2014 in the rear view mirror

With less than an hour to go in this year, I think I'll post a few of my favorite photos from 2014 to my blog.

The winter that just wouldn't quit.  And a light at the end of the tunnel.

The college girl's bangs match the color of the lilacs.

The grands favorite new water toy was the stand up paddle board.

Suttons Bay selfie.

Lots of good family time this year.

The water temperature at the State Park that day was 42 degrees.

My long ride of the year, I think.  Or one of them, anyway.  Favorite destination, favorite riding partners.

It was a very good year.

Finding Greens

As it turns out, finding the appropriate greens to go with black eyed peas is easy.  I walked in the front door of Winn Dixie (the name says it all, doesn't it?) and saw this display at the front of their produce section.

By the bunch it's $3.49 -- or two bunches for $3.49.  That's a lot of collard greens.  I walked back to the wall and found these offered up to holiday shoppers --

Kale wasn't on the list of preferred greens, but it is clearly green.  At $2.79 for a pound (a pretty big bag of greens) it seemed reasonable.   Also in the same display case were these --

Turnip greens and mustard greens, Two one pound packages for $5.00.

Or maybe the collards are the right choice -- in any case, finding a traditional southern green is not going to be a problem.

Not Quite Over, But Getting Close

It's that time of year again.  Time for me to take out a new sheet of paper for my logs and reset all the counters to zero.  I didn't set any goals for myself this past year, so I can't announce whether I met them, obviously.  I rode more miles on my bicycles this year than I did last year, somewhat to my surprise.  Not by a lot -- a little more than 300 bonus miles at this point.  And I logged more miles walking than -- well, probably ever.  I took a couple of trips back to the tundra for family celebrations, and welcomed visitors to both the sand dune and the swamp.  Some good family times.  I took a couple of bike trips with friends, to northern Michigan first, then northern Minnesota.  One spring, one fall, both a great deal of fun. The fall color on the iron range was spectacular the last week of September.  JB and I spent our first year in decades living in the same house.   We've been spending part of every winter in Florida for about 27 years now, so this kind of weather for New Year's seems pretty normal to me.

Ollie's pond was on the route for both Saturday's bike ride and Sunday's walk.

After a half hour at the fitness center this morning, a mellow ride to the beach seemed adequate.  A dew point of 70 may have had something to do with it.  There are no big plans for New Year's Eve here, though I did buy a bag of black eyed peas that I plan to soak overnight and cook up for New Year's Day.  It's a southern tradition, I've been told, and it is supposed to bring good luck.  I have never fixed them before, so they may or may not become a new tradition for us.  I still have a couple of days to Google up a recipe or two.

Boxing Day follows Christmas Day

Christmas day without family present is a lot like any other day here.  More like a Sunday than a Thursday, with light traffic on the roads.  I entertained myself for a few hours in the afternoon with a bike ride past West Spring Lake Park --

and on to Ollie's Pond before heading back to the ranch to fix our Christmas supper.

We'd prearranged with the COTU to Skype around 8 pm when they returned home from their other Grandmother's house.  They're highly entertaining all by themselves, and we had hatched a plan last week to make the internet visit even more fun.  We'd decided to watch Dr. Who together.  The three of us (the college girl, Totally Jammin' and Gma) have been watching this series on BBCA together all season, and thought we'd have to miss the final episode of the season -- the Christmas Special -- because we couldn't be in the same place.  Skype provided us with the link we needed, and we had a blast watching the show together.  Listening to the crunch of potato chips being eaten by TJ in Michigan while face eating crabs attacked the Doctor and Clara added another layer to the fun.  I stayed up way past my bedtime while we dissected the plot once the show was over.  As the college girl said, it was the perfect way to end Christmas day.

We had some stuff to do this morning, so my daily exercise had to wait until early afternoon.  In prior years I've walked from the banyon tree to Fisherman's Village in Punta Gorda with the grands, and it is a nice tradition, worth continuing, even without them.  They haven't yet outgrown the banyon tree -- and neither has OSLO.

Christmas card lane.

The statue of Ponce de Leon.

Past the tennis courts where an enthusiastic group was playing a version of tennis that closely resembled table tennis.  Without the table.  With wooden paddles and plastic balls. I have no idea what was going on.

Fisherman's Village is decorated for the holidays in a Whoville theme -- it's the wrong Who for me, though.  I prefer the British TV science fiction version.
.

Last year the grands and I made a stop at both of these places, the chocolate shop above and the coffee shop below.  It was an odd lunch.  I passed up both of them this year.

I ran into a friend of Eli G.'s while I was wandering through the shops.  He was trying to sell a condo, fully furnished, for $158,500.  I don't know if he was having any luck.

It was cloudier than forecast, and cooler, but plenty nice enough for walking along the Peace River.  A nice way to spend boxing day.

