Retrograde 4th of July
Alternate title: Every man needs a Kubota
As we were listening to the news and weather Tuesday night before going to bed, the weather woman was talking about a ‘retrograde’ storm system. She showed us on the map; normally our weather blows from west to east, but this storm was going to blow east to west, and then reverse and go west to east again. Going counter to the normal flow is ‘retrograde.’
Our entire holiday was retrograde. Which, for people like AdventureMan and I, is not too bad. It’s a good thing we married one another; we are not to good with same-same all the time, if things get too tame, we shake things up a little bit. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way we are wired.
One of the first differences was that we weren’t leaving early in the morning to drive down Highway 98 along the beach road; we were picking up our adorable grandson, going to his house, and as soon as our daughter-in-law got off work we would hit the interstate.
It all went well; cloudy skies but light traffic, all was well until we left the highway headed south . . . and started hitting the “Roads Under Water” signs. We didn’t see any roads under water until the car in front of us hit what looked like a shiny spot on the road and went almost a foot deep. AdventureMan cooly slowed and drifted steadily through the lake in the road – and we thanked God to be in a vehicle a little higher off the ground than a sedan.
After the lake in the road, it started raining, a little sprinkling, and then a steady rain.
The temperatures dropped.
Here is what we had planned – dinner with family and friends, a day of fun and heading out for sun downers on the boat to watch the fireworks on the 4th. Heavy applications of insect repellant and sunscreen.
Here is what happened – the deluge.
Here is what was cool about the deluge – the temperatures were the coolest, 24 hours around the clock – that we’ve seen in a month. We could sit out on the screened porch looking at the bayou, listening to the rain fall – it was heavenly! No insect repellent needed. No sun screen needed.
Our hostess is a wonderful and creative cook; unafraid to try new recipes. Dinner after our rainy drive in: Red snapper, baked in a crust of crumbs with butter and parsley, so delicious. Green beans and mushrooms; so good I had them for breakfast another day 🙂 Holy smokes, desserts. The best pound cake ever, topped with peaches in their own juice and whipped cream, or chocolate red velvet brownies.
It was a fabulous lazy day. In the afternoon, our friend got an emergency call; friends whose husband was out of town were facing a flooding situation. Loading up his Kubota, he and AdventureMan went over and (manly manly) DUG A DITCH! getting all dirty and wet in the process, coming home with those grins that only activities like a good hunting trip, a successful fishing trip or digging a good ditch can create.
We had great plans that night to visit The Blue Fig (“They have mohammara!” my hostess said, knowing my weakness) but when we got there, it was closed . . . and, oddly every restaurant along that strip seemed to be closed. And side roads were flooded, more big lakes of water in the roads. It had rained so much and for so long that the runoff had no where to go.
Our little grandson fell asleep while we were searching for a restaurant that was open, and slept in my arms through dinner. I know this might be the last time; he is getting to be such a big boy, so I just treasured the time and listened to him breathe.
I know it may not seem like such a great holiday to you, but it was fun. We focused on conversations and laughed a lot. AdventureMan thinks every man might need a Kubota. We listened to the rain fall on the leaves, the roof, the bayou. We listened to the frogs celebrate the 4th of July. We really had a great time.
Florida Man Shot in Case of Mistaken Identity
U.S. News
Suspect denied bond in I-4 shooting death in Florida
-
Published: July 2, 2013 at 9:32 PM
TAMPA, Fla., July 2 (UPI) — The suspect in the Interstate 4 shooting death in Florida was denied bail Tuesday and authorities now say it’s a case of mistaken identity, not road rage.
Jerome Edward Hayes will have another bail hearing next week, WFTS-TV, Tampa, reported.
Hayes is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Fred Turner, 47, Saturday. He turned himself in Monday.
His attorney described Hayes as a “soft-spoken, nice guy.”
“You take a look at him, you talk to him, he does not seem like the kind of person that could possibly commit this kind of crime,” Nick Matassini Jr. said.
The TV station said police have obtained the gun and car involved in the shooting. Investigators say Turner was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“The victim was mistaken for an individual who was involved in an altercation with the suspect’s friend inside the Gold Club,” Col. Donna Lusczynski said.
Hayes and a friend allegedly were in a fight at the strip club and waited outside for their opponent. But they mistakenly followed the wrong person, who had been in an adjacent business.
“Mr. Turner was followed from the location by the suspect to the interstate, where he was shot several times,” Lusczynski said.
Turner was on the phone with a 911 operator, telling the dispatcher he was being followed and had not done anything to precipitate a confrontation when he was shot, she said.
Andrea Coming for a Visit
Tropical Storm Andrea is dropping in, our first named storm of the Hurricane Season. She is expected to arrive along the Florida Gulf Coast this evening, bringing with her drenching rains.
