Time now to check out some of the old photographs I "rescued" while antique shopping in Jacksonville. As you all know, I'm a fan of old pictures and I love putting them online so they can survive in digital perpetuity.
First, polishing up the Dodge on Easter, 1947. It looks like everyone is dressed up to go out, or maybe go to church. I think Mom in the background even has a little corsage.
On the back: "Sport."
On the back: "My room." The decor has some style but it looks like the back of that chair is pushed right up against the bed. Not a whole lot of space!
Maybe he sent this picture to his sweetheart, prominently displayed on the desk.
Catastrophic structural failure is imminent, but no one seems worried -- except possibly that little kid on the left.
Dated 1964 -- Grandma is very proud of her new refrigerator!
My childhood babysitter had eyeglasses just like hers.
On the back: "Dec. 22, 1944." If I had to guess, I'd say someone was posted to the South Pacific during the war, and this is a picture of a piglet that became a Christmas feast.
On the back: "Durham: Geo Clymer." At first I thought the man in the photo was George, but I think actually the photo may have been taken on the USS George Clymer, a wartime transport ship. Perhaps Durham was his name.
And finally, a mysterious cityscape. It's obviously somewhere in Europe, and on the building on the left we can see the word "Haus," which suggests Germany. It took me a while but I finally figured out the location using the sign atop the curved building in the background, which says (not very clearly) "Rundschau Haus." This was the headquarters of the Frankfurter Rundschau, a daily newspaper in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. The building went up in 1953, so the photo was taken sometime after that.
That puts the location of this photo on Eschenheimer Tor. Here's what the area looks like today. Rundschau Haus is now gone, but the castle on the right, the white building in the center with the circular decoration, and the building on the left all appear to still exist.
These are just eight of 22 photos I bought. Here's the whole batch on Flickr, if you're interested.
I found this graffiti on my walk home last night. It's similar to another bin I found a few years ago, also bearing a Twitter-related message. We could use some fact-checking in our modern culture, that's for sure, rather than following a political leader who believes if he says anything enough times it becomes true.
My own personal dictator, Mother Russia, has won the front garden battle. The gardeners returned yesterday and did a much harder prune on everything:
It's clear she was standing out there giving them directions while I was at work -- as I expected -- because several areas that she specifically targeted have been hit hard. That poor Cotoneaster to the left of the front door, for example. Mrs. Russia wants enough space adjacent to the wall to put up a ladder so the front of the house can be painted, and she made sure to get it. The house does need painting so I can live with that.
For the most part I think it's OK. The first go-around was too gentle, and we wanted to see some definition of the bushes, which will fill in more in coming months. Afterwards she sent me a satisfied e-mail that said "I am happy with the result of the work," and paid me her share of the bill.
At least it's over. We've been talking about front garden pruning for at least a year, and I filed the maintenance request last August! Perhaps now life can move forward.
Here's where the devil dogs wound up in our kitchen -- perched on a tiny ledge next to the window. When I put them up, Dave said, "Where did you get those?!" I said, "Don't you read my blog?" (Answer: No.)
And here's the plaque I picked up the same day in Jacksonville featuring a red-headed woodpecker. Obviously handmade, I suspect it's someone's craft project from summer camp or wood shop or something like that. It fits in nicely with our needlepoint wall. There's no obvious name or date on it.
Our garden saga has taken another turn. I wrote the gardeners yesterday and asked them to make another pass at the front garden, and surprisingly, they agreed. They're supposed to come back this morning. I'm going to work as usual; I'm going to leave the situation in their hands. I made it clear we need a harder prune than we got the first time around and included photos of some of the problem areas. Hopefully this will placate Mother Russia, who will no doubt be peering down from her upstairs window.
I slept well last night, thank goodness. Maybe my jet-lag is on the wane.
Our windowsill cactus is blooming again, as it has done almost every spring since 2019. I think those nubs around it are old blooms from last year, but maybe they're new buds. In any case, I'm glad it's still happy.
It's happier than I am, I'll say that much. Blame the Russians.
