Where It's At

Sleuths that we are, we had to try to find the True location of Santa Rosa Beach. So we now know where the original town stood (apparently a long while ago, for there's not much there but a grove of old busted up scrub oaks) as well as where the locals actually can be found, that is, in the Emerald Coast Plaza, site of JamBone & the US Post Office. There too is our Mexican Grocery and Cantina, our Computer Guy, our Cig Store (Smoker Friendly) and the Laundromat where we wash unwieldy things like comforters. There's a Dance Studio too, but we're unlikely to set foot therein.

Our neighborhood explorations continue to take us northward toward Musset Bayou: this week we tooled up East and West Hewitt roads, both of which deadend right in the water. We want to know, whose bright idea is this? Does noone ever get a bit disoriented and drown their cars and/or themselves in the soggy boggy bottom? Sure, sure, you want to be able to launch your boat (we guess), but maybe a chain could be slung between a couple of posts? We confess that it's not just the deadends that make us squeamish; sometimes these roads are mere causeways through extremely marshy land and our guts roll as our brains fight the sensation that the ooze is reaching out to draw us in.

This has been a week of administrative details: we got Florida Drivers' Licenses to go with our FL tag. This set us up for two things: 1) voting. So today, after Tai Chi class, armed with our sample ballots and new drivers' licenses, we went to the Court House Annex (which should be located in the Emerald Coast Plaza, if you ask us), to cast our historic Early Votes for Barack Obama. Man, did that feel good! 2) homestead declaration. Again with DLs in tow, we went to another wing of the Court House Annex, the Property Assessors Office, where we filed for our homestead exemption, which will take effect in 2009. More good feelings, tho not quite as momentous. (On a side note, we notified Beach Rentals of South Walton that we are no longer on the rental program: yippeeeeee!)

After twenty years in one CSA or another in Alabama, we are now in search of decent fruits and vegetables here in Florida. Our trip today to A Girl Named Toni yielded a couple of apples, which didn't taste any better than you might buy in a grocery store, and were nowhere near as pretty as the Mcouns featured on Jess's blog. Toni also had hydroponic lettuce, from not too much more than a hundred miles away, but S hasn't quite given up her distrust of anything grown without Dirt, so we passed. For now. A recent trip to Fresh Market, where E got her BD orchid (pix when the shy thing blooms), netted a pair of artichokes from Castroville. Better than a kick in the teeth, but c'mon. We may just have to spend the winter eating a steady diet of giant butternut squash if we want to eat local produce. Stay tuned.