Three Little Kittens
This morning, driving to the commissary, about ten feet apart on the highway, I saw the smooshed bodies of three little kittens. They must have been about five or six weeks old. I felt sick; I still do. What kind of animal would throw little kittens out the window of a car to let them die in terror on a busy highway? Who raises these people who could act with such cruelty?
I am a believer; I believe God put each one of us here for a purpose. I think we often misunderstand some of God’s intentions; I think sometimes we get it very wrong. I fantasize that maybe these little cats and dogs we adopt are really our guardian angels, who will speak up for us on the last days and tell the Lord Jesus how we treated his little ones. Imagine the punishment for hurting a helpless animal! Imagine the penalty for hurting an innocent, defenseless child!
League of Women Voters
My friends and I had an animated conversation about Florida politics as we sat around the table having a late breakfast at Adonna’s Bakery, down on Palafox in Pensacola. We were explaining how in the last election, if it were not for the voters handbook the League of Women Voters published, explaining exactly what a yes or no vote would mean for each proposed amendment, Florida would be stuck with constitutional amendments voters never intended to approve.
The League of Women Voters cuts through all the baloney and explains the issues, clearly and objectively. Without their clear, cool voice of reason, voters would be blown to and fro by the turbulent election rhetoric which blows at hurricane force during each election in Florida, obscuring the clearest issues. The League is neither liberal nor conservative, but contains members of all parties. Their goal is getting people to vote, and to understand the issue on which people are voting.
So grown up. So mature. So wise and clear sighted. Way too grown up for me, all these years, until, after that conversation, one of these friends sent me an invitation she had received for an upcoming League of Women Voters annual luncheon. As an added attraction, a local NPR reporter would be the speaker.
I hate meetings. It brings out the ADD child in me; I fidget, I wish I were anywhere but in the meeting.
And yet . . . this is a group I have long admired, and I want to support them. So I agreed, and we attended.
It was so much fun. These women – and men, about a fifth of the attendees were men – are people focused on ISSUES. They have study groups for how juveniles in the local area are arrested and treated in our jails and custodial facilities. They have groups which study the impact on the environment of legislative and local government decisions. They go to civic meetings, speak out, and report back to the League. This is a group of people who take positions and recommend actions! Exciting stuff.
You know I am a believer, so I might see things differently from you, or others, but I met some really cool members, people I believe I was meant to meet. One said wonderful things about my son as he practices his profession. There is no Mother’s Day gift on earth that means as much as the words she spoke, praising his ethics and integrity.
An elderly man sitting next to me was leaving this week to go to Heidelberg.
“Are you going for the closing down?” I asked, and told him I had graduated from Heidelberg American high school, lo, these many years ago. “Yes,” he replied, he has family who have lived there many years, and he has been back many times. It led to a discussion around the table, where I discovered two other women who had been in DoDs schools in Germany. What an unexpected blessing!
Every now and then, as you lead your life, you get the feeling you are exactly where you are meant to be at this very moment, and I had that feeling as I left the meeting. I am so thankful for the serendipity that led me there, and for the rush of blessings the meeting provided.
LOL, the group I thought might be stuffy and staid played this wonderful Lady Gaga video:
The Week Flew By
Yesterday when I got home from a day-long seminar on Heirloom Feathers (a follow up to another one earlier in the week on making quilts from Heirloom linens), with Cindy Needham, well-known expert and instructor, (that’s Cindy giving us an extra demo during lunch on how to do beading embellishments while on an airplane)
I found a huge bouquet of flowers from my sister and her husband, who had been house guests this week. It’s one of those gorgeous days we have a few of in Spring, warm and sunny, not too hot, and oh, this bouquet looks like Spring. Arriving home and finding this gorgeous bouquet just made my heart laugh. Can you see the Easter Bunny? We had time to walk and talk, to laugh and share stories, and we were able to take them to Five Sisters. We hope they come back soon 🙂
We’ve had a busy week. AdventureMan is getting ready for the big Expo and garden sale in May, we expect our next set of house guests tomorrow morning, and meanwhile, we have our normal daily busy lives to follow. Tonight we meet up with friends we love, people who spend their lives doing good for others, and with whom we always have great conversations, and tomorrow, early, we pick up the house guests, get them settled in, and share an Easter banquet with them, and with our son, his wife, our sweet little grandson and her mother and her husband.
I found a wonderful new Spring salad recipe to share with you 🙂 Very easy, very good:
Spring Asparagus Salad
Ingredients
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 1/2 pounds fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
Directions
1. Whisk together the rice vinegar, red wine vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, and mustard. Drizzle in the peanut oil and sesame oil while whisking vigorously to emulsify. Set aside.
2. Bring a pot of lightly-salted water to a boil. Add the asparagus to the water and cook 3 to 5 minutes until just tender, but still mostly firm. Remove and rinse under cold water to stop from cooking any further.
