Florida Discoveries 1: Where are the Reindeer? Reindeer Lichen

17. December 2010 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

Prepare yourselves, this is going to be one of my most bewildering blog posts yet.  More so than vermicomposting, toilet odors and pumpkin reproduction.

This morning I enjoyed another run through my new neighborhood.  I’ve been mapping out my runs on this website (so I know the distances I’m covering) and this is the one I did today.  It takes me though this lovely golf course neighborhood northwest of my house.  Needless to say, the golf course is near the streets titled “PGA Blvd.” and “Masters Blvd.”.  I don’t live there, but it’s pretty to visit, especially with some of the houses’ holiday decorations.

So…today I was running along a backstretch of Cove Rd., which is on the southwest part of the loop, and the houses ended and I had hammocks on both sides of me for several hundred feet.  No, not the kind I wished I had in my backyard, but the ecological kind.

And down on the ground were not the low-lying palm fronds that are elsewhere in the neighborhood, but lichen fields!

When I think of lichen, I don’t think of Florida. I think of 10,000′ alpine tundra, with reindeer eating the stuff. In fact, the kind of lichen I found is nicknamed “Reindeer Lichen”.  I had visions in my head for the rest of the run of reindeer licking rocks with lichen.  We saw lichen on an alpine tundra in Colorado in August, in fact.  This website answered my questions about lichen in Florida.

Lichen I had photographed on a rock in Colorado this past August, we were at about 10,500′ elevation here.  I never imagined seeing lichen in Florida!
From 2010 08 09 Rocky Mtn Natl Park Day 1

I was so intrigued by this field in my neighborhood, I stopped to check it out.  Took a few pictures with my phone camera:

You can use lichen on model railroads.  The greener lichen makes nice shrubbery.
From 2010 12 17 Lichen
The red stuff on the ends of the lichen on the right was interesting to me, but I didn’t want to touch it.  This website discusses the “matchstick” lichen a little more.
From 2010 12 17 Lichen
The area was covered in it!
From 2010 12 17 Lichen
Just doesn’t seem very Floridian, does it?
From 2010 12 17 Lichen

Our Weather Station is BACK!

13. December 2010 · Comments Off on Our Weather Station is BACK! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

We re-assembled our weather station in our backyard over the weekend. We have plenty of fenceline to choose from, and you can’t see the equipment from the street (always a bonus in a deed-restricted neighborhood).

You can see current conditions on the right-hand column of the blog now, or you can click on the “sticker” and save that page to your favorites.

We also have several other local weather stations with which we can compare our data. I’m not quite sure our wind vane/anemometer set is high enough off the ground, we have some wind direction inconsistencies that we’ll monitor for the next several days.

It’s nice to have this back, especially for rainfall information…we can use that data to assess whether I have to water plants.

Hi Honey, We’re HOME!!!!

28. November 2010 · Comments Off on Hi Honey, We’re HOME!!!! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

We made it! We had a nice uneventful trip, with about 22 hours worth of driving spread over 4 days, 1200 miles, and 10 different states!

This afternoon we went straight over to the house to empty out the trailer into the new house’s garage, although we aren’t officially moving in until Wednesday.

More pictures will come a little later, for now we’re in a sea of address changes, insurance changes, school supply purchases, and utility installations.  Today we went over to Pensacola and chose a new living room set and boy is it different from what we have had for the past 15 years!  Ironic how we opted for the red couch after we left Nebraska, huh?

Timmy’s happy to be back in Moe’s country, that’s for sure!  We stopped there tonight for dinner after our furniture shopping.  The one in Bellevue had closed just 6 months after we had moved there, so poor Timmy had been in a two-year-long Moe’s drought!  Relief, finally!

Almost Homeless….

22. November 2010 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

So here I am, sitting in an empty house.  It took about 3 1/2 days, and it filled 2/3 of a 53′ trailer!  But it’s done, and we now are living with a minimum of stuff in our house.

Folks have been asking “Why aren’t you in the Transient Lodging (on base hotel, more or less)?” or “Why aren’t you staying with friends?”

Several reasons.  First of all, we enjoy our space.  We held on to sleeping bags, cots, air mattresses and camping chairs and are doing pretty well.  We kept our small TV, our Wii system, and laptop computers.  We still have our WiFi going (and will until 6 hours before we leave!), so I can still come to you from our empty house.

