That kind of lovin' sends a man right to his grave...

the past 24 hours:
Post a frantic-ending at work (pesky Friday), I arrived home to find squished in my mailbox a letter from the *new* at&t (formerly BellSouth) stating that they couldn't send me e-notification that my bill was ready to be paid because the email address they have on file for me is "incorrect" because they had a failed delivery to it. This caused me to note 2 interesting things:

1. The post office's recent fee change, which includes higher prices for things that can't be bent, apparently may mean that any mail that doesn't pay this surcharge will be bent--which is wrong (but I'm blaming Congress, cause they force the Postal Service to do stuff).
2. at&t must be sending out too many mass emails, so that their servers are being tagged as a spammer, because they have the correct email address for me. If it failed, it's because of actions they have done.

Anyways, so after getting my mail, which matched my bent-out-of-shape mood post-work, I quickly packed a bag and headed over to Fort Myers with one of my Masters teammates (Blake), for a 5K we swam this morning. The 90-minute drive over on Alligator Alley--the part of I-75 the cuts across the state from west to east coast--was uneventful, with only the still-burning fires in the 'Glades of note (the pic at right is of the smoke arising from the fires into the air; the smoke has kept Lauderdale overcast for the past week/so). Oh, upon leaving Alligator Alley, we drove past signs for the Corkscrew Sanctuary, which left Blake and I pondering if it really was a place to save wine bottle openers...

Upon arrival in Fort Myers Beach, we found the hotel, had dinner and then wander around, scoping things out. It was actually a nice night out, with the moon but-a-sliver and stars in view (which I don't see in FtL due to the ambient light). I attempted to take a picture of the night sky to have a keepsake of this; however, it didn't work out so well (left): the lights in question are actually of a building that was along the beach. (I did share this picture with one of my other Masters teammates--Vanessa--who's in the Seattle area at the moment for Masters Nationals, and she seemed to appreciate the humor of it: I call it "Beach at Night". She'd also requested pictures from this weekend).

However, this morning's picture from outside our hotel room turned out much better:
This shot even includes part of the race course, which started just on the other side of the pier. (The white area below the pier, between the shore and the first structure on the pier, is the finish line.)

As for the 5K swim, it went alright. I went 1:00:30 (one hour and thirty seconds) which was pesky for not only being so close to being under an hour, but also because I got 4th overall and one of the 3 people who beat me was in my age group--dagnabit! (And in case you're curious, Blake went 1:27, and dropped 15 minutes off his time from September.)

Post race, we hung around a wee bit for the awards, ate some lunch and then headed back East. When I got home, I proceeded to take a bath to relax/wash off the race numbers. The numbers were marked on both upper arms (pic'd at left), hands to lower arm (mine where upside down, so that they read 441 instead of 144), and on each shoulder blade. And sitting in the tub apparently caused some a lot of the ink to rub off onto the tub, so now that the inks off of me, I now need to get it off the tub. (And just so you know, I also have the numbers tanned into my skin: very faintly, but in the right light you can see them.)

Anyways, this is approaching way to close of a novella and I've got some further scrubbing to do, so hasta...

Yeah you drive me
Crazy, crazy
Crazy 'bout you baby
What can I do, honey