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I post regularly to all those sites, including lots of pictures of the kids. Jan can be found here:

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Monkey thing

For anyone clamoring for a better look at that monkey ghost thing in the St. Augustine post, here you go.

I've sharpened and brightened the picture up as best as I could without washing it out. It's clearly some little 'thing' that is standing there holding something, and it clearly is on the *outside* of the window, standing on the approximately 2.5" ledge. Zoomed-in, it looks like a bald guy with grey hair, and he's about 19" tall.

Weird, huh?

The more I look at this the weirder it is. If it was some little doll figure that was glued to the outside of the window for some reason (which would be really odd as it had been raining for much of the day) then why is it so illuminated when all the illumination is in front of it, not behind it? It's like completely self-lumnious. There's no light source illuminating it from the north angle, but it's completely illuminated. And if it was an illuminated toy, why doesn't it illumniate anything else around it? You'd expect it would cast some light into the wood frame surrounding it.

Maybe the answer is obvious and I'm just missing it, but to me this is really unusual.

St. Og

This week I had a business conference that was up in St. Augustine, which is 5 hours away from Miami. That sounds like a really far way, and it is. And it's a pretty uneventful drive, although you do drive by Merritt Island, home to NASA's Cape Canaveral. We didn't stop there, but we could have, in theory.

I brought Jan and the kids along since they've never been there. I was afraid it was going to be a "Circus Circus," which is what I call things now that are far cooler in my memory than they are in real life. But they wound up really liking it, which was great. To me, it's always been very historic and interesting and has always had a fun atmosphere. It's a 550 year-old town-the oldest in America that's been continuously lived in. It's right on the sea, about 30 miles south of Jacksonville and about 50 miles north of Daytona Beach.

I stayed at the Renaissance Golf something or other. It's a hotel there in St. Augustine, and is home to the world golf hall of fame or something like that. It's on a golf course that looks very nice. I assume it may even be famous since it looks expensive. For you golf buffs out there, the course is called 'Slammer and Squire,' which sounds like a time travel Bill & Ted-esque movie.

The interior of the hotel had this sort of fun artrium thing. It's hard to tell in this picture but there's a little water river thing down there.

 Way to go, Renaissance hotels!

A very cloudy and (for Florida) cold day (65 degrees)

I went to my conference on the first day and the girls went shopping and did some brief driving around.  I met up with everyone after I was done and we went into town and walked around in the dark in the historic downtown area. Those pictures are all very low light, but here are a few.

The Castillo de San Marcos, a 500 year-old Spanish fort. They light it up at night and it's fairly spooky.

This building used to be the town morgue, and they would display the bodies in the front window. Now it's a gift shop.

The, well, oldest wooden school house in the US. They put a manequin in the upstairs window. For fun? Apparently?

The entire town's been taken over by ghost tours and there are multiple options competing for your attention. There was a pirate tour, a sheriff tour, a few walking tours, and a tour by trolley. In the past I've taken the trolley tour-this time we took one of the walking tours.

It was just us with the kids and one other couple. The tour was led by a girl who was attending nearby Flagler college, probably as a drama major. She told some normal stories but presented them in a 'dramatic' manner, so it was 'interesting.' We had fun, though.

The Protestant cemetery. 

OK this brings us to our first 'ghost' photo. See if you can spot it here.

If you guessed 'the ghost monkey thing over on the left hand side in the window,' you are correct.

No idea what this is. There was nothing in this window that Jan or I remember seeing at all, much less a 20 inch-tall little ghost monkey thing holding a book or something. I guess it could be a reflection of some kind, but it's pretty odd. And you can tell that I don't have the flash on, or Jan's shirt would be illuminated.

Our second ghost picture is this one. It's extremely hard to see. You have to view it at maximum size and in a pitch black room, and then the light will show up a little bit. See if you can see the odd figure in here:

It's over on the left

I ran this through some image software I have, however, and the ghost game into blurry focus.

Dang it, Jan.

The next day we woke up and had some breakfast at a local cafe. Mads helped me craft this guy.

She did the nose.

After that, we headed over to Ripley's Believe it or Not museum to see how things were going there. They were going.

