The St. Louis National Weather Service Office recently had a public photo contest.  The winning photo (below) is currently the NWS-STL Facebook profile picture.  Wow!

The rain has finally moved out of the area.  We had a total​ of 11 inches at our house in 6 days–7.5 inches over the weekend and 3.5 inches yesterday and today, with one day of sunshine between the two storm systems.

Most of the rivers in the area have crested; some will have an additional crest from yesterday’s and today’s rain, but it will be lower than the crest from the weekend rain.  Flooding in the area is pretty bad, and clean-up will take awhile.  We’re looking forward to sunshine for the next 5-6 days.  It will be a welcome change.

Much of the local evening news tonight addressed flooding rivers and road closings.  One reporter noted that all roads to a particular area were under water, leaving that area “landlocked.”  Of course, that reminded me of Inigo Montoya’s line in The Princess Bride.

 

We had a beautiful, sunny 66-degree day today for a change.  It was a short break, though:  the rain returns tomorrow for another two days, with up to another 2-5 inches forecast in addition to the 5-7 inches the same area had over the weekend.  MODOT posted a map of statewide road closings today, including parts of I-44, I-55, and I-70.  As the water rises on I-55, people were instructed today to decide which side of the flooded roadway they want to be on tomorrow, because it will be closed tonight.

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Someone played with FaceApp, and this is making the rounds on Facebook.  It’s as much fun as the Muppet Presidential look-alikes.

L -> R, top -> bottom:  Mike Pence, Ben Carson, Paul Ryan, Rudy Guiliani, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Mitch McConnell, Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions

After our 7.5 inches of rain over the weekend, there was a final sunset sprinkle that produced a rainbow.  The rainbow visible from our house was less spectacular than the one in the photo below submitted by a local TV viewer.

We’ve had 7.5 inches of rain in the last 60-70 hours.  The cold front has gone through and, although the normal high for tomorrow is 71 degrees, temperatures aren’t expected to rise above the low 50s.  The weather guy on TV said he wished it was February, so it would be warm.  At least we weren’t in the blizzard or tornado zones, like western Kansas and Texas.

It’s April, so we opened our swimming pool.  When I mentioned to several people that we would be opening the pool on April 25, they asked how I knew exactly which day we’d do that.  I explained that a crew comes out in the fall to shut down the water system and the pumps, blow out the pipes, and winterize everything; then they come back in the spring and reverse the process.  As a result, we need to schedule the day they come.

We take the winter cover off the pool the day before the crew comes and the concrete is always dirty around the edges where dust, dirt, leaves, etc. collect over the winter months.  Ted set up the power washer and I got busy cleaning the concrete.

The concrete to the left of the red brick trim is clean; the concrete I’m standing on is still dirty. Can you see the difference?

After the crew leaves and all the mechanical stuff is running again, we need to kill off algae that’s grown over the winter, re-stabilize the chemicals in the water, and vacuum the dirt off the bottom of the pool.  It usually takes about 4-7 days to finish the cleaning, stabilize the chemicals, and heat up the water.  This year we learned that some of the pool-opening work can be greatly reduced and/or avoided.

Vacuuming the bottom of the pool.

We usually open the pool when the air temperatures are warm enough to consider swimming, and we close it when the air temperatures are too cool to have fun in the water.  While they were here this week, the pool crew (the same guys who come every fall and spring) told us that algae cannot grow if the water temperature is in the low 60s or below, so if we close the pool after the water cools down to about 60 degrees and open it before the water gets above 60 degrees, it won’t be nearly as dirty.  (Our water was 68 degrees when we removed the winter cover.)

The obvious question:  Why didn’t they tell us this the first year we had the pool???  We’ll definitely try that idea next fall!

A television viewer sent this beautiful sunset picture to a local station and it was later posted on Facebook.  I feel peaceful just looking at it.

This is what my birthday could have felt like–but didn’t.

If birthdays keep getting better as you age, I’m going to keep getting older.  This birthday was so much fun that, instead of counting the candles, I kept on celebrating.  I had a half dozen lunches with friends, a destination celebration at Key West, a surprise weekend visit from our children, and finally, dinner at Bentley’s with Ted.  We saw beautiful flowering trees and spring wildflowers on our drive to the Lake of the Ozarks, our favorite server was on duty, and dinner was delicious, as usual.

It’s going to take something amazing to top this year’s birthday celebrations!

The view from the restaurant window while we ate.  The Lake is visible just to the right of the picture.

I haven’t thought about my physics classes for a long time, but I remember this little gadget.

The newspaper hasn’t moved for awhile and Ted’s head is slumped forward.  Is he sleeping?  “Oh, no,” he tells me.  “I’m just resting my eyes.”  Picture Jeff sprawled on his bed (while he lived at home) with his eyes shut.  Was he sleeping?  Not at all.  He always insisted he was “thinking of what to do next.”

Last week, I saw a bumper sticker that reminded me of Ted and Jeff.

Kari’s family invited Ted and me to their house for Easter dinner.  All the food was delicious (Who taught that girl to cook?  Oh, right–me!), and it looked so pretty on the table, I had to take a picture of it.  Dylan, a master of presentation, set the table and planned the serving dishes and their placement, contributing to the overall effect.  After dinner, there was conversation and sheephead.  It’s so nice to live close to at least one of the kids’ families so we can share times like this.

Lots of milk drinkers in this group.

Albert Einstein was born March 14, 1879, making him a Pisces like me.  I’m sure that’s only one of the many amazing things Bertie and I have in common.  Today is the 62nd anniversary of Einsteins’ death.  To honor his unparalleled scientific mind, here are some things he said on subjects other than science.

