February 3, 2007

The big news coming up on the Oprah Show on Feb. 8th is the long awaited "Secret". My suspicion is that the Secret to life will be revealed to be the teachings of many of our prophets such as Jesus Christ, Buddha, Gandi, Yogananda, St. Augustine, and Billy Graham just to name a few. The Secret to a happy fulfilled life is very simple, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself". That is not to be confused with, "fearing your neighbor as you fear yourself". There is a big media blitz about this upcoming revelation as one would expect with Oprah involved. I like most of the Oprah shows. I don't see them all and some that I have seen have dipped into that awful sensationalism that so many of the talk show hosts of old have drowned in. There is a web site (of course) for The Secret and apparently a dvd if you are interested.

Today is farmers mkt day in Bonita Springs just north by 3 miles. I am going up for sweet corn and tomatoes. The corn is young with those sweet small kernals and the tomatoes are the best. Tonight we are going to a blue grass concert at the First Presbyterian Church nearby to hear The Barbarry Coast Jazz Band. There are 4 couples from our street going and we are sharing a pot luck supper beforehand. I will make a fresh mozarella, basil and tomato salad as well as the corn as my contribution.

We still have the large sofa in the crate outside on our patio. Now the dealer wants us to sell it. Posters are up. We are eager to be rid of it. What a deal - a brand new $1000 sofabed for a couple of hundred dollars.

I sent more Florida Sunshine up to my grandson who is at Virginia Tech yesterday. He said it was sleeting and cold there. He is working hard with a full credit load this semester plus the Army training, marching band, jazz band and regular band. While we were talking, he frequently excused himself for a moment. He told me that each time a door opened in his area, he had to stand up and salute. That's the Army!

I hope your weekend is a joyous one.

February 1, 2007

Lots of new units moving in today. This is the favored month. It is nice to see old friends again. Lots of wind today. ralph and I prepared to ride this morning with the bike club but I had a flat tire. We ended up taking the tire and tube to the bike shop, eating breakfast out and doing a bit of shopping at Target. I did finally go biking into the wind. It was a tough ride but good exercise and there is always the reward of turning around and letting it blow you back.

We are taking a lot of ribbing for the large coffin shaped box sitting on our patio taking up most of our space. It is our former sofa awaiting a pick up. I hope it leaves soon.

I went to Santibel Island the other morning with the Pelican Pete Pedlars. It was 39 degrees when we left Lake San Marino but warmed up nicely by the time we took the bikes off the vehicles. We peddled all around the excellent bike trails and out to the Ding Darling Reserve and museum. We saw a huge flock of white pelicans and lots of Ibis but no gators due to the cold temps. We ate lunch in a nice warm restaurant but most of the group ate outside in a picnic setting. I liked my warm clam chowder.
20 miles of peddling later we loaded the bikes on and set out for home. Long day but fun. I will try to post a group shot in the future. In the meantime, here are some others. Enjoy!