UBA

Jimi sent me a few of the photos that he took at Ollie's Pond this morning to fatten up my post, so photo
credits go to TT, with thanks.  The first one is my favorite, I think.  I believe that I've mentioned before that birdwatchers have discovered the pond, and there are always a number of them there with their binoculars and cameras.  Today was no exception.

I think this dove is a mourning dove -- we heard several of them while we were there, and they're common in Michigan, so I should know.  The sun came out while we were there and lit up the scene pretty nicely when we got around to the ibis side of the pond.  There didn't seem to be as many coots as we usually see there, but there were still plenty of birds to see, including either a stork or what we thought could have been a great white egret.  (This is also Jimi's photo.)

I'll insert my one and only photo of the day here. The alligator sign is always a good prop for people pictures.

I will wrap this up with a photo that Jimi took of NCW and Santini (that would be me).  He titled it OllieUBA.

UBA stands for -- (in a tip of the hat to BDE)-- Unsightly Bulge Alert.  He found it hilarious that we have both been well trained, and inhaled deeply in unison, when warned.

Punta Gorda Heat Wave

Yesterday taught us all a lesson about heat and the mid-day sun.  Primarily, to stay out of it.  It seemed like low 80's and quite breezy would be fine weather for a walk along the Punta Gorda side of the Peace River.

We ran into some Canadians who had just walked across the bridge from Port Charlotte and were looking for someone to chat with about it.  Plus they were excited about having purchased a lottery ticket, and were trying to figure out a way to get their winnings back across the border, should they win.  We had no advice for them.

We walked from the Banyan tree up to Fisherman's Village, at a pretty casual pace, taking photos along the way.

There was a rack full of old bicycles near the tennis club -- I tried for an artsy shot through the spokes with this one.  There was a lot of rust on nearly all of them, including the one below, which appeared to be made entirely of rust.  In fact, I considered titling this post "Rusty, Creaky and Old" -- but thought better of it.....

All three of us admitted to feeling less than well by the time we returned to the house, and we spent most of the afternoon recovering from our ill considered outing.  A dew point of 71 should have warned us off.  So today we headed out for a walk earlier, returning before 10 from our walk.  Highs for both today and tomorrow are forecast to be in the mid to upper 80's, with a cool down arriving mid week.

Visitors from the Tundra

Visitors arrived from the frozen north yesterday afternoon.  They arrived on time, a little early even, and after some milling around went to the baggage area to claim their checked bag.  In a world where what can go wrong will go wrong, but you will have worried about the wrong thing, it took an hour for the luggage belt to disperse all of its hostaged bags.  They were good sports and we eventually found our way back to our house.  Today's to-do list had a number of items on it.  One, pick up their car.  Check.  Two, buy props for a photo shoot.  (What?  Isn't that always the second thing on any vacation to-do list?) Check.

Visitors from the tundra were also the cooks for the day.  Groceries were purchased as item 3, and salmon burgers with homemade veggie soup was lunch.

More cooking took place by our visitors in the early evening before the main entertainment portion of the evening took place -- the photo shoot.  The golden hour gave them the right sunlight for the photography session.  Some fun now, eh?

Food for Thought

Short Post

Sometimes a photo turns out better than expected. Taken earlier this week at the beach.

 Lynne sent this one from a ski she took this morning around the neighborhood.

Makes me homesick.  Sort of.

Umbrellas and Ice

I agree that umbrellas seem like a poor choice for a February theme day, at least north of the Mason Dixon Line.  However I am going to post this one, because I slogged 4.5 miles yesterday, primary because the pool at the beach was the one place that I was pretty sure I could find an umbrella.  Well -- I was probably going to do 4 miles or so anyway, but the destination was chosen because of the theme.  So here it is. I count at least 4 umbrellas.

My archives had this very old photo in it as well, taken in the Maintz, Germany town square in the late 1980's.

So on to the second theme -- walking on ice.  My access to frozen water is limited here, but this old photo of the much younger COTU -- back when they were the SLO's (small loud ones) -- should do nicely.  It was taken on a walk after Thanksgiving dinner, about 4 years ago.  The kidlets are 10 and 13, I believe.

And since taking pictures of food and posting them on the blogs seems to be another theme, here's what we had for lunch today.

Tomato cabbage soup and cheese quesadillas.