Yesterday, the gardeners came to trim our garden. They arrived about 9:30 a.m., just as the rain slackened, and after I went to work they spent several hours in the back garden, pruning the roses and buddleias and ripping out all the ivy invading the borders. They trimmed the large hebe and several other bushes in the front and gave us several inches more space to go up and down the front steps.
I was mostly happy with the result. It's still quite "full," but looks neater than it did.
I was very happy with the back. They didn't strip all the ivy on the fence and in the trees, at my request -- I want to leave some cover for the birds. But they took a lot off the ground and the pruned roses look much better.
Our bulbs and day lilies are more exposed and although the lawn is sodden and muddy right now, it should fill in well when growing season begins.
The one thing I wish they hadn't done is rake up all the fallen leaves I'd left in the borders and piled at the back of the garden. I was deliberately allowing them to break down as mulch. Oh well.
At work I spent the day in a training session learning about Chat GPT and Artificial Intelligence. This isn't something I use much -- in fact not at all, up to now -- but I can see how it might be beneficial for certain tasks like synthesizing data or composing routine e-mails. (I confess there is a blogger who commented once or twice on my blog many months ago who I strongly suspect uses Chat GPT to compose her comments. They're always very detailed and yet they seem blandly artificial. I will not name names!)
After I got home yesterday evening, I wrote to the Russians and our landlords and asked them to pay their portion of the fees for the front garden. I'd already paid and was seeking reimbursement. (We're responsible for the back but not the front under the terms of our lease.)
Mrs. Russia responded by knocking on our door and complaining that the trimming in the front is inadequate. She feels they should have done more and went on and on about how they'd promised four hours of work (I don't know where she got that number) but spent less than one and left the bushes too large. Possibly because I was halfway through my evening gin & tonic, I lost my temper with her and said I was finished dealing with the garden and went inside and closed the door, leaving her out on the stoop.
This morning, after about two hours of sleep (jet-lag and annoyance), I wrote and told her that I don't expect her to pay for work she feels is inadequate, and I will ask the gardeners for a more thorough trim. (Which I am doubtful they will provide.) But I also reiterated that the garden isn't our responsibility and all future communication about it should go straight to our landlords.
Dear God, I am so tired.
To finish on a happy note, I took my glasses to the optician yesterday who managed to rescue them after they'd been fairly badly mangled during my trip to Florida. I dropped them at one point and an earpiece broke off, and the other earpiece got bent in my luggage. Miracle opticians! My glasses are fine now -- at no charge!
We are jumping back into our London lives! In fact the trip to Florida seems so short it's almost dreamlike. The blueberries we left in the refrigerator didn't even have time to shrivel. I had them on my cereal yesterday and they were perfectly fine.
I spent the day unpacking and organizing -- doing laundry, that kind of thing. The devil dogs have been given a bath and are now perched in a prominent spot in the kitchen. I haven't hung my woodpecker plaque yet but maybe today.
The garden is looking springlike, with the daffodils and crocuses blooming. The snowdrops are all open and hanging like upside-down moths from their stems.
The gardeners are supposed to come today to trim the front garden and get the ivy under control in the back, but it's pouring rain at the moment and the forecast doesn't show that changing. I wonder if they'll want to reschedule. I suppose an English gardener is used to working in the rain.
Here's Olga, curled up next to me on the couch. It's very dark in this room, with only light from the hallway casting a dim glow, so I'm impressed that picture worked out. She seems very glad to have us home. She slept soundly on the couch next to me all afternoon, and she was out like a light last night.
Or maybe that was me, honestly. I resisted sleeping during the day, to try to get back on track, but once 9 p.m. rolled around I climbed into bed and had no awareness of anything until 5:30 this morning. Again, I think we were gone such a short time that jet lag didn't even have time to kick in.
Well, we'll see what happens with the gardeners. I really hope they come because our roses are starting to show new growth, and if they're going to prune them they need to do it now. Plus today is a professional development day at work so I can come in a bit late without ramifications -- unlike when we have kids around (starting tomorrow).
Oh, by the way, my Gulf of Mexico t-shirtdid arrive at Dave's parents' house, just as we were preparing to leave. I wore it home on the plane, and I'm wearing it now.
