Not One, But Two

OK, another week in Florida and guess what? Not one, Gustav, but 2, Hannah, Hurricanes in the forecast, just surrounding us. We feel good that Gustav will not come this way, but as you all know we have family and friends in the path and will worry about them, as we are now 3 years from the anniversary of Katrina. Hannah has not figured out which way she will go. To top the whole mess of hurricanes being all around us, I am on vacation next week! Do I know how to plan it or what?

end of the work week and fay's life

So can you say rain? You know it's wet outside when the dogs don't even want to go out. Jack was visiting through today, while Cimi was in Austin visiting Brenna. This has been a really long work week. We get to work on Monday and start Hurricane Conference Calls. Decide on Tuesday that time to kill the calls as this TS Fay is really not a problem. Get to Thursday and she is now worse that when she started out the week and just will not go away! What is that all about. Moving at 5 mph? Get out of here, beaches are awaiting us sometime, somewhere. Back to work, could the days just drag by. I am always busy, but it seemed as if the days would just not end. I guess just thinking about having 15 days left of vacation time gives me the feeling to just be OFF! So I will leave everyone with a picture of what Fay looks like as of now. Stay dry if you can and talk to everyone soon.

Tropical Storm Fay from the front yard

So I was just getting ready to finish up syncing my new IPhone and Dago called and told me to come and look at the sky. As with all of us, a camera was within grabbing distance and here is the video. An interesting site.

Hurricane Fay, Macy's update and Manny and Emily

Another week has gone by and guess what? Another hurricane, tropical storm, whatever is making its way towards Florida. Above is the 5 day forecast of where Fay is going to travel. This Monday is an airport run for Manny, he is dropping me off for a 730a flight to Miami for the class that I have been in all year and for Emily to make her way back to Louisiana. I get on conference calls tomorrow to see if the travel for myself is still on and if it is off, I just go to work for the week. But unfortunately for Manny, Emily is going north west so she will not have any issues travelling. This week we have spent the time getting to know Emily. A delightful young lady. She is a good influence for Manny and supports the fact of him being in Orlando straightening out his life. They spent this past Sunday at the beach with us. If you have not checked out the Picasa album here is a pic of Emily and Manny skimming in the surf. The beach was awesome this past week. I can not remember the last time I spent so much time in the water. It was perfect.

Tomorrow Manny and Emily are off to Universal Studio to ride the rollercoasters. That should be fun for them. Jacki left Orlando this past Thursday to spend the week in New Orleans visiting her mom and sisters and any other family that she runs into. It seems as if drama loves to be in mine and Dago's life at this time. I think I should contact a cable show and have our lives produced at this time. Talk about crazy. And I thought that I had raised my children and would be able to enjoy my adult kids, but hey, not in the cards at this time. Work this past week has been interesting. It is all about the New Store Structure that we are converting to. No one knows exactly who does what and we are all enjoying confusing our boss, by pointing at each other saying, hmmm, that's under their umbrella, and where is the line we are not supposed to cross. Buisness continues to be good at our Macy's (thanks to tourists and the dollar to the pound) so as we all say we are having fun working at the mall. Enough updates, I need to go and do some homework for my, just in case I go, class on Monday. Will update next week. And Happy Birthday to Janet in Littleton Colorado.

Beijing Olympics

Check out the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The opening ceremonies have been pretty awesome so far.

We are all sitting here as a family watching the 1st night.

If you are into it, enjoy, if not I know that the reruns are alot

of fun.

Manny update: all was fine in court on Wednesday. If he takes care of all his probation things and pays all of his fines, he can get early release. He does have an email now, msilveriv@aol.com or call the house as he does not have a job yet, but will be out pounding the pavement next week.

Again, thanks for all of your thoughts and support.

getting back to normal

So it is now Monday afternoon, and again I worked the weekend and low and behold another system is in the Gulf, Edouard. Maybe Brenna will get some rain. So here is a photo of where it is at this time.

Manny leaves tomorrow am to fly into New Orleans to drive to Lafayette for his court date Wed am. So looks like he and his dad will be having a nice wet drive.

I have just spent the day today getting up early, having a nice conversation with Manny about where he wants to be with his life. After we finished talking for over 2 hours I thought it would be a good idea to have a nap. The pool was calling me after that so I laid out and floated around for a couple of hours.

I have now gotten totally caught up with my personal finances and am looking forward to cooking a home meal and then trying to get caught up with some last minute work that is due tomorrow am. So that is where I am at as of this moment. Taking my life just one day at a time, gee where did I here those words before? They really work.

Cimi has a great new look for her blog and for those of you who do not look at the rest of the families blogs you need to check them out. I love lurking them as they always bring smiles to my face.

Super Sleuthing

Last Wednesday night I received a message from Regi. My attention was captured immediately and with that arrangements were made to fly to New Orleans. Of course all in the family know the relationship that I have with Terri and her family. Terri agreed to pick me up and drive us to Lafayette to begin our sleuthing. The first thing we did was to check into the Holiday Inn and precede to go through my phone and contact all of the people that Manny had programmed into the phone 3 years ago. Luck was not on our side with the numbers. We left numerous messages and waited for call backs. Much to our dismay, only 1 of his friends called us back and said that we would need to call Emily. I had of course tried her a few times and she had not returned the calls. Our greatest accomplishment was the information that was given to us from Regi. I owe her my gratitude and will thank her for the rest of my days. We met for lunch at the Blue Dog, which was very good and I recommend it to all who travel to Lafayette. I had the crab meat served with a bechemel sauce spiced with crawfish on a bed of spinach. Delicious. Regi brought us up to speed with the information that she had about Manny. I had not realized that he had been arrested. The arrest was a misdemeanor for possession of drug paraphernalia and a small amount of marijuana. This had happened over a year ago. Great! That was all I could think of. With that information, I knew that I had done the right thing by coming to Lafayette and finding Manny. This news made our "mission" all the more urgent. That afternoon after lunch, I continued the phone tags with Manny's connections. Finally Emily answered the phone. As I was explaining to her that it was necessary that I speak with Manny immediately, she stated "oh, he's walking in the door now, do you want to talk with him?". This was the first time that I had spoken to Manny since Mother's Day last spring. I did not tell Manny that I was in Lafayette, but just probed him with questions about where he lived and where Emily lived. After retrieving this information from him, I told him to make sure that he calls me soon. Terri and I then looked up in the phone book, yes, we were amazed that at that point, that the Internet was not going to help us. We found out where the "Courtyard" apartments were and then preceded to drive to that location. Well, when we got there it was an Assisted Living complex and I knew we were not at the right place. I then probed my memory regarding what Manny had said about the location of the apartment. Terri and I then went back to the area that Manny had lived in when he first got his first apartment in Lafayette. As we were driving to that address I pointed out that there it is. Regi had told us that Manny had a bomb sticker on his back windshield and we noticed that his car was there. Terri and I then went into the complex and just randomly picked a door and started to knock. The first door did not answer, even though I thought as I peeked into the window that someone was in there. We then went upstairs to start on those doors. The first was a no answer, but then we were surprised that the next door opened and the people told us that Emily lived on the 1st floor, it was the door that we had first knocked. Downstairs we went and banged on that door. My first meeting with Emily was with her wrapped up in a towel and a headful of shampoo. She yelled "Your mom is here Manny!" My what a surprise this was to all. If I had a camera, this picture would have been priceless. So now you all know how I was able to find Manny in Lafayette.