Halfway thru our Pine Island visit... already?

Hard to believe it's already the 15th of December, and our month here is half done.  It seems like we're being a little more "mellow" and laid back on this trip - are we getting OLDER???  I told Dave we'd better get off our behinds and DO stuff because I have nothing to blog about!  Obviously we have to do SOMETHING every day, but quite a few of those days are spenting doing things like sleeping in, taking the dog for a long walk, Dave going on a bike ride, us going to the pool and then spending an inordinate amount of time deciding what to do for dinner.  (I do have to admit-the pool is quite nice and as long as you aren't overly offended or grossed out by a bunch of old people with fairly bad bodies, floating around on their swim noodles, it actually isn't a bad place to spend a few hours in the afternoon!  And the people are all very nice, I have to add.)

We did, however, make some new FRIENDS!  And, frankly, we don't do that very often because we kind of like our own company and we like our privacy and we don't really want to "adopt" people as we travel - in other words, we're anti-social!!!  But we met this nice couple from Indiana this week - their names are Tina and Ed, and they are very nice.  A couple years younger than us, but retired - he from GM, and she was actually a bank teller for about 30 years.  They just bought their rig last year and used it a lot this summer, going to a lot of state parks.  We love that of course, because we too believe in USING your RV if you have one!  We met Tina and Ed at the pool, and made a "date" to go out for peel-and-eat shrimp on Tuesday.  Of course, there is a "special" at one of the seafood restaurants in town (oops-I forgot the name of the place - I think it's something like The Waterfront or something similar).  Anyway, they have shrimp, either hot or cold, for 45 cents apiece on Tuesday.  We got 4 pitchers of beer, close to 60 shrimp, and this decadent dessert ( a deep-fried, coconut-dipped piece of cheesecake-YUMMY!!!!) all for $48-for the four of us.  And for us retirees, there's nothing that makes us happier than a good food deal!

Wednesday was our anniversary - unreal...I've spent SEVEN years married to "the Lokes" - and he's spent seven years married to me.  I'm not sure which of us should be commended the most.  No-I'm just kidding-we actually still really LIKE each other a lot, at least most of the time!  So, since I did NOT end up flying back up to Michigan, we got to go out for our anniversary and we picked this excellent Italian restaurant on the island (actually, in Matlacha) called Micelli's.  Of course, neither one of us actually ordered Italian...Dave got the ribs (check the picture-doesn't he look happy?) and I got the stuffed flounder.  Excellent!

So-regarding Michigan-since Chris decided to stay on, we ended up deciding that we should delay my trip up there until early January.  That way, we'll be through the first couple days of year-end processing, so maybe I can jump in and help out with that, plus our support person, Deb, can schedule a two-visit at that time also.  Hopefully we can spend some time strategizing about the ERP implementation and keep things moving even while I'm on the road.  I'm fine with waiting until January to go up, but am a LITTLE nervous about there being SNOW!  But I guess I'll just have to wait and see, and just deal with it if I HAVE to!

Yesterday Dave and I did an AVA walk - together!  This is my 57th AVA  walk, but up until now Dave just couldn't walk that far.  But now that he has TWO new knees, he's doing GREAT with walking.  We take Brandi for a nice long hour to hour-and-a-half walk every day or two, and he said he wanted to tackle doing one of the AVA walks with me-and those are 10K (or 6.2 miles!).  I picked the downtown Fort Myers one, which maybe wasn't the best choice.  It 's probably not one of the most scenic walks - I think he might have enjoyed Sanibel a little more.  But we did it, and he did really well!  It was really fun to have someone WITH ME-normally I do these walks alone (unless Cindi and Glennda are down for a trip, or I'm with Brenda) so that was a treat.  Little does he know that he set a precedent now and I'll be expecting many more of these in the future!

And last but not least, we went out fishing with Scott and Deb again today.  I absolutely LOVE being out on the water, on their pontoon boat, with the sun and the water and everything.  We had an extra special treat today, because we had a mother and baby dolphin swimming around by us for the longest time.  Apparently "mama" was teaching baby how to hang out by a boat and snap the smaller fish that the humans throw back into the water.  I snapped a bunch of pictures, but it's really hard to catch them because by the time they come up and I hit the button on my I-Phone and the picture actually "snaps" a second or two have gone by and they normally are already back under.  But I did catch them out of the water a couple times, so I cropped the pictures and am posting one.  If you didn't KNOW it's two dolphins you might not recognize them - but since you DO know, you can tell...right????  Anyway, believe me - it was SO beautiful to see them swimming together and coming up out of the water side-by-side.  And, we also saw a bald eagle sitting in the mangroves watching us fish - also a beautiful sight!  Dave and Deb both caught groupers - too small to keep but fun to look at - boy, they are really quite UGLY!  When we got back to Scott and Deb's house, we had a wonderful fish fry.  Deb was such a sweetheart and kept each separate type of fish apart, so we could taste the difference between each type.  We had kingfish, sheephead (which are wonderful tasting), pompano and sea trout.  They also had some halibut they had brought down with them from home.  So we had a wonderful dinner together, along with their friends Jim and Lanay (I have no idea if that's how she spells her name).  By the way, I have to add a comment regarding this last picture - when Scott and Deb come in from fishing, Scott cleans the boat and Deb cleans the fish.  Their fishcleaning station is right on the channel, so Deb attracts a lot of attention from the local birds.  She tosses the skin and guts to them and it's a hoot to watch them fight and scrabble to get their share.  Fishing, floating, eating:  it was a great day!










....But I can't end my post today without mentioning how heartsick we are over the senseless, horrible shooting of those precious little first graders in Newtown yesterday, as well as the teachers and others at the school.  We've watched hours of coverage of this tragedy and our hearts go out to all of the families of the victims.  How can such horror exist in the world????  We all need to tell our children and grandchildren how much we love them, don't we?