A Different View

An all day rain here -- puny weather complaint, I know.  I left all of my rain jackets at home -- I meant to bring one here and leave it here, but ....  Anyway, 53 and drizzle is still not all that bad.  A check of a weather blog by a Michigan TV meteorologist yielded this: (Photo cred to Herb Harney)  Taken yesterday, Big Red on the right.

Palm Trees and Lawn Decorations

This is what winter looked like here this morning. Wind and rain made it this far south overnight, but the cold weather that gave Pensacola a dusting of snow will not have much of an impact on our temperatures. Lows are forecast to be in the 40's the next few nights, not bad, even by Florida standards.

I took a walk around the neighborhood on the other side of the waterway yesterday, and took a picture of this lawn ornament.  It's not really pink, but I'm pretty sure it is supposed to be a flamingo.

A little further down the street I found a couple of lions dressed up for Valentines Day.  That is a necktie with hearts on it that is wrapped around its neck.

News from home continues to be wintery.  Here's a website that JB uses that gives snowfall for the last 24, 48 and 72 hours.  http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge2/snow/index.php?site=grr&lat=43.2&lon=-85.6&zoom=4

Local (West Michigan) news reports 93 inches of snow so far this season in Muskegon, about 10 miles north of Grand Haven.  An email from LH, the other retired professor, reports that she is "sick of this."  No doubt.

Olllie's Pond, By Bicycle

Except for the wind. So many ride descriptions have that line attached, it seems. I rode further than I'm used to riding, because I really, really wanted to get to Ollie's Pond under my own power. I was tired by the time I got back, mostly from the last two miles or so that I had to ride into the wind. So, it would have been about the right amount of exercise, except for the wind.

I rode along the east side of the pond -- across from where I've seen the alligator hang out. You can see the wind a little bit in the Spanish moss and in the ripples on the water.

I didn't visit the side of the pond where I've seen the alligator -- I'd be happy if I didn't ever see it again.  JB thinks that alligators are a protected species in Florida, and a quick check of Google confirmed that.  My check didn't unearth just what that means, perhaps they cannot be disturbed unless they are a danger to humans.  Its presence had made me very aware and alert any time that I'm near this place, though.

Maintenance Projects

My daughter in Michigan is quite curious about the tile and carpet projects that we've been working on.  Well, mostly we've been watching people work on them, but you get my drift.  We chatted over Skype, but it wasn't easy to show her colors and styles and such, so.... Hey, it's my blog.  I might as well use it.  Ready?  Here we go:

The tile and a glimpse of the carpet in the bedroom,  photo taken while standing between the kitchen and the laundry room.

Here's the bedroom carpet -- I was standing next to the window.

Here I was standing in TJ's room, looking down the hall past the bathroom towards the bedroom.

And lastly, the bathroom.  I do wish I'd put the seat down before I took the photos, but I'm going with them anyway.  As is always the case with a camera image filtered through a computer screen, the colors are approximate.

An alligator, a cow and a small math problem.

Yesterday's mild exercise was a walk around the inside of Walmart, Kohl's and Penney's, followed by a walk around the outside of Ollie's Pond.  It was sweatshirt weather, which may explain the woman who got out of her car in the parking log, walked the short distance to the Alligator Habitat sign, took a photo and walked back to her car and left.  This reptile is still hanging out in the same space behind the sign.

Today was a little warmer, and also a bit less windy (55 degrees, NE at 16), so I took a short bike ride up towards the bridge across the Peace River. The linear park along the river has added a children's playground, and this is one of its features.

Who doesn't like a cow?  It's mostly a fairly scenic ride along the river, but it was near low tide, which exposed some less than attractive old tires, crusted with barnacles.

I counted seven of them.  Since a day does not ever go by without the use of math in some form, I spent some time thinking about the significance of the number seven.  Why seven tires?  I came up empty, except for the conclusion that somewhere there is an eighteen wheeler with only eleven tires.

Warm Photos for OSLO

My daughter, who lives in Michigan, would like me to post more "warm" photos.  I have accumulated these three over the past few days, I hope she likes them.  The first one is of my hibiscus bush next to my garage.  It is in full bloom right now.  I took this as I was leaving for a walk up to Walgreens on Saturday.  The walk was over 3 miles, a bit too far for my current level of walking fitness, but I survived it.

On Sunday I took a bike ride where  I rode through Kiwanis Park at the far end of the ride.  It was also a bit too far for my current level of fitness.  Which is kind of sad, since it's only about 9 miles.

There was a pretty good wind blowing from the south-west today, but I got out for a ride before it got too bad.  This photo below is of East Spring Lake -- I passed through Spring Lake Park on the outward leg of the ride.

There is sunshine in all three photos, and they probably look warmer than it actually was.  But still a lot warmer and brighter than it is back home.  I watched a Grand Rapids weather guy online this morning, who said that there had just been 5 days in a row with no measurable sunshine there.  I got an email this morning from my next door neighbor (Bob) in Michigan, who sent me the image below from the online version of our local paper.  I found it fascinating.  The link to the newspaper article is under the photo.

An image looking down on the channel to Lake Michigan at Holland State Park taken by a drone Jan. 12. C


http://www.hollandsentinel.com/article/20140119/NEWS/140119051#ixzz2qyeww1Aq

Just Another Day in the Life

This January has seen three new years begin already in our household. New Year's Eve was first, of course, memorable mostly for the story about the nice police officer. (Words to the song go something like this -- "Grandma got pulled over by a policeman, coming home from the movies New Year's Eve...."  It's sung to the tune of Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer, of course.)   It's not much of story, but the grands and I do like our new song. The second one was the turning of the calendar yet again for our long...long....long marriage -- we began our 50th year together last week. The third occurred today, with JB's birthday, marking the beginning of a new year on this planet for him. It's a big number, but then they are all big numbers by now. This morning dawned cold (by Florida standards), crisp and clear. Just barely above freezing.

