Floridians love their AC more than their spouses!

So, this has been one of those years.  You might know the type.  Its the kind where every single good thing that happens is balanced by a bad one?  I'm talking about the kind of things that totally upend your world for a while.  Its the type of year where you have to keep on counting those blessings to stop yourself from having your head explode!  Things like oh, your house gets chosen to be used in a movie...then you get a tornado!  Your daughter gets engaged and the wedding is at your house...where you had that tornado 14 days before the wedding day!  A year with things like that happening!  How many more months are left in 2013?  Just sayin'!  Anyway......

It was David's weekend off so there were plans to get a lot of work done.  My sister was in town and we were having her and her kids and Mom for lunch.  Saturday morning started out really well; David and I got a few things done directly after morning coffee and then split off to do the individual thing...he went outside to finish up the Pump House (or Well House as I'm apt to call it!) while I vacuumed up dog and cat hair and dusted and all those other housewifely things you do when company is coming.

It's summertime so a lunch get together has to have potato salad.  So about 1 p.m. I got those taters peeled and boiling.  And had a hot flash.  Or so I thought.  I went to the AC thermostat and turned it down a degree...went back to the kitchen to start the next dish....still having that hot flash.  Went back to the thermostat and turned on the Fan...went back to the kitchen and back to work preparing for lunch.  About an hour later, my family walks in the kitchen...someone said something about the temperature of my kitchen.  Back to the thermostat I go....to see that it reads way hotter than the setting and that that fan I turned on wasn't on!

To make a long story short; we call our AC company to come see what is up with our 3 year old system.  

Its the Fan.  

A GE product.  

And GE and the AC company KNEW it was going to go out.  

Because they are all - one by one by one - going out on all the systems that contain that product.   

Did we get a recall notice like you do for your vehicle?  Nope.  They just wait for your system to fail to tell you that they are going to replace it for "free" right before they tell you how many hundreds of dollars it will cost to get that "free" fan!

Have they known for years that this fan was defective? Yep. 

Did ours go out on one of the hottest days of the summer here in Florida? You betcha.  Along with two others that our neighbors (well, they share our county) had put it in within the last few years!  (Our AC guy thought it would be helpful to let us that we were his THIRD call this weekend for the EXACT same issue with new systems they'd put in!)

Could they fix it there and then? Oh, no way!  They have to order the part and wait for it to be shipped to them and then we have to wait for them to come out and pull out the defective fan and put in the new one.....In Four Days.  Maybe.  But they sure needed that several hundred dollar check right then and there didn't they?

Lucky my head didn't explode!

Anyway, we did what any Floridian without AC does in the dog days of summer.  We headed for water!  And did some Angus training to boot!

Like I said....counting my blessings!  And waiting for the AC guy to call and tell me he'll be here with the fan this afternoon........

Photography...

My Christmas gift this year was a new camera!  Since moving to Mac, I'd been videoing and photographing non-stop.  What I'd wanted to be able to do when the children were small  - film, edit and then actually watch the results,  I was able to do.  I'd video and then race to the laptop with the SD card and get it all into iMovie and go to town editing and adding music and photographs.  Camping trips and cruises and family get togethers were all making their way onto our T.V.!

There was one issue though. My old camera didn't do HD videoing; in fact, it didn't video very well at all. Normal movement of subjects - even in Sport mode - left a "vapor" trail.  Moving the camera during filming had to be done very slowly or you received the same result.

So, David bought me a new camera!  In addition to HD filming, it takes really beautiful stills as well.  I'm still learning how to use all of its functions to their best capability.  Dallas was home last week and he sat and played with it and helped me to move forward in that regard....the best thing he showed me?  That there is a "continuous shutter" function.

Trying to get a good photograph of a Black Lab is difficult.  Without the correct lighting, whatever photo is taken shows a completely black spot where their eyes and other facial features should be.  Profile shots are not too difficult to get, but a full frontal shot?  Nearly impossible without a really good camera and the best lighting.  In the past, we'd hired a photographer to get photos of our Black boys so that we'd have some good shots of them.

With our new little Black boy, even with my new camera, getting good photos was not easy.  But yesterday, I sat outside on our drain field as Angus explored the yard and played with Callie.  Using the continuous shutter trick, I was able to get quite a few good shots of him....here's my favorite...

Using the continuous shutter trick, I just kept shooting.  Right before this shot, he'd been sitting quietly staring at Callie.  Suddenly, he began to run to attack her!  This would never have been caught if I'd been simply taking a regular photograph....!  And yes, this is the same sweet boy in the photograph above!  : ) 

The process of mourning...

From August 2009 until just recently, I rarely posted here.  The passing of my mother in law took the joy out of writing in this on-line journal.  There was a lot of (extended) family tension as her estate was settled over the course of a year and a half.  I wrote, as I've done since I was a child, but not here, not where others could read about the sad state of affairs.

In 2011, we began the year having gotten through the probate process and I thought I'd begin to write here again; but in March of that year, within three weeks of each other, we lost our two Black Labs, Murphy and Indie, and again, any joy I found in writing here was overshadowed by their loss.  I found that most of what I wrote was filled with the grief of their loss.  

Grieving is a process.  2012 was a slow year of emotional recovery.  

It was also the year I retired my ten year old Dell and switched to Mac.  Along with my new MacBook Pro, I got iMovie and iPhoto....and all that those programs would allow me to do.  I realized that I could finally get all the old family movies on unwatchable VHS tapes onto DVD's.  (The last of our VCR's had given up its life a few years ago.)

I went through all those VCR tapes and transferred them one by one onto my laptop and into iMovie; I scanned all the old photographs into iPhoto and my Genealogy software (Reunion). And I spent months editing those bits and pieces of footage into "movies".  Then I put them all onto DVD's and shared them with family.  

There was footage from my niece's 6th birthday party held in October 2004; a party where we all dressed as fantasy characters mostly from Disney Movies; there was limbo and apple bobbing and after the sun went down, family karaoke for hours!  What fun it was to relive that day and finally get the video not only to my niece but to all the family members that were there that wonderful day.

There was footage from a 1993 trip to Universal Studios with David's brother's family.  There was footage from a 2000 trip to Hawaii Nikki took with that same family.  There was footage of Dallas' year as Drum Major of his high school marching band; too many band and chorus concerts to count, soccer games for Hunter with Nikki as the referee and David as Coach of his team and footage of my performing days!  

There was a lot of footage of our Shanna, Murphy and Indie; that was the most difficult video to edit in the beginning, but as I worked on those old videos and put them into a "movie" I was able to let those beloved pets go and remember them with joy instead of sorrow.  The process allowed me to think about getting another puppy and to move toward the day when I was ready....

Meet our new baby....introducing our 13 week old Black Lab, Angus Demetrius!

6 weeks old - We first saw Angus on May 2nd - two days before the Tornado hit us.  This was taken on May 29th when we returned to pick him out of the three black males in his litter!

The day he came to home - 8 weeks old June 20th!

9 weeks old - Gazebo Time.  We try to spend the last hour of his day in the Gazebo training him in "quiet time".  Eventually we'll be able to actually get back in the hot tub and relax while he is out there with us...right now with all the new puppy energy?  Well, let's just say that we are in training!