Last week was my birthday, and we had a wonderful time celebrating. I worked in the morning, but when I got home in the afternoon, Justin was in the final stages of putting a bookshelf together. Of course this was a bookshelf I've had my eye on, so he was very sweet to get it. Then, we just decided to open up a few of my gifts right then. Later than night we went to dinner, to a cute little place in downtown Hollywood called Argentango. Great food! Great ambiance!

So now, Justin and I are getting ready for a new house guest. My dad is flying in from Arizona tomorrow morning, and we're trying to tidy up and get things somewhat neat. We're definitely looking forward to the visit. When we have visitors, we also get to feel like we're on vacation, because we visit new tourist places that we haven't been to before. Well, we'll update you on his visit later.
Spent about 20 minutes today watching a pair of seagulls. These birds certainly don't qualify as the most graceful creatures, but they were fascinating to watch. Their flight skills definitely left something to be desired. However, they excel at crash landings. After laboriously flapping their wings circling around the inner coast, the birds would suddenly drop into the ocean below to scoop up an unsuspecting fish.

A few days ago Susan and I noticed an increase in the quantity and size of these schools. These large schools of fish look like dark clouds floating just under the surface of the ocean not 10 feet from the shoreline. They swim so close to the top of the water that they get flipped out into the air when the waves pass by.

It was these schools of fish my two seagull friends were interested in today. Every so often, each bird would suddenly stop flapping its wings and zoom head first into the water. Making a large splash and going under for just a brief time, the bird would then pop back up and enjoy his new snack only to repeat the process a few moments later.

Back during flight school one of my instructors compared my flying skills to that of a seagull. I now realize that was probably not meant to be a compliment. Think I will go fishing soon. - jt
So (after much pestering from Justin) I am here to write more stuff. It's Sunday and after church, we had an extremely lazy day sitting in front of the tele watching sports. Now I'm at the end of a terribly relaxing and wonderful 3 day weekend (I also had Friday off :) We've spent a lot of time, as of late, discussing our plans for the future. It's official that we miss Arizona very much and have taken the idea of moving back in November into consideration, but we decided that it doesn't make sense for us to do that right now. That means we are looking for places to move (locally), since we can't justify spending the $ we do for our place now. Now we're looking for a place on the ocean, or perhaps the intercoastal, but hope to spend a few hundred less. Especially since we have a lot of travel plans coming up: A trip to Key West in October, a cruise in November, Portugal in March, Phoenix in May, and Phoenix again in the Spring. Yikes! No matter what we decide to do, we'll let ya all know as soon as possible. Much love. Susan
We have updated the photo gallery again. We still have not gotten around to writing captions for the pictures yet, but we have loaded up two more sets. JS Visit AZ are pictures from when Susan and I went back to Arizona this June. Also, we added Jerald Weds! These are pictures from my cousin Jeralds wedding. In addition we added a few more pictures to the Visit FL gallery. Right now we have eight galleries:

J and S: Some of our favorite couple pictures of Susan and I
Life in FL: Pictures of the view from our apartment, etc.
Portugal: Pictures of our trip to Portugal
Visit FL: When my folks came and visited us
Elijah: Pictures of Susan's nephew
Jacob: Pictures of Justin's nephew
JS Visit AZ: Our trip back to Arizona
Jerald Weds: Pictures from my cousin's wedding
In a condemning editorial on Hollywood's role in the tobacco wars, Joe Eszterhas (Author of "American Rhapsody") looks at his own responsibility for smoking deaths and calls on Hollywood to change it's ways.

A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old ... We in Hollywood know the gun will go off, yet we hide behind a smoke screen of phrases like "creative freedom" and "artistic expression." Those lofty words are lies designed, at best, to obscure laziness. - Joe Eszterhas

To learn more about the Tobacco Cartels' addiction to marketing to children, visit:
SmokeFreeMovies
OK, so we didn't get all the pictures scanned in yet. But we did get a few more added to the "Visit FL" gallery. That gallery contains pictures from when my parents came to visit us. Hopefully we will have a few new galleries up soon!
Great News! My baby sister is engaged!!!! Brian proposed to Diana while on a recent trip to Las Vegas for his birthday. Susan and I are both very excited about this and can't wait to get more details. Right now everything is in the early planning stages, but it is just too exciting!