Tonight we went to Sky’s concert.  This is always an enjoyable evening for us.  The difficulty of the music and the kids’ improvement in musical skills is always noticeable from one semester to the next.  These kids are now old enough for competitions, so we heard some of the pieces they played at their festivals.  A few of the kids are even brave enough to play solos and duets, so we heard their competition pieces as well.  Most of the music was classical, but then the director asked, “What’s a concert without Michael Jackson?” and the orchestra played Man in the Mirror and Thriller.  Yes, an enjoyable evening.

I love that blue violin on the left.  What if the blue-haired girl played the blue violin?  (Arrow to Sky on the right.)

Here’s a picture my dad took of our family in the 1960s–maybe 1962-63?  Dad didn’t play “photographer” like Mom did.  He was a straightforward point-and-shoot kind of guy.  We used to tease him about his pictures because, more often than not, he cut off the tops of his subjects’ heads, but included their feet in his photos.  This time, he got all of our heads in the picture.

The sun is shining from low in the west in the picture below, so it’s getting late in the afternoon.  We’re all dressed up in our Sunday best clothes to attend Denny’s baccalaureate event.  I’m even wearing gloves!

L -> R:  Tom, me, Denny (back), Russ (front), Mom, Steve

Last night, Ted and I were at Wal-Mart and we saw happiness that lit up the entire store.

Mom, Dad, and their four daughters were heading for the checkout lane and each of the girls had a brand new bicycle!  The bikes were in assorted sizes–one small, two medium, and one large–to fit the owners.  The girls’ smiles couldn’t have been any bigger, and their eyes were shining with excitement as they each rolled a bike past the checker and then out to their van.  Lots of heads were turning to watch (it was like a bicycle parade) and people were commenting on how happy and excited the girls were.

It was already dark outside (about 8:30 pm), but I’m pretty sure there was going to be some bike riding in the driveway before bedtime.

Over the kids’ surprise weekend visit, I had a chance to spend some one-on-one time with eight-year-old Teddy.  Teddy takes after his mother (Kari), and talks nonstop.  Like his mother, he’s interesting, so this is ok and excuses the listener from the challenge of making small talk with a young child.  What always amazes me about Teddy is that first, his mind is always working; and second, it jumps all over the place in no particular order.  For example, when Ted watched Teddy one day when he was sick and couldn’t go to school, Teddy blurted out, “I just don’t get the Big Bang!  I mean, what started it?”  During the 30-45 minutes Teddy and I were together last weekend, some of the myriad of topics that came up for discussion in rapid order included the following:

* Birch bark can be used for paper, so if you would draw pictures of trees on pieces of birch bark and then put them together with pieces of wood for covers, you would have a book about trees made out of trees.

* I wonder if you can ever chew gum enough to make it disappear.  You know, like when you chew other food, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and then you swallow it, but gum always stays the same.  (I mentioned this conversation to Katie and she told me there is a gum that dissolves.  She had it once and said it was awful.)

* What if we didn’t have skin?  What if everything about our bodies–the organs and the muscles and the blood vessels and everything was still the same, but we didn’t have any skin to hold everything together?  Maybe we would have something rubbery and we would all be like robots.  (Demonstration of how we would move like robots if this should occur.)

* What do you think would happen if you put ice cream in hot chocolate?

* I think more men than women died on the Titanic because they put women and children in the lifeboats first, so fewer women than men were left on the ship.

* Kittens were saved from the Titanic.  Really.  This is true.  A mother cat had kittens in a lifeboat and they were saved when the lifeboat was launched.

* Maybe I could write a story about a Titanic lifeboat.  “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a lifeboat sailed . . . ”

Kari told me later that Teddy had to research the Titanic for a school assignment, so that explains why the Titanic came up repeatedly.  As I said, conversation is interesting with Teddy.  You never know what he’s going to wonder about next.

I guess I’m not the only one who thinks about what “Grandma’s house” looks like to outsiders.  While the kids were here for my best birthday ever, we were gathered in the family room for conversation.  During the chitchat, Jeff brought up something he’s noticed over time.

Jeff:  “You know how old people’s houses always look dark and smell funny?”

Ted and me in our thoughts:  “Is he talking about us?”

Jeff:  “Well, your (i.e., our) house doesn’t.”

Ted and me:  “Whew!”

I think with the new, non-yellowed microwave, the light, and the lack of funny smells, our house passes the visitors’ litmus test.

Friday night, Ted said he wasn’t too hungry, and asked how I’d feel about eating dinner a little later than usual.  Fine, I was reading a book, so I didn’t care.  We had a light supper around 7:30 and, just as we were finishing, the doorbell rang.  I couldn’t imagine who would be at our door at nearly 8:00 pm on a Friday night–a driver with a broken-down car?  a salesman?  a candidate for Tuesday’s election?  I could see a young-looking man and some other figures through the blown glass in our front door, so I decided it must be some high school kids with a fund-raising plea.  I opened the door and saw . . . my kids!  They had been working with Ted to plan a surprise birthday party for me.  I didn’t have a clue and almost started crying, so I reached for Sefton and snuggled my face into him.

Just the day before, Katie texted me a picture of Sefton and I texted back that he lives too far away from us.  The next day, she brought him here.

Jeff and Thom scheduled flights to arrive in St. Louis within minutes of each other around 6:00 pm.  Kathy and Annette arrived at Kari’s house in the late afternoon, and the plan was for the girls to pick up the boys at the airport, then come to the house to surprise me, after which we’d all go out for pizza.  (That’s why Ted was supposedly not very hungry at dinner time.)  Unfortunately, Jeff’s plane had hydraulic problems and he was delayed almost three hours.  The girls got hungry and decided to eat.  (Messages between them, Jeff, and Ted that I knew nothing about led to Ted’s and my late, light dinner.)  Ted and Thom picked Jeff up at the airport around 9:00 pm.

