Darn(er)

Hi all!

I've given Y-Zee the day off so that I could give you a quick update myself.

Last night was our first night in the townhouse as a family. The cats explored everything and then spent most of the night curled up at the foot of the bed. They are both doing okay, but clearly spooked and unsettled by the new surroundings, needing lots of extra rubs and pets. Guess the same could be said of we humans, too.

We returned the RV this morning which involved driving into Tampa - only about 30 minutes from here and an easy drive. That done, Hubs took me to the most amazing Italian market where we had paninis and took in all the wonderful sights and smells. The place is called Mazzara's and it is at least as good as any Italian market in NYC - I will definitely be doing some shopping there!

I had my first experience pumping my own gas in about 20 years - NJ is one of only 2 states in the US where it is illegal to pump your own. I confess to bumbling around a bit before figuring it out. I also took my car through the car wash. It was dusty from the trip down on the car carrier (our driver delivered it around 7:30 last night).

Last night we found an amazing sushi place only about 5 minutes from here - I know we will be regulars there.

This afternoon after doing some work to get ready for the movers to come tomorrow, I took Big Daddy over to Lake Seminole Park which is about a half mile from here. First thing I saw was a snowy egret, flowed by a blue emperor butterfly (I think) and then a family of moorhens. But it was these huge darners that grabbed my attention - they were huge and zoomed all ing the edges of the lake, hunting. I took tons of shots, most of them crap. But several turned out reasonable well focused and hubs selected this one as today's blip. Not sure what type of darner it is - my FL dragonfly guide is in a box on the moving van. Sigh.

Tomorrow is going to be another long, crazy day so I may ask Y-Zee to step in again. As you could see from the last few days, he's keen to blip.

Happy Friday, good people.

Debbi, reporting from Florida