New Year's Eve

Only photos and good memories remain.

One of my favorite photos from this year, worth looking at again.  

I took a bike ride this morning so didn't have a lot of energy left for entertaining the boy, but the walk around Ollie's Pond is always worth the effort.  We did run into a strange group of people there, though.  Twice.  Four or five of them, with three of them carrying putters.  Golf putters.  Who leaves their house to walk around Ollie's Pond and do some bird watching and decides that they need to take their putter with them?  I almost stopped one of them and asked on their second trip around the pond, but thought better of it.  There are enough strange people in my life as it is.  Happy New Year, family!

The Air is Thick

Sometimes the weather is the thing that stands out about a day.  This was one of those days.  My error really, I know that mid day sun and high humidity make me feel "off."  So while my young visitor was fine, I was really dragging during our visit to Fisherman's Village today.  And there are just way, way too many people in southwest Florida right now, though TJ pointed out that since I am one of the extra people who is here during winter, I probably shouldn't complain about that.

A quick stop at the chocolate shop.  It's a tradition.  The Grands really like their truffles.  

Fisherman's Village is changing.  One of those changes is a little beach along the water's edge.

Back to the house to recover before a walk around the park on the other side of Edgewater.  It too is changing.  We think maybe hiking paths are going in.  For sure pickle ball courts are now an option on the tennis courts.  We ate supper at Chick-filet thanks to our daughter's Christmas gift cards before taking another walk.  TJ is planning to spend some time in the hot tub, I'm pretty much done for the day.  Here's hoping tomorrow that there is a little more oxygen in the air.

On a totally unrelated note, here are the berries currently in my refrigerator.  Driscoll's for the raspberries and blackberries, but the Pixie Blues are sort of local.  Grown in Plant City, Florida.  The home of the annual Strawberry Festival.  They're not Blue Crop, but they're not bad at all.

A guest from the north.

Yesterday was, as my Granddaughter says, a Day.  One of those where things don't go according to plan, but all you can do is carry on.  My Grandson was due to arrive at the Punta Gorda airport at 6 pm, so about 2:30 I was leaving the Publix, loading the rental car with some of his favorite foods.  For the third time in three weeks, the car refused to start, and nothing changed its mind this time.  Eventually I called Avis, who after much discussion, sent roadside assistance my way.  He eventually got the car to start but couldn't tell why it wouldn't and recommended that I take it to Avis and trade it for a different car.  The local Avis was closed (early closing on weekends) so the closest Avis was the Punta Gorda airport.  By this time my Grandson's plane was in the air, and I needed dependable transportation, so that's what I did.  It all worked out eventually, and TJ's plane arrived about a half hour late.

It was pouring rain on the drive back to the house, but the boy was hungry.  We stopped for food at Olympia before heading home.  The rain moved through overnight and today is sunny, warm and too humid.  Our first excursion today was to Sam's Club -- no good reason, except it was near the mall, and we find trips to Sam's Club to be entertaining.  He found one of his favorite Sam's Club foods -- mini tacos -- and we then moved on to the mall.  Sbarro's is a favorite of both of the Grands, and it's high on his wish list when he's here.

( I need to improve my picture taking, I can't seem to get him and his food into the same photo.)  My dafter has requested some "warm pictures" so I will try to add a few more of those to the blog.

A lot of food oriented activity today, this one was taken on a quick trip to Walgreens and Winn Dixie.  At least I got his whole head in the picture.  And it's definitely a "warm picture."

Coming up on the end of another decade..

There's some disagreement about when decades begin and end and I really don't care.  The new decade may begin January 1, 2020 or maybe not until 2021.  I have some photos from 2010 on this computer which makes it easy to go with the 2020 crowd.  So a little glance backwards seems to be in order.

This was a banner year for Florida visitors -- the photo above was taken on a fairly chilly day on Gasparilla Island.  February 10, 2010 is what it says on the file.

 The Tampa Rays were playing someone on this (also chilly) day at the Port Charlotte Stadium.  Spring Training.  He and I and later Sharon saw a fair number of games and practices together here and in Ft. Myers at the Twins Stadium there.  The file says March 4, 2010.

These two made the trip that year, too.  If memory serves they saw quite a few Spring Training games.  It was on his bucket list long before he got sick.  March 14, 2010 is the date on the file.

March 21, 2010.  Apparently lots of snow, and lots of beach, though it's a little hard to tell if that's beach or sand sitting on ice that is in the process of melting.  I suspect the latter.  The beginning of the decade had some nice moments.

Amazon sells almost everything...