This was Friday night's Florida sunset, seen from the back yard of my stepmother's guest house. I love those filmy veils of clouds, lit by the sinking sun.
And now we're back in London. Olga was thrilled to see us, once I woke her up -- she was sound asleep on the couch and didn't hear us come in. She's been jumping around and is now lying next to me, sighing deeply. All is right with the world.
The flight was smooth. As a special treat, Dave and I bought business class seats for our return voyage. (They were the only ones available on the direct London to Gatwick flight, so it was either that or connect through some other city.) We were each in those pods with divider walls between them, and a seat that basically turns into a bed. I read The New Yorker, watched two episodes of "Absolutely Fabulous" and slept for part of the trip, a light snooze, but I'm still exhausted.
Here we are toasting through the partition between our pods, with our pre-takeoff champagne. Cheers!
And just for fun, here's my stepsister's cat, Ozzie, at her house in Tampa. Jennifer and her husband spoil their two cats rotten. They are very satisfied animals. (Of course I wouldn't know anything about spoiling pets.)
I'd give you a picture of Olga but I feel sure she'd be insulted if I put her in the same post as a cat.
Yesterday was one of those spectacular Florida winter days with a cloudless sky and bright sun -- the type of sun that casts shadows turning even mundane streetscapes into something wonderful. It was also really cold -- 38º F (or 3º C) when I went to Dunkin' Donuts in the morning. This morning it's 45º (or 7º C) so slightly better, and of course I'm back at Dunkin', pumping out a blog post before driving to Bradenton to pick up Dave.
I had a leisurely morning yesterday before driving into Tampa to meet my friends Sue and John, who I've known since college. Remember me mentioning the Rod N' Reel Pier in Anna Maria a couple of days ago -- the one destroyed by last fall's hurricanes? Well, John and Sue are the friends who sat with me on that pier on so many evenings back in the '80s and '90s. I always try to connect with them when I pass through Tampa.
We met in Ybor City, the historic Cuban/Italian quarter where cigars were hand-rolled in gigantic brick warehouses at the dawn of the 20th century. Now it's the arts and entertainment district, with a thriving bar and nightlife culture, and lots of popular restaurants. It retains some elements of its previous identity, such as the terrazzo floor at the entrance to the former Max Argintar menswear store.
John, Sue and I ate at Carmine's, where I ordered the hot pressed Cuban sandwich and black bean soup (with onions, please). We used to go to Carmine's when it was squeezed into a much smaller space and one of John's friends performed in a band there. I remember being crammed into that tiny space and dancing to their cover of the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun," which was always the high point of their set, at least to us.
Anyway, Carmine's is a lot different these days and I have no idea where John's musician friend might be, but suffice to say, I share a lot of history with John and Sue. We talked mainly about retirement options and the dismal state of the newspaper industry, because we are journalists (or former journalists) of a certain age.
Afterwards Sue and I got a Cuban coffee at the nearby Hotel Haya, which I didn't even know existed. It's quite swank, with a palm-fringed pool in a sunny courtyard, and I'd love to stay there sometime. And the cafe makes a mean Cuban coffee! It's next to the site of the former El Goya, a renowned drag bar back in the '70s and '80s (which became Tracks, a popular gay dance club where I spent a lot of nights dancing in my college years).
Afterwards, I drove down sunny Bayshore Boulevard to Ballast Point Park, which offers spectacular views of the city across the bay. Again, this was a favorite spot during my college years. I'd drive down and study at one of the tables with a coffee from the fishing shop next to the pier. Nowadays the fishing shop has become a gleaming little cafe called Leon's Lobstah Shack, but it still sells a good cup of coffee. (It may sound like I'm over-caffeinating but that Cuban coffee was small.)
The pier at Ballast Point is closed, because of hurricane damage, I believe. But there's a shorter dock (above) where a couple of anglers were trying for the day's catch.