Christmas Eve Day

We have good neighbors here.  The people who live across the street have recently become year round residents, having inherited the house from their father.  She bakes some really tasty date nut bread and likes to share it with the neighbors, including us.  Last week I baked some cranberry nut bread (similar to BDE's famous cranberry bread, but with nuts) and took them a loaf.  Today they brought over more date nut bread and a dozen or so assorted Christmas cookies.  They also raved about how delicious the cranberry bread was.  They also invited us to their house for Christmas dinner.  I have a plan in place for that meal, and have done the grocery shopping, so I declined.  But the invitation was much appreciated.

The weather here the past few days has been windy (from the south at 20 to 25 mph) and humid.  (A dewpoint of either 73 or 81 today, depending on which weather site you check.)  Yesterday I walked along the Peace River for a while, today I biked for a short distance.  Outdoor exercise isn't comfortable for me when the air is too thick to breath.

We have no Nativity Scene here, but in the spirit of the season, I'd like to point you to this story about the first Christmas and the visitors to the barn.  The Animals from the Wild Visit, and Ms. Cat Stays.

Merry Christmas to all.

First Day of Winter

Kind of windy, mid seventies, high dew point and sunny moving towards cloudy.  The beach is about as far as I wanted to ride in winds gusting to 20, but I wasn't going to stay inside on the first day of winter.  Actually, it seems a little bit like fall.  There's  a color change going on here that I don't always recognize -- like with these sea grape trees at the beach.  Some of them are full on green, and some are turning color like the ones below.

I checked the sunrise and sunset times for yesterday's solstice, and the length of daylight in three locations:

1.  Port Charlotte 7:13 am sunrise, 5:39 pm sunset, 10 hours 26 minutes of daylight.
2.  Holland           8:12 am sunrise, 5:13 pm sunset,   9 hours,  1 minute   of daylight.
3. St. Paul            7:47 am  sunrise, 4:33 pm sunset,   8 hours 46 minutes of daylight.

Interesting.

Staying the course.

Yesterday was the day I said I'd try to get back to my morning walk routine. A three mile walk took me past the nearest Walgreen's.  I'm a creature of habit, I head north on walks and west on bike rides.  Usually.

Today was gym  workout day, and nothing about it comes naturally yet.  It's slowly getting better with familiarity, and I'm fairly determined to make this work.  JB commented today that he thinks that exercise is probably a good thing.  I'm calling that a breakthrough.

Strength training doesn't feel like real exercise to me yet, so I rewarded myself for sticking to my plan by taking a bike ride this afternoon.  It was quiet at Ollie's Pond today.

I spent some time looking through my bike log this afternoon -- one little piece of information that I found interesting is that I've biked at least once a month for nearly 11 years.  The last month with a zero in the mileage column is January of 2004.  I was still in my 50's.  I think I've mentioned that I'm a creature of habit.

Routines

My morning walk routine has been disrupted this week, and I've tried to fit in an occasional walk later in the day to make up for it. Yesterday I only got as far as Sunrise Park -- which is essentially across the street from here. This was the late afternoon view from the fishing dock.  It's a small park with a tennis court, a fishing dock and a spot to launch kayaks into this quiet backwater lagoon.

Most of you know that JB's routine this summer included cardiac rehab.  He graduated from that program (which means our insurance quit paying for it) and this fall he moved on to a similar program in the same location intended to help him maintain the progress he'd made over the summer.  Then November happened.  By the time we got here, it had been a number of weeks since he'd done his exercise routine.  A little internet research revealed that the Cultural Center here (another name for senior center) had a fitness salon.  I signed us up with a membership, and last week we started attending three times a week.  JB has an established routine which he does, and yesterday I met with the "trainer" here.  My plan was to do some strength training while JB was doing his thing.  The trainer showed me how to use several of the machines that work the core and upper body muscles.  It seems possible, time will tell.  Indoor exercise will never be my favorite form of exercise, but for strength training I think it could work out okay.

JB only allowed me to take his picture so that OSLO and the Grands can see that he's keeping up with his exercises.

I opted for a bike ride instead of a walk this afternoon, and hope to get back to my morning walk routine tomorrow.  It's a long winter, and there's plenty of time to establish new routines.

A sign, the beach, some birds, Cracker Barrel and bicycle yard art.

There are signs, and there are jokes.  Jokes on signs are rarely good jokes.  For example:

We Skyped with OSLO and the Grands earlier this evening, and I promised them that I would post some warm pictures.  I think these qualify.  (Taken on a bike ride this afternoon.)

I don't have much luck photographing birds, as a rule.  Thus I was pleased to get these two photos of birds in a tree -- also taken at the beach.  Then I realized that I can't identify the birds -- or the tree.  That first bird may be a mourning dove, though this is a long way from where I usually see them.  Michigan has plenty of them.  Probably not at this time of year, though.