Remember my lament about not having a bicycle stand for my Florida bike?  There's plenty of room for my bike next to the front door, and it's out of everyone's way, including people coming in through that door.  We do have freshly painted walls though, and I didn't want tire or handlebar or pedal marks on them, nor did I want my bike to fall over because it wasn't secure.  So I looked on Amazon, and sure enough, they had a floor stand just like the ones I have at home.  I ordered one and it came today.  Just one day later than promised.  I've put three or four of these together before, so assembly was pretty easy.

Having put that much effort into the bike stand, I felt the need to actually use my bike today.  The dew point was either 65 or 75, depending on the source, and the temperature in the 80's.  I haven't been here long enough to be comfortable in that so it was a short ride.  A brisk south wind actually helped keep me from overheating overly much. 

Cloud cover tonight is thick, so here's a photo from last night's sunset.  The clouds add some drama to the picture, otherwise it's a pretty peaceful view.   Mosquitoes and no-see-ums were out in force though, and long pants are required for sitting by the water after sunset.

This is from yesterday, or maybe Sunday, afternoon.  It wasn't a serious crew, or so I suspected from the number of brown beer bottles that were visible when they stopped for a rest.  On the other hand, they seemed to be having fun. Today I made some progress on decorating my table top tree, but I'll save that for next time.

Formation flying

We're settling in to a routine of sorts, though I still can't find things in my kitchen.  Apparently I don't have a big frying pan with a cover -- how is that possible?  OSLO gave me a gift card to Bed, Bath and Beyond for Christmas, so that might be how I solve that issue.  Speaking of OSLO, she called to let me know that she and her SO arrived safely back in Michigan last night.  She sounded happy to be home.

Yesterday I went to a Celebration of Live gathering for one of our neighbors who died the first week of December.  She's lived across the street from us for maybe 7 or 8 years and has kept an eye on the house for us while we're in Michigan during most of that time.  She was a sweet lady, 72 years old, and she'll be missed.  Most of the neighbors that I know showed up at the park along the Peace River in Punta Gorda to pay their respects.  It was a cool and sunny, windy day along the water -- a fitting way to say good-bye, I guess.

Sunset here is about 5:37 pm (sunrise about 7:10 am.)   I walked next door to watch it with our neighbors -- their view is better than ours this time of year, and they're dedicated sunset watchers.  It was a clear night and the sunset was not spectacular, but my next door neighbor caught this flock of ibis over our little lake -- so that's the photo contribution for the day.  Photo cred to PR.

Cloudy, windy with scattered showers--

It takes a while to get into a routine here, even after all these years.  And of course every year is different.

The bike (an object of art, obviously) got moved to a spot near the front door.  It's not in anybody's way, though I wish I had one of my bike stands here.  No ride today. And I need to pump my tires.  I did take a walk around the neighborhood and did some shopping, so not a totally idle day.

The table in the corner has a small tree on it, it needs a few decorations, but it's a start.  Or at least an attempt at a start.

The sun is setting in a direction that is more south than it is west, but I'm not in charge of that.

Visitors move on.

OSLO and her SO left here around noon today, headed to the southern tip of the state for a few days before heading back to the frozen tundra.  We enjoyed having them here for a few days as we settled in, and I think they had some fun, too.  They spent yesterday afternoon roaming around Gasparilla Island -- quite literally, they rented a golf cart and zoomed around the place like the natives do.  OSLO said it was a blast.  She and I took a walk this morning before she spent some time just soaking in our view from our porch/lanai.

Meanwhile, things seem pretty quiet here now.

Traveling is hard.

It’s early Sunday morning as I write this, after a not very good night’s sleep. Pretty typical for the first night in Florida, so not unexpected.  Traveling is hard.  Yesterday was a long day for some of us, and even the younger ones (OSLO and BB), went to bed early last night.  On a positive note, it’s Florida, and we have plenty of time to recover.  Funny story.  Our daughter told us that last year, when her children helped us with our trips back and forth to Florida, they told her that helping the grandparents travel was a real thing.  And now she understands what they meant.  OSLO and BB will be with us here for a couple of days then heading even further south before heading home at the end of the week.

And then the sun came up.....

Okay, then.

Late Fall slips into early Winter

I didn't want to let too much time go by before I posted to this blog again, following the November marathon postings.  We've finally finished up the last of the holiday leftovers -- okay, maybe there's still some turkey left, but it's past its "best if used by" date.  I usually spend the last day of any given month updating my bike log, but with only 6 rides in November, it didn't take long.  It's good to take a break from biking, but I still need some exercise -- preferably outdoors.  It feels awfully cold to me out there, though it's above freezing during the day and most of the snow has melted here along the lake.  I've been walking some -- mostly staying in the neighborhood.  The last several days I've been walking in the morning and again in the early evening.  Of course it's dark by 6, with sunset a bit after 5.  Several of the houses have holiday lights up, which makes it cheerier than it would be otherwise.  Here's a photo I took a couple of nights ago while I was out wandering around.  (I do wear my long, off white winter coat, hoping to be more visible.  Not many cars up here, though.)