I mentioned how great it is to drive down Bayshore Boulevard, one of Tampa's most exclusive addresses. I made a little video to replicate the experience, as if you're in my car listening to my iTunes while soaking up the sunshine. (Specifically, you're hearing Astrud Gilberto's "Canoeiro." And before you chastise me for filming while driving, all I did is hold my phone out the window without watching the screen, so my eyes were still on the road.) You'll see some cones and barricades, and that's because the Gasparilla Distance Classic is being run on Bayshore this weekend. At the end, you get a quiet moment at Ballast Point, listening to the waves. Enjoy!
Last night I went to dinner with my step-sister, her husband and her son. We went to a neighborhood steak place where the steak was good but the martini was marginal.
By the way, I apologize for being unable to answer all your comments -- I don't have much opportunity to be online at the moment -- but I am am reading and enjoying them all! Dave and I will be winging back to London this evening. Coming to you tomorrow from the land of Olga!
It's not quite 6 a.m. and I am back at Dunkin' Donuts in Lutz, my Internet outpost when I'm staying at my stepmother's guest house. The WiFi there isn't hooked up so I hop in the car and come up here, and have a delicious and surely perfectly healthy Boston Kreme donut while I type my blog. I've done it so many times on so many trips that it's become my routine.
Yesterday involved a whole lot of driving. I left Jacksonville about 9 a.m., after my brother and I dropped my niece at school and stopped for a final coffee at Starbucks, where we sat across from each other at a wide, long table, like two attorneys trying to settle a complicated case.
Once on the road, I luxuriated in some solitude and played my iTunes (is there a happier, more vapid song than "The Hustle" by Van McCoy?) while barreling west on I-10 toward my not-so-mysterious destination -- Lloyd, Florida, and fellow blogger Mary Moon.
Mary and I have met several times -- in 2015 and 2019 in Florida, and once in Cozumel, when we happened to be there at the same time. But it's been many years (not since the pandemic) and I really wanted to see her unusual wild trilliums (above) and enjoy a bit of North Florida thrift shopping!
It took me something like two and a half hours to get there, a little longer than I expected, so it was about 11:30 a.m. by the time I pulled into Mary's driveway. We're both native Floridians and we joke that we are long-lost siblings, so greeting her was like greeting family. I also got to say hi to her husband once again and meet her daughter Jessie, who accompanied us on our day's adventures.
We headed to Monticello, a picturesque little nearby town. I'd driven through before but I don't think I'd ever stopped there, and Mary goes there quite a bit, so I was eager to check out the scene through her eyes. We began with lunch at the Rancho Grande Mexican restaurant, which surely has the most colorful dining room in the world. I was so engrossed in conversation with Mary and Jessie that I pretty much ordered the first thing I saw on the menu -- a Speedy Gonzalez, which turned out to be a taco and enchilada with refried beans and rice. Yum!
Monticello has an ornate courthouse (complete with monument to fallen Confederate soldiers) in the middle of a traffic circle at the heart of downtown. The Latin phrase Suum Cuique is inscribed over the door -- "to each his own," which seems typically individualistic in the American vein, but apparently means each constituent will receive fair treatment at the hands of the government.
And then -- shopping! We were in an antique store and I wanted to send a picture to Dave, so I grabbed the ugliest nearby object to use as a prop. "Don't buy that," Dave wrote back.
We had a great time talking and laughing and marveling at the incredible assortment of weird junk populating the shops. We saw a pineapple-shaped ice bucket, which led to a discussion of whether displaying an upside-down pineapple indicates a person is a swinger. (Cosmopolitan magazine confirms this, so it must be true. Far be it from me to question Cosmopolitan on matters of sex.)
Speaking of sex, these paint-by-numbers nymphs were apparently judged too scandalous to display in their entirety.
My childhood babysitter/nanny/surrogate grandmother, Mrs. Kirkland, used to have a poodle like these. I liked the one with the cat-eye glasses, but I wasn't going to pay $48 for it.
Jessie's face says it all.
In the end I only bought three old postcards -- and actually Jessie bought them for me, which was incredibly kind and gave me a fun souvenir. I'll turn them into a future blog post, I'm sure, so whether Jessie knows it or not she has invested in my blog and is now part-owner of the intellectual property contained herein.
