Practice

Dazed & Confused

If it's the weekend, forget it, there's no staying home in your slippers and watching TV.  This is The Beach, and strict standards for socializing are in force!  S slept until 8:30 am this morning, to give you an idea of just how intense the whole show has become.  Neighborhood feasts start promptly at 5:30 pm with appetizers and booze, continue with meals for 10-15 people, and conclude after Cadillac and dessert anywhere between 10 and 11 pm.  (Which dessert has lately been apple-something, since you know who bought themselves a bushel.  Or is it youknowwhom?  Dee?)  The householder of the evening is generally in charge of the big protein and maybe a side dish; everything else is schlepped in by the assorted guests.  Since we last wrote, our house has twice been the scene of one of these parties, most recently for Charlie's 72nd birthday.





In the old friends are the best friends department, Beach-A-Rama has also seen action, hosting some of the weekend guests for HarOLD's 60th birthday party, and having everybody over for Football Buffet during one of the season's Crimson Tide nailbiters.



Many of the local sustainable farms had tours one Sunday near the end of October, and we drove up to Bonifay to visit Renee's farm, source of our organic eggs, chickens, and--big anticipation here--our Thanksgiving duck.  Because many farms were visited by some folks, it was necessary for guests to dip the soles of their shoes in sanitizer before crossing the threshold: E's fave sight was the disinfection of a wagon in which a toddler was being pulled.

In addition to a number of repeat restaurant experiences (Smiling Fish, Harbor Docs, Pig Alley, Thai Elephant), we tried some new places: La Cocina in Rosemary Beach with a bunch of they neighbs (not a do-again, alas, tho it's very pretty in a how-can-we-make-something-new-that's-been-manufactured-in-North Carolina-look-like-a-Mexican-antique-sort-of-way) and the carry-out/deli-style Destin Ice, which was Just Fine.  Handy enough that it's likely we'll go back.

With the return of our neighbors, Squeaky's surrogate caretakers, we were able to leave home for the first time since April: Biloxi here we come!  While we didn't have any spectacular luck at the casino, we didn't lose ALL of our money, and S had what she proclaimed was one of the culinary events of her lifetime--and at the Imperial Palace buffet, to boot!  Best Pho broth imaginable!

Hoping not to go so long next summer without leaving town, we looked after Billye's FOUR cats for a week, visiting every afternoon with a thermos of coffee and our Skip-Bo cards, hanging out with Jake, Josh, Cydney and the ineffable Toby, aka Mr. Debonair.  Four plates of catfood will really perfume the air--that's all we're saying....

For our second tropical storm, Ida, we had the presence of mind to take down the bells on our porch, so weren't awake ALL night.  The storm's landfall was more than a hundred miles away, so relative to Claudette, things were calmer here.  But STILL the wind found the one place in the roof or a soffit that is not perfectly secured, so there was a tiny dripping for several hours right next to poor E's head...



We hosted Bunco for twelve people: having procured a punch bowl at the Indoo(r) Flea Market for this express purpose, we concocted a tasty cranberry punch (next to which we posted a gigantic bottle of vodka), made myriad tasty snacks, and had a hilarious party, successful in more than one respect, because E won the Most Bunco prize of $25.  Oddly enough, the biggest hit of the night might have been the Publix gumdrops.

Things on their way out:

Things on their way in:

And a fond memory:

Where the Hell have we Been?

We're looking at 6 days of non-stop rip-roaring activity--but we have yet to report on the past couple of weeks. Aiiyyy! Consider this a build-your-own-adventure posting, and we hope to get back on track in November...

We had a grand visit with Von, laughed SO HARD, and had a blast flying around the Wii Sport Resort islands. Upon one of which, Von now has a little house.

Tons of neighborhood peeps were in town for the HOA meeting, and predictable amounts of partying ensued.



And finally, our sweet Ms. Squeak was the NW Florida Daily News Pet of the Day. It's a measure of our integration into panhandle life that two locals sent us emails about our kitten's fame before we even opened the paper.

Oops, and don't forget: E's birthday is this Friday: Ray Roo!