More later.

Looking Backward

As I mentioned in my Thanksgiving post, OSLO's significant other lost his father early on Thanksgiving Day this year.  At the time I couldn't find any photos, but today I looked a little harder and found this one from 2009, also on aThanksgiving Day.  This is Bob and his SO Helga, taken at our house on Pine Creek Bay.

I wanted to put this here for OSLO's family, primarily.  He'd been part of their lives for the last 10 years, and they were all very fond of him.  He'd been quite ill for quite a while, but you're never really ready for these losses when they happen.  He was a good guy.  He will be missed.

Girls Running

First -- I won't be blogging every day in December, but I'm not done yet.  Feel free to check back --

This may be my favorite picture of our beach -- more familiar faces, more family ties. The back of the photo says August of 2001.  It was a different time.  It seems like a good note to end on.

As always, November blogging every day for a month is dedicated to my brother Jim.  I miss him.

Black Friday

Black Friday has never been a thing for me.  I despise waiting in lines, I strongly dislike crowds and in general wouldn't go near a shopping center on Black Friday if you bribed me.  Which, I guess, they do -- that's what sales really are.  So today I stayed home and loaded and unloaded the dishwasher a few times.

Here's a photo from when we had actual beach in front of our house.  It's from September of 2011, if memory serves.

Yup, back to the sea wall as of yesterday.  The local news is reporting significant damage to Holland State Park, including the walkway from the parking lot to the pier.  Big sections of the sidewalk ripped out, erosion of the picnic areas, that sort of thing.  Apparently Kirk Park lost 30 feet of dune in Wednesday's storm, and on and on.  Not a good feeling.

Thanksgiving Day -- with a dog.

OSLO and the two young adults spent the afternoon with us today.  We all ate too much, even though we tried to pare things down a little bit.  There was enough to send plenty of food back with them and still have a few meals worth of food left in our possession.  Before they left to share some pie with their other grandmother we took a three generation photo.

The dog that the girl is cuddling is Maya, a relatively new addition to the household.  In some unhappy news, Nancy's partner was not with us today.  Sadly, his father passed away this morning in the Muskegon hospital.  He turned 84 this month and had been in poor health for a long time.  These things are never easy.

What is a bomb cyclone?

There's a new weather phrase -- bomb cyclone.  It sounds excessive to me -- surely either bomb or cyclone would have been adequate to describe a weather event.  Anyway, we're all still afloat here, and we'll have to wait for morning to see how the beachfront looks.  I took this photo out of our window at the same time our weather station was recording a 53 mile an hour wind gust.  It's dropped into the low to mid 30's since then, and hopefully the worst is behind us.  The wind is supposed to calm down overnight.

This afternoon I did some cooking and baking in advance of tomorrow's eating festival.  I made a loaf of Martha Stewart's cranberry bread and a batch of fudge for JB.

I also cooked a batch of wild rice for Barbara's Stuffing, so I'm ready enough.  I'll do the rest of the cooking tomorrow.  Dinner will be mid afternoon, about 2:30 or 3:00, mostly because I'm not willing to get up early to get the bird in the oven.  I am looking forward to spending the day tomorrow with OSLO and the COTU, and glad I'm not travelling in this weather.  Be careful out there.

Blogging Slump

Thanksgiving preparations have taken my focus off of my blogging routine, I think.  Or maybe its just the end of November blahs.  I read somewhere that November is the Norway of months.  Although the only time I was in Norway it was mid June and there were 24 hours of daylight, at least on the northern part of our trip.  Of possible interest, we're waiting for another "wind event" to arrive, with dire warnings about 50 plus mile per hour winds and power outages tomorrow with the potential for 16 foot waves.  We may be back to the sea wall by this time tomorrow.  JB's plan is to move to Florida if this house falls in the lake....

 Here's a photo from Sunday's beach walk.  It didn't make the cut on Sunday, but it's looking a little better today since I have fewer options.  It was taken on the climb to the stairs to the Tunnel Park overlook.

My adventure for the day was to cut down some oak saplings on the dune that have been blocking our view this summer.  (Someone must have been throwing acorns off the deck???)  I was also going to move the ladder back further from the edge of the foredune, but someone had already moved it behind the bench.  This picture was taken from the bottom of the stairs, and the edge of that grass that you see in the photo is the edge of the foredune.  We are definitely getting close to the sea wall. 

Time to Hit the Phone Camera Files

For the sake of finishing my stories -- despite my dire prediction, the wild rice did arrive from Amazon in one day, so I can use BDE's stuffing recipe on Thursday.  We've also clarified who is bringing what for Thanksgiving dinner, it won't be an all dessert meal after all, and today I bought a fresh 12+ pound turkey.  Busy work took up much of the day -- Monday's often look like that for me, and I took no new photos with either my phone or my camera.