The kids and Ted apparently exchanged many emails/texts/whatever since late February to plan all this.  The first suggestion was to get together on my birthday weekend, but Ted and I were in Key West.  Not exactly hardship duty, and I was thrilled to have a destination birthday.  I had birthday phone calls from all the kids and not a single person gave away the slightest hint that anything like this was in process.  Everything was planned so that I could have a stress-free weekend to celebrate.  Kathy and Kari took care of the food preparation, and Kari hosted lunches at her house, as well as providing sleeping accommodations for Kathy and Annette.  What an awesome, loving family I have!  This was one of those times a friend of mine described as “pearls” in your family’s life.

Sefton was happy to see his Grandpa too.

Saturday morning included a trip to Paul’s Donuts.  Sefton didn’t seem to mind that his was a toy.

Three of my favorite boys:  Sky, Teddy, and Dylan.  Sky is almost as tall as I am.

As the hostess, I usually go through the buffet line last, but as the birthday girl, I was ordered to go first.  It felt a little weird.

When my plate was filled, I thought the food was so pretty, I took a picture of it.

Then I saw Dylan’s plate.  You can tell by the ring of green beans that he is far more artistic and more skilled at presentation than I am.  (And he likes bread!)

After dinner, there were birthday gifts to be opened.

Naturally, there was Vienna Torte–my favorite dessert–for my birthday cake.

Laralee’s sister is celebrating a milestone birthday in Arizona this week, so she and Jeff decided that Jeff would come to my party and she’ll go to her sister’s.  Alex is in Peru; Kyra is at BYU; Zack stayed home with La; and Julian was dog-sitting.  Dean spent some of the weekend with us, but couldn’t be here for the official birthday dinner.  Annette’s son, Ben, lives in the St. Louis area now, so he and his girlfriend joined us for some of the festivities, but not this dinner.  The miracle is that all four of our children, representing all four families, could be with us at the same time!

Here we are–all four of our children present.

Ted and I had pizza (delayed from Friday evening?) with Thom and Katie before we took them to the airport.

We are regular customers at this restaurant.  When they found out it was my birthday, the staff gave me a gift.  They “wrapped” it in a plastic cup and all the servers and both managers on duty signed the cup with birthday wishes for me.

Shocking!  It’s a glass with the restaurant logo imprinted on it!

On Sunday, Jeff left on a morning flight; Kathy and Annette left after lunch; Thom, Katie, and Sefton left after our pizza dinner.  I’ll bet the small, dark-colored duffle bag Thom is pulling holds his and Katie’s stuff, leaving the large plaid suitcase, the backpack, and the car seat for Sefton.

When everyone was gone, Ted and I relaxed outside at our firebowl.  The amazing, awesome, wonderful, fantastic weekend was over, but I’ll never forget it.

As I was driving home from my volunteer time at school today, I noticed that there was some road construction work going on ahead of me.

A little farther down the highway, there was another sign.

Luckily, the left lane was closed at the point where the highway expands to three lanes, so we could all drive down the center lane.

April Fool’s Day is not an official holiday, but it is celebrated worldwide as the one day of the year during which playful and mischievous behavior is tolerated and even encouraged.  The most important rule of April Fool’s pranks is to do no harm.  Jokes and pranks should not cause physical or emotional hurt to the recipients of those pranks.  Some of my favorite April Fool’s pranks include the following:

In 1957, the BBC News show Panorama featured a story about spaghetti trees that grew in Switzerland.  Video footage showed farmers pulling spaghetti strands off trees.  Following the program, people contacted BBC News to ask where they might purchase spaghetti trees for themselves.  Those who asked how to grow a spaghetti tree were told to put a stick of spaghetti into a can of tomato soup and hope for the best.

An early 1990s news segment on KSDK-TV in St. Louis also featured an unusual April Fool’s crop harvest.  Two of the station’s reporters were filmed picking marshmallows off trees in the Jewel Box (a display greenhouse in Forest Park).  The reporters gently squeezed the marshmallows to check for ripeness.  Miniature marshmallows were left on the trees to grow larger.

In 1997, an email message supposedly originating from the Interconnected Internet Maintenance Staff of MIT, announced that the Internet would be shut down to clean out the accumulated “flotsam and jetsam” of old emails and dead websites.  Readers were told to disconnect all devices from the Internet during the 24 hours between March 31 and April 2.  This was an updated version of the telephone-cleaning April Fool’s joke that warned users to cover the ends of their telephone receivers with plastic bags to catch dust that might be blown out during the April 1 cleaning.

In 1998, Burger King introduced the “Left-Handed Whopper,” specially designed for left-handed customers.  The bun was rotated 180 degrees “to ensure a better grip” of the sandwich.  Thousands of customers ordered the specialty, while many others requested their own right-handed version.

In 2000, Nancy, one of my co-workers at the college, was the target of a clever April Fool’s ruse.  Two of her staff members rushed to her office and breathlessly told her they’d just found out that the dance instructors had hired a helicopter to fly over the entire college service area and drop pamphlets advertising their dance classes offered through Nancy’s department.  (You’d have to know the dance instructors, but this was plausible.)  Nancy was horrified and frantically began brainstorming ways to stop this before her budget had to bear the expense of the helicopter.  Nancy was a good sport.  When she learned it was a prank, she laughed in relief and admitted her heart had nearly stopped when she heard about the helicopter.

Happy April Fool’s Day.  Have fun and do no harm.  ?

Lots of people are asking me about the trainings I was asked to do in India.  It’s been frustrating for me because, since the scheduled February departure date was cancelled, I’ve had no idea what comes next.

Today, I went to Dr. P.’s office to drop off invoices for reimbursement for John (my co-trainer) and me for expenses we’ve incurred (visas, inoculations, etc.).  Dr. P. and I had a chance to speak for a few minutes, which I appreciated.  He became ill on a visit to India in October 2016 and has never fully recovered from that episode.  He told me he recently returned from Chicago, where he was receiving some medical treatments, and that he is not yet completely well.

