Presidential debates start tomorrow. But can they really call it a debate? With all the preparations and rules, it's really more like alternating speeches. A real debate would 1. Include all the candidates (including 3rd parties) 2. Allow the candidates to address eachother 3. Eliminate all of the rules 4. Put the candidates on the spot.

I don't even want to watch this mockery of democracy. Here's what will happen: John Kerry will try to cement his "new" positions (you have probably all noticed how he has tried to differentiate himself in the last few weeks). George Bush will attempt to string together coherent sentences, but fail miserably. I already know who I'm voting for (Kerry - I'm just voting for him because I really don't want Bush to serve a second term).

Grrr. You know what's kind of annoying? Having no cable and no internet. You know what's really annoying? Having cable and internet, and getting snatched away, forcing you to stay on hold with the stupid company for hours. And the company, which we will call "Brighthome Networks", taunts you with the audio from the TV news while you are on hold. Then you're stuck sitting in front of the computer, because that's where the phone is, with nothing to do except write in your stupid blog. Then it gets worse; the "Brighthome Networks" representative tells you that there is no outage. It could just be a glitch in the system, so they can't help.

The third storm is over. We are hurricane veterans now. This one actually wasn't that bad. Again we were evacuated and went to my parent's house. Friday night Em and I joined my parents at temple, which was just as boring as ever. We sat around all day yesterday and came back to the beach tonight. The power stayed on at both houses and we only lost cable and phone for about 24 hours.

My Holga came! I've been having lots of fun shooting random stuff. I was hoping to take some pictures of the destruction, but there wasn't much where we live.

We took our boards off the windows right after Hurricane Francis, but left them on the balcony until two days ago. Big mistake. Two days ago, Hurricane Jeanne was predicted to go to the Carolinas. Suddenly the track changed, so we spent most of the day today getting sand bags and dragging the boards out of the garage and up the stairs.

I'm sick of hurricanes. I really am. They just need to stop. On top of everything, Em and I just spent over $200 re-stocking our fridge. We are going to take all the food and video equipment to my parents house to "hunker down". That's another thing. Those stupid news people and city leaders are always telling everyone to "hunker down" because the storm is "bearing down" on us. Is hunker even a word? What the hell does it mean? It sounds like the position you get in to take a dump.

Emily and I ordered two Panasonic DVD recorders from Jr.com for our business. One with a built in VHS deck, for small orders and one with a hard drive for large orders. The latter was suppose to be here two days ago. It wasn't. So I called the company and it turns out that the unit was discontinued three days ago. I think that if I hadn't called, I would have been waiting for it forever. We had to cancel the original order and purchase the newer version, which won't come until next week.

Yay! More hurricanes! The National Hurricane Center is saying that Hurricane Jeanne is coming. It already killed almost 2000 people in Haiti. I can't wait for it to come here!

Sprint must be the worst phone company ever. They are completely incompetent. A family of monkeys would do a better job. I have spent the last couple days trying to get a business phone line. Yes, days. It would have been easy if any other phone company provided service in the Longwood area. But unfortunately Sprint is the only company we could use. They won by default. Sprint was the first company I called, because my parents use them and the lines are already set up. I spent 3 hours being transferred from one person to the next. It was like a human game of "Hot Potato". I was given at least 5 different numbers to call and transferred to no less than 10 different people. No one could answer my questions or transfer me to someone who could. All I needed to do was set up the stupid business line! Eventually I spoke to a manager and thought I had it all figured out.

What I really wanted was a forwarding line, a phone line without a physical location, which forwards all the calls to a secondary number (my cell phone). This would allow us to keep the phone number consistent when we move. They said that Sprint does not offer this service. Today I called back to make sure everything was set up correctly. It wasn't. They gave me a residential line! I canceled the order and hung up. Surely SOME other company will provide business phone lines in the area. So, I did an internet search and called every small, no name company I found. No luck.

Emily suggested we sign up for a 1-800 number instead. She called MCI and got the info. Before making a decision, I called Sprint Yellow Pages to make sure we could get a free basic listing with a 1-800 number (all business lines get a free listing). After being transferred another 50 times and calling 5 more phone numbers, I found out that it was going to cost $25 a month for a basic listing, $40 for a bold listing and $200+ for a business card sized ad. Those charges, plus the 11 cent per call charge for the 1-800 number put us over budget. Sprint was our only hope. So, I called back and braced myself for the onslaught of new phone numbers and transfers. This time I got lucky. I reached Andy at the Central Florida Sprint location and got exactly what I wanted. He set me up with a forwarding line (Sprint actually does offer the service), an easy to remember number (407-681-4DVD), and got me into the Yellow Pages.

