Three things that have/are making me happy in the past couple days:
(1) Recognizing a song on a Volvo commercial: I was watching Comedy Central last night, and they must have played the commercial three times in one hour — it’s an ad for one of Volvo’s SUVs, the XC90. I was like — “Hey… I know this song!” Turns out I heard it on Hybrid’s remix album, “Remix and additional production by…” — the song is “Glorious” by Andreas Johnson — who, as I found out after looking it up on the iTunes Music Store, is signed to WM Sweden. Sweden, of course, being the home of the Volvo. A bit of Googling later I found a thread which discusses Volvo’s relationship with Swedish artists.
(2) Jim featured my submission for his panoramic homework!
(3) Tonight’s em space sarasota Meetup is at a brand new coffee shop, which of course I always like to discover. 🙂

Asteraceae Rudbeckia hirta, AKA “Black-eyed Susan”, native to the United States. Click to view the gallery in a new window.
So I went to Marie Selby Botanical Gardens on Saturday. That was fun. It’s filled with all sorts of flowers, plants and trees of the tropical variety. Much more biodiversity than I’m used to seeing along Fruitville Road. I’ve posted 75 pictures from the trip, including captions where I thought I could add something — but the vast majority speak for themselves. Have a look in the latest krishenblog gallery.

UPS won on Thursday night’s game, giving us not only the title but I think also our first undefeated season: 10-0! Wahoo! 🙂 It was just 8 of us in the finals, giving us one sub. Monica delayed her trip up North so she could make the game, which was awesome. She brought people from her running club to watch, too, which was ++awesome and she even baked the whole team brownies! +++Awesome!

Monica’s running club buddies cheered us on
A rainout had delayed the game a week, so when I got an email from her around noon on Thursday, it was a big surprise she was still in town (we all thought she had left on Tuesday). As for the game, we took half quickly, 8-2. Our opponents, Airborne (with both Big City and Leonard, amongst others), staged a mini comeback and came out swinging after half, but it wouldn’t be enough, and we took the game 15-8. We all played well that night; I don’t think any single person can take credit for it.
Instead of shirts, or visors, or a plaque, as have been the prizes for first place in past seasons, we got a $100 gift certificate to RJ Gators! I gotta say, I was pretty happy about that — I have more than enough Ultimate clothing already 🙂 Brian (Big City) and Leonard joined us, and we made short work of the gift certificate that night.

Cheers!

Our waitress told us there was a contest going on between her and the other servers — whoever sold the most French Kiss martinis (cream liquour with a Hershey’s kiss at the bottom) would win an MP3 player. As you can see we love to help 🙂

Monica, Scotty, Alec, Capt Tom

Jen contemplating her Kiss

Monica makes sure all the chocolate is finished while John watches

Jen and Joe

Jen was a natural

Cam, Melissa AKA Dad and Mom

City gurns for the camera

Eric G

John and Monica

Monica and Scotty

Monica, Alec and Capt. Tom

Capt Tom and Leonard
Cam also did a great writeup on the night; view it here.