This and That

We have been so busy that I haven’t even had time to write our story. Gee retirement is rough. There have been so many things going on that I can’t even remember them all so I will refer to our January calendar.

I do remember that the day little Xavier was born we were with our friends Judy and Glen and their Grandson Daniel. We had planned on going out on the glass bottom boats at Silver Springs Park but they did not allow enough time to get here with all the stop and crawl on I-75. That week was the worst we have ever seen the freeway. By the time that we finished lunch we just drove over to the park to give them an idea of what it was like but they would have to pay about $100.00 for the three of them to go in and it just wasn’t worth it for the couple of hours of light remaining. They all came to our place and we spent the rest of the day showing them our little corner of the world.

Saturday we had a Bar-B-Q fundraiser at our clubhouse so that meant a lot of set up and clean up again. We collected a couple of hundred dollars and by adding it to the other funds we had earned, we purchased a big screen TV for the clubhouse. We didn’t have enough money for it but we put the balance on an interest free charge and will make payments each month until paid in full. It was important that we had this before the Gators played for the National Championship against Oklahoma last Thursday. It must have brought luck cuz the Gators won the Title. Gee these College teams are exciting. I tried to root the Vikings on to a win also but again, they didn’t listen to me.

We had a lot of diners out with our friends and a lot of campfires at night. Of course there are always snacks at these get together but I was very good and this week I lost a tad under 5 lbs. Boy this is hard work. Between eating rabbit food all week and exercising every morning, I am beat. It was worth it when I got into one size smaller jeans though.

Last evening a whole bunch of us went out for dinner (salad for me) and then we went to the main clubhouse for a dance. Again, we all had a ball.

One day this week we just took off by ourselves. We haven’t done that often enough lately but we started out visiting some of our friends from the MOC. Steve and Betty arrived in Florida the first of the year and are about 40 miles from us. They recently bought a new Montana Big Sky in the same model that we are looking at so it was really nice that they showed us all the great things about it. We just loved it and will be going to the Tampa RV Show on Wednesday to see the newest floor plans. Actually we will be going down there on Tuesday and staying overnight at the Hard Rock Casino so we can get to the show early on Wednesday morning.

After leaving Steve and Betty we went on a hunt for a good lunch. I was looking for seafood and we finally found it about another 40 miles at New Smyrna Beach on the East Coast. It was wonderful. Had we known we would be going to that area we would have contacted our friends Sandy and Ken who are spending the winter near-by but it was just too late in the day to call them. After a very late lunch, we drove North through Daytona and then Ormond Beach before we started home….We wound up coming home way later than we like since we do not like driving through the Ocala National Forest at night, but we made it home just fine. We did see one very large swift animal cross the road a ways in front of us and it was not a deer. We don’t think it was a bear because it was a lot bigger than that but it could have been a Florida Panther. There are some in the woods right in front of us that people have seen.

Ocala has been a hub of activity this last week because of the tragic death of Jett Travolta. John Travolta and his wife live just a few miles from us and they returned here for the funeral on Thursday. They are so loved in this area and have become great members of the community. You can find them many evenings at Target shopping or at the same grocery store that we buy our food. Of course there were a lot of celebrities attending the services that included Lisa Presley, Tom Cruise, Cal Ripken Jr. and many others. The Media was their usual disgusting selves. Security did a wonderful job of trying to give them privacy. I’ll take some pictures of their place after they leave the area but there is no way we will intrude at this time.

That catches you up a bit and I’ll see if I can do better next time.

Jan 11, 2009

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