Secondly, we know Howie does much much better when the family is with him.  We could have kenneled him, but he doesn’t sleep well at the kennel, and he tends to not eat.  Better for Howie, for sure.

Finally, unless it was filled up, we’d have had to use Offutt AFB’s lodging, which we used on our way into this assignment in July 2008. They’re gracious enough to have a pet-friendly lodging room that we were able to get, but it was very small and very old. The 4 of us, plus Howie, weren’t too comfortable, so we decided to save the government some money and stay in the house until we vacate it on Tuesday.

So here we are in the house. I’m down to just odds and ends…we have all utilities set to turn off later this week in our current house, and our Florida house will have utilities coming on early next week.

Enjoy some pictures from our packing up…and our life in an empty house:

I ran an errand to Kohl’s to use some Kohl’s cash that would expire while we were on the road.  I came home and saw this ENORMOUS truck parked in front of the house.  I was tickled by the map of Florida painted on!
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
Those who were packing our boxes did a nice job stacking them neatly so we could still maneuver around.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
The dining room.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
The furniture pads helped protect the larger items while crammed into the truck.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
This is the fridge getting loaded up onto the truck.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
The packers were kind enough to leave two chairs for us until the very end.  That computer table wasn’t coming with us, we’re leaving it for the next tenants.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
The fridge coming down the stairs out of the kitchen.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
As one of Dave’s Facebook friends pointed it, seeing our stuff get loaded was like watching a game of “Tetris”.  That’s our fridge, washer and dryer across the bottom there.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
Howie’s old hat at this — this will be his 4th move in 10 years!
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010
This is from this morning.  My boys have a “Breakfast with Spongebob” tradition on the weekends.  Today was no exception.
From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

The Cat’s Out of the Bag!*

11. May 2010 · Comments Off on The Cat’s Out of the Bag!* · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,
Picture by MAYNARD PAUL
Lovely picture, isn’t it?  Where could that be?  It’s so pretty there…boy…I wish I could live there….

So…those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter already know this, and if you aren’t on either of those websites, you could probably just glance to the right on this blog and see the news.

We ARE going to live there**!  Actually, that picture is of sunset in Destin, Florida, which may or may not be where we live (probably not, we’re looking more at Navarre), but it’s definitely in the area of where we’re headed this fall***!

Yes!  We’re moving back to Florida!!!!!  Whoo hoo!  Dave got a job as a “Director of Operations” for a weather squadron at Hurlburt Field, which is just east of Pensacola.  So this time we’re not returning to the east coast.  That’s okay…I’d spent some time at Hurlburt Field in 2008 while training for my Middle East deployment.  It’s a great area, plenty to see and do.

Whoo hoo!

Not sure how many of you knew that before we were in North Carolina, where I started this blog, we lived in Viera, Florida from 2002-2005.  Dave and I were both on active duty, stationed at Patrick AFB, which is just south of Cape Canaveral.  Both of our sons were born in Melbourne and we owned a great house just off I-95.  We really enjoyed it there.  Lots of great things to do (such as Washington Nationals Spring Training), lots of great friends and lots of rocket and shuttle launches.  Okay, not a lot of shuttle launches.  There were only 5 launches in the 3 1/2 years we lived there: the 4 that occurred in 2002 after we moved there, then STS-107 which was the Columbia mission that exploded upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.  It was really cool to see the launches from our front driveway in Viera!

Actually, we had known about this for a couple months now.  But we wanted something in writing first. Dave got his official assignment notification on Friday.  We had mentioned this to the boys back in March, and Jacob’s first question was “How far will we be from Disney World?”  Ha ha!  They’re looking forward to the beaches and the warmth!

So, if you didn’t hear me the first few times on this blog post: Whoo hoo!****

*What does that idiom mean, anyway? Is there some sort of archaic story behind this? Let’s find out!


**Boy, I hope I don’t jinx things by shouting out all this happiness so soon!


***Technically, we’re headed down this fall.  Dave’s report date is before the first day of winter, even if it’s barely so…


****For those in the Omaha area reading this, please don’t feel that we don’t love you guys and gals!  We really like it here, but we Vollmers are EASTERNERS so to get to go back East of the Mississippi is comforting for us…

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