I wasn't hearing anything from them. As soon as I got back from the beach I went to the library to take a 12 minute problem solving test, which I completely bombed. I just simply didn't think about it correctly and had the wrong approach. So that job lead and hope was slammed along with a chunk of confidence.

My wife had gone back home to see her friends and family for a week. She was having a tough time dealing with the uncertainty and the lack of direction on what to do; because she really couldn't look or pursue a teaching career until I found a job, which wasn't happening. The longer I was out of a job the more questions the head hunters asked about why. So the longer I was out of a job the more stress was added because I became less and less desirable. When ever I mentioned my arms or that I had to use a tablet P.C. they became very cold.

By the middle of June I was beginning to look at the job fair in Orlando Fl. as the deadline for looking for an engineering job and start pressing hard to find a teaching job. My wife still had not recieved her eligibility letter to teach in Fl., which I had received mine by the end of May. This added to the frustration because she had sent all the information for both of us back in April. I really didn't even want to teach, I was doing it as a contingency plan.

We went down to Tallahassee, fl. a week before the job fair to try to find out what the problem was. We discovered that her transcript didn't have her social security number on it and her name had been changed because of our marriage, so her transcript got put in the don't know pile and was pretty much lost. We finally got them to locate it and tried to get them to get it done before the job fair, but the paper pushers weren't and didn't care.

So we were now going to the job fair without her eligibility letter, which was highly recommended to have before you went. There were several counties that would not even interview you unless you had it, so it was really discouraging. We both had interviews scheduled with Monroe county though. Mine was as 10:00 and hers was at 4:00.

When I interviewed at 10:00 the guy told me I qualified for Principals of technology and offered me a contract. This was incredible because this was similar to the course that was offered to my wife in Georgia, and I wished I was teaching it. I told them I had a wife that wanted to teach and if they wanted me they had to find a job for my wife. They only had an opening in Marathon, teaching Math. My job was in Key West 50 miles away so it created a dilemma that we needed to think about.

We talked to some other counties and nothing really seemed better or more exciting than living in the Keys. We ended up signing the contracts with Monroe County and was hoping they would be able to move my wife to Key West high School before school started. So we left that day to find a place to live somewhere between Marathon and Key West.move to the Keys

050709KeyWest

Hurricane Dennis is about 125 miles west of Key West and we are staying with Drew in Pompano Beach at Burt and Glenna's house. We were suppose to move in today, but it is raining and blowing about 36 mph down there, so we are going to wait until Sunday (10th) to go down there and move in our stuff.

It is suppose to still be raining and windy, but hopefully not too bad.We currently have a storage rental on Key largo so we will have to unhitch the trailer and load the storage and then chive to Bpk. which is about 75 miles away. after hooking the trailer back on.

Once on BPK we will have unhitch, then unload, then rehitch, then take truck and trailer to Key West to turn in Sunday night or Monday morning

events of 2005 part 2

The other thing that was going on after they offered me the job and before they withdrew the offer was my wife's job. She had not been happy with it for some time and was wanting to quit and be a teacher. So when I was offered the job she volunteered to be laid of at work before they had a big cut back. The timing seemed perfect because she was going to get 3 months pay with severance pay.

She set up an interview with a high-school and we went and she loved it. It was really great because everything seemed to be falling into place. We were looking into buying a house and the whole 9 yards. So! when they withdrew the offer we were looking at both of being unemployed. The place we were moving to was not really where we were excited about living, so we decided not to pursue her job. I have always wanted to live in Florida, so we decided to focus our effort there.

So now we are both going to be out of work by the end of March and I'm unable to use my hands to operate a computer. I decide to go down to Florida to work for my brother-in-law who owns his own business. He runs underground power lines from the street to new houses. I was hoping I would be able to dig with a shovel since strength and major hand and arm motion was not causing a great deal of pain.

So I went down there and worked for less than half of what I was going to be getting paid at my engineering job. I was able to do it for 2 weeks, but there were times when I had to slam the shovel into hard dirt and it would really kill my hands.So I came back home and tried to think of something else I could do for the rest of my life.

Then one day I realized that I might be able to use one of those tablet PCs and I would not have to type or use a mouse. So I started looking around and found one for about a thousand bucks. It was a nerve racking purchase because if it didn't work I would want to take it back, but I bought one and it worked. The computer was really crappy though, so I started looking for another one with a better quality.

During this same time period my parents were down in Honduras running a girls home for a ministry until they could find someone to run it full time. They asked us to come down and help, they would pay for everything. We had to wait until my wife had finished her psychology class that she signed up for in January. It placed us going down there around April 29 and come back May 16th.

We also had to go to a friends wedding in Austin, Texas in April. So now not only do we not have jobs we are spending a lot of money. On the way to Austin we looked around Atlanta for a Tablet P.C. and find one that cost about $2,000 when it is all said and done. So now! we are spending money that we don't have in hopes of me getting an Engineering job. The tablet P.C. gave me the confidence I needed to really pursue my engineering career, which was great, because now I can work on a computer, it just has to be on a Tablet.

At the end of April we moved out of our house and we put all of our stuff in storage. We then drove to Moultrie Ga., where my parents and other family members live, to drop off the rest of our stuff that we were going to need until we found a place to live. Then we drove to Miami to fly to Honduras.

fair or unfair

In light of the fact that God created everything and is in charge of everything. His children has to accept the fact that fair and unfair should not be apart of their vocabulary. If our situation has worked it's way into being through the Love, Wisdom, and Power of God then it is the absolutely best thing for us at this particular time. No matter how crappy it seems.

I believe everything should be viewed as righteousness and unrighteousness in our own acts. We try to be Christ like and most of the time it would seem unfair because that is grace.