FREE August 2004

BIRTHDAYS Laura became a teenager this month. Look out world! Joe, Claudia and Great Mom Zenobia all added another year to their list of accomplishments. ANNIVERSARY Joe and Carolyn had their 36th anniversary this year. In celebration of that and Joe's birthday, we all went to a live performance at the Alhambra dinner theater in Jacksonville. The production was "Footloose" and they put on a great show. GAZETTE ARCHIVES NEW HOME The house we're renting is being sold... that's twice that's happened to us, so we decided it was time to buy. We've done most of the leg work of locating, negotiating, arranging financing, etc. and we'll have our Real Estate licenses before we close on the house, so we will get to collect the commission for ourselves. The house is 2400 sqft and sits on a .66 acre corner lot. The backyard is fenced and private. For the first time, we'll have enough space to unpack everything we own and still not be able to fill all the rooms. The house is completely livable as is but we're already planning improvements such as adding a screened porch and remodeling the kitchen and baths. I think we'll like it here. Interactive Floor Plan & More Photos HURRICANES Having lived so many places, I've experienced a great variety of nature's wonders. Amazing amounts of hail, snow, rain, wind and hoar frost in Colorado, tornadoes in Indiana, earthquakes and months of drizzle in Washington. The weather in Germany was bland by comparison. Now that we live on the east coast, I have yet another phenomena to take delight in. Last year we had one hurricane (ISABEL) pass close by and hit North Carolina. This season we've been visited by Hurricane ALEX, Tropical Storm BONNIE, Hurricane CHARLEY, Tropical Storm GASTON and Hurricane FRANCES. None of these have hit us directly but all were headed in our direction with Beaufort as a possible strike location. We got residual rain and wind from each of them. Next on the radar is Hurricane IVAN. The weather channel and weather.com get a lot of traffic from us.