11/19/23 We are still on the bear's feeding rounds

Hear a noise in the dark. Beeped the truck lights and horn to scare the bear away. Checked to be sure he was gone. Went looking for our garbage can.  

Found it. 

Now we have a new garbage process. If it would smell good to a bear and it's not garbage pick-up day, we double bag it tightly and put it in the freezer to wait for the next garbage day. Florida life!

Getting ready for a new adventure

It's been almost 8 years since we sold our RV and lately we've been talking about getting a small one. And now, we did it!

We don't anticipate doing a complete over-haul on this one like we did to our big RV. Just a few tweaks, get some travel equipment, and we should be ready to go. 

Since this is the best time to be in Florida, we'll probably wait until spring and summer to go traveling, but we are sure looking forward to this!!

Visit with Family

We drove up to Lake City to spend the day with Lance, Marla and Liam. Marla had researched what was going on in the area this weekend and suggested we go to a local place which sold pumpkins and good Mexican food. Sounds like a great idea for a Saturday so Lance drove us out there. We all agreed that the first order of business was to have lunch, which was even better with a milkshake!

Next we looked for pumpkins to carve. They have a ton of pumpkins here - rows and rows, and even a pumpkin house.

We picked out several and took them back to their house, where Liam started creating a jack-o-lantern. Lance cut the top off but Liam had to scoop out the insides. He thought he'd never get them all out!

Eventually it became a family event.

Liam was pretty happy with the results!

Randy didn't carve, he watched cuddled Dobbin and watched us get messy.

I even added my own modest little pumpkin!

 

The bear is getting to be a problem

About 8:30 last night I heard the sound of the bear wrestling with our garbage can! He was trying to maneuver the big rubbermaid can from the inside corner of carport to drag it out in front of truck, between the recycling box and a smoker, to get it out in the side yard. It was hard work but he didn't want to give up. I really wanted to go outside but that would not be smart, so I got  Randy up.  He'd gone to bed early that night but it didn't do him any good! He had the sense to use the truck key fob to beep the light and horn several times and still, when he opened the door, he got a glimpse of the bear making a run for it. 

We picked up trash, bagged it, and put it in the freezer. Despite the size of the bear, he's not very destructive. There was just a couple of bite marks on the can; then I remember how hard it is to damage a heavy duty rubbermaid can.

8:30 is pretty early for a bear to be making the rounds. Now I don't go out to put recycling away after it gets dark - it can all wait until morning!

New Furniture!

I've been looking for a nice bedroom suite for awhile and found one I really liked on Facebook Marketplace. It's a big set so we rented a U-Haul. I'm not much help moving furniture so Micheal from church came along to help Randy. 

The mattress was included but we don't need that so we'll try to sell it. I love love love this furniture!!! 

There was another dresser/tv stand that wouldn't fit in the bedroom, but it fit nicely in the guest room, where I promptly filled it up with camera stuff.

Korean Spa and Italian Market

Got a little time off today and decided to to treat ourselves to a Spa. The Shangri La Spa offers wet and salt steam rooms, massages, saunas, and spas/hot tubs. The hot tub areas are strictly divided between men and women because in Korean spas they are nude spaces. We learned this when we first visited a Korean spa in California so we were not surprised. Here the door signs repeated the message over and over - I guess some folks were hard to convince!

After we were finished at the Spa we headed to Mazzario's Italian Market. It was lovely and well stocked and we got pretty excited at the prospect of wandering casually through the place, then having a relaxing lunch. But as I was in line at one of the counters I heard a guy tell another customer that they closed in 5 minutes (at 2:30). I thought (hoped!) he meant that just that counter but he said, no, the whole store would close in 5 minutes. What?!? I whined that we had traveled over 2 hours to get there and he smiled and said if I hurried I could probably get waited on at the various counters. So I told Randy and he made some swift (and excellent) decisions about what meats to buy while I scooted back to the pastry counter and picked up a dessert.  We also got sandwiches which we ate sitting in our truck in the parking lot. We got some great stuff and we definitely want to come back when we can spend more time here!

Maybe next time we will get some of their Porchetta to try!

Well, that didn't work.

When I checked on the bluebird nest I found something that looked like plastic stuffed in there so I asked Randy to help me remove it. Yeah, he immediately knew it wasn't plastic.

It's a snake.

So no more baby birds. I'm sad about that but I can't hate the snake cause he's just doing what he does. 

Snakey was not happy to be disturbed but I kept going out to look at him all day beause how often do you get the chance to annoy a snake?

In spite of my interest he stayed in the birdhouse that day and the next. Probably too stuffed with baby birds to get out. 

Stupid snake.