We're Too Beat to Blog

The retired-old-lady social whirlwind goes like this: 1) we invited 5 people to pot roast dinner on Friday: 9 people sat down to the table, repeating the phenomenon of the loaves and the fishes. A game of Cadillac followed. That was last weekend. 2) This weekend, we played mahjongg all afternoon Friday, and were invited to stay for pizza and play Cadillac, however members of our tai chi class finally got a bunco game together, so we ventured out of the neighborhood, drove to Mallet Bayou in Freeport, and played 22 rounds of bunco with a whole new set of ladies. It took forever, and S knocked over a lamp, but E won the "rubber duck" prize by rolling the last bunco of the evening, so we came home with as much money as we took. 3) Saturday, we ran to the grocery and bought supplies with which to make a rum cake, our contribution to "Cuban Night," a party Wendi intended to use as a vehicle for showing off her brand new kitchen. But since the entire ground floor of her and Pete's house was completely ruined by a burst pipe that gushed for two weeks, she instead showed off her incredible resilience by whomping up a grand meal on her grill and serving it at Susan's house. Which meal was preceded by margaritas in 1-gallon glasses (see Billye and E eyeing their first, above) and concluded with a round of "semi-sober" Cadillac. Neither of us has yet won this damn game.

In other news, Wayne, our neighbor across the street, went out to sea and brought us back a skinned and filleted King Mackerel, a big fish from which we've already had a couple of meals (fish tacos and a nice grilled steak). We've been to the eye doctor and gotten the scoop on our cataracts: the guy told E it was good she had them or else she'd be dead! (The drift being that once you're over 60, boink!) S got no such story, just the count. And the big YOLO (You Only Live Once) board Stand Up and Paddle race was held at Seaside. We snagged a cool pic from the SoWal blog, but as of this writing, we can't get the page to accept a reformatting that will include it, so BAH!

Now we're looking forward to a tag-team of visitors: Harold & Petra -- and then Von. And a break in the weather, any minute now . . .

Fauna

Folks! We're in the midst of a retired-old-lady social whirlwind. Too bizzy to report our own doings! So we offer you some cool views into the local ecosystem, little videos we've found engaging, something to entertain you until calm is restored.

Check out this link for sure, the red wolves of south Walton county!

http://www.ubu-online.com/the_pack.html

The fish swimming with the sharks are cobia:



Timeless!

What?!?

Big doings here in the panhandle: the new Publix--a mere six minutes from Beach-A-Rama--opened on August 26, and we were among the first 1500 happy campers to walk thru the doors, netting us each a lurid green grocery bag and enough free samples to call it lunch.



Susan had us and Karen D (aka Kiki) and Julie over to play MahJongg last week, which lark was followed by dinner and a new-to-us card game, Cadillac. Which we loved! (Despite the fact that we lost: no small thing.) We got more of the intimate neighborhood feel when a small party of slightly tipsy folks crashed the party in the middle of the game--without even bothering to knock! After a brief cacaphonous interlude, the crashers departed and we got back to it.

By far and away, the most momentous events since our last posting were tied to a marvy visit over Labor Day Weekend from Tom & Jess and Wendy & Joel. E says, I don't know what to say about it: it was hilarious. So hilarious S almost wet her pants. Okay, maybe TMI.

But it _was_ fun, from our own game of Cadillac the first night, to hours of poker and Rummy-O (and even a bit of Skip-Bo and MahJongg), to an unforseen obsession with Tom & Pep's Wii Music handbell ringing game, to beach fun with the hordes and throngs, to the first Crimson Tide football game of the season, to some great meals cooked at B-A-R and a nice feast at Jambone, it was go go go and then go some more.

Due to the bell game, most of the weekend found somebody singing either Do-Re-Mi, Sukiyaki or Oh Tannenbaum! When they weren't hollering WHAT?!?!



We were sad to see everybody take off on Monday morning, so we thought to distract ourselves by playing bingo, but alas, we were so whipped that shortly after eating our bingo snack-shop lunch, we found ourselves nodding off in the middle of a 50/50-split-with-our-sponsor game. And one of us has nodded off in the middle of constructing this post . . .

The Adventures Continue

In addition to our one-year anniversary, there have been other firsts of late: Elizabeth participated in the canning of pears (And Sandy made more pepper jelly).

We went to two new restaurants: 1) Lin's Asian Cuisine, where beautiful vegetable carvings graced each plate and the world's coolest money-cat welcomed us in, and 2) Silver Sands at Harbor Docks, a great ramshackle joint on the water in Destin where the floors have been walked on so long the grain has risen. Good food both places, definitely Do Agains!

We survived our first Tropical Storm to make landfall within 20 miles of here: yowser, what a night!



We survived our first High Season: there has been a dramatic drop in the number of summer people--phew!

And (jaw-drop), finally our new dining room chairs arrived, having been dilly-dallying on a loading dock in Memphis for a couple of weeks. Tomorrow, when we host mahjongg with the local ladies, we'll test 'em out.