August 27th, 2019

This past Saturday was Minock day August and you know what that means, right?  SuperFun!!!!

  It was Minocks choice this month and very wisely, they choose something air conditioned.  A movie!  Genius! Why didn't we think of this before?   This time 'round we met in St Petersburg.  (Florida not Russia).  Tim and I have been to the beach several times in St Pete's and therefore have driven through the madly insanely busybusybusy retail areas where it is just shop after store after restaurant after car dealership after tax office after...well you get the idea. 

Multiple lanes of traffic in both directions and the road sides are simply chockablock with one store front after another. It's almost overwhelming. I had no idea that there were that many stores in existence! I swear it seemed like every single chain store  and dhain restaurant and chain business that I have ever heard of in my entire life is somewhere in St Pete's in that area and then the rest of it is stuff I've never heard of.  There is a lot.

Frankly, based on that little bit that I knew about St. Pete's, it did not appeal to me at all.  Fortunately, this visit has completely turned my opinion around.  

We were not in that area. Thank goodness!  We were in an area I've never been before with lovely green spaces, and beautiful architecture and interesting restaurants and other very appealing buildings.  It was a lovely place to walk around. Absolutely charming!

We met at the theatre which was in yet another beautiful building. We saw the film, "Angel has Fallen".  It was very exciting. I guess it could be categorized as an action/adventure film.  It was a constant  bang, pow, wham!  One thing after another thing after another thing.  No down time to recover from any of it until the movie was over (though there was some surprising bits of  humour in it).  

Once we staggered out of the dark cool theatre into the bright sunshine we made our way about four blocks down to a restaurant called, Red Mesa Cantina.   It was Excellent.  Kind of uptown Mexican food.  Same yummy flavour but elevated both in quality and presentation.  And I loved the decor (as you can see from my photos). As usual I forgot to take pictures of the food because we were too busy scarfing it down!  

Afterward, reluctant to call it a day, we walked around a little more until we found a lovely place to sit in comfy chair, in the shade, under a large ceiling fan, by a fountain.  What?  Just random chairs waiting for us to plop our butts down so we could keep talking?  Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.  How cool was that?

So the four of us sat and yakked for a few more hours and before we knew it, it was late evening and time to head to our respective homes, them to the north and us pointed south.

It was an awesome day. It felt like old times.  Almost like all of the many many Sundayevenings that we spent sitting on their patio in Colorado just chatting and relaxing and laughing and enjoying each other's company.

We already have the September day tentatively planned YAY!   And bonus points, we even talked over some ideas for unspecified but agreed upon future Minock days!  YAY again!

Minock day continues to be my favourite day of the month!  Cannot imagine that will ever change ;)

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