August 16th, 2021

How was your weekend?  We spent our with Tropical Storm Fred. (see above)  Which really was much ado about not much. For us anyway.  Other folks might have gotten a bigger impact, in which case, I feel badly for them.  But for us, it was just a rainy gloomy weekend.  

Believe me when I tell you that I am NOT disappointed.  Having been through an actual hurricane or two, and hoping to never have a repeat performance, little old TS Freddie was a nice change of pace.

There was a lot of media build up for Fred's arrival.  Warnings of possible flooding and high wind damage, notification of sand bag stations open and ready,  lots of different projected possibly tracks and constant updates on the situation.   But here's the things about these storms,  they don't care about what the professional weather forecasters have to say, they do as they please.  And Fred choose to swing wide so we only were affected by the outer bands.  

Still it was a dreary, gloomy, rain filled weekend.  Every minute of the day was either:  about to rain, just rained, threatening to rain, or currently raining.  Which only meant that as we were out and about, I brought an umbrella, just in case.   No matter what plans we had, our solution is simple, go ahead and do whatever you were going to do anyway, just with some sort of rain gear OR find something else to do.

We kind of did both.  On Saturday we did what we would normally do.  We went out to breakfast!  We ran some errands,  spent some time with people whose company we always enjoy and had pizza for dinner.  The only change was that before we left, I moved my potted garden under the eaves.  No plant needs that much water.  Oh yeah, and we went to the beach.  Not our beach.  For a change we drove up to Sarasota for a very brief visit to Lido Beach.  

There were a surprisingly large number of people at the beach, but at that point, we were  only at the threatening to rain part of the program.  So we walked on the beach for a little bit,  used their bathroom - which is a trailer! - and took some photos.  There was very little splash, a few birds and poor lighting.  There was also some sort of food truck, I do not recall what. Ice cream maybe?

  As soon as we headed back toward home (which was very shortly after I took these photos) the skies opened up and poured. Which means everyone on the beach got very wet.  Not a big deal really, I mean, if you are dressed for the beach you are already wearing a bathing suit which suggests that you intended to get wet anyway, right?  Just watch out for lightening.  It is no joke.

Sunday was a little different, our only outing was pick up a few things at the grocery store, put gas in the car and to check out a new local restaurant called Brew Za Bagel.  Strange name, Yeah, I know.  It's beer pizza and bagels.  Their menu, which is all in chalk on a series of Enormous boards consists of a wide variety of bagels and cream cheeses, a lot of different kinds of breakfast bagels sandwiches, an even bigger variety of lunch bagels sandwiches and a lot of different kinds of pizzas.  Because it was still fairly early in the day, we opted for a half dozen bagels of different sorts.  I had the sesame bagel this morning. I didn't even toast it and I put nothing on it that might disguise it's bagel-ness.  Tim had the cinnamon raisin, toasted with cream cheese.  
​

Here is the low-down.  They aren't bad.  They are better than grocery store bagels by miles.  BUT, the big but,  they are not New York bagels.  Nothing else is.  Would we get them again?  Maybe.  We will definitely try out some of those bagel sandwiches in the future.

And of course, once again, we went to the beach.  It's kind of a requirement when, like us, you live by the beach. Gotta check out all of her moods.  Sunday was definitely  more rainy than Saturday.  We woke to rain and a big more wind.  So we were hoping for some great splash!  There was only little splash, but  that's ok.  There is no such thing as a bad trip to the beach.  The ocean is always beautiful.

There were also some low flying birds:

And, once again, a surprising number of people.  My guess is that they were vacationers and their thought process is something like, "I planned a beach vacation and so I am, by gawd, going to the beach!"  I say that because there they were setting up their canopies (struggling a little against the wind) and beach chairs, with their coolers and hats and beach bags. Good on 'em, I say!

On the way back from the beach we saw this guy on the side of the road:

We watched him for quite some time as he bathed in a puddle, drank the water and frolicked and splashed like a little kid.  Perhaps he was a kid.  I don't know much about birds, maybe he was a juvenile hawk, and not an adult.  Or maybe just a kid at heart.

Once we got back home we knew that we would stay put.  So it was an afternoon of puzzles, old movies, TV reruns and bbq chicken nachos.  Oh and a few tiny naps.  Nap-ettes perhaps?

The next Tropical Storm heading our way is right on the heels of old Fred.  Her name is Grace and who knows what she has in mind for us.  But that's ok.  The puzzle isn't finished yet, I can make other really bad for you but yummy food, we can watch other old movies and of course head back over to the beach.

As long as the hurricanes stay away, it's all good.