this entry was last updated on 09.04.2004 @ 9:55 PM EDT

Natural blonde-induced sports riddle of the day: "Why is Bowling Green's logo orange?"

The photos at left were just snapped outside our front door about 20 minutes ago. (As always, click images for larger pop-ups.) How easy it is to forget that something like this is slowly spinning at you when the skies are clear as crystal, a blue so bright it's almost blinding.

Our prayer today remains much the same as it did back in 2002: "It better not freakin' knock out my DirecTV -- it's a football weekend!"

Because of the almost complete inability to get gasoline in our area, we won't be joining our local Sooner Club for the season kick-off party this afternoon at Selmon's. We're ordering the game on pay-per-view instead, along with a little take-out. It's just not worth gambling the full tank of gas we're currently sitting on since the Port of Tampa is currently closed and refueling tankers can't get in...sigh.

Well to quote Wayne and Garth, "GAME ON! GAME ON!" Updates to follow later if necessary. Hasta la-bye-bye for now...

Other Frances-related entries here, here and here.

UPDATE: Just snapped these photos outside right quick (image 1, image 2) around 4:15 p.m. EDT. It's starting to cloud up over here finally, and it looks like we'll be getting our first dose of feeder bands soon. Don't forget that I have other Florida-blogs linked here, and several are updating regularly.

UPDATE 2: New photos taken at 7:30 p.m. EDT (image 1, image 2) just before the first feeder bands rolled into the northern Tampa Bay area. It's the first time all day that we've even had a reminder Frances is truly just a hop, skip and a jump away. Our account is very similar to this one at Metroblogging Orlando -- ten minutes of wham and bam, and then just as suddenly "thank you ma'am" and goodbye as night begins to fall.

UPDATE 3: Well the latest track literally has the eye of Frances going right over our house sometime tomorrow, thankfully weakened as a tropical storm. But with sustained winds of 60-70 mph+ for goodness knows how long, well it could get interesting. Watching the live footage of West Palm right now makes my heart sink for Sphinxy though. I hope she's doing ok!