After dinner on Friday, Rick and I decided to get out of the house for a while and to go down to the Marina. The Marina was crowded, but we were able to find a parking space in the lot, so that allowed us to try something new: a walk along Edgewater Drive.
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| A bench in Edgewater Linear Park. |
Edgewater Drive is, as its name implies, a street in Dunedin that runs along the coast of St. Joseph Sound. On one side of the street is the Sound while on the other side of the street are grand old houses with magnificent porches giving spectacular views of spacious, expensive yards and the aqua expanse of the Sound. Near the Marina and downtown, Edgewater Drive just has a public sidewalk with houses on the landward side and high-rise condominiums directly on the Sound; however, once one passes the condos, the street curves more toward the Sound, and the high-rise buildings give way to the high-tax district. Now the before-mentioned mansions are on the landward side, and the sidewalk begins to gracefully snake into a path on land called Edgewater Linear Park. Rick and I took a long walk through this Park, stopping to sit on a bench, to relax a bit, and to watch the sunset. We throughly enjoyed our time even though the wind was doing its best to blow Rick's baseball cap into the Sound. Timing is everything since we were able to watch a beautiful sunset before we walked back to the car.
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| Sunset over the Sound. |
Saturday entailed some shopping, cleaning, and hanging the picture frame that I noted in the last blog. We are happy with the frame, but anxious to have pictures of our new grandchild included in it when we come down in the fall. For anyone interested in the frame, I found this one three or four years ago through RedEnvelope.com. I recently looked at their site, and they still offer "gallery" wall hangings like this, although not exactly this same one. They actually have one slightly smaller than this one which also is great.
On Sunday, after church, we did our necessary shopping for the week. Since we only have three weeks left here, we are now in our "eat the 'fridge out" mode"-- that is, trying to put meals together so that we can use what we have in the refrigerator and freezer without having to throw out too much food at the end. Meals can get a little strange, but we usually do not waste too much by the time the weeks wind down.
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| Our big red umbrella is easy to spot on the beach. |
The weather on Sunday was beautiful with highs in the low 80's and a slight breeze. That's perfect weather for the beach, so after downloading some new books on our Kindles, we packed up the beach bag and headed for Sand Key Beach. Timing is everything, and our timing going to the beach was awful. Apparently, we were not the only people who thought a trip to the beach was a good idea, and traffic was backed up almost all the way across the causeway. On top of that, a red truck almost ran into us trying to get into our lane (don't they teach Florida drivers that the little stick thingy to the right of the steering wheel is a turn signal????), so the trip there was rather tense.
After we arrived, though, Rick got his blood pressure back under control, and we set up our big red umbrella at the beach. The girls bought Rick the umbrella for Christmas, but because of poor timing or high winds, this is the first time that we have been able to use it. It worked wonderfully! We would have been miserable, singed crispy critters had we not had the shade of the umbrella.
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| A "pirate ship" offers families tours. The crew are all dressed as pirates, and children have a blast. The beachwear on the beach is not always so beautiful to look at, though. |
We both got into our books and were enjoying the afternoon. I must say that the sights at the beach are something else! Most of the kids are cute, most of the teens are skinny and look good in their suits, and most of the above 45 group need to rethink their choice of beachwear! Some of the off-shore sights are rather fun, though, as the above picture shows.
Both Rick and I were engrossed in our books when suddenly I noticed a rapid, drastic cool-down. I looked up to see a rather ominous cloud bearing down on the beach. "Ah, Rick," I said. "I think it might be time to pack up and go."
He looked up quizzically, and I pointed to the sky. "Yeah, you're right," he said. We packed up quickly, and we could see rain off in the distance starting to fall from the clouds. We stowed everything in the car, made a quick stop at the restrooms, and we were on our way. Timing is everything. By the time we reached the entrance to Sand Key Park, rain was starting to sprinkle on the windshield. By the time we were a block away, the rain was falling so hard the wipers could hardly keep up with the waterfall coming from the sky. We are glad that we were able to get the umbrella packed into the trunk before it got wet. That would have been a very big umbrella to try to open and to dry in the house!
This morning after ordering parts out to fix the struts on our Toyota, we came home and decided to take a walk. We usually do not walk in the morning, but more rain originally was predicted for this afternoon. We have been watching a house on a corner in our neighborhood that has been vacant ever since we bought Gladys. This past year, a tarp appeared on the roof, so we knew that there were major problems with the house. Rumor had it that a sink-hole was involved, but we never found evidence of that; however, this house was definitely a foreclosure and it definitely needs lots of work. Timing is everything. On our walk today, we heard hammering in the distance and soon stood before the house (which was recently sold for $50,000) to watch a crew of five men just finish sweeping off the roof. The shingles (or tiles?) were gone, and two of the men were replacing boards (not plywood) on the roof deck. The numerous nails, we are sure, was to meet hurricane ratings to give the owner a break on his insurance in the future. We peeked in the back yard to see that the pool had been uncovered, so this will be fun to watch the progress on this house. I know if he could have, Rick would have stayed and watched them work all day.
This afternoon Rick mixed up a batch of cement and patched the surface hole in the back where the old dryer vent had gone through. He also did a couple of other patch jobs so that when we come back in the fall, we don't have to waste any time doing those patches. We can just get to the prep work and then paint the house.
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| Like all old ladies, Gladys needs a little patching before she puts on her make-up of new paint next year. |
Ricks final task of the day was to start to look at booking tickets for us to fly back to Wisconsin for Christmas. Once again, timing is everything. If we try to fly too close to Christmas, both flights and rental cars are astronomically high priced. If we leave too soon after Christmas, high prices again are a problem. We have to fly early enough to beat the Holiday rush, and we have to stay long enough to allow all of the people who HAVE to fly back to school or jobs to be on their way. Thankfully, retirement gives us the luxury of having options on when we fly. We'll choose times to fly that will work to our advantage, knowing that timing is everything.
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