BLOGGING

Its been awhile since I've sat down to put together some thoughts...unimportant as they might be. Things around here are kind of boring, unless your talking about the lousy weather. Actually the lousy weather is the reason it's boring. Wednesday it rained all day and during the night we had thunderstorms. It didn't stop raining until Thursday afternoon. With the rain came colder temps and high winds. Low thirties overnight and just into the fifties during the day. Now the fifties wouldn't be that bad if the wind wasn't making the fifties feel like the twenties. Today (Sunday) the sun came out for the first time in the last five days. I know it's much worse up north, but this is Florida after all.

The weather keeps everyone in their RV's or away from the campground. We've never met our neighbors on either side of us. On our left is a fifth wheel where we saw a couple young boys the day we got here. Since then only the occasional glimpse of (grandma?). She seems to be there alone with no vehicle there in a couple weeks. On our right is a 46 foot Newmar RV. Newmar is the most expensive RV you can buy. The price tag is somewhere in the vicinity of $750,000. The occupants are a couple in their 60's. We've never actually seen the woman except in their car. They go away for the day most days. Parked next to this RV makes me feel we're in the wrong neighborhood. We've certainly brought down the value of that Newmar.

Speaking of the neighborhood, we are moving to our permanent spot tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it even though it means a lot of work tearing down and setting up. We'll be down much closer to the Santa Rosa Sound. Just three spots from the beach. We'll be right across the street from the only new people we've met (Russ & Beth Jackson). Diane and Jeff Bloss, our friends from last year will be in the spot next to us when they arrive in March.

Yesterday we attended Mass at our winter parish, St. Sylvester. Father Kelly is still the pastor. We didn't hear anything about a 'welcome snowbirds' luncheon like they had last year. Hopefully they do it again.

I think you know by now I've been working on a presentation to be given to the Grain Elavator and Processing Systems (GEAPS) group. I shared some of what I planned to say with my son Mark. I told him I was going to share some of my experiences with actually combining several rows of corn. Mark commented, "telling a group of farmers about your combining experience is like telling a firefighter that you've used a hose!!" I liked his comment so much I plan to share it with the real farmers! Thanks, Mark.

Till next time, "life is too short to stuff a mushroom".

jim