3. Place the asparagus in a large bowl and drizzle the dressing over the asparagus. Toss until evenly coated. Sprinkle with sesame seeds to serve.
Tomorrow is our happiest of holidays, the day that sin and death are defeated and HOPE for all mankind is welcomed joyfully into the world. Happy Easter, my friends.
Fifty Degree Shift
AdventureMan and I were up early yesterday, headed for early church, then he headed home to vacuum (God bless him mightily!) and I headed to the commissary. We expected house guests today, Monday, but they were coming by car and I had hopes they might arrive a little early, which they did.
As we were cleaning, putting away groceries, making sure the guest suite was in top condition, we could hear a symphony of buzzing, humming, clicking, sawing – we had the windows open, and with the temperatures in the 70’s, climbing into the 80’s (F) it was one of those irresistible days for yard work, and all the neighborhood was out mowing, trimming, weed-whacking, etc. We could hear the hmmmmmmmmm of air conditioners turned on, and the clicking of pool cleaners whirring and cleaning.
We treasure these rare days; warm enough to enjoy having the house open, to hear the birds and cicadas. It’s one of those days that energizes.
And then, the wind shifted, and grew cool. From the 80’s, around three in the afternoon, to evening, it dropped 30 degrees. This morning, it is in the high 30’s – a fifty degree shift! I hope the pool is warm at the Y.
Spring Break Hits the Gulf Coast
This last week has to have been the sweetest week of the year; running into all my friends at Home Depot, the cool mornings and the warm afternoons, it all makes you feel energetic, and you tackle all those projects you’ve been mentally lining up.
For me, it was painting the front door. I think it used to be red. It faces west, and the strength of the setting sun over the years faded it to a rosy rose. It needed to go back to shimmering red, but that takes patience, and more than one coat, and it takes a special day, cool enough, warm enough, and entirely without humidity. To paint a door, you have to have it open, and then it has to dry open, and when you are painting a door red red, you have to paint it more than once, even painting over rosy red.
Done. And time for a field trip to the Botanical Gardens Sales in Mobile, with AdventureMan, now in another career as Master GardenerMan.
It’s all good this weather, this time of year – until you get on any road leading to the beach, especially on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
Saturday, coming back from Mobile, there was a sudden jamming up as the cars went down into the tunnel running under the tip of the bay. As we are waiting to get through, we hear these banshee screams and yells, and my first thought, after years of living in the Middle East is “oh! it’s a wedding!”
No. No, I was wrong. It is no one’s wedding, but it does seem to be a major mating ritual, as colleges close for a week or so for Spring break and the students head for the beaches. These students were hanging out the windows of their cars – sitting on the window sills – waving bottles and screeching.
Animal spirits. I hope they packed their sun protection, and all kinds of other protections.
Seafood Platter Deli AKA Gulf Coast Seafood Deli on 9 Mile Road
“We’re going to drive ‘all the way’ out there,” AdventureMan tells me and we laugh, because ‘all the way’ is such a relative term. When we lived in Kuwait and in Qatar, we would drive a minimum 30 minutes to get to a restaurant, any restaurant, not only because of distances but also because of traffic, horrendous traffic, in the evenings. While the Seafood Platter Deli is 13 miles away, it takes us less than 20 minutes to get there. Welcome to Pensacola 🙂
This is a very unusual restaurant. It is so old-timey Gulf Seacoast, and at the same time, I thought as we entered “My Moslem friends would love this!”
Many of my Moslem friends think Americans are unbelievers. They think we don’t talk about God. They don’t know we pray – sometimes without ceasing. Just as I was astounded as I learned things about Islam and Moslem culture living in the Middle East, they were also astounded learning things about us, like that we take care of our families. Think about it – most of what many people in the world know about Americans comes from the impact of cable TV. They watch American TV and they think they understand American culture. Horrifying thought, isn’t it?
So how amazing is it to walk into a restaurant where, as you stand at the counter to order, and you look at the big menu on the wall, there is a stand, with a bible on it. And there is paper, and a pencil, and a sign saying “Prayer requests.” I don’t know about your restaurant experiences, but this is unique in my experience – in America. In the Middle East, there are all kinds of restaurants with Qu’ranic verses on the walls, and the sounds of religious services piped into the restaurant. People talk about God all the time. It’s a whole different world; and my Moslem friends would feel right at home in the Seafood Platter Deli.
Of course, in Saudi Arabia, we would rush to buy our pre-sunset felafels, and then sit and munch, listening to all the souk grates coming down as shops closed for the Mahgrib prayer. Everything closed, five times a day, in Saudi Arabia, for prayer.
At the Gulf Coast Seafood Deli / Seafood Platter Deli (I don’t know what the real name is, and both names appear when you Google it) there are scriptures on the wall. When you sit down, the little basket holding condiments tells you to “count your blessings.”