The day started out foggy, but eventually it turned into the nicest day we've had since we arrived.  Here's another photo for OSLO and her family, to show them that we have used one of the gift cards that they gave us for Christmas.  (Thanks guys!)

One final photo, just because bicycles as art makes perfect sense to me.

Who's Ollie?

First up, because I think it is interesting, is this tree.  It is a coconut palm -- an easy and obvious identification.  They aren't native to this region, I've been told -- but they're fairly common around here.  This tree is pretty tall, and has a string of Christmas lights wrapped around it. That's not something you'd see in Michigan.

I took a bike ride this afternoon, over to Ollie's Pond.  I reversed my usual route and ended up taking a couple of wrong turns along the way.  It might have been smarter to ride it in the usual direction first.  The map in my head of Port Charlotte needs some updating before I can rely on it.

I stopped for a while next to a new bench recently installed by the Audubon Society.  I think this answers that question we've all been asking about Ollie's Pond.  "Who's Ollie?"

• "This bench was installed in honor of Oliver H. Hewitt  
•  1916-1999 
•  A retired Professor of Wildlife Management at Cornell University and an accomplished ornithologist, Ollie regarded this pond as one of his favorite birding sites."

Four Days without a Refrigerator

This must be that appliance post that I was supposed to do in November during NaBloPoMo.  I didn't do it then.  Karma can be a nasty bitch.  At least I now have an answer to the question, What's your favorite appliance?  My refrigerator!  Honestly, I've been living in a delusional world where I assumed that if you needed a refrigerator, you could call up someone who sells appliances and they'd deliver it the same day -- next day tops.

Florida has been cooler than normal this week, so I've been using the back porch as a makeshift refrigerator.  Overnight lows in the 40's -- it seemed safe, even for the occasional leftovers.  No one has gotten sick so far.

Late this morning two men who work for Sears delivered this box of icy goodness.  Dairy products are once again a part of my life.  This white box is definitely my favorite appliance.

Zoom

The camera that I used to take the photos on yesterday's post was the one on my phone.  It has a pretty decent camera on it, for a phone.  It has two weaknesses that I've noticed, though.  I think I've mentioned before that it doesn't function well in low light, and the other limiting factor is that the only zoom it has is a digital zoom.  (It is a phone, after all.  A mechanical zoom lens would be pretty silly.)  What that means regarding the kind of photographs that I take is that photos from it can't be cropped -- just not enough resolution and pictures get fuzzy fast.  Don't misunderstand -- I really like that phone.  It's an amazing piece of technology.  It's smarter than me, more powerful than my laptop, and it weighs almost nothing.  However, it is not primarily a camera.  To demonstrate the difference, here are two photos I took with my real camera on my walk this morning, both of which have been cropped significantly.

What brought this up was TT's comment that he couldn't tell what kind of birds were in the photos in yesterday's post.  I tried cropping the photos before I posted yesterday, but the results were fuzzy.  To further demonstrate the point, here's a photo from the Peace River chapter of the Audubon Society's Facebook photo album from Ollie's Pond.  No problem identifying the species of bird in this one.  (Black bellied ducks, according to the description.)  The photographer was not named, but it is shared publicly.

Ah, Ollie's Pond.  Next time I'll bring my real camera.

Ollie's Pond

It was a sweatshirt day here today, and when I left the house to do some Mall shopping, I didn't plan on a visit to Ollie's Pond.  Inappropriate footwear, for one thing.  Mall shopping, rather like mall walking, just doesn't hold my interest for long, and I'd missed my morning walk to go refrigerator shopping at Home Depot.  I needed some outdoor exercise.  (Subplot: refrigerator.  The repairman showed up early, the verdict was a failed compressor.  A new compressor costs nearly as much as a new refrigerator, and we'd still have an 18 year old refrigerator.)  Ollie's Pond beckoned.

In case you've forgotten, the path around Ollie's Pond is almost exactly a mile long, as measured by my bicycle computer at some point in time. (Feel free to compute the area, radius and diameter for your own amusement.  Yes, it's roughly a circle.)  I had my phone with me, which has a pedometer app on it.  The app also measured the circumference at nearly exactly a mile.  I like it when my measurement tools agree.

The only wildlife I saw during my walk was of the winged variety.  And there was plenty of that.  Photos of Ollie's Pond don't really do it justice.  It's the sound of the place that fascinates me as much as the view -- maybe more.

The lovely isolation was only marred by running into a chatty woman and her sister visiting from Illinois.  I now have a personal invitation to join the local chapter of the Audubon Society and to join them on their New Year's Day bird walk around Ollie's Pond.  I promised to at least look up the Peace River chapter on Facebook, for what she promised would be nearly daily photos posted there from the pond.  (To finish the subplot, the trip to Home Depot was a waste of time -- they'd have to order the one we wanted, with delivery no earlier than December 24th, probably later.)