The weather out here recently has been somewhat exciting as well. The first Tropical Storm of the season was named yesterday. Christobol probably won't bring much, but we have had lots of fun rain locally. For about an hour yesterday the lightning was so frequent that it seemed as if a spotlight was shining through our window.

In more aggravating than exciting news, I recently had issues with my phone. Who knew 44 ounces of Coca Cola dumped on a Kyocera 6035 would cause problems? Well I guess pretty much everybody could figure that out. After letting the phone dry for a couple of days, everything seemed to be in working order. However, after a week the cola did its magic and turned the circuit board into swiss cheese. Well, not completely, but the damage from the corrosion did a number on the phone and forced me to replace it. Susan was happy to have me all to herself while I waited for my replacement phone to arrive. Now that it is here, I must make sure to spend quality time with my girlfriend and not the phone!

Damaging the phone of course happened at completely the wrong time. Kyocera is coming out with the next generation smart phone in just a few months. So after spending so much to replace my current one, it looks like I won't be one of those standing in line to get it the day it comes out. Now if only one were to magically appear? ;)

Our quality time activity tonight will be sorting through pictures and scanning them in. We will be adding another couple of galleries in the next few days. The question then becomes, how long is our definition of a day? Hopefully we will also come up with some captions to help better explain some of the photos.

Well it is raining again, so I am off to sit on the couch, read a few articles and watch the storm roll in off the ocean. Why spend time in front of the computer when the skies are storming?
The photo gallery should now be working fine! We still have not gotten around to writing captions for the pictures yet. That may be a task for this weekend. Right now we have six galleries:

J and S: Some of our favorite couple pictures of Susan and I
Life in FL: Pictures of the view from our apartment, etc.
Portugal: Pictures of our trip to Portugal
Visit FL: When my folks came and visited us
Elijah: Pictures of Susan's nephew
Jacob: Pictures of Justin's nephew

More galleries to be added soon!

And finally for those of you in Arizona who are lucky enough to be experiencing the monsoon storms, todays column by E.J. Montini expresses one of the things we miss most about Arizona. So while you may be lamenting the traffic, noise, power outages, etc. Keep in mind there are always good things as well.
Well, it appears there are a few more kinks in the gallery than I originally thought. Right now only 2 of the 6 galleries are viewable. (Portugal and Jacob) I hope to have the others fixed in the next few days.
The photo gallery is now online! Well, it's not perfected yet, but it’s a whole lot better. We don't have captions up yet to explain the photos, but since someone said a picture is worth a thousand words, we felt the caption thing must therefore be redundant. Anyway, it may load a bit slow for you, and there are still a few kinks in the system. But hopefully this new format will allow us to post more pictures, more often.
Well, we have our photos linked to this page now. However, it simply takes you to the old, "ugly" sight. Soon we will be posting our new photo gallery with a cleaner look, easier navigation, and of course... more photos! Hopefully I will be able to get the new gallery on-line soon.

As Susan said, work is quite hectic right now. I am on the road several days each week conducting trainings for the campaigns volunteers. So updates to this site may be sporadic for a bit. If you haven't yet checked it out, stop by the Smoke-Free for Health website to see the campaign I am working on.

Take care and stay tuned!
OK, I'm finally on and able to write updates. Justin and I just celebrated our two year anniversary last weekend. Whhheewww, those two years flew by; I feel like we've been together forever ( hee hee).

Just to get everyone up to speed on our lives:
*I am currently working at Miami-Dade Community College as an instructor (a.k.a. Administrator). Although I'm part time there, I usually work about 30-35 hours/week. *Justin is still working hard for the campaign, just pushing towards the win in November.
*We are hoping to take a relaxing vacation in November and we'll post that information when we make some final decisions.
We have now added a link to our "Garage Sale" at Amazon.com Who said all those old books wouldn't come in handy!
It is time we were brought into the real world. How can we share our lives, if it takes 3 months to post a single picture?

This is the begining...

If you were looking for the end. Then you are in the wrong place.