A Little Work Up North

We went up to the Ocala area to do some geocaching and stop by to help out Uncle Frank & Aunt Martha. Remember, Click-On-A-Pic to see a larger version of an image.

Of course, we also working on adding to our photo-catalog...

To begin with, we started putting one-gallon cans of paint into a 5-gallon bucket so the ladies could paint the outside of the building. Unfortunately, Karen was hit with a little 'kick-back'.

Yeah, this is what I mean. The neat thing though, is that she's still smiling. I cleaned up the bits that made it into her hair, then she cleaned up the rest, no big deal.

Since the 3 gallons of paint weren't exactly the same color, we had to mix it with a paint-stirring tool on the end of a drill. Gotta take it slow, or everybody around me will get a paint-bath.

In the picture above, you can see a window and this is how everything was stacked up against it inside. Looks like we're ready for just about anything...

As we were finishing up the mixing, Karen added the last of the gallon of white paint, which made for a nice coffee-tan color for the walls.

Here is the end of the 'painting party', as the 4 ladies went at it with gusto and made it all the way from one side of the building to the other side in about an hour. In this shot, front to back, is Luann, Aunt Shirley, Karen, Aunt Martha, and Uncle Claude in the blue shirt way back there.

The ladies went so fast that even the kitty-cat that was doing the lower trim around the base was wiped out. Uhm... hey! Can we have that brush back before the paint dries out?

Since there was painting going on, the cars were parked a little bit over from where they were working.

While the painting was going on, I worked with Uncle Claude and Uncle Frank putting up sheet rock inside the building. As you can see, since Uncle Frank was injured from a serious accident a bit back, he takes his supervisory position quite seriously.

And I just know that he was watching me somewhere nearby while I was making the cutouts for the outlets... But seriously, we got quite a bit done before it got too hot to be working in the sun, so Karen & I went to find a geocache near the property and I brought it back to be signed. After lunch, we said our goodbyes and headed out to a nearby park to hunt for a couple of caches.

It was nice to get out into the scenery, taking pictures and using billion-dollar satellites to find tupperware hidden in the woods (geocaching).

It's especially fun when the person who hides it, takes the time to put one together like this one. When I reached down into the hole in the root-system of a tree, this lion was staring at me and I have to admit, I jumped back when I saw the critter.... ROAR! Nice cache.

And we snapped a few pictures of the flora and fauna as we discovered it.

We could go this way... Or we could go that way... I know, let's go the other way!

Ok, so we're all a bit tired and sore from our work day. Thankfully, I found a tangelo tree nearby, climbed it and picked some fruit to give to the girls. That seemed to help a bit, but seriously, it was time to head home...

Surprise! On the way home, we were stuck in stop-&-stop traffic due to an accident. Here is the result of a rear-ender in the left lane. This one is so 'fresh', the glass is still scattered across the roadway.

Here's a side-view of the poor car that used another car in front of it to stop.

Yeah, that was an ouch! The strange thing about this was that we didn't see hide nor hair of the other car that received the 'vehicular enema'. Maybe it was a reverse hit & run, where the car that was rear-ended took off because he wasn't driving legally in the first place.