We got back to Mary's and I promptly hit the road for the long drive back to Tampa. I was conflicted about which route to take -- the longer but probably smoother all-interstate route, I-10 to I-75, or the shorter but stop-and-go U.S. 19 that hugs the curve of the state's sparsely populated "Big Bend" area. In the end I did the shorter route and it went very smoothly despite the small-town stoplights along he way -- Perry, Cross City, Crystal River. I just cruised along with my iTunes and had a great time. I got to Lutz, the suburb where I'm staying just outside Tampa, about 8 p.m.
It was a long day but well worth it to re-establish human contact with my blog sister!
Yesterday was gray and rainy, so my brother and I sought out indoor things to do. After dropping my niece off at school, we went to one of J.M.'s favorite coffee shops and hashed out a plan. We were supposed to run an errand at one of the big shopping centers in town, but we decided along the way to drop in to an antique mall where I've picked up some great old Florida photos in past years.
Fortunately, my brother really likes antique shopping. Dave can't stand it, so it's not something I get to do very often. We got there just as the place opened and spent a couple of hours poring over all the treasures. We even ate lunch there.
You gotta love these orange dogs with triangular eyes! And for only $8! I passed them by but then, while we were driving away, I looked through the photos on my camera, came across the one above and thought, "I NEED THOSE DOGS!" So we went back for them. They'll be coming to London. I also got a carved wooden woodpecker plaque that looks like it was someone's art project at summer camp. (I'd take a photo to show you but it's out in the car.) And of course I found some more photos to rescue and some old postcards too.
Good thing I have room in my luggage.
We got so engrossed in antiques -- we went to a second shop too -- that we didn't even bother to run our errand. Before we knew it it was time to collect Kate from school and go to dinner. During antique browsing and driving time J.M. and I had plenty of opportunity to talk about everything from our '70s latchkey upbringing to NATO and Trump. (Fortunately we share a common political perspective.) There really is something special and cathartic about being able to talk to someone who shares your personal history.
For dinner we went to a favorite local restaurant that unfortunately had a live band playing. It was quite loud and made conversation hard. It would have made Dave crazy -- he hates live music in a restaurant, and I'm not such a fan of it either. These guys were good, at least.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to see my older niece, Jane, who is living at college nearby. I don't want to intrude on her campus experience so I would never go there, and she was too busy to join us last night. I told J.M. not to bother her or pressure her to come to dinner. "She's doing what you're supposed to do in college. She's making her own life," I said.
Today I am back on the road, headed to Tampa with a special detour in mind.
I got up early yesterday morning and took a long walk through the neighborhoods just to the east of Dave's parents' mobile home. It was about 55º F (or 13º C) -- cool enough that I needed a sweater, which isn't all that unusual for Florida in February. I had a great time checking out all the Florida-themed paint jobs and garden ornaments.
Then I took some boxed bed frames up to the UPS store to return them to Amazon for Dave's sister. They were purchased for their parents's new place, but for whatever reason they didn't work out. Those suckers were heavy and I was glad to get them shipped back and to be able to do something small for Dawn, who has been working so hard to get their mom and dad settled.
I had an appointment to meet my brother in Tampa at 12:30 p.m., so I hit the road about 11 a.m., which I thought would give me plenty of time. But THE TRAFFIC! Holy cow! I navigated my way out to I-75 and the northbound cars were backed up for miles. I don't know if there was an accident or what, but rather get in the middle of that congestion I drove past the Interstate and found a northbound detour, through the sprawling new housing developments that have paved almost every inch of the swamps and pastures that not so long ago patchworked that area. By the time I was on the main road again it was practically noon.
I got to Tampa half an hour late and joined my brother, J.M., for a meatball sub at Alfonso's, a pizzeria we frequented as kids -- now run by the former owners' son. Still a fantastic meatball sub! We ate as televisions overhead showed highlights of World Wrestling Federation matches.
J.M. and I had some important family business to attend to -- scattering my mom's ashes. It took a while to work out a plan, get permission and wait until I was back in the country. Not to be all mysterious, but I'll keep the details to ourselves.