The interior dining room (as opposed to the deli section, and the counter where you order food when you come in) is wall-to-wall sea mural, family friendly, Fish and sea life everywhere. There are also families who pray when their meal is delivered to the table, before they eat. The wait-staff is patient, and personal. You get the impression they truly want you to have a good experience at this restaurant.
We were hungry. We are mildly disgruntled to see piping hot food delivered to tables around us who arrived after we did, but not very. Even though we are hungry, we know that our ordering our food grilled or blackened slows things up in the kitchen, where the majority of the meals are fried. It is really really hard for people like us to watch other customers thoroughly enjoying their fried shrimp, fried catfish, fried grouper, fried scallops, etc. They look SO delicious. Every now and then, maybe once every couple months, we slip up and eat something deep fried, just because yes, yes, it tastes so good, and we know it is like the WORST thing for us. What a pity that deliciousness can be so lethal.
Ah! There it is! Our meals! We tuck right in and then I remember “Oh no! I haven’t taken any pictures!” AdventureMan is used to this, and bless his heart, he stops eating so I can shoot what is left of his grilled scallops, so tasty and delicious, so fresh!
I had so much salmon on my platter that I had salmon and steamed vegetables for dinner, too! The salmon was copious, lightly blackened, seared on the outside, moist on the inside, just the way I love it. It was some of the best salmon I have had in Pensacola (not exactly salmon country, but that little Alaska girl still lives in my heart and I can’t resist salmon when I see it on the menu.)
There’s another thing we loved about the Seafood Platter Deli – remember Dembo’s Smokehouse? We love restaurants that honor their heritage, and the Seafood Platter Deli has this wonderful wall:
Last, but not least, the food was so good, and so plentiful, that we couldn’t eat it all and ended up taking some home. We also took home some dessert, one dessert, $1.99 for a goodly portion of Vanilla Wafer pudding, that old-fashioned kind, maybe Banana pudding. It was so GOOD, we wish we’d gotten two. 🙂
Gulf Coast Seafood Deli / Seafood Platter Deli
Address: 2250 W Nine Mile Rd, Pensacola, FL 32534
Phone:(850) 969-3299
We love this place, and look forward to driving ‘all the way out there’ for more fabulous Gulf seafood.
Satanists Plan Rally For Rick Scott
Don’tcha just love Florida? You elect a governor who barely escapes conviction of multiple counts of fraud against the government, who slashes funds to education and environment, and states Florida will not participate in Obamacare (he’s had to back off that one), and now, he is backed by Satanists, LLLOOLLLL! Found this article on AOL/Huffpost:
Florida Governor Rick Scott, who suffers dismal approval ratings, has at least garnered favor with one unlikely group — Satanists.
On January 25, the members of the Satanic Temple will gather on the steps of Scott’s office in Tallahassee as a show of solidarity with the Governor, whom they believe “has shown unwavering fortitude and progressive resolve in his defense of religious liberty,” according to a press release.
Specifically, they’re referring to Scott’s recent approval of Senate Bill 98 that permits school districts to allow students to read inspirational messages of their choosing at assemblies and sporting events. It went into effect on July 12.
“The Satanic Temple embraces the free expression of religion, and Satanists are happy to show their support of Rick Scott who — particularly with SB 98 — has reaffirmed our American freedom to practice our faith openly, allowing our Satanic children the freedom to pray in school,” the release continues.
The bill dictates that school officials are not permitted to mediate, approve, or participate in these “inspirational messages,” which expand upon the two minutes of silence for quiet prayer or mediation previously observed in Florida public schools.
Although the word “prayer” was axed from early drafts of the bill, the legislation was largely seen as a way to sneak religion back into schools.
Backers of the bill, who likely didn’t have the Satanic Temple in mind, might be surprised at the group’s tenets, which include a dedication to American patriotism, the golden rule, compassion, as well as family values, according to their web site.
The groups states that while they support separation of church and state in that it protects freedom of religion, they also note that “secular authority devoid of religious guidance is an abomination, and secular authorities should not be inhibited from receiving religious guidance regarding issues of serious moral and society-wide spiritual import.”
So where does Satan come in? The temple believes he is “God’s proxy” on Earth and represents the central role of knowledge and wisdom in life.
“Satan was the force of design that urged humanity toward refined pleasures of the Arts and Sciences,” according the web site. “It was He who first brought the fruit of knowledge to Humankind that thereafter we might live not as naked brutes in the wild, but develop our cultural splendor into ever more aesthetically and technologically advanced heights.”
Their gathering in Tallahassee will be a “satanic coming out,” temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves told the Miami Helard’s Naked Politics blog. “This is not a hoax. This is for real.” More than 100 members are expected to attend the 1 p.m. rally.
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