I asked Dr. P. if he is still interested in having John and me provide trainings for his teachers and he said yes, he is, but he cannot set a date at this time.  Since John and I both have some summer commitments, we previously agreed that we will not be available to go to India before September.  Dr. P. is amenable to this and said he will call me when he is ready to proceed.

I want to follow through with the trainings, and I hope I will hear from Dr. P. in a few months.  If this doesn’t happen, I’m sure I will find another way to help others through education.  And I can still visit India.  After all, I already have a visa and the necessary medical protection.

My new sewing machine is too large to fit in the cabinet that came with the 53-year-old sewing machine I replaced in December.  I don’t like working with the new machine on a table because the sewing machine surface is about 2.5 inches higher than the table surface.  I know.  People everywhere do this every day, but I don’t want to if I don’t have to.  I also like the convenience of my sewing supply drawers in the cabinet.

I shopped online and in stores for a new sewing cabinet, but didn’t like anything I saw.  Most of the so-called “sewing tables” simply had an opening in the surface with a sunken platform on which to set the sewing machine.  I couldn’t even find a decent “sewing cabinet.”  What I saw, however, gave me ideas for converting my old cabinet.

I measured my new sewing machine and my old cabinet and decided that there was just enough space to enlarge the surface opening to fit my new machine.  Then I could install a sunken platform, set my new machine on it, and sew with a flat table surface, my large leaf for the fabric, and my supply drawers.  I’m handy with tools, but I don’t pretend to be a finish carpenter.  Luckily, my network includes a cabinet maker, so I invited him to take a look at my idea.  He said it could be done and voilá!  Problem solved.

Here’s my old sewing machine as it fit in the cabinet top.  It could be dropped below the cabinet surface for storage.

To fit the new machine, my friend had to cut the opening wider on the left and on the right, and shorten the hinged piece at the front.  The width of the opening is now equal to the distance between the two upright side panels of the cabinet.  Whew!  It fit!  The machine is sitting on a platform, just as I planned.

Cutting the opening wider on the left eliminated the space used by the mechanism for the retractable arm that supported the leaf.  To compensate for this, my friend added a hinged support that folds flat when the leaf is closed.

I can’t drop the new sewing machine down into the cabinet for storage like I did the old one, but that’s a small inconvenience compared to the ease of working with all this level surface and having my nice, large supply drawers within easy reach.  The solid maple cabinet lives on after more than a half-century of use:  two sewing machines for its original owner and now, many years later, a new sewing machine for me.  Sew on!

I brought cookies to school today to celebrate my birthday with the kids I help on my weekly volunteer day.  They are all teenagers, so of course they’re always hungry.  Even so, they were very appreciative and repeatedly complimented me.  The most frequent remarks were, “Thank you,” “Did you make these?” and “Did you work as a baker?”

It was fun to bake a variety of cookies like I used to do before our kids left home.  While the kids were growing up, I baked about three batches of cookies every two weeks; now I make a half batch and it still lasts too long for Ted and me.  I split these 14 dozen cookies three ways:  some for school, some for Kari’s family, and some for Ted and me.  At least for a few days, while Ted and I eat our share of the cookies, we can enjoy the variety of flavors like in the old days.

Left to right:  carmel-filled bars with mini chocolate chips; brownies with raisins and nuts, topped with melted marshmallows and fudge frosting; TV squares (no reason for that name) with mini chocolate chips in a meringue topping.

The only thing I brought home was an empty (reusable) box.  I think the cookies were a hit.

There were a few things along the way on Ted’s and my Spring Break Road Trip that I found interesting, amusing, or at least worth a picture.

The Biltmore gift shop offered wall hangings with bits of wisdom.  Here are two of them.

. . . and we’re proud of it!

Never underestimate the power of new shoes.

The Cummer Museum in Jacksonville also offered gift shop-based advice.

Yes!  Groove like the King!  Forever!

On our way home, we stopped at a rest stop and couldn’t help overhearing a lady on her cell phone.  She was standing in the parking lot and giving an update to her listener.  “I’m not sure where I am.  I think I’m in Missouri.”  (She was.)  If she’d been in Mississippi, she would have had no doubt.  All the restrooms at the rest stops provide location information.

In case you’re wondering which state provided the bathroom you’re using.

The Blue Angels are garrisoned at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola.  When we pulled into a rest stop near Pensacola, we saw this in the parking lot.

Go, Navy!

The goal of the Spring Break Road Trip was to find warmer weather.  That didn’t happen until we got to Jupiter, FL.  Temperatures were in the mid- and upper 70s in Jupiter and in the Keys, but we finally hit the 80s in the Florida panhandle.

We had to travel 2,687.4 miles to get above 80 degrees.  The thermometer actually got up to 90, but I was zipping along on the interstate and it dropped before we reached a stopping point.

Now that we’re back in Missouri, it’s time for spring.  Twenty-eight days until we open the pool.

New Orleans was the last stop on Ted’s and my Spring Break Road Trip.  It’s been many years (1996?) since we’ve been to New Orleans and we were hungry for beignets.  We arrived in the city in the late afternoon and spent the evening walking around, enjoying the sights.  Yes, it was warm.

Our hotel was in the French Quarter and had a pretty courtyard.

The line to hear the Preservation Hall Jazz Band was a block long.  The sign above the door says “Preservation Hall,” in case you’re wondering.

It didn’t take long to find the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.  They were jivin’ in the street prior to their performance time in Preservation Hall.  (Drumming up business?)

The trombone player with the white hat is a PHJB member doing some impromptu jamming with the band in one of the bars on Bourbon Street.