We also visited the house where we both grew up. No one was home, but I laid a hand on two of the big trees on the property -- a magnolia my mother planted and a pine that was there before the house was built in 1966. I choked up, thinking about my mom and how these two trees had seen us grow up and get older. And now a whole new family is growing up beneath their branches. Trees seem so eternal.
That's the lake where we used to swim. If there is a God, he/she was present at the moment I took that picture.
We drove around the neighborhood for old times' sake and then hit the road separately for Jacksonville, where my brother lives.
It took four hours to get up here, so I was driving through little towns like Waldo, Starke and Middleburg at night. I haven't driven on an open road after dark in ages, and I worried I'd come across a deer or other wildlife, but I didn't. In fact I saw no animals all day, living or dead, except humans, the occasional bird and two house cats frolicking on a side street when I stopped in Starke to take the photo above. The absence of roadkill was striking. I wondered if wild animals are learning to stay away from roads, or perhaps there are simply a lot fewer of them.
Morning: Eggs, toast, grapefruit on the front porch. The weather is cool and crystal blue. The next-door neighbor, Tom, stops by to ask how Dave's parents are doing. He seems shocked by the suddenness of their move, but we explain how it happened -- Dave's dad's back injury, and how it left his mother (who has her own mobility issues) unable to care for him. Tom goes into a monologue about his Dutch heritage and his history in Michigan.
When we later tell Dave's parents about Tom's visit, they roll their eyes. "That guy likes to talk," they say.
Dave's sister leaves to take the parents to some doctors' appointments. Dave and I drive out to Anna Maria Island to see the hurricane damage. On the Cortez waterfront, the Seafood Shack stands decimated -- "crushed by the storms," as my brother wrote earlier. We all ate here as children. Now it's going to become a public dock and marina.
And of course, the Rod N' Reel Pier, which I wrote about last fall after Helene damaged it and Milton destroyed what was left. The sign says they intend to rebuild. A guy in biking gear is taking selfies next to the fenced-off pier entrance, decorated with wreaths and flowers. He shares his stories of fishing here with friends while growing up in Bradenton. I share mine of late nights with college friends, sitting on the end of the pier with bottles of Miller Lite, watching fish churn the water and a Space Shuttle launch on the other side of the state, blazing a trail like a shooting star in reverse.
Dave and I drive back to the mainland, navigating horrendous high-season traffic, to join his parents for lunch at Discovery Village. Dave and his sister go back to their apartment to assemble more furniture and fill out 10-page insurance forms that inexplicably come with multiple envelopes, yet all seem to be going to the same place.
I duck out for a Starbucks coffee and find this:
What is it about Trump that creates this kind of enthusiasm? People loved Reagan, Kennedy, Clinton, Obama, but none of them, to my knowledge, inspired their own roadside shops. Neither did Newt Gingrich, Barry Goldwater, Rush Limbaugh or other earlier heroes of the rabid right. I suppose it's because Trump is not just a man. He's an attitude.
I drive back to Discovery Village and we hang around until dinnertime, when we go to a nearby Italian restaurant. We find an easily accessible table and park Dave's parents' walkers next to a wall. A jazz band plays too loudly and I, trying to eat healthy, get the biggest, most ridiculous salad I have ever seen, topped with about half of a full-sized chicken (diced). I eat a third of it, bring home the rest and throw it away.
Today I'm off to Tampa to meet my brother for some family business before heading north to Jacksonville.
Dave and I have rapidly settled into the American way of life. We are eating, eating, eating and occasionally shopping. When in Rome, I suppose.
We went to breakfast yesterday at the Cortez Cafe, which is one of my favorite spots for pancakes and eggs (and I had both). Then we moved some furniture and wall decor to Daves' parents' new place in Discovery Village, which sounds like a bigger job than it really was -- the furniture wasn't large and our cars have capacious rear storage so we could do it without renting a U-Haul or anything like that.
While Dave and his sister stayed at DV to assemble some chairs for his parents (imagine long but unnecessary story here involving free chairs mistakenly sent via Amazon), I decided to run to Kohl's to return a belt that his mom sent for my birthday in November. (When I say "run" I mean drive, obviously. Again, the American way of life.)
