GRACE UNCENSORED

florida florida florida

there has been no sun at all today.  it started to rain a little bit when we were running, and it’s been raining ever since, and it’s just supposed to keep raining…

florida, a very blue place.  when we got back from driving down the keys, mom, kevin and i headed to the outdoor bar for happy bar.  this time we went to the little bar way out on the point, the one that lots of locals seemed to frequent.  the drinks were stronger there.

i kept drinking and then running out to take pictures of the pelicans.

i love that funny guy over the on the left, peeking out.

the pelicans love the live music under the pontoon roof.

the tide was way, way out.

here’s the view from the end of the bar.  we didn’t sit out there because it was a little too chilly…but now looking at it i think WE SHOULD HAVE SAT OUT THERE ANYWAY!

here’s the view facing the far bar.  i just realized that it’s red, blue and yellow, just like our bathroom.  perhaps we should serve drinks in there.  the problem with having such a beautiful bathroom is that i want to have a party in there, do some entertaining…but it’s the bathroom.  but it looks SO GOOD.  i just have to hang up a few more photos on the walls and then i’ll take many pictures so you can see for yourself.

i guess it was even a little bit cold there in the outside bar.  but nice.

ok then,

friday evening grace.

20 minutes…

that’s how far we ran (or shuffled) today.

we were running (shuffling) across the field and all of a sudden kevin was zig zagging along instead of going in a straight line.  i felt like we were running MUCH FASTER than wednesday.  i asked him why he was doing this even though i already knew the answer.  “it’s so we can still run next to each other,” he said tactfully.

HE HASN’T BEEN RUNNING FOR TWO AND A HALF YEARS.  HE HASN’T REALLY GOTTEN ANY SERIOUS CARDIO EXERCISE IN ALL THAT TIME EXCEPT FOR HIS MULTITUDE OF PROJECTS.  AND YET HE’S ALREADY RUNNING FASTER THAN ME.

as we ran up the hill towards home he was quite a bit ahead of me and i ran AS FAST AS I COULD in order to catch up…but i couldn’t.

i would like to say it’s because his legs are about twice as long as mine.

but let’s face, even though i exercise like crazy, he’s just a much more fit person than me.

oh well.  i’m just happy he’s running again.

even if he DID say “you haven’t been running fast because you need me to set the pace.”

here’s an incredibly cute photo that randy sent me of his cute kitty rupee.  she’s very cute except it’s hard to see that mostly because she hides almost all the time whenever anybody comes over.

randy has a lead in the musical “parade” which opens tonight at the hoogland.  we’re going tomorrow night.  break a leg, randy!

ok then,

still amazingly slowpokey grace.

CUTEST DOG EVER

i just can’t seem to get a handle on much of anything this morning, but i did take this picture of mollie who was looking so sweet, and so at least have to share that with you.

we’re now about to go running which i’m really not looking forward to because it’s cold and gray and just yucky outside.  but mollie is ECSTATIC, of course.

kevin went running with us on wednesday for the first time in 2 1/2 years - ever since he injured his knee.  things went well on wednesday except we only went for 17 minutes, and now i’m pretty sure he’s going to want to go longer which would be ok except for the yucky dreary weather.

PLUS, jim asked us about  how it was to run and kevin said, “it was fine, but of course we were just shuffling along.”

JUST SHUFFLING ALONG??!!!  I WAS RUNNING!  THAT’S HOW I RUN!  i guess i could have gone somewhat faster (if someone had been chasing me, maybe) but not a lot…

so now i guess we won’t go running right now, we’ll just be SHUFFLING ALONG.

ok then,

really really slowpokey grace.

INCREDIBLY CUTE KOALAS!

my aunt sandy sends me many, many different forwarded things.  sometimes they are DIRE WARNING, sometimes they are pictures of different things, mostly cute animals.  I LOVE THE CUTE ANIMAL PHOTOS, but none of them, NONE OF THEM, has been as cute as these INCREDIBLY CUTE KOALAS.

apparently it was so hot in australia last year that the INCREDIBLY CUTE KOALAS were really really thirsty, begging people for water.

more photos of greenery and sunshine…

we did have plenty of sunshine and WARM TEMPERATURES here yesterday, but things are still pretty darn brown.

this is kevin on our first day of vacation, enjoying the local cigar he bought at the cigar shop in key largo.

the next morning we started heading south, and came to this fabulous giant lobster.

it was in front of this souvenir shop which had a bunch of “artist”-type little shops inside it, but some of the bigger ones were just regular tourist places.  the complex was very cool, though - huge, with outdoor walkways in between the stores and lots of trees and flowers.  in one shop was a (pretty big) puppy sleeping under a table.  the owner said she was trying to train the puppy to sleep a lot during the day when it was at the store.  this didn’t seem like such a great thing for a puppy to do, sleeping all day, but the puppy woke up and was very happy to see me and i figured that it least it’s going to get lots of attention from customers plus it gets to be right their with its mom.

we kept traveling down the road and it seemed like things got fancier the farther we drove.  we stopped at this incredible place that i’d read about; it’s a huge sporting-goods store plus they have a bar upstairs as well as a big porch off the bar where you could sit if it wasn’t cold and very very windy.

