yeah, it’s getting pretty boring, as the temperatures climb way up to the 20s, then plunge again and today the high will be 10.
at least we don’t live in siberia. there was a little thing about siberia in the millions of hours of olympics on the tv, and my, it is a very very very cold and dark place.
somebody was selling fish outside. the fish was, of course, frozen solid. fish popsicles, maybe?
here’s a darling photo of chester on the first day of february.
and here’s me last superbowl sunday, in the bathroom at the st. louis airport. randy had said SENT TEXTS WITH PICTURES, so i decided to document the fact that i’d immediately spilled soup on the front of my t-shirt, without even leaving the airport.
we flew from st. louis to charleston, where we had to sprint through the airport which is very, very big. it looked nice, as i jogged past many shops. white rocking chairs were set out all over the place, which was much more homey than your usual airport benches.
we arrived safely in fort myers, rented a lovely car…a chrysler 200? it was beige, but when they asked me at the hotel desk to write down the make and color, i put silver, because i couldn’t even tell the color there in the airport garage. it was a little funny, a the car rental place, because they just let you go out and pick which car you want. they were all kind of alike, as far as i could tell.
i had carefully checked out our route from the airport to the hotel and realized there weren’t any close grocery stores near the hotel, so on the way there we stopped to buy a few necessities.
there was a restaurant right next to the hotel, called flippers, and it was completely open-air. it was only open til 9, i believe, so we threw our bags into the room and hurried down to eat.
we only ate outside the entire time we were there. it’s weird now to think of it; we were lucky because it never got below 70, and the temperature hovered in the 80s. it was unbelievable to be in such warm weather. it doesn’t seem so horrible now in the deep freeze, i guess because this is what it’s like in winter. well, not usually this cold, but cold anyway.
i booked the trip through hotwire and i’m pretty sure i got a good deal, because i booked it four days in advance. the plane tickets alone woulda cost a fortune, i think. when i booked this hotel i chose the “deluxe” suite instead of the standard one, for $10 more a night. the deluxe was 800 sq. feet, the standard was 600.
i realized when we got there that it was all about location. here was our view from our balcony. we were on the second floor, and there was the parking lot below us, even though we were on lovers key island which is a very small island and there’s water all around. i knew there must be water way out there on the left, but i couldn’t see it in the dark.
the inside of the suite was pretty deluxe, and if we’d wanted to cook anything, we’d have been set. no, of course we didn’t cook anything.
a big living room with a sleeper sofa where i slept. it wasn’t the worst sleeper sofa in the whole world, anyway.
a nice bedroom. mom quickly and neatly arranged all her stuff in there.
there was a big TV in the living room, and another in the bedroom. so that’s one more TV than we have in our whole house. i realize, though, that most people have more than just the one TV.
i don’t think we even turned the TV on in the living room at all. because mostly we were outside because IT WAS EIGHTY DEGREES!
the bathroom was ridiculously huge. we coulda had a party in there.
…meanwhile, at home it snowed and was cold and awful, and kevin sent me this photo.
on monday morning i woke up earlier than i wanted to, and took this picture while still lying in bed. i left the balcony door open, but the air conditioning was also running because it was very warm and humid.
it was a little foggy, and there were many trees in the parking lot, at least.
i brought enough exercise wear to go running every morning, but i only went that first morning. we got plenty of exercise the other days, hiking and walking.
that run was nice, though, even though i hadn’t been running in way too long. i ran down the little road from the entrance to the hotel across the big road to Lovers Key State park, and this is the view from the little wooden bridge i crossed on my way to the beach. that big bridge connects lovers key with fort myers beach to the north.
this is the view of the other side of the bridge.
and oh my goodness, this was my first view of the beach. wow. so beautiful, and there were just a few guys fishing along the shore.
i think this was a live starfish.
and of course there were many birds.
it was a great run, and now i wonder why i didn’t run more, but i guess it’s a good thing because i was completely exhausted the other days anyway, after all our many activities. they don’t call her bette go for nothing!
i ran along the beach and decided to cut inland on the way back, because it started getting really warm. it looked shady on the inland trail, and it was, sometimes, but then i lost that nice ocean breeze.
i would love to live on the ocean. in order to accomplish that i need to make a really large ton of money. JK Rowling did it, so i guess there’s some hope for me.
but of course not if i never actually manage to write anything besides me writing here, which isn’t exactly money-making at all.
but it’s awesome to go to the beach, anyway. really, really awesome and i didn’t even tell hardly anybody that we were going because i didn’t want people to feel bad that they were stuck in the cold and the snow and more cold and more snow.
this is the hotel from the road, as i jogged back. we noticed that in the late afternoon, a huge amount of white birds were perched in the trees there in back of that fountain.
palm trees everywhere…
behind the tree with the purple flowers is the restaurant flippers.
and that’s just the first little bit of our trip. more later.
in the meantime…well, it’s up to four degrees now, whoo hoo!
ok then,
mrs. february hughes.