Black Beans and Pelicans

I don't know what I've gotten into, but all of a sudden my legs are covered by itchy bites. I don't know why this surprises me, since I'm in Florida, where (as I'm pretty sure Ms. Moon has said) everything will bite or kill you if given half a chance. I think it happened when I was planting the new landscaping at my in-laws' yesterday morning. Chiggers? Mosquitoes? I have no idea.

I did get their plants in, though! Front to back, we have Hibiscus, Clusia, Ixora, a ti plant, another Hibiscus, and then behind a few hardy Dracaenas that were there already and survived last year's hurricanes, a third Hibiscus (which you can't see in the photo above). There's also a Lantana in the front flower bed. I'd forgotten how easy it is to plant things in soft Florida sand! Dave told his sister, "Steve's definitely going to want to move here now, because it's so much easier to dig than in England."

After cleaning up, Dave, his sister Dawn and I hopped into the car and drove to Tampa to meet with my college friend Sue. We had lunch at Carmine's in Ybor City, and realized that yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the party that Sue and her husband John threw at their house to celebrate my wedding to Dave. We got officially married just days before in Tampa, though we'd been Civil Unioned in New Jersey five years before that, and we use the New Jersey date as our anniversary.

After a fun lunch of Cuban sandwiches and black beans (for me), Sue went back to work and Dave, Dawn and I strolled through Ybor City, Tampa's old Latin quarter and once a world headquarters for cigar manufacturing.

We popped into La France, possibly one of the best vintage clothing stores on the planet, where Dave bought one shirt and I bought two. Turns out they are not vintage because La France also sells some unusual newly manufactured clothes, but I still love them. I'll post a picture tomorrow.

We considered going to some Tampa thrift stores but we wanted to get home before traffic got crazy, so it was back over the Skyway and home. We tried to go to some Goodwills in Bradenton, but the two I knew about have been turned into donation-only centers, where you can drop stuff off but not buy anything. What's up with that?! We'll have to try again today.

Today's FloriVideo™ comes from my evening walk. I tried to focus on pelicans, because I've given them short shrift in my previous videos and they are really remarkable birds. They are absolutely pterodactyls. The variety I've shown here is the brown pelican, but there are white ones too. You'll also see several sunset shots of Sarasota Bay, with the bridge from Anna Maria Island to Longboat Key in the distance.

Here's where I spent the late evening, watching light seep from the sky as I listened to Bossa Nova music on my iTunes. I later went inside for left over pizza and we all watched "Die Hard," in which neither Huey Lewis nor Tommy Lee Jones appear, contrary to popular and mistaken opinion. (An actor named Dennis Hayden, who is in the movie, somehow manages to look a little like both of them -- even though they do not particularly look like each other. The mysteries of camera-work!)