An easy end to a very nice year

Sunday December 29-Tuesday December 31, 2013
Oscar Scherer State Park
Osprey, Florida

 

 

No bugs, and cooler weather.

 

Since we arrived on Saturday at Oscar Scherer we’ve just been hanging around.   We’ve gone running twice to try to get rid of some of the holiday excess.  Or at least I’m trying.  David has no excess to get rid of.  He says he wants to get ‘back in shape’ whatever that means.  His running is good cardio exercise but he can’t afford to lose any weight.  As problems go, I’ll take that one. 

 

 

I have spent an inordinate amount of time just sitting on the patio reading now that I can.  What a joy to be able to sit outside and eat outside and not be constantly bothered by noseeums. 

The park has a nice rotating book library in the gate house and as you can see I have found a big stack of things to look over and possibly read.  I’m finishing up a memoire by Carolyn Heilbrun and then I’ll read 25 pages of each of the books I found and see which ones pull me in enough to read them through.  I love having a book in my hand, smelling the paper and ink. 

 

Oscar Scherer’s take one leave one library

 

 

The weather has been chilly in comparison with what we experienced at Sebastian Inlet and perhaps that’s why the bugs are worse over there although when I asked the ranger when there were no noseeums she said ‘never’.  It was lovely the day we arrived but we got here too late in the day to do much and the past two days the high has been 69 and the low 59.  I know, I know, hardly something to complain about but sadly for me not really beach weather.

 

 

It was a long trip to get good news.

The biggest and only event yesterday was a visit to the Moffitt Cancer center in Tampa for David’s 18 month check up.  It was a long drive, 80 miles one way, but worth it to find out that things are still excellent.   Red and white cell counts are still down which is a bit worrisome to me but the doctor says not a big deal and I guess he knows.  This was all a welcome relief especially since a former colleague of David’s was diagnosed with multiple myeloma just over a year ago and died this past month. The news was quite sobering.

 

 

In addition to running, we’ve done a bit of biking, up to the library twice, out to the recycling center with the “red bag” and around the campground though we haven’t yet gone out to do any of the 15 miles of trails that run between Sarasota and Caspersen Beach.  There is an entrance onto the trails directly from the park and we would have gone today but we were too tired from running.  We really are out of shape.  But biking is up coming on our agenda.  

 

 

We haven’t had pizza in ages and today I got a craving for it.

 

 

 

David had something else planned but I just had a hankering to send off 2013 with a home made pizza.   I was kneading the dough when he said “look over here”.  “Who me”?? Some picture. 

But the pizza turned out delicious.  We used our pizza stone but didn’t put the pizza directly on it.  We put the pizza on our regular pizza pan and put that on the stone to see if we could still get a nice crispy crust without the tricky business of getting the pizza on and off the stone.  Worked great!  We probably will never cook directly on the stone again.

 

 

While the dough was rising and the pizza cooking I went outside and cut my hair.  I actually like my hair long but I just can’t get through that stage where it hangs in my eyes.   So the flowbee and I had a date.  A couple of people commented asking what was flowbee when I mentioned it in a previous post.  I’ve put it in my blog several times but thought I’d do a set of pictures again for those who haven’t seen it yet.   I’ve been cutting my own hair, for better or for worse, since we went on the road.  I find that I don’t like the cut the day I do it but it evens out and settles down in a few days.  And then I love it. 

 

Before

 

I just turn it on, choose the right length of attachments for the length of my hair and move it all over my head with a bouncing type motion.  I stop, change the attachments making them shorter and shorter as I do it again and again until it’s short enough to suit me.  It layers my hair and puts the cuttings in to the tank on top of the motor.  No mess.  LOVE IT!

During

 

 

After

 

 

My “new year” started on the day that daylight began to increase but there is the calendar we all are tied to.  I am amazed at how fast the calendar year 2013 has seemingly flown by.  Is the warp speed with which everything happens now and our constant frantic attempts to keep up? Or is it just a phenomenon of aging that makes time seem to go more quickly?

 

In a contrary effort, we don’t have any New Year’s eve plans.  So it will be a quiet evening at home.  We had a very rough 2012 and are thankful that 2013 has been a wonderful year.  Hope yours has been too.  Here’s to a GREAT 2014!