We didn't go in because this is a building with many stairs and it wouldn't lend itself to a stroller visit very well.

After this we went to the St. Augustine lighthouse, which is purported to be very haunted. Which is not saying much in St. Augustine. I think even the Dennys there claims to be very haunted. Still...

Very cool trees.

The gift shop/ticket place. There's probably something historic upstairs.

The back yard is very pretty. The lighthouse is about 10 feet to our right, here, and back about 200 feet.

More very cool trees and atmosphere.

Thar she blows

It looks haunted, yes?

It's hard to take a picture of something 300 feet tall and something 3 feet tall simultaneously.

We didn't go on the tour because, again, stairs. About 292, if memory serves. Plus it was very expensive. Plus, if you're going to go, then the ghost tour would be the way to do it. We'll have to return in 10 years when the kids won't prohibit stair travel.

After that it was over to the Castillo de San Marcos, which is this very very old Spanish fort that is right downtown. Again, stairs. So we stayed on the outside.

A 'blast furnace' for munitions.

We think this was a flagpole stone. The precision of the cut indicates it's a newer feature.

Kids bundled up warm

This is the 'moat' although it was never intended to be a moat. They instead let their livestock graze here. When the city recently allowed water to be let in to create a moat, it caused the fort to settle and start to crack. So they nixed that one.

The orange fence thing is where they were doing some work on one of the retaining walls.

Very cool. As seen from above, it looks like a Chinese throwing star. There are 4 of these cool battlements.

Walking around the side.

Yes, we had to climb stairs anyway.

Finally, we headed into the historic district in the daylight to check things out. It was a lot of fun. Lots of touristy restaurants and gift shops but certainly a lot of fun things to see. Kind of interesting that the city lets modern businesses operate out of 500 year-old buildings, but OK.

Pretty little area in the middle of town.

Olllld buildings and walls.

St. George street is the main street in the historic district.

Biiiig statue at a church.

Most all the rock is really seashells bound in a kind of cement.

Happy kid at a water wheel thing that is powering a bakery.

Nice little interesting touches everywhere.

Very Spanish-looking fountain.

We had to bribe her with cotton candy to get her to smile.

More of the same.

The things you can buy are...eclectic.

Yes they are real alligator heads.

Very old, very cool trees, most of which are covered in Spanish moss.

We had a really fun time, even though it was a 5-hour drive, and we weren't mentally ready for that much car travel again considering the trip we just had 7 weeks ago. But it was nice to see more of the state (we've seen more of Florida in 1.5 months than we ever saw of Texas in 2.5 years) and the northern part of the state is gorgeous. Tons of very very tall pine trees, and a dramatically different feel than bombed out hooker-ville down in Miami. We'll have to return soon!

WC

Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.

-Winston Churchill, after his country had just been bombed to smithereens.

Reactions and things. Also stuff.

With a day or so now for things to sink in, I'm not as fatalistic as I was last night. Yes, that was the last chance America had to turn things around. No, a conservative Republican can no longer win the presidency in the country from here on out. Yes, things will get a lot worse now.

But things have been worse before, and better people than me have weathered it. I'm sure the early Saints thought that life was pretty much miserable and over when they were chased from place to place, mobbed, murdered, and so on. Things were pretty bad in the Great Depression and World War 2, as well. The people of Alma in Mosiah 24 also had it pretty rough. But they had a great solution:

13 And it ^acame to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage. 14 And I will also ease the ^aburdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as^bwitnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their ^cafflictions. 15 And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did^astrengthen them that they could bear up their ^bburdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with ^cpatience to all the will of the Lord.

They prayed and had their burdens lifted, so that they could submit 'cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.' How!? I'm sure they were blessed with it, but it was something in their character as well. They had enough faith to do this even though their burdens were still the same. 

And, of course, there's the big guns:

 7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the ^apit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the ^bdeep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to ^chedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of ^dhell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee^eexperience, and shall be for thy good.  8 The ^aSon of Man hath ^bdescended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

No, I definitely am not.

But if all the things in life that we pass through will give us experience, and shall be for our good...

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