A Family Event

The beautiful bride was visibly happy and glowing, and her cousin -- my daughter -- was lovely, and very happy to be able to share this day with her "baby cousin."

Outside my doors, and Pi

The hibiscus bush outside my front door is still (again?) blooming.  It blooms in spite of almost total neglect.  This year was one of its best years, I think.

I do like the view from my back yard.  Thursday morning there was enough wind to blow back the palm fronds on our neighbor's palm tree.

I will miss seeing this outside my window every morning.  It's a nice way to start a day.  After what seemed like a long day of travel, tonight my view out my window is white instead of blue.

We're home a little early this year, but only by a few days.  St. Patrick's day, or somewhere close to that, is our traditional return date.  I don't remember seeing ice and snow this far out on the lake when we returned, ever.  There is a little bit of open water on the horizon.

My lovely and charming sister-in-law reminded me (in the comment section of my last post) that today is pi day.  Yep.  3.14 -- March 14.  Next year pi day falls on 3.14-15, and finally in 2016, on 3.1416!  Exciting!

 At least pi(e) has a circular shape.  This particular pi(e) was described as French apple pie.  Ummmm.

I've eaten French apple pie a number of times in my life.  It has a glaze on the top crust.  This one (clearly a Dutch version) has frosting on the top crust.  Come on people!  Frosting? On a pie?  Enough complaints.  The pie was remarkably good, as are most pies at Russ'.  The apples are tart and the crust is flakey.  I venture to say that they make some of the best pie crust of any commercial establishment in town.  And they make it themselves (at Russ' commissary -- the same place they make the pigs I eat once or twice a year on rides to the PSPS.)  -- See how I worked in a little bit of bicycle content?  Happy Pi day.  I'm happy to be home.

A Look Back

All good things end, and the visit of TT and NCW is no exception. They left yesterday, pulling out of the driveway just as thunderstorms began to hit the coast a few miles from here. TT had his lucky penny with him though, and their plane departed close to on time and arrived back on the Tundra safely. I have a few photos from their last days here that I haven't posted -- here they are. These first two are from a walk along the Peace River on Monday. The bench theme continues.

This is the classic, "I'm leaving and I have my Minnesota clothes on" picture.  They were excellent guests and we were happy to have their company for a while.

Today was another one of those "too windy to ride" days.  After an all day rain yesterday, and realizing that once we leave here there will probably be no more bike rides in March, I took a short ride anyway.

This is my trusty Florida steed.  JB bought me this bike for my 50th birthday, so it's been around a while.  Fuji Absolute.  It probably has fewer miles on it than any of my current stable of bikes, but it works fine for the riding conditions down here.  The cable on the handlebars is a bike lock, so that I can stop at the Hava Java Grill or Walgreens, should the mood strike me.  (It didn't today.) Photo taken in the parking lot of the Lutheran Church next to Highway 41 and the Midway bridge.

We're beginning to organize ourselves for our own return to the tundra, but we aren't quite ready to leave yet.  Soon, though.  We have things to do "up north."

Kiwanis Park

The new content on TT's blog described their activities during their road trip this weekend, leaving me free to blog about what we did today without duplicating what he's already done.  It was a pretty quiet day following a late night at the Oscar's.  Time spent outside in the hot Florida sun has led to some pinking up of their pale northern skin, so we opted for a walk in the shade of the woods in Kiwanis Park.

Some of us are more well balanced than others.   I was a little worried about PW, who seemed to think that she was the flying nun there for a while.  Fortunately, I was the only one who fell down, and even more fortunately, that event was not caught on "film".

I'm still learning how to use my new camera -- the header at the top of the blog was my attempt at using the panorama function, for example.  This snowy egret photo was only possible because of the 12X zoom and what I assumed was an excessive amount of megapixels.  It's massively cropped, yet still in focus.  I am quite happy with the camera so far.

We planned our outing this afternoon around the special dinner our house guests were planning for us.  Well, mostly NCW --  though TT supervised closely and offered his advice and counsel.  She marinated and then slow cooked some barbecued back ribs, which were delicious and made the house smell amazing.  Rice and beans was the primary side dish -- a mix of wild rice she brought from MN and brown rice, with black beans and corn in a mild chili base stirred in and baked until the flavors blended.  (Can you tell I really liked it?) JB is particular about how he likes his ribs, and he had a second helping of these.  Broccoli and carrots provided some color contrast and a little extra fiber.  It was all quite good.

Just playing with stuff.

We spent the afternoon at a ball game here in PC. It was a nearly perfect day for it, the sun was hot but our seats were in the shade and a light wind blew through the bleachers.

New Camera

I've been thinking about getting a new camera for a while.  I've had my Canon Elph for quite a while - years and years, and it has been a good camera.  It has some features that don't work the way I'd like, and it seemed like time for an upgrade.  JB and I looked around some before Christmas, but I couldn't settle on any one camera.  This week my brother TT arrived with his new camera, and it seemed to have all of the functions I was looking for, in a very light package, at an appropriate price for a camera that I plan to carry in my pocket and on my bike.  TT, NCW and I went to Best Buy a few days ago to buy one, only to find that that specific model was no longer available, nor was the newer version of that model.  No big deal, life's like that sometimes.  First world problems, etc.

After TT and NCW left on their road trip, I told JB about the camera shopping experience, including the story about how there was a version of this same Nikon CoolPix camera that was available, but with wi-fi, and thus a little more expensive. I reasoned that I'd never use the wi-fi function, being a Muggle, and all.  JB pointed out that we have done this sort of thing before, and eventually regretted it.  Texting function on the cell phone?  Don't need it.  (Wrong.)  Voice mail?  Nah.  (Wrong again.)  Caller ID?  Nope.  (Wrong, very wrong.)  Video camera on the computer?  Well, you get the idea.  So we made a trip to Best Buy this morning and bought the camera.  I'm still learning my way around the controls, but it is way nicer than my old camera.  Here are a few photos I took once I figured out which language it will speak to me, and what time it is.

The Macro function seems to actually work on this camera, and it seems to handle glare better than the old one did.  I decided that I don't really want the date and time printed on all my photos, so I disabled that for now.  The zoom on this one is amazing (the fisherman and his boat were on the other side of our little lake), and it takes pretty decent photos inside, in low light, without a flash.  I'm pretty happy with it.  Now I guess I have to figure out how the Wi-Fi function works.  And I'm really glad -- for now -- that I didn't get the one with GPS.