In God We Trust

E's birthday (and raft of presents) continued with pastrami & rye bread from Zingerman's (in Ann Arbor), a three-month subscription to artisanal bacons, and an ice-cream-making attachment for her Kitchenaid mixer. The BD elf still owes her a dolphin-watching boat ride and dinner out because Thursday was part of a 36-hour deluge that cancelled the Dolphin-Star sunset cruise. An orchid is also owed because we don't yet know where to find a nice one (perhaps an adventure for this week). Not to mention the myriad of cards and gifts and phone calls that came from afar: we kept the FedEx and UPS guys busy!





Having finally received both our voter registration cards and a form from the bank that owns our car, we were able to make one step closer to becoming true Floridians and acquired our license plate. Here is our state seal:




Note the Seminole woman strewing flowers (florida!) in front of a backdrop of streaming sunshine, navigable waterways, and a cabbage palm (one of the few palms native to a state that is chock-a-block with the things).

We are also learning how challenging it is to live in an actual neighborhood where out of the blue people knock on your door bearing gifts or tidbits of local gossip. When we lived at Lake Tuscaloosa, never did a single person drop in. The only other time we lived in a neighborhood was for a few months in the Quail Valley Apartments and the only neighbors we knew were the frat boys who occasionally stepped out on their balcony to take a piss over the railing. This new intimacy puts pressure on our domestic skills, for our kitchen is but a few steps from the front door: must we really do all the dishes every night before going to bed--or maybe even worse, the first thing in the morning? Stay tuned.

As Floridians, our bird is the Mockingbird, our mammal is the Panther, our reptile is the Alligator and our salt water mammal is the Dolphin. Our state beverage is Orange Juice (and now that we're citizens, we declare that our state Adult Beverage is the Moscow Mule). Remarkably, our State Song in its original incarnation is horrifying; we sure hope that our two votes for Obama swing Florida to the Blue:





Hmm. We wondered why McCain/Palin posters outnumber Obama/Biden posters 99 to 1. Have come to very much admire Michigan's state motto: Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice!

The Suwannee River runs from the Okeefenokee Swamp in Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico at Suwannee, Florida.


Friday brought Von and a bottle of champagne and toasts to E's 65th. And the usual 3-bad-girls shenaniganarama, including bingo, Rummy-O, eating E's homemade pistachio ice-cream, sitting on the beach (where military maneuvers seem to be afoot, with submarines or some such tooling about) and hauling home fried matter from JamBones to consume while watching Bama slaughter Tennessee!