it’s called the  WORLD WIDE SPORTSMAN, and here’s a picture i took of it but if you click the link you will see many very good pictures.   it’s a cavernous place with beautiful old details, like this brass elevator with stained glass inside.

here’s dad standing in front of the big boat they had inside the store - it’s not a replica of ernest hemingway’s boat, it’s a boat that’s almost identical to it that he rode on and decided he liked, so he had the pilar, his boat, made.  it was neat that you could climb up inside it.

and here’s what it looks like inside -

here’s another view of the boat and the store.   there was just SO MUCH fishing stuff, plus all kinds of other gift things plus lots of clothes…lots and lots of things.  like i said, if you click that link you’ll see many dazzling photos but i realize that clicking a link is sometimes too much for some people.  but it’s worth it, i promise.

here’s a small portion of the enormous fish tank.

i peeked out between the plastic sheeting they had up over the open-air windows around the upstairs bar to take this photo.   it was just so dazzling out there.

on their website are some good photos of the fancy bar.  we sat in there and had some conch chowder, or at least i had the conch chowder.  i kept having it whenever i could wherever i went because when will i ever get the conch chowder again?  it was very different every place i had it.  at this place it was a red chowder, and very tasty.  kevin had tuna salad, but it wasn’t like canned tuna salad, it was made with fresh tuna and it was delicious.

we could have all had cocktails, but since it was just barely noon we didn’t.

we kept driving, and got as far as Long Key.  we’d only gone about 26 miles from our b&b - if we’d wanted to go all the way to Key Largo that would have been about 93 miles, and would have taken at least a couple of hours.  we didn’t have any desire to go to Key Largo - in the guidebook it described it as the one place in the keys that was like a crowded city, and i had no desire to go to a crowded city, even if it was really just a little town.

we stopped at a little beach called anne’s beach, and it’s not even listed on google maps, but i did find the exact location on the map.  it was a beautiful little place, and we finally found a parking spot in the tiny little lot and took a walk down to the water.  there aren’t a lot of beaches in the keys, and there were plenty of people out sunning themselves.

we took a walk along a little walkway and a bird was standing quietly in the underbrush, doing a good job of blending in.

a man and his whippet were having a great time throwing a frisbee around, and i wanted to get a picture of the dog in action, but instead here’s a shot of the man in his plumber-crack stance.

it was such a beautiful drive, and i highly recommend it.

ok then,

thursday grace.

skier!

i was wondering what i’d take pictures of around here, now that the snow geese seem to be gone, as well as most of the other geese.  but then we were outside and THERE WAS A SKIER!

ok, so, sure, it’s warm and incredibly wonderfully warm today…but i wouldn’t want to be in the water.  kevin felt the water temperature and guessed that it was probably in the 50s.  not swimming weather.

i’m sure the skier was wearing a wet suit, and i ran up the hill to take pictures, but none of them looked as good as they appeared in the view finder.  this is the only one where you can definitely see it’s a really a person out there.

mollie had a very good day.  lots of frolicking.

ok then,

wednesday grace.

and…more pelicans!

in celebration of the fact that it’s going to be in the SIXTIES today, here are some more photos of key largo.

here’s yet another view of the water, taken from the edge of the property.  it reminds me of gilligan’s island for some reason.

have i mentioned that i love the pelicans?

around the bay were a bunch of boats - quite a few of them were ones you could rent from the hotel, but at least one was the hotel’s used for catching the fish for dinner.  the pelicans thoroughly enjoyed the boats.

i took this picture from up on the balcony outside our bedroom.  down there by the pool is this woman from australia.  dad informed us that the couple is australian because they were in the suite next door and the man was having a very long phone conversation and dad says he was almost completely unintelligible.

it’s amazing to me that it was just the two of them staying in the ENORMOUS suite.

here’s a closer view across the bay…

…and closer still.  we thought you might be able to walk out to that stand of trees, but it wasn’t actually land, it was just mangrove trees growing out of the water.

here’s the guy on the pontoon boat playing in front of the outdoor bar, and behind him is our suite.

and mr. pelican, enjoying the music.

this is one of my favorite pictures.  i want to print some of these out and hang them up, but if you’ve been to our house you know that we’re kind of running out of wall space.  i might have to resort to taking a few things down to make room for the new stuff.

ok, you might be thinking that we never left the place, but we did…at least a little.  here’s a giant propeller was saw when we walked down the street in front of the b&b.  it doesn’t really look like they’re going to be using the giant propeller anytime soon, and i wonder what it’s for.  maybe once they got it into the yard they couldn’t figure out how to move it.

kevin and dad on the huge screened porch.  the trees in back hampered the spectacular view of the ocean, but on the second day they came around and cut the trees, make the view sensational.  somebody said that they had been waiting three years to cut them, but it had taken that long to get a permit to do it.

