We arrived at Tom and Bonnie. They are Marlo’s friends that she kept from a former relationship. Hmmm, I guess that I am ok with that… Let’s see they are really nice people have a lovely house in Florida and best yet, they like me! The house is a nice Florida style house. It has three bedrooms, two baths, a beautiful formal living room with vaulted ceilings. The room that we will be staying in is lovely. A queen-size adjustable bed, that vibrates :> Besides Tom and Bonnie, Tom’s mother Millie lives there. She is 92 years-old, can’t see real well and can’t hear. She was pleasant and we have not heard much from her. She went to bed before we got home and got up after we left. Yes, she slept later then me.
Now the best part is the pool! We are talking about a remote control pool, hot tub combination all house under this wonderful screened-in lanai. A lanai you say, yes a lanai. It is a fancy name for a fancy screened in porch. Anyway there is a remote for the controls for the spa. Sweet! Actually there are a couple of issues because the builder didn’t completely finish. One night the tub was a little cool and the next night I nearly roasted Marlo… So, 109 is hot hmmm, oops…
So we wake up the next day and Marlo calls up her friends Tom and Linda. These are people that she used to mountain bike with. Well they really miss the people from up north. They decided to take a boat ride and invite us! Again I say sweet!!! We drive an hour north and meet them Fort Desoto.
This trip to Florida is really a trip to Florida… most of it. Well most of south Florida. We are hitting Tampa, Daytona, and later I will hit Miami, maybe South Beach, and definitely the Keys… back to our boat ride.
They actually come up to the beach at the fort and pick us up. Nice! It is a nice open boat. Probably 14 feet, but with a nice motor. They took us to this really nice beach on an island. Problem was that the sun did not cooperate. That was a mixed blessing. It was a little cool, but no one got fried crispy by the sun. I am pacing myself in that regard. We walked the beach found some sand dollars, saw three cigarette boats, and the remains of the fort. One of the boats did a HIGH-SPEED run across in front of the beach… all the guys got woodies :>
The fort was mostly collapsed. That is not the interesting thing. The interesting thing was that Tom and Linda’s friends Carl and Donna remember when the fort was not collapsed. It has only collapsed in the last ten years. Usually ruins are always ruined your whole life. Like I said interesting.
So we cruse around in these beautiful waters that look just like Aruba… but without the sun out. It kinda lost the effect . it was still nice. They even invited us out with them to dinner with her mother for Valentine’s day. It was nice, but we passed.
After the boat ride we sat and ate our grinder and chips. We took that time to exchange our Valentine’s day cards. Everyone all together now… awww :> then I reached into my pocket and told Marlo to look what I found on the beach and presented her with a gold heart with diamonds… again everyone awwwww….
We stopped on the way home and got 26 oysters for the price of 15 and when we got there Tom had a shirt on the said “Got Oysters?” and he had a big pot full of mussels on the boil. Sweet. But better then that, Tom bought a wireless router!!!! Now we have my kind of excitement!!!! Last night I was wandering the house with my laptop high in the air praying to the wireless gods to grant me connection to an open router… the prayers were answered, but I hate to beg!
Well, all of the computer stuff was in Millie’s room and she was asleep…. Grumble, grumble… I actually did grumble to Marlo… Bonnie said I could sneak in and hook it up, yea! I set the whole thing up by the pool and tested it out. Well this was the latest Linksys wireless N router that supported 802.11 authentications. Well that is not necessary or good. My computer would connect and then try to validate. Tom’s would try to validate before it would connect. I had to google the answer and disable the 802.11 auth per wireless connection… that means I had to attempt to connect then disable it. It took a bit to make it all happen. They were impressed with my computer prowess :>
Then I loudly asked Marlo if she wanted to hot tub later. She did, so we had to turn things on. Well, when I flipped the breaker I turned the heater up a bit… well it turns out it was a bit too much! It got to 109 degrees! Oops, apparently the 101 setting on the thermostat was meaningless… well it cooled off quickly so we did not boil. I even helped Marlo into the COLD pool. She was not overly appreciative of that… go figure… but you should have seen the sputtering when she came out… it was truly funny!!!! At least I thought so :>
Well now we are connected, the blogs posted, pictures posted, lying next to my girl on vacation in Florida… life is good!
Tomorrow is RACE DAY!!! Marlo is such a good sport and up for anything. This is my choice. The weather is not great. It is not beach weather, not water park weather, maybe everglades, but this works. Now we have never been to the largest gathering of rednecks in the world before so we are curious. I think it will be fun AND it is on my list of great things to do. New years eve, times square; the super bowl; the Kentucky derby; the world series, etc… just huge events. It just HAPPENED to be happening when we were nearby. This nearby that I speak of is, of course relative… we have to drive three hours to get there, but hey, it’s a lot closer then Middletown.