Saturday I went to Dexter's in Winter Park with my family to see Marc Schwartz's band play and to drop off some tapes to Jill. They were playing mostly cover songs of classic rock, and my grandmother loved it. She was up front next to the band singing and dancing, having a great time. It was hilarious! She came back to the table singing "I love rock and roll".

I went to the Surf Show with my mom and Emily yesterday. It was at the new convention center, which was absolutely enormous. The show kind of sucked this year; there were less vendors and a lot less buyers. My cousin Arthur, who owns a jewelry booth, said he would be lucky if he broke even. Even the skateboarding sucked. Usually they set up a half-pipe and bring in some of the top pro skaters; this year I was excited because they had both a half-pipe and a street course. I watched the street demo and the skaters were no better than you would see at the local park.

After the show we drove around Maitland, Altamonte and Longwood looking for apartments. The one in Sable Point is still at the top of our list. Can you beat 1000 sq ft for $690? We tried three different restaurants before finally finding one that was open. Why is everything closed on Sunday night? Whatever, we ate at Bonefish grill and it was pretty good.

We are in business! Our equipment arrived, we set it up, and started work on our first conversions. It is very exciting. Friends and relatives have given us some good feedback and ideas about the direction of the company. Videotaping the life stories of the elderly and creating DVDs for their families, was one of the best we've heard (thanks Jill).

I ordered a Holga camera. I stumbled across some online galleries of photos from the camera and I was amazed. Of course, you could get much better images from an expensive medium format camera, but I love the moody/dramatic shots that are possible with the Holga.

Our equipment is suppose to arrive at my parent's house today. Exciting! Hopefully it doesn't get stolen off the porch. Em and I are going to get our occupational license in a little while. I hate this endless string of paperwork. They certainly don't make it easy for you.

We opened our bank account last week, but we can't use it until we get the license. And we can't get the license any time soon; they are running late because of the storms. Not much else is really going on. I'll write more when there is...

I finally returned to the beach after a week long evacuation. The house is in good shape, except for a couple missing tiles under the roof. The rest of this area didn't fare so well. There are roofs missing, walls destroyed, power lines everywhere and signs smashed into buildings. Emily and I wanted to leave the boards up until after Hurricane Ivan, but the first night here we slept until noon, because the room was so dark. Yesterday we took off the boards.

We bought all the equipment for our new DVD business and set up the bank account! It ended up being less than $2000 for everything. We should be able to pay off Emily's loan without a problem. The apartment hunting has been going slowly. We went back to the Echelon apartments downtown and saw some places in College Park. The only requirement is that it's not a small crapper, like in DC.

I have spent the last few days at my parents house waiting out the storm. And it's been a long wait. Emily and I got here on Thursday. A mandatory evacuation was set for Friday in our area, but we had already spent most of the day preparing the house, so we decided to beat the traffic. The storm was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Because it had slowed to a crawl, it didn't come until early Sunday morning. We spent most of the time playing cards, eating and being bored off our asses. The storm didn't seem that bad. It came in waves, with a band hitting every couple hours. It caused a lot of damage because it was over the state for so long. It stormed all day Sunday and half the day today. I have been trying to call the information lines in Volusia county for hours. Finally I got word from one of our neighbors that our building looks OK.

My grandmother has been stubborn about the whole thing. She didn't want to come over during the hurricane. Between bands yesterday, Emily and I went over there to check on her. She didn't have power or phone lines, and she still refused to come over. Finally we convinced her to go out to eat with us tonight. We had the now routine after hurricane meal at Too Jays, before Emily and I went to a movie. We saw "Paparazzi", which was just as stupid as it was entertaining. As we pulled into my parent's driveway, a huge black bear spotted the car and walked around the side of the house. Needless to say, Emily and I were terrified. I put on the brights and pulled up to the front of the driveway, to see if he was gone. He wasn't; he just stood on the side of the house licking his lips. I honked until my parents opened the garage and we both ran in

Yea! More hurricanes! I just love hurricanes. All the panic, worry and endlessly changing predictions. Yesterday, Emily and I spent four hours at my favorite place in the world, Home Depot! It was great, just sitting there waiting and waiting. I can't think of anything I would rather be doing. We were waiting for shipments of plywood to come in, so we can board up the windows. I wish we could have waited longer. A couple guys, who obviously don't know the meaning of fun, tried to cut in line three and a half hours after we got there. The people in line behind us informed Home Depot about the party poopers and, after a few tense moments, they were sent to the back of the line. I was jealous. Why couldn't they send me to the back? We purchased 5 boards, pulled our car around and waited while the guys loaded it on our car. An old man pulled up next to me and stopped directly on the foot of one of the guys. He stayed there for almost 30 seconds, while everyone yelled at him to reverse. Finally he did, and the guy limped off. Hope he's ok. Today, we are going to prepared the house and head back to Orlando. I can't wait for the storm to come knock out power, so we can live like cavemen. It's going to be great