march is going pretty well thus far.  too bad that next week i have to get my tooth pulled, thereby entering the hillbilly phase of my life.  lord knows how long i’ll have to have the gaping hole before they can put in the implant, which is just some big metal post of some sort that they’ll embed in my gum, then i’ll have to wait even longer for the actual fake tooth.  the time of the hillbilly.  too bad they’re not doing “l’il abner” somewhere, because i could be mammy yokum.

and i’m going to end the month going to traffic court to get supervision for my speeding ticket.  i’m having a horrible time trying to remember to SLOW DOWN when i drive.  i realize that i almost always speed.  no, not almost, I ALWAYS speed, except if there’s snow on the ground, when i drive only one mile an hour.  but i’m so used to roaring around way way faster than you’re supposed to go that it’s going to be difficult to change this habit.

i find it ironic that i was so happy that i didn’t have jury duty and somebody wrote to me, saying they’d love to go see a courtroom without being a defendant - and now i’m a defendant!  but of course it won’t be like a trial; i just read an article in the paper about “a day in the life of traffic court” and it said that there were 400 people there in the afternoon!  i’m scheduled for the afternoon.  it sounds like quite a scene.  too bad i can’t take pictures, but that’s probably not allowed.

i have to go outside now.  if it was working, we could put the boat in the water today.  there were some boats out there the past couple of days, and i bet there are lots today because of the crazy warm weather.

ok then,

springtime at last grace.

tuesday

ok, i changed that banner - this is the picture i wanted to use, but i’d just have to cut too much of it off to make it nice and long.  kevin took this picture with his phone and he’s using it for his screen background on his computer and it’s just such an awesome shot…

this was taken from our bedroom in the condo.  and by the way, somebody asked me the name of the b&b and i can’t believe i forgot to mention it - it’s called the dove creek lodge, and their website is Dove Creek Lodge, Key Largo.

even though this is my favorite photo, i’m also happy about the pictures of the pelicans.

ok then,

tuesday grace.

p.s.

i realize it’s time for a new banner - it’s WAY PAST february now.  must get right on that…

oh, james

what is james cameron’s mood this morning?  what did he do last night, after getting shut out of the oscars, after his ex-wife won for both best director and best picture?  did he get really drunk?  did he go home and cry, or did he smash things?

i’m pretty sure he didn’t cry.  he definitely seems more like the kind of guy who would get mad and do a lot of smashing of things.

after kathryn bigelow won for best director they showed james and he was clapping and he looked like he was genuine about it.

but they didn’t show his reaction when she won for best picture.  “the hurt locker” also won best editing, sound editing sound mixing and original screenplay.  that couldn’t have helped james’ mood.

when we were watching the awards last night amy said that james cameron was a horrible person and she was going to tell us a story about him during a commercial but then that never happened, and this morning i wonder what that story was, and how, exactly, amy personally knew about what a bastard he is.

during the show i kept thinking about when he won for “titanic”  he proclaimed himself king of the world.  when he won last night, what was he going to say?  i mean, where do you go from king of the world?  i suppose you could say you were king of all the universe and the galaxies beyond and infinity.  but that would just sound like bragging.

maybe he didn’t win because he really is a very big asshole and everybody in hollywood knows it so they didn’t vote for him.  i can probably read all about it right here, but maybe i’ll wait a while.

i thought steve martin and alec baldwin were pretty funny hosting together, but they could have been funnier.  i liked the opening number, with neil patrick harris singing and dancing. but then the program just went on…and on…and on…almost forever.  there were very many great huge dresses and i can’t imagine actually getting into a car in many of them.  i somehow doubt that the women in the enormous gowns wore jeans and carried the dresses with them.  jennifer lopez’s dress was particularly enormous, and you’d think it would have gotten crushed in the car driving over.  maybe she had to lie on her side, because the huge protusion was mostly just on one side.

ok, enough about that, bring on the pelicans!

first, this is the view from the balcony outside the b&b lobby where we had breakfast.

and here’s kevin enjoying a bagel.

pelicans, and behind them are the outside bars across the bay.  in front of the pelicans is a pair of crocs.  there was also a wet suit hanging on a railing - i think somebody from the hotel went out in a boat every morning to catch fish, and left their shoes there on the dock.

this is our suite.    that window up on the top is kevin and my bedroom.  below, extending halfway across the frame, is our whole suite.  it was HUGE.  on the left behind the trees is a big screen porch.  the b&b really looked like a small hotel, with only 14 rooms.  ours was the only one with a name, the key lime suite.

two smaller rooms on the right, and the lobby balcony on the left where we had breakfast.

i’ve never seen a pelican lying down, and i like that they look like giant meatloaves.

i’ve never seen a pelican so up-close before.

there were plenty of these birds out on the water…i just can’t remember their names.

this is my favorite picture, mr. pelican with his crocs.

this is the hotel looking from the dock.

and here’s the view looking out over the ocean.

i did take a few pictures of things other than pelicans, but not so many.  i remember that when we were in scotland i wasn’t happy that kevin didn’t take many pictures of the different hotel rooms…but i didn’t take ANY pictures of our vast suite!  it was vast, and very nice…but i really most enjoyed watching the pelicans.

i feel like i haven’t sat down since we got back.  maybe there will be some sitting-down in my future today.

ok then,

monday morning grace.