Friday

Well it was much the usual morning with Chester blowing his beak around 5 in the morning and after my quiet time I had the bowl of oatmeal with fruit before riding out on the bike for 2 plus hours of pickle ball. After the rec I stopped off and picked up a couple new reads and I found this new awesome author Larry Watson. He is really a down to earth author and writes about the most mundane occurrences with suspense and intrigue. After the library I headed home to work in the garden. I transplanted into the ground some new lettuce seedlings as my mature lettuce is just about all eaten and gone.

Amy and the kids along with GG came for lunch so Sam and I spent the afternoon in the back yard while the girls all took off to Amy's new rental house. I dug a few worms and that kept Sam busy playing with them and Chester through the fence. He loves to be outside with me and we have a grand time together except he is like Ava when it comes to flower heads as he loves to pull them off the plants. After the kids left I settled down and read for a couple hours before pulling 2 bags of collards greens for our good friends from Galax, Va, Ralph and Sara Ann. He is not doing well as he to has congestive heart failure; but they both love collards and mine are doing exceptionally well. I used a little Osmocote in the hole when I planted my seedlings last Fall and it really seems to make a difference as it's a time release fertilizer.

We went out to eat for supper with Dan and Carol and we wound up at a place called Toucan's in St. Pete. Reminded me of a Jimmy Buffet style place. The place was hopping with all kinds of folks and there was even a side room where you could for 2 dollars try to catch a Maine lobster with this little forked catcher( much like the type that kids are always trying to get toys with) that drops into the tank and then picks them up and drops them into a chute; all within 45 seconds. We saw a family catch 2 of them and the restaurant cooks them for you and we saw lots of misses as well. That was interesting. We had wings, fish and chips and fried shrimps. It was rather tasty and even though everything was fried we had no problems. I would go back again. I saw some old friends that were at Pap's funeral there as well and they told us about a special beer they always get so Dan and I had to have a glass and wow was it ever potent and the name was special as well, Golden Monkey at 9.5 per cent as it comes from a local micro brewery. Any how after eating we headed home to play domino's at their house and we met their new exchange person from Sweden, Maria.

Maria is working with the coalition that is world wide investigating the young girls that are captured and used as slaves. She will be staying with Dan and Carol for 6 months. Last year they had another lady who was here from Eastern Europe for a month or so who also was with this coalition. Very interesting and this problem is especially bad in the third world countries where many of the girls are brought here to the USA and exploited.

Well we headed home after Dan won in the last round, LATER