What Goes Around

The Sunday before last on our way to Palm City we stopped for lunch at a Carrabba’s in Jacksonville. Donna had a series of coupons from a newspaper awhile back that were 2 for $10 off two dinners and in the middle was a $5 off two lunch entrees. We thought we’d use the lunch coupon, but as it turns out, there is no lunch menu on Sunday. Not a problem, we could just use one of the $10 dinner coupons. Figuring we would not use the other dinner one before it expired, Donna gave it away to a couple that was at a table near us.

We usually come back from FLA and stop near Ocala which is about halfway home. This time, because the University of Florida had a home football game, the usual Hampton Inn we stay at for $98 was charging a hundred bucks more. So last Saturday and instead of coming back up the Turnpike like we usually do, we opted to go straight up I-95. This put the halfway point on the southeast side of Jacksonville’s outer loop. I found a Hampton Inn there for a mere $75. When we were checking in, Donna asked the lad behind the desk if there were any restaurants within walking distance. He mentioned three, one of which was a Carrabba’s.* Because Donna really likes their Mama Mandola’s Sicilian Chicken Soup and I’m easy, that is where we went for dinner. Guess we should have kept that other $10 dinner coupon.

It was a lot busier on a Saturday evening compared to a Sunday lunch, but fortunately it was still early enough that there wasn’t any real wait for a place to sit. We couldn’t get a booth of course, but ended up in a half booth right next to a family that had a baby in a stroller between their table and ours. We both thought to ourselves, “Uh oh,” but they had just got their check so we knew it would be OK. As they were leaving, the woman leaned over to Donna and handed her a piece of paper and asked if we wanted it. It was a coupon for $10 off two dinner entrees…

*Not the same one as last week, that was on the north side of town.

Volens in Aeternum

Desdemona, or as she is more commonly called, Desi, is the 10 year old dog that belongs to Sandy and Paul. Like all dogs, Desi can understand lots of common English words, like food, treat, vet, ride, bath, etc. She can also spell a few, including W-A-L-K. Desi is loyal and protective of the household and will bark mightily at those approaching, but once introduced to you and you give her a dog treat, you are instantly promoted to friend of pack.

Desi’s primary function is hanging around any person who is passing through the kitchen, in the kitchen, or sitting around the kitchen table eating while watching hopefully for any bit of food either offered or dropped. And while Desi is not of a breed officially recognized by the American Kennel Club, her official family motto is Volens in Aeternum which roughly translates to Eternally Watching.

Sunrise Fishing

Sunrise Fishing

On this morning’s early walk on the beach, Donna sees a guy fishing and makes a bee line for him. “Where you going?” I ask. “To ask him what he is trying to catch,” she says. I mumble under my breath so she can’t hear, “Probably fish.” She chats him up for a few minutes while I try unsuccessfully to capture a photo of a pelican silhouetted by the the rising sun. When she asks him if the beach is always this uncrowded he tell her it is on weekdays from May to December.

The Auxiliary Wing of the ROMEO Club

Atlantic Rainbow

Today I was invited along to the meeting of the Palm City ROMEO club and because I don’t actually have all the requirements of membership I was made the first member of the Auxiliary Wing.

A small group of Paul’s friends come over once a week and give him a break from his caregiver duties and take him out to lunch. Because one member of ROMEO is an ex-Marine helicopter pilot that served during a couple of our country’s armed conflicts, he is a member of the local VFW and can get everyone in. The guys like to go here because draft beer is a buck and a half and mixed drinks are just two and a quarter. My lunch fish sandwich lunch today with chips, a pickle, a side of potato salad and a beer cost $5.00. Compare this to my $17.95 fish tacos plus $2.50 for a soft drink yesterday at Conchy Joe’s in Jensen Beach and you can see why this is the default spot for the Club.

If you haven’t already Googled “ROMEO Club” to see what I’m talking out, it is an acronym for Retired Old Men Eating Out. And if you did Google it, you found out it is actually a thing sort of, but this isn’t in anyway affiliated with either that website or the Young Adult fiction book. Anyway, I’m in the Auxiliary because I have not yet retired.

The above photo was taken this evening off the 5th floor balcony of the Marriott Courtyard on Hutchinson Island. It wasn’t until I resized it for posting here that I realized it was actually a double rainbow.

Caution! Crab Crossing

Crab Crossing

Donna and I had lunch in Jensen Beach and because of the roundabout way we found ourselves there, I needed the GPS’s help in getting us on the right track heading back to Sandy and Paul’s house. After a short time I knew where I was and how to get home, but left the GPS on anyway.

As we crossed the St Lucie River from Stuart into Palm City on the Monterey Road Bridge the GPS said take the first left onto Cornell Ave instead of the usual Mapp Road. What the heck, I took it. A couple of streets down along on Cornell Ave I could see how it was going to take us, but because we needed something at the store, after a couple more streets, I turned right on 34th Street to go over to Mapp Rd where the local Publix was.

34th was a residential street and there were some traffic calming tables that needed to be driven over. As I approached the second one I could see a small crab using the table as his own personal crosswalk. I slowed down to let him cross (and get the camera out), so he slowed to see if I was going to run him over. I stopped to take the crab’s picture. He noticed me not moving, so he finished crossing the road. I put the camera away and we both continued on our respective ways.

47,000 Outlet Store Customers

I-95 Exit 318 in Florida would take you into St. Augustine if you could make it by the two competing Outlet Malls located there. They are on opposite sides of the Interstate and the only difference that I can see is that the one on the west side has the word Premium in its name, but I can tell you this, both parking lots were chock full of cars on a Sunday early afternoon. Probably about 47,000 of them, which coincidentally matched the number on the Purple Whale’s odometer as we drove by.

It is the season opener for the football team the Purple Whales this weekend and unless Payton Manning picks up his game quite a bit (without involving Demaryius Thomas too much, who is on my opponents team) they are going to go down in defeat. It is going to be partly the fault of the owner (that would be me) because one of the wide receivers I had starting for me, did not start for his real team (that would be the Jacksonville Jaguars) and it was announced that he wouldn’t play on Saturday. I should have checked…

Thanks For Nothing

We got a letter in the mail a couple of weeks ago to let us know that there was another 2 week free trial of XM Satellite Radio coming up. Cool, I thought, that would give us something different to listen to in the Purple Whale on the weekend trip to Florida. The Friday before Labor Day on the way to work I punched the button marked XM and turned it to my favorite (and really only) station, #31 – The Coffee House, and got a few seconds of song, a few seconds of static, song, static, song. I punched the AUX button to go back to the USB drive.

In the past we have had issues with reception around home because of the copious tree cover, so I figured we’d try it again once we started the trip and got out into the farm land near Barnwell. Well, it wasn’t any better out there, so I went back to the recorded stream of Radio Paradise. I tried it one more time along flatland I-95 and this time it never even locked on the station, the display just showed “LOADING” for a a minute. Then I just gave up on it.

I don’t know where the problem was, my end or theirs, but where ever it was, getting 14 days of one channel of satellite radio was not reward enough to call anyone.