We arrived at Tom and Bonnie.\u00a0 They are Marlo\u2019s friends that she kept from a former relationship.\u00a0 Hmmm, I guess that I am ok with that\u2026\u00a0 Let\u2019s see they are really nice people have a lovely house in Florida and best yet, they like me!\u00a0 The house is a nice Florida style house.\u00a0 It has three bedrooms, two baths, a beautiful formal living room with vaulted ceilings.\u00a0 The room that we will be staying in is lovely.\u00a0 A queen-size adjustable bed, that vibrates :>\u00a0\u00a0 Besides Tom and Bonnie, Tom\u2019s mother Millie lives there.\u00a0 She is 92 years-old, can\u2019t see real well and can\u2019t hear.\u00a0 She was pleasant and we have not heard much from her.\u00a0 She went to bed before we\u00a0 got home and got up after we left.\u00a0 Yes, she slept later then me.
\nNow the best part is the pool!\u00a0 We are talking about a remote control pool, hot tub combination all house under this wonderful screened-in lanai.\u00a0 A lanai you say, yes a lanai.\u00a0 It is a fancy name for a fancy screened in porch.\u00a0 Anyway there is a remote for the controls for the spa.\u00a0 Sweet!\u00a0 Actually there are a couple of issues because the builder didn\u2019t completely finish.\u00a0 One night the tub was a little cool and the next night I nearly roasted Marlo\u2026\u00a0 So, 109 is hot hmmm, oops\u2026
\nSo we wake up the next day and Marlo calls up her friends Tom and Linda.\u00a0 These are people that she used to mountain bike with.\u00a0 Well they really miss the people from up north.\u00a0 They decided to take a boat ride and invite us!\u00a0 Again I say sweet!!!\u00a0 We drive an hour north and meet them Fort Desoto.
\nThis trip to Florida is really a trip to Florida\u2026\u00a0 most of it.\u00a0 Well most of south Florida.\u00a0 We are hitting Tampa, Daytona, and later I will hit Miami, maybe South Beach, and definitely the Keys\u2026 back to our boat ride.
\nThey actually come up to the beach at the fort and pick us up.\u00a0 Nice!\u00a0 It is a nice open boat.\u00a0 Probably 14 feet, but with a nice motor.\u00a0 They took us to this really nice beach on an island.\u00a0 Problem was that the sun did not cooperate.\u00a0 That was a mixed blessing.\u00a0 It was a little cool, but no one got fried crispy by the sun.\u00a0 I am pacing myself in that regard.\u00a0 We walked the beach found some sand dollars, saw three cigarette boats, and the remains of the fort.\u00a0 One of the boats did a HIGH-SPEED run across in front of the beach\u2026\u00a0 all the guys got woodies :>
\nThe fort was mostly collapsed.\u00a0 That is not the interesting thing.\u00a0 The interesting thing was that Tom and Linda\u2019s friends Carl and Donna remember when the fort was not collapsed.\u00a0 It has only collapsed in the last ten years.\u00a0 Usually ruins are always ruined your whole life.\u00a0 Like I said interesting.
\nSo we cruse around in these beautiful waters that look just like Aruba\u2026 but without the sun out.\u00a0 It kinda lost the effect .\u00a0 it was still nice.\u00a0 They even invited us out with them to dinner with her mother for Valentine\u2019s day.\u00a0 It was nice, but we passed.
\nAfter the boat ride we sat and ate our grinder and chips.\u00a0 We took that time to exchange our Valentine\u2019s day cards.\u00a0 Everyone all together now\u2026 awww :>\u00a0 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\u2026\u00a0 again everyone awwwww\u2026.
\nWe 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 \u201cGot Oysters?\u201d and he had a big pot full of mussels on the boil.\u00a0 Sweet.\u00a0 But better then that, Tom bought a wireless router!!!!\u00a0 Now we have my kind of excitement!!!!\u00a0 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\u2026\u00a0 the prayers were answered, but I hate to beg!
\nWell, all of the computer stuff was in Millie\u2019s room and she was asleep\u2026. Grumble, grumble\u2026\u00a0 I actually did grumble to Marlo\u2026\u00a0 Bonnie said I could sneak in and hook it up, yea!\u00a0 I set the whole thing up by the pool and tested it out.\u00a0 Well this was the latest Linksys wireless N router that supported 802.11 authentications.\u00a0 Well that is not necessary or good.\u00a0 My computer would connect and then try to validate.\u00a0 Tom\u2019s would try to validate before it would connect.\u00a0 I had to google the answer and disable the 802.11 auth per wireless connection\u2026\u00a0 that means I had to attempt to connect then disable it.\u00a0 It took a bit to make it all happen.\u00a0 They were impressed with my computer\u00a0 prowess :>
\nThen I loudly asked Marlo if she wanted to hot tub later.\u00a0 She did, so we had to turn things on.\u00a0 Well, when I flipped the breaker I turned the heater up a bit\u2026 well it turns out it was a bit too much!\u00a0 It got to 109 degrees!\u00a0 Oops, apparently the\u00a0 101 setting on the thermostat was meaningless\u2026\u00a0 well it cooled off quickly so we did not boil.\u00a0 I even helped Marlo into the COLD pool.\u00a0 She was not overly appreciative of that\u2026\u00a0 go figure\u2026\u00a0 but you should have seen the sputtering when she came out\u2026\u00a0 it was truly funny!!!!\u00a0 At least I thought so :>
\nWell now we are connected, the blogs posted, pictures posted, lying next to my girl on vacation in Florida\u2026\u00a0 life is good!
\nTomorrow is RACE DAY!!! Marlo is such a good sport and up for anything.\u00a0 This is my choice.\u00a0 The weather is not great.\u00a0 It is not beach weather, not water park weather, maybe everglades, but this works.\u00a0 Now we have never been to the largest gathering of rednecks in the world before so we are curious.\u00a0 I think it will be fun AND it is on my list of great things to do.\u00a0 New years eve, times square; the super bowl; the Kentucky derby; the world series, etc\u2026\u00a0 just huge events.\u00a0 It just HAPPENED to be happening when we were nearby.\u00a0 This nearby that I speak of is, of course relative\u2026\u00a0 we have to drive three hours to get there, but hey, it\u2019s a lot closer then Middletown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We arrived at Tom and Bonnie.\u00a0 They are Marlo\u2019s friends that she kept from a former relationship.\u00a0 Hmmm, I guess that I am ok with that\u2026\u00a0 Let\u2019s see they are really nice people have a lovely house in Florida and best yet, they like me!\u00a0 The house is a nice Florida style house.\u00a0 It has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-florida-2009"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7vq9N-2x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}