It’s fun to walk up and down the streets of the French Quarter, listening to the live music coming out of so many open doorways.  We enjoyed that for awhile, but then got down to business:  beignets.  We’ve had beignets at Café du Monde on previous visits to New Orleans, but I don’t remember the Café being open 24 hours a day on our other trips.  Well, there’s such a demand for beignets that they are now available all day and all night.

This is the place–the home of the world-famous New Orleans beignets.  The open-sided outdoor seating was beautiful on this warm evening.

Two orders of beignets, please.  P.S. Don’t inhale before taking a bite.  The thick powdered sugar is a choking hazard.

Before heading back to the hotel and packing up for the drive home tomorrow, we went to the top of the levee and watched the Mississippi River flow by, then admired the night beauty of New Orleans.

It seems wrong that the river is higher than the city.  One year, we watched the Fourth of July fireworks from this levee.

The St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square was a beautiful evening sight.

In spite of the cold start we had, it was a wonderful Spring Break Road Trip.  The good times and the good memories are abundant, and a destination birthday was certainly a great way to celebrate.

With the Spring Break Road Trip on our agenda, I suggested to Ted that for this “special” birthday of mine, we make it a destination birthday and celebrate it on Key West.  I didn’t even have to twist his arm to get him to say “yes.”

Of course, we traveled on the Overseas Highway (U.S. 1) because it’s the only road connecting the Florida Keys to each other and to the Florida mainland.  The highway is 113 miles long with 42 bridges, and it’s scenic all the way.  It’s also slow all the way–think mostly less than 45 mph with moderate to heavy traffic on a two-lane highway and essentially no opportunities to pass a slower vehicle.  You have to switch to “island time” and just enjoy the ride and the scenery.  Add a major accident with a 45-minute delay, and we arrived hungry for dinner in Key West.  It was warm, and the tourists–including us–were out in full force.  There was lots of music and lots of action on Duval Street–the main drag.  The street is 1.25 miles long and extends across Key West from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.

We picked a restaurant called the Gas Monkey–whatever that means.  The food was good and it was warm enough to eat outside.  What more could we wish for?

It’s Key West.  Key lime pie is mandated, isn’t it?  I don’t usually like Key lime pie very much, but the real thing was delicious.

This is the second-most photographed spot in Key West.  The line to take a picture was a block long in the afternoon so we came back after dark.  Then we were third in line.

We took a conch (cahnk) train tour of the city and learned a lot of interesting things about the history and architecture of Key West.

Some of the high points regarding Key West’s architecture include:  houses are built with higher ceilings on the first floor than on the second to allow the warm air to rise higher; since the 1923 fire leveled the city, all buildings are required to have tin roofs; porch ceilings are painted blue to keep the wasps from landing on them–the wasps think the blue is the sky; “zigzag roofs” are designed to create channels to drain rainwater for collection.  There is no fresh water in the Keys; it is piped in from Miami.  Our hotel had a 50,000 gallon cistern to store rainwater.

A few highlights of Key West’s history include:  (1) The Overseas Railroad was completed in 1912 and destroyed by the Category 5 Labor Day hurricane of 1935.  The rail bed was later used as the foundation for the Overseas Highway; (2) A fire leveled the city in 1923 and burned so hot that people had to go into the water to survive the heat; (3) The Depression hit Key West so hard that 90 percent of the population was unemployed and people were put to work under some of FDR’s programs to rebuild the city.  The city was then destroyed in the 1935 hurricane and rebuilt again (no government funding this time), after which it became a tourist destination; (4) In 1982, Key West, aka the Conch Republic, declared a faux war on the United States.  This is an interesting and amusing story.

And that’s enough history.  Let’s get back to being a tourist.  It was my birthday, so we went to the starting point.  This is the most photographed spot on the island and the “Mile 0” sign is the most stolen sign in the city.  The mayor got tired of replacing it, so he added a video camera and promised that, if you steal the sign, you can “arrive for vacation and leave on probation.”

I’m going to start over counting birthdays.  This one can be “zero” and then I’ll take the advice on the sign: “Begin 1.”  (We did not steal the sign.)

Walking around the city, we saw Rick’s Bar (Casablanca), Sloppy Joe’s Bar (Hemingway’s hangout), Hemingway’s home, and Margaritaville (Jimmy Buffet).  We also saw an interesting sign on a driveway gate.

I think the message is clear, don’t you?

In Key West, they “celebrate the sunset” and it’s a big deal.  People start to gather an hour or more before sunset, so we joined them on Sunset Pier.

As sunset got closer, there were hundreds of people sitting, standing, eating, and/or drinking from one end of the pier to the other.

Key West = margaritas on Sunset Pier.

Live music kept us entertained while we watched the sun drop lower and lower in the sky.

Lots of boats gathered on the water to watch the sunset.

And then the sun went below the horizon.

After sunset, Ted and I had a delicious dinner followed by even better Key lime pie than last night’s.  It was a beautiful day and evening for a birthday celebration.  This one will be unforgettable and hard to beat.

After the Cardinals game, we drove to Key Largo.  I wish we’d have planned another day here.  It was warm and there were more things to do and more ways to relax at the resort than we’d known about.  Now we have an idea for a future spring break trip.

The weather was so nice, we spent the evening getting to know the resort and spending some time relaxing outside.  Then we found other things to do around the resort in the morning.

There was live music so we found a seat, ordered margaritas, and put ourselves into “island mode.”

I even got my margarita free.  Hahahahaha!

The conch (cahnk) shell is an icon of the Keys.

The resort pool was pretty in the sunshine, but more striking and romantic at night.

Island life at its best:  relaxing on a warm night in a hammock under the grass roof of a tiki hut beside the water.

Some of the resort property, complete with tiki huts.

Mmmmm!   Yet another way to relax while looking out at the water.

