So I promised that I would eventually post about St. Pete. This week has been busy at work but got a lot accomplished, so during the week I have been tired – and the weather has been mostly crappy, which doesn’t help. It finally became sunny on Thursday and everyone seemed to “snap out of it.” It is sunny now but meant to cloud up later today, so we’ll see. I plan to take the dogs geocaching…they really love it 🙂
Arrived in St. Pete last Thursday, Tim and Kate picked me up and brought Isaac along. He’s adorable and amazing. They dote on him, of course, and they really pay a great deal of attention to him. He’s only 3 months old, so that might change! They really seem to understand him…sometimes he cries almost uncontrollably and they say “oh, he wants to go for a walk.” As soon as they put him in the stroller and get going, he gets quiet. Amazing.
I was still a bit sick, so I didn’t hold Isaac too much and unfortunately I didn’t get a picture with him. Tim had to work Friday (works from home) and Kate was not working. Their Tivo had recorded The Broken Hearts Club so I watched that. Tim came through at one point and asked what I was watching. I said “gay porn that your Tivo recorded.” It’s not, of course, I just thought it was a funny remark. It turns out that they set their Tivo to record “recommended” shows automatically based on their viewing habits. I guess it recorded it because they record “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Anyway, it’s one of the best gay films made to-date, so I hope they watch it.
We did watch Garden State Saturday…interestingly enough there is a connection to Broken Hearts Club because hottie Zach Braff is in both. Garden State was a great film, and I recommend it. It also has a great soundtrack, including an old song from Simon & Garfunkel called The Only Living Boy in New York. Great tune, and I’m a little surprised I’ve never heard it before. It’s not on the Greatest Hits compilation I have, and I’ve never bothered to explore their catalog. You can miss deep cuts from great artists by limiting yourself to the compilation collections.
We did geocaching, of course. The closest cache to Tim’s house was about 2 blocks away – it was a 5 stage multi-cache. The first 3 stages were all in walking distance and the last two were a 20 minute drive away on the beach. Someone had recently put $50 in that final cache, but it was gone. I dropped off one of my Travel Bugs in that one. I think they enjoyed it and realize that many of these caches take you to neat places. We did a couple more on Sunday before I left and ended up a a palm tree arboretum and walked back along the bay and bayou and saw a manatee in the bayou.
The manatee is frequently in that spot, evidently because of a storm water drain that empties there, and he likes that spot. He’s there frequently enough that there is a sign warning you not to feed or touch the manatee, because manatees are endangered and if they lose their fear of humans, they will be further injured or killed. This woman jumped out of her car to watch and was standing right in front of the sign and said “let’s go get some lettuce so we can lure him over and pet him.” I think the biggest threat to these magnificent creatures is stupidity and carelessness of humans.
It was a real pain to leave 75 degree sunny weather and return to 39 degrees and raining. Fortunately, American Airlines did one of their increasingly common flight features, which is to have a late departure from the gate my flight is arriving into, so we sat on the tarmac at DFW for a solid hour, so that made arriving even better.
Naturally, as soon as I was able to get home and see James, I felt 1000% better 🙂
Current Mood: Happy
Current Music: “Underneath Your Clothes” – Shakira