we got the beat

Okay, so a while back I happened across one of those new-fangled karaoke contest shows (singing bee? don't forget the lyrics? the ratings battle of wayne brady and joey fatone?) and I watched for a bit. I have to say, I think the singing bee one (on bravo) is tougher because if you get one single word wrong, you lose. Anyways, this song was one of the ones used and ever since then, it's been stuck in my head. Also, I think the chick didn't get this one right because she missed the "they can't wait to hang out and be cool" lyric. Soo.... hopefully now you will have it stuck in your head, too. Also, I start teaching music to 4th-6th grade tomorrow at St. Mark's Episcopal School... so I've had a lot of music-related songs rolling around in my noggin. Okay, now that I've explained myself, let's start the line-up.



First, here's Jeremy. A while back, a bunch of us gathered at Jeremy's condo to play poker. It was very fun and most of the people there had never played before, so I had fun taking all their money. Hahaha. No, just kidding. Well, not really.... but hey! It was fake money. Anyways, I WAS winning for a while, then Stephen claimed a BIG pot by beating my pair of queens with kings (ARGH!) and pulled into the lead. On the last had, we all went a little wild and stuffed the pot... and Jeremy won the pot and thus, the chip total! Although some might claim it was beginner's luck, it was still exciting- as evidenced below:







Jacksonville is a city on a river... the St. John's River to be exact. I may have mentioned it before, but here goes again. The St. John's is a BIG river and one of only a few in the world that flow from South to North. Jacksonville is right where the river starts to head out to the Atlantic Ocean and as such gets very wide at points. The neighborhood where Stephen and I have picked out a place to live (where I'll be staying until he comes in January) in the historic district which is aptly called Riverside. This is a picture of one of the pretty parks in our neighborhood.

So, Stephen and I are THINKING about getting a dog sometime in the next little while. This is a cute little dog up for adoption that I went to see (just for fun... for now) and her name is Reba. I don't know if Reba's the dog for us- or any dog for that matter right now- but she sure was a cutie!

So, about 3 weeks ago it was raining almost every day. And not just raining, but like torrentially down-pouring. Every day. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped. And ever since then, it has been unbearably hot. Every day. Darn Florida Summer. Here's to more pleasant weather, which supposedly exists somewhere...

Stephen and I spent some quality time painting the dining room and living room of my (our) new place and once we finished and did a few other things in preparation, we were ready to move our stuff in. We were excited!

So, this past weekend was the big move-in day. Mom and dad brought all my stuff up from DeLand and Stephen and his friend John moved his things that were in storage. I must also give credit to John and Katie, Melodie and Kevin, and my parents, because with the 8 of us working, we had all the stuff unloaded and in the house in less than an hour! After some work, we got a few rooms looking pretty nice! Of course, I'm not posting any pictures of the other rooms that are full of boxes and look like a disaster! First up, the dining room:

Next, the living room!

This is a particularly nice feature: our cozy office/music room! And I finally got to move my piano from my parents' house... now I just have to work on playing it better!

Also, somehow this past weekend we managed to fit in a night out at the Jacksonville Jaguars' pre-season game against the Tampa Bay Bucs. This picture was taken looking out from the stadium at downtown and the pretty Hart Bridge. I thought it looked pretty cool with the way the lights came out all squiggly.

I didn't take any pictures of the game, because let's face it, we've all seen football games. But during half-time there was a BMX bike show. It was pretty cool. But, the coolest was when I heard them announce that the dude would be doing a flip or something and I got out the camera to see if I could get the shot. Stephen's camera has like a second and a half delay so I saw the rider coming and just pushed the button and hoped for the best... and voila! I couldn't believe I got it! I was so excited.

Although it had been a long, sweaty day... Stephen and I don't look too bad! Well, I guess that's all for now, over and out! (We got the beat, we got the beat... YEAH!) :-)