JB likes to go out for breakfast, me -- not so much. So we rarely eat out for breakfast. But birthdays take precedence over dietary preferences, so breakfast out it was.

It was mostly a pretty quiet day, which seems appropriate for him.  We had dinner out last night at Red Lobster, and he had his favorite meal there -- crab legs.  The early celebration was for two reasons -- Friday nights are busy at Red Lobster and he hates standing in lines, and by celebrating on Thursday he could be home on Friday when his daughter and his grandchildren wished him a Happy Birthday over Skype.

He has a piece of cake in his future, and if I'm any judge at all, he'll watch FOX for a while, then go to bed early.  After all, birthdays are just a number.  Even when it is a pretty big number.

Citizen of the Swamp

I took a walk around Ollie's Pond today -- I've been there with a number of you, most recently the Grands when they were visiting us after Christmas.  I've seen a lot of Alligator Habitat signs there -- really, they're all over the place around here.  I never took them too seriously, but I think I will from now on.  This sign is at the edge of the parking lot, just as you enter the trail that circles the pond.  There is an alligator just on the edge of the water, next to the bank.

This was my first view of it -- I found it amusing that the sign is so dead on accurate.  There were three other people photographing it at the time, and I eventually got a better angle for a photo.

I met a couple on bicycles as I was leaving, and we chatted about the alligator for a few minutes (it was still there.)  The guy expressed the opinion that the gator is in that same spot on just about every sunny day.  Alligator habitat, indeed.

News from Michigan and other stuff

Over the course of the week we've been in touch with our neighbors, who have been checking on the house for us during the polar vortex and blizzard that enveloped our area early this week. One of them sent me this, commenting on how little snow there was right at the edge of the bluff because of the wind, and mentioning the wind tunnel that exists between our houses.

I lifted this off of one our local news channel's website this morning, who had lifted it from YouTube.

I've only seen the lake look anything like this once since we've lived there, yet this kind of photo shows up every year, or so it seems.  It's an odd effect caused by freezing water, wind and wave action.

This one was taken by my granddaughter this afternoon when she went to check on the house.  According to my next door neighbor, the lake is frozen solid about a quarter of a mile out, with about another half mile of what is called "pack ice."  The girl was sure I'd want to see my lake, and equally sure that I miss it.  A little bit.

For contrast, here are two photos that I took on a walk this morning to Sunrise Park, across the street from here, more or less.  The tennis court photo has a story behind it -- there were six cars in the parking lot, one of them had one person in it.  There were four people on the courts.  So, do the math.  JB's theory is that somebody brought two cars.

Two Days Later....

It turns out that we like hamburger soup. I was right about the excessive amount, though. It was dinner on Monday, lunch on Tuesday, and we ate it again for supper tonight. The current re-run was more like stew, or pot pie. It was thickened with a little roux, then topped with a half package of crescent roll dough before it was baked for about 20 minutes.

Here's the finished product on a plate.

I had planned some outdoor exercise today, but just before I walked out the door, people showed up to replaced the burned out light bulb in the bottom of the spa/hot tub on our porch. It took a while, since the water had to be emptied out of it before the bulb could be changed. (We knew that this would be necessary, and it was the main reason we had someone else do it.) By the time they finished up and left, rain had moved in and the window of opportunity had closed. There's always tomorrow.

New Year's Resolution

I don't believe much in New Year's Resolutions, since they are -- as Wireless pointed out -- pretty much doomed to fail.  I waited until a week of the new year had gone  by before I came up with this one, which I like because even if I fail eventually, it will have done some good.  What is it?  I resolve to eat more vegetables this year.  My diet needs a little bit of cleaning up, and veggies help do that, in my experience.  This week's plan involves eating soup for supper a couple of times.  I ran across a recipe for hamburger soup on  Pioneer Woman, and modified it for my preferences, and the contents of my pantry and refrigerator.  Here's the ingredient photo.

I used ground sirloin, skipped the peppers, added mushrooms and yellow squash, and didn't have any tomato paste.  I considered adding green beans, but the amount of soup in the pot was getting out of hand.  I still might.  It's going to take the two of us a while to eat this much soup.

Once the carrots and potatoes were cooked but not mushy, I turned off the heat and let the soup sit on the stove for a half hour or so while I made a trip to the post office.  OSLO and her band of merry men left quite a few things behind when they left here on Saturday, so I packed them into those handy priority mail boxes and sent it all back.

When I returned, I put the soup pot in the refrigerator to let the flavors blend until this evening's meal.  Soup.  It's what's for supper.  Does anyone have a good recipe for wild rice soup?

Back from the Keys

OSLO and her BF spent some time in Key West this trip, just the two of them. They arrived here late yesterday, happy but a little tired, and "touristed out." From all accounts, they had a great time.

We took a walk over to Sunrise Park this morning, before the four of them headed for Boca Grande. We met them at the Outback restaurant on their way back, where they treated us to supper. We just made it back to the house before it started to rain. They're currently soaking in the hot tub/spa. Today is the last of the warm stretch of days we've been enjoying -- 80 plus today -- and tomorrow, their last full day in Florida, it will "only" get to about 60. Sweatshirt weather. I may have to break out the long pants.