Where I would have spent a chunk of time if we’d stayed longer in Key Largo.  I wanted to swim out to the raft.

After lunch, it was time to board a glass-bottomed boat to seek out a coral reef in the Atlantic Ocean.

Here we go!

The water is beautiful green, turquoise, and blue.

Because of the type of water here, the coral is earth-toned in color.

We saw several sharks.

We returned through the “bowling alley”–an old, narrow, dredged channel marked by buoys.  It’s illegal to dredge in this area of water now because of the coral.

Mangrove roots are so dense that, over a hundred years, they collect enough sediment to form new islands.

We were in John Pennecamp Coral Reef State Park.  There were a lot of people enjoying the park waters.

Two years ago, Ted and I went to a Cardinals Spring Training game in Jupiter, FL.  We enjoyed it so much, we bought tickets to do it again this year on our Spring Break Road Trip.  Just like last time, it was sunny with a temperature in the mid-70s–a great day to sit outside and watch baseball.  We were hoping some flying objects would leave the field, and they did–twice.  Unfortunately, both were hit by the Mets and the Cards lost the game, 5-4.  It’s Spring Training, so no big deal; just being at the game was fun for us.

One of the things I like best about Spring Training games is that the stadium is much smaller than Busch Stadium.  There are only about 4,000 seats and no more than 20 rows.  We were in the eighth row behind home plate looking directly down the first base line.  We could see all the players’ faces and could even hear them talking.  I believe this is referred to as an “intimate” setting.  Whatever.  It’s more fun and more personal than watching from hundreds of feet away.

Here we are in cardinal red, ready to have a good time.

It wouldn’t be a Cards game without a full stadium and a sea of red shirts and hats.

Jhonny Peralto got one of the Cards’ hits.

Greg Garcia also got a hit.  He was safe at first.

The Mets had a sidearm pitcher.  He reminded me of Randy Johnson back in the day.

Tim Tebow, a former NFL player, decided he’d like to try playing baseball.  The Mets are giving him a chance.  He wasn’t spectacular, but he got a hit.  His jersey has a number (97), but no name because he doesn’t have a contract with the Mets yet.  If they keep him, will he get a new shirt, or will the team seamstress just add his name to this one?

Here’s Tim.

I can’t believe what good timing I had on this picture.  You can see the pitcher after releasing the ball, Matt Carpenter showing the bunt, the catcher in position, the umpire focused on the ball, the first baseman running into the infield to play the bunt, and the ball just in front of the bat.

Carpenter was out, but he advanced the runner.

It was a good game and fun in the sun.  We’ll have to do this again.

It’s not my imagination that it’s been surprisingly cold on Ted’s and my Spring Break Road Trip.  On Wednesday night while we were there, Jacksonville tied a record low temperature of 28 degrees.  The record was set in 1871–146 years ago!  Today, however, the car thermometer hit 73 degrees on our way to Jupiter.  We walked around the area near our hotel without jackets and ate dinner outside without jackets.  After eight days of travel, we have reached Southern Spring at last!

Our hotel is handy to the stadium for tomorrow’s Cardinals/Mets spring training game.

The hotel is the green building on the left; the stadium is the red brick on the right.  Yes, we’ll have to walk all the way across the street.

We arrived early enough to walk around in the warm weather for awhile before dinner, so we checked out the stadium and the nearby restaurant/shopping area.  The Cardinals and the Marlins share this stadium for spring training.  We talked to a resident of Jupiter who told us that when the Marlins play in the stadium, parking is plentiful, but when the Cardinals play, parking is hard to find.  Dedicated Cardinals fans fill the 4,000-seat stadium.

Here’s the main gate to enter Roger Dean Stadium.

We’re hoping the Cardinals’ batters will send some flying objects out of the field during tomorrow’s game.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day and the Marlins had a ball game, so there were lots of people in the area.  Many of them were in green St. Patrick’s Day t-shirts.  One street was obviously going to be the party street tonight.  There were games set up, sidewalk vendors, live bands, and lots of restaurants and bars.  There were also many policemen–I assume to handle the D&D’s that are likely this evening.  Families with younger children settled on blankets and in lawn chairs in the amphitheater area, leaving the party street to the party people.

The party street with St. Patrick’s Day revelers.  It was still early, but it was already very noisy and getting very crowded.

The family fun area, where the boisterous voices of green beer drinkers were replaced with the squeals of younger children.

When we decided it was time to eat, we selected a restaurant on a street filled with more “adult” diners than the party street restaurants and had some awesome bread, beef tips with fettucini, and peach melba for dessert.  Yum!

Our more sedate restaurant.  The empty table in the center was ours.

When we go to the game tomorrow, for the first time on our trip, we’re looking forward to wearing short-sleeved shirts and no jackets instead of long-sleeved shirts and fleece-lined jackets.  We’ve already unpacked the sunscreen.  Yes!!

We spent today in Jacksonville, FL (JAX) and we think/hope it was our last day of winter.  People in JAX have been telling us this is the coldest weather they’ve had all winter.  Well, thank you for sharing your cold weather with us!  We still needed warm clothing today, but it was sunny and pleasant outside–for late winter.  There’s another freeze warning out for tonight for JAX, but we are heading for Jupiter tomorrow and it better be warm!  Jupiter is just north of Miami, and that’s pretty far south for winter to visit.

We enjoyed our afternoon field trip to the Cummer Museum of Art and its gardens.  It’s rated as a gem by AAA, and we agreed.  We saw very nice artwork.

By the all-American sculptor, Remington, of course.  This piece is “Bronco.”

This is a picture of Mt. Washington in NH.  We were at the top of Mt. W. in October 1972.

This room displayed some of the modern art.  The photo at the left honors African Americans who struggled to achieve the right to serve in the military in WWII.  Notice the piles of old AM radios on the floor beneath that painting.