My own rule is that there must be at least one photo with every blog entry, and these two will do.  Late fall flowers in my flower garden by my front step is the first one and holly berries at the end of Straight Street near the Tunnel Park fence here in the neighborhood is the second.  Taken on a walk at the beginning of the month, so fairly recent.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Update on the beach front.

The house that was hanging over the edge of the dune a few miles north of us was demolished on Friday.  According to the news report one wall fell into the lake in the process, so not good news on that front.  Today was breezy but late tomorrow is when the winds are supposed to ramp up and more erosion warnings are expected, and I think they wanted to get it torn down before it fell in the lake.  One of the traditions of my Michigan family is, weather permitting, to walk to Tunnel Park after we're done eating Thanksgiving dinner.  The weather doesn't look like it's going to cooperate on Thursday so I took the walk today, starting at the south Association staircase, the one nearest our house.

We're losing some foredune, but still not back to the seawall in our neighborhood.  Those posts are my landmark, they used to be right next to the edge of the foredune drop off.

Even with the waves the beach was walkable, but if you look up the shoreline a ways you can see where the water comes right up to the edge of the foredune.  When I got that far I scrambled up onto the foredune to keep my feet dry.  The amount of debris that was on top of ledge surprised me.

Walking had to be done carefully, the wood debris had nails and was splintered.   Obviously the sun was behind me.

Looking ahead the beach resumes, so I just needed to get past these sketchy parts.

Quite a wide stretch of beach here.

Debris in the water isn't anything new, but this was all from a single tree that somehow ended up in the lake.

 I eventually got as far as Tunnel Park.  It took me two tries to scramble up the drop off, and it was still a climb to the stairs, but I took my time and it all worked out.

I haven't climbed those stairs since -- I'm not sure.  It's been a while.  I've been up there using the inland stairs, but not the lakeside ones.

I had the place all to myself except for the ghosts of Thanksgivings past.  And the wind.  And my shadow.

Thanksgiving pre-prep has begun.

A lot of planning goes into the Thanksgiving meal, even more so when it's a group effort.  I made up a list of what I thought would be on the menu, and then asked for volunteers to help out with some of the acquisition and preparation.  The Grands were here this afternoon and we worked our way through part of the division of labor -- the girl is bringing the rolls, the corn (and she's fixing it according to her other grandmother's recipe) and in a surprise move, she's making a chocolate pie.  The boy's role is a little muddled at this point, so some additional conversation will be required to get that straight.  For sure he is coming here Wednesday night to help get down the big platter and roasting pan from the cupboard over the refrigerator and add a couple of leaves to the table.  He also offered to bring ice cream, and perhaps marshmallows and maybe spinach dip.  So TBD, as they say.  Then I took my list with me to the restaurant this evening where we met OSLO and her partner, and the conversation continued.  (This was the family dinner to celebrate the college boy's birthday, and we all met at Wild Chef -- a Japanese hibachi style restaurant.)

 

OSLO always brings the green bean casserole and pie for Thanksgiving, but the choice of pie changes from year to year. She's thinking about a sweet potato pie at the moment, and possibly an apple pie. Bear in mind that there will only be 6 people eating Thanksgiving dinner here, and we're already at 3 pies.  At this point JB remarks that he'd like fudge, and I'm thinking we'll just skip the turkey and eat dessert.  Plus this was the year that I was hoping to have a simpler, perhaps less heavy meal.  It will all get straightened out, with any luck, but I'm not sure that we made much progress today.  To make it even more interesting, I have had no luck finding wild rice in any of the local grocery stores this year, so this afternoon I ordered some on Amazon.  It's supposed to be here tomorrow  -- we'll see -- this one day delivery stuff rarely works where I live.  In truth, it was all kind of fun and good spirited, and I am glad that all of my little family is interested and engaged in the process.  More on this later, most likely.

More Bicycle Faces

Here are a couple of photos from 2006 that I quite like.  The first one is my daughter, also known as OSLO on the blog, at Kirk Park.  In those days she and I would do at least one mother-daughter longish bike ride every summer.  I remember this one, and at least one other epic ride to the south around Lake Mac then to it's westernmost point near Big Red lighthouse.  We quit doing this quite a while ago -- probably because I just don't ride that far any more.

Here's another one for that folder of photos of Siblings on Bicycles -- also from 2006, from a trip that Jim and Gene and I took to Wisconsin on a non-TRAM year.

Jim took the picture.  We're standing in front of the condo we rented, across the parking lot from the restaurant where we went to the world famous meat raffle.  Some fun was had by all.