The belt was too small. I have a 32-inch waist but she sent me a 32-inch belt, which of course means it wasn't long enough to be buckled because you need a little extra belt for that. So I brought it back from London and drove it to Kohl's and explained my tale of woe: old purchase, different store, no receipt, blah blah blah.
They were nice about it, even though I could only get a refund for about two-thirds of what Dave's mom paid. I intended to also buy a replacement belt and some new undershirts. But the process turned complicated when they needed a driver's license, which I suddenly could not find. I looked in my wallet and my pockets and...WHERE WAS MY DRIVER'S LICENSE?! I can't drive around Florida for a whole week with no license!
I tried to pass of my British biometric ID card but that wouldn't work because they have to scan a bar code on the license, and then of course that led to questions about why I had a British ID and a purported Florida license that I couldn't find. I finally ran out to the car and was half-tempted to drive away before I got arrested for identity fraud -- but I found the license, which I'd carelessly tossed into the glove box, thank god thank god thank god. I took it in and they scanned it and then they needed a phone number for my Kohl's reward dollars, or something like that, and of course my British number wouldn't work. So I gave Dave's Mom's number and she got my Kohl's dollars, and will now probably be arrested herself when she goes back to the store.
Long story short, I got out of there with a new belt and t-shirts, and not in handcuffs.
I've seen lingering signs of damage from last year's hurricanes, Helene and Milton. The mobile home park where Dave's parents have wintered for years (and where Dave, his sister and I are now staying) has several units that look like this, especially along the waterfront of Sarasota Bay. There are uprooted forests of Australian pines, gigantic trees that are non-native and invasive and not really made to withstand those kinds of storms. Miraculously, Dave's parents' place escaped serious damage, though some of the landscaping seems to have been killed by salt water.
On my way back to Discovery Village from Kohl's, I took a side trip to drive through the neighborhood where my friend Cherie lived in the '90s. I used to go to her house every Thursday night to watch "Must See TV" but on this return trip I could not find it. The area has changed so much with road-widening and new construction, and of course all the trees are bigger, and I recognized nothing.
I came across this flock of ibis, which seemed perfectly untroubled by the increasing urbanization as they happily nibbled morsels off the pavement and out of the lawns.
Finally, last night, we went to dinner at the Anna Maria Oyster Bar, which is a longtime haunt of Dave's parents and right next to DV, and thus very convenient. (Even though it's next door we drove, because now they both use walkers.) I had a couple of raw oysters, coconut shrimp with cheese grits and Brussels sprouts, and key lime pie.
We were intrigued by AMOB's dedicated waitress, Pearl:
I have never in my life seen a robotic waitress. (I'm saying waitress because of the coconut-husk bikini top, which may be in dubious taste from a feminist perspective but never mind. This is Trump country.) She seemed very "Star Trek." We gave our orders to a human, and humans mostly took care of us, but Pearl did steady duty helping to deliver food. She was very skilled in steering around people and obstacles, and seemed to flawlessly navigate the layout of the restaurant. Apparently she has occasionally been known to get stuck on a rug or drop a bowl of soup, but what waitress doesn't?
I'm not sure what's on the agenda for today, aside from more time at Discovery Village. ("What are we discovering?" Dave asked. None of us are sure.) (Top photo: A bath-house at an RV park near Dave's parents' mobile home.)
We arrived in Tampa safe and sound last night, tired from the trip and the persistent crowds but otherwise fine. We flew out of Gatwick on British Airways, taking the direct flight that I always like. But this time, checking in was a nightmare. We were at the airport the recommended three hours ahead of time, and we spent an hour and a half standing in the check-in line. It was huge to begin with, but then the BA staff kept calling people up for flights that were leaving sooner than ours, so over and over again we were bypassed by hordes of people behind us who basically didn't give themselves enough time. As I told the woman standing in front of us -- who was equally punctual and thus equally punished -- "I'm just going to show up an hour later next time!"
And the ticket agent had to jump through hoops to find us both seats because by the time we got to the counter we were so freaking late and the plane was oversold. (Normally we check in online in advance, but I confess I completely forgot. Won't make that mistake again!)