The portraits below were done by Andy Warhol.  They are:

Left to right, top row:  George Gershwin, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, Louis Brandeis, and Golda Meir.  Left to right, bottom row:  Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Sarah Bernhardt, Sigmund Freud, and the Marx Brothers.

No Campbell’s tomato soup can in sight.

The picture below is by Normal Rockwell.  I found the story behind it bittersweet.  The woman needs to go to the Mayo Clinic for some detailed tests, so she and her husband decide to treat the journey as a vacation.  They talk about it excitedly with their friends and finally make the trip.  The woman knows something is seriously wrong with her, but decides to spare her husband and keeps that knowledge to herself.  The husband finds out that his wife is seriously ill, and decides to keep that information to himself to spare her.  Shades of “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry.

This should probably be titled “True love.”

After viewing the works in the gallery, we went out to the gardens.  The azaleas were in full bloom and the designs of the gardens were beautiful to see and relaxing to walk through and enjoy.

The English garden.  Spanish moss is growing in the tree on the left.  The tree hasn’t leafed out yet–it’s been too cold!

The Italian garden.

This is a huge live oak tree.

And this is the live oak from the inside.  Live oaks are monstrous, majestic Southern trees.  I wonder how old this one is.

Between the museum and the gardens, we saw a wall decorated with fish sculptures.

After the Cummer Museum, we went to see Fort Caroline.  The short story is:  The Fort was originally established by the French, who hoped to develop the entire eastern Florida coast as a mercantile enterprise.  The Spanish came and massacred the French.  The French (not the dead ones) got mad and came back to massacre the Spanish.  After that, the Fort was abandoned.  My opinion:  This is a perfect illustration of the waste of wars.

There is written history of the existence of the fort, but no artifacts have been found.  The National Park Service has re-created a fort to provide a feeling for what things might have been like, but there are no claims of authenticity for the recreation.  Our tax dollars at work.

The fort is actually (and historically) triangular.  Speaking of no authenticity, it doesn’t look like any fort we’ve ever seen before and I doubt if it would provide much protection from any enemies.

The (non-authentic) cannon was aimed at the gate, not at the river.  I guess it kept enemies from getting in by land.  No gunnery was pointed at the river on the other side of the fort.  Definitely not authentic.

The farther south we go, the colder the weather gets.  I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work.  Sure, it snowed in Nashville and Asheville, but the temperatures were in the 30s overnight and in the 40s during the day.  Not to mention that the latitude wasn’t too far south of St. Louis.  Hilton Head, on the other hand, is in southern South Carolina and not only was it cool while we were there yesterday, but today’s high temperature was five degrees cooler than yesterday’s and there’s a freeze warning out for tonight.  We’re in Jacksonville, Florida now, and there’s a hard freeze warning in tonight’s forecast with the low temperature expected to be in the mid-20s.  Luckily, we brought plenty of warm clothes with us, so we’re having fun anyway.

Today we visited Okefenokee Swamp Park in southern Georgia.  Of course it was cool (low 50s), but the sun was shining, so we were comfortable with jackets.  The swamp is over 500,000 acres in size, so we saw only a small part of it.  Due to drought conditions, there was no water in the swamp rivers in 2007 or in 2011, resulting in several large fires.  There was water today, however, so we were able to take a boat tour.

The front end of our boat as we traveled down the Suwannee River.  The Suwannee and St. Mary rivers drain Okefenokee Swamp into the Gulf of Mexico.

Mirror Lake. .ekaL rorriM

A pretty view under a walking trail bridge in the park.Our guide could name every plant in the swamp.  Now we can name some of them as well.

Several varieties of water lilies are native to Okefenokee Swamp.

This is soapweed.  Our guide made his hands wet, rubbed the weed vigorously in his palms and produced a generous soapy lather.

These are the smallest plants in the swamp.  Look at the next picture to see some individual plants.

Ted has dozens of the plants on his fingertip.

This plant is called “never wet.”  It actually repels water and never gets wet.  In a swamp!

The green clumps in this tree are mistletoe, a parasitic plant.

The bald cypress has very shallow roots, so it grows “knees” to help support itself. The knees–the knobby things growing upward–can grow as far as 100 yards from the tree’s trunk.We saw a half dozen alligators.  None of the alligators was out when we visited the Everglades two years ago, so this is the first time Ted and I have seen alligators in their natural habitat.  We learned that the females are much smaller than the males.  The male alligator will fight and eat any other male alligators he encounters in his territory so he can have all the female alligators for himself.  We had a glimpse of a baby alligator in the water, but it hid in the plants while our boat was nearby.  Our guide said if you try to grab a baby alligator with your hands, it will rapidly bite you a half dozen times before you can let go.  Ouch!

The bull alligator on the left is estimated to be 110 years old and is about 20 feet long. One of his many wives (on the right) is about 35 years old and 6-8 feet long.

Look carefully. There is an alligator in the water.At one point on our tour, we got off the boat and climbed a viewing tower.  I don’t know how high it was, but there were over 100 steps to the top and we were above the treetops.  We had a small tour group and took pictures of each other.

Ted and me in the viewing tower.

Here we are in the boat.We had a very nice afternoon and enjoyed visiting Okefenokee.  We also greatly enjoyed our time in the Everglades two years ago.  Are we weird to like swamps?

 

20 pi jokes and puns, just for the fun of pi.

1  3.14% of sailors are pi-rates.

2  Never talk to pi. He’ll go on forever.

3  Come to the nerd side. We have pi.

4  Simple as 3.141592…

5  The roundest knight at King Arthur’s table was Sir Cumference. He ate too much pi.

6  The worst thing about getting hit in the face with pi is that it never ends.

7  What do you get when you take green cheese and divide its circumference by its diameter? Moon pi.

8  What was Sir Isaac Newton’s favorite dessert? Apple pi.

9  What is the official animal of Pi Day? The pi-thon.

10  A pizza has a radius z and thickness a. Its volume is pizza (or pi*z*z*a)

11  What is a math teacher’s favorite dessert? Pi!

12  The mathematician says, “Pi r squared.” The baker replies, “No, pies are round. Cakes are square.”

13  Just saw American Pi. I gave it a rating of 3.14.

14  In Alaska, where temperatures get below freezing, pi is only 3.00. After all, everything shrinks in the cold.

15  What do you get when you take the sun and divide its circumference by its diameter? Pi in the sky.

16  How many pastry chefs does it take to make a pie? 3.14.

17  What do you get when you cut a jack-o’-lantern by its diameter? Pumpkin pi.

18  What is 1.57? Half a pie.

19  What is the ideal number of pieces to cut a pie into? 3.14.

20  How many calories are there in that slice of chocolate pi? Approximately 3.14.

 

Thanks, Grammarly.

A few days ago, the forecast for today on Hilton Head Island predicted a high temperature in the low 60s with sunny skies.  The reality when today arrived was a high temperature in the mid-50s, cloudy with a few peeks of sunshine, and a 25-30 mph cold west wind.  In short, a blustery day.

It was too cold to swim or to sit on the beach, so we drove around the island to see what we could see.  A realtor’s sign told us we could own part of the foot.  We looked at the map and noticed that the island is shaped remarkably like a foot.  (So why is it named Hilton Head?)

The pink area is HH Island.

At the toe of the island is a lighthouse and a small specialty shopping district, so we took a look around.

The Harbourtown lighthouse.

The trees along the roads we traveled definitely had a Southern look.

Y’all come in and have some sweet tea now, y’heah?

After exploring the island, we went back to the hotel and explored the resort at which we are staying.  It has indoor and outdoor swimming pools.  Two women were sunbathing in swimsuits at the outdoor pool.  On a nearby chair, a man reading a book was bundled up in a jacket and a pool blanket.  Someone was wearing the wrong clothing.  Given the weather, methinks it was the two women.

The view from our hotel room balcony.

Part of the hotel’s beachside backyard.

We took a walk along the beach and then spent some time relaxing outside on the lee/beach side of the hotel protected from the cold west wind.

The beach was pretty deserted on this blustery day, but it was still a beach.  Yes!  We’re at the beach!

It’s a tough life.  I had to wear a jacket to be comfortable in a hammock at the beach.

Ted said this is the first time he’s ever been in a hammock.

Obligatory foot shot of Ted and me taking life easy and watching the ocean waves.

We finished the day with a delicious steak dinner and some very good wine at a nearby restaurant.  The restaurant was described as “swanky.”  The food and prices were swanky, but it’s a beach town filled with resort visitors, so diners were in very casual clothes.  Can a restaurant be “swanky” if the diners are wearing flip-flops and shorts or jeans?

Tomorrow we head farther south in our continuing search for warmer weather.

After clearing today’s snow off the car, we drove to the Biltmore Estate.  Guess what we saw on our way to the main house.

In honor of today’s three inches of snow.

The first sight of Biltmore is impressive to visitors as they enter through the gates at the end of the 2.5-mile driveway.

It’s not much (hah!) but it was home for George and Edith Vanderbilt.

We had lunch in the Stables Cafe, right next door to the main house.  It was really a stable.  The Vanderbilts kept their horses here in the 1890s.

Our table was in one of the stalls below the windows.  No horses were present.

It took six years to complete the major portion of the house, and many more years to finish everything.  It cost $5 million and has 175,000 square feet with 250 rooms and 65 fireplaces.  The fireplace in the library is 6 feet high and 10 feet wide.  About 60 rooms have been restored and 39 are included on the public tours.  Biltmore was a private residence with 125,000 acres of land (now 8,000 acres).  It was opened to the public in 1930 to help increase tourism in the area.  Biltmore is a working plantation with about 2,000 employees.  Some of the Vanderbilt family still live on the grounds.  It was designed by three major architects and was obviously the home of a very wealthy family (shipping and railroad money), but is not ostentatious.  It feels welcoming, warm, and comfortable.  Season passes are available to the public for $99 and allow people to picnic on the grounds and to use the estate trails for walking, hiking, running, and biking.  The season pass also allows admission to special events held at the estate.

We toured the house, the gardens, and Antler Hill Village.  Biltmore has its own winery (wine tasting and purchase available in Antler Village), greenhouses, and horticultural buildings.  We also saw horses, cattle, and fields of farm crops.  We spent nearly six hours at Biltmore and enjoyed every minute of the time.  It helped a lot that the weather was sunny with the temperature in the upper 40s.

This is the room I want to have–filled bookshelves all the way to the ceiling and all the way around the room, with a balcony to reach the upper shelves (see the railing).

Check out this ceiling.

This is a basement room called the Hallowe’en Room.  It has murals painted on all the walls.

The dining room table was designed to seat 64 people.  The room includes a pipe organ–for dinner music?

This is a part of the gardens where spring bulbs were beginning to bloom.

The grand staircase.  In one stairwell, Ted and I counted seven floors.

I must get a dress and headpiece like this.  Peacock feathers are so me!

Last night, the winter storm warning was cut back to a shorter time span with less snow accumulation.  We didn’t see any falling snow east of Nashville yesterday, and the warning was due to expire at 11:00 a.m. today, so we didn’t expect to wake up and see another three inches of snow on our car!  Now we’ve seen more snow in the last two days than we had at home in the last three years!!  Why did we think we should go south for some warmer weather?  At least it was sunny all day today and temperatures got into the upper 40s.

We hauled out the snow brush and cleaned off the car.  Again.