Somehow we got seats -- Dave even got an exit row, though he said it wasn't particularly comfortable -- and here we are. I spent the flight reading -- two New Yorkers, a BBC "Gardener's World" magazine and the rest of "The Wager," which I really liked.
Once in Florida, we disembarked from the plane, breezed through passport control, baggage claim and customs, and said hello to Phoebe the flamingo. (Obviously that's not me in the picture. Phoebe is besieged by a steady stream of photo-posers and selfie-takers.)
We then went to pick up our rental car, which turned into another massive delay because of course the people in front of us had some problem with their car reservation, which the counter agent was apparently unable to solve to their satisfaction. A manager was called, there was much strenuous explanation of policies and procedures blah blah blah, the customers had to get on the phone to a travel agent of some kind, there were furrowed brows and shaking heads. We were finally called to an adjacent counter (after a 30-minute wait) and when we departed a short time later with our key fob, they were still there, trying to get to Disney World.
Speaking of which, there was lots of Disney swag on our plane -- t-shirts, bags, stuffed Mickeys and Minnies. The man in front of me was wearing a Disney-branded elastic headband securing his sunglasses to his head (yes, even on the plane). You could tell these were all people who had already visited the Happiest Place on Earth and were going back for another round. Other British schools must also be on break now -- in any case, there were a million kids.
We got on the road, cruised down the smooth, wide highways through St. Petersburg and across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to Bradenton. I had to pay the bridge toll ($1.75) in cash, and all I had was a $50 bill that Dave's parents sent me for my birthday last year. "This is all I have, I'm sorry," I said to the toll-taker when I handed it to him. "Well, what if I don't have the change?" he said, with a half-grin. "I don't know!" I responded, but I could tell he did in fact have it, thank God, and we were on our way again.
We got to Dave's parents' place in Bradenton and sat up with his sister Dawn, de-briefing about their recent move to assisted living and all the tasks involved. Today we're moving some furniture and other stuff to their new place at Discovery Village, which Dawn has branded "DV" for short.
I was up at 4:20 a.m. this morning (in England it was 9:20 a.m., so I actually overslept!) and had to run out to find coffee because the coffee machine here has apparently already made the move to DV. Fortunately there's a big Ed Ruscha-worthy gas station with an attached 7-Eleven just a mile or two down the road. The hot, fresh coffee gushed out of the urn like a brown waterfall and here I am, back in the land of plenty.
As I walked home from work yesterday, I noticed that the Bottlenecks sign that was recently revealed on one of our corner shops is being covered up again. At least it's not being painted over or destroyed. Maybe at some point decades in the future, when Every Skin and its successor shops have come and gone, Bottlenecks will once again see the light of day and make people wonder about its origins.
The last two days at work were ridiculously quiet, given that there were very few students in the building. I mostly did background tasks in the library, things that I've been meaning to get to but can't when the kids are around. I cleaned out our resource lists and catalog collections -- lists of books we compile for specific classes or class projects -- deleting dozens of old ones. I also cleaned out my desk drawers. Big excitement!
Finally, at about 3 p.m., I could no longer pretend I was doing anything useful and I came home. Dave was already here because he did all of his parent/teacher conferences from his recliner via video calls. Our modern world!
We did nothing special for Valentine's Day, unless you count the steak dinner Dave cooked last night, which was indeed pretty fantastic. I'm not a big steak eater, normally, but that steak was darn good. I also got to watch Dave administer his own injection of Yuflyma, the hilariously named medication he's now on for his Crohn's. It's a "bioidentical" of Humira, and it replaces a different medicine he used to have to get every three months via infusion at the hospital. So the good thing is, no more hospital visits, which used to take hours and required him to miss work. The bad thing is, self-injection -- but it's actually pretty easy, administered every two weeks with something like an epi-pen rather than an old-fashioned syringe.
And this morning, we're off to Florida. In fact, I have to go pack. Our friend Warren will be staying over to take care of Olga, who is so far none the wiser that we are leaving. (We've delayed getting out the suitcases until the last possible moment.) Warren has stayed with Olga before so I think she'll adapt to the situation just fine, even if she's not particularly happy about it.
