Murder mystery dinner

First and foremost we suck  we didn’t take pictures inside the venue with Angela.  She DID join us and stayed the whole time although she wanted to bail in the beginning.  She didn’t dress up and was uncomfortable for the first while with people coming into our space that we didn’t know  actors coming over to chat us up  
My outfit was thrifted day prior I’d you can believe it. All but my undies and shoes came from goodwill. New with tags to boot!  Can’t beat that for $20 ;)

Liz read Haunted Hollywood and went for it!  LOL. 

Alex was very dapper in his outfit. 

My head dress and pearls :)

It was fun, not really my cup of tea but entertaining. The food was meh. I did see two old coworkers while there as well, so that was fun. Oh and we got it wrong. Hahaha. I said at the end “it’s this person because we haven’t been looking at her and couldn’t find the motive” yep it was her but we had motives for all the others. What does this teach me?  You can pin the blame on ANYONE with enough circumstantial evidence. 

More Florida adventures

We cooked crab legs at Sally’s for dinner along with steaks. Great dinner with surf and turf :) I’m not a fish person but I do like crab legs :)

Updates for the little house 

There used to be a small foldable table here. I had this night stand from a sale I went to. I loved the yellow and the bamboo look. It’s a good fit for the bunk room. 

I also bought some push back recliners to give a bit more comfort in the living room. I was supposed to order the high back ones but accidentally ordered the low back ones. I’m NOT mad about it as this IS a rental and hair products differ so having it lower makes it less likely to get gross. I DID scotch guard the heck out of them and will do it again in November when we are there for Thanksgiving :)

We revisited DonCha Peruvian again. I love the food there. Sally was less impressed so lucky me, I got to have the left overs as she ordered this same meal below. It was a creamy sauce with shredded chicken and potato wedges. YUM

Butch ordered pork he loved it!!



We finally got a walk in the beach. The water was beautiful, warm and clear. 

HUGE jelly washed up on the sandbar near shore. I felt bad for him however was NOT picking him up to put him back in the sea 🤪

Beautiful shell. Butch picked up as it was stuck upright in the sand….

It was live so we put it in the water and by the time we passed by it again it was gone so I’m glad that we out it in the water again. He’s living his best life :)

I do like going to the beach :) no swimming this time. Pool was chilly and we didn’t wear suits to the beach. Silly us!

Florida shed removal

My wall was removed. Day one. Sunday. I went over and pulled out a wall in my frustration. 

Day two Butch took out another wall. 

Day three Butch took down another wall. Leaving it to look like this:

And that is where we left it. We called Honey-Do and had them do it. I tried for three days to get someone to come out and take it down for the wood. No go. Oh well such is life. It went to the dump. I’m sure some went home with those boys. Oh well. 

They wrapped up and sent this picture. I asked what the red thi v was in the middle of the leaves. A bowl. Seriously the man left a bowl. What the???  Yeah stupid man said “I wasn’t sure if they wanted it”. Uh. No. I do t want it OR the leaves. They went back to clean up. And the final results were:

Much better!!

In other news we went to two estate sales  this was purchased for a whopping $5. 

It cleaned up nicely. 

Warner Robins Burger Week

Warner Robins had a Burger Week where lots of places (23 to be exact). As Wednesday night if family dinner night we opted to go to a few places and split some burgers.  First up was the Butcher shop - I actually took a picture of what their burger was: 
I didn’t take a picture of the ACTUAL Burger because it was a “to go” only situation as this is really a Butcher shop, vs. a restaurant.  The burger was good - very good taste.  Liked it, but it was not the favorite…. It was the first that we really liked that had a good impression.

The next was Big Picture Burgers which we did sit down and have it there, and took the above burger in and while sitting and waiting for the frisco type burger from there we split the first burger and enjoyed it… then enjoyed the burger from Big Picture burgers… along with some onion rings.  Then we moved on to Black Barley’s pub down the road to split theirs.

While we pulled up to Black Barley and got on their wait list to get a table, we walked over to the new coffee shop - Woodlands to check out their burger…. There were quite a few people in there, and we walked in and EVERY head turned and looked at us!!! Goodness.  I said “I feel like we walked into something we shouldn’t” - felt rather horror story, stepford wives vibe.  ha!!  We found out they were closed and had closed at 4:30 that day and this was a mission trip to Honduras meeting for their church group that goes there.. it was only about $1,200 to go with them.  Really?  I’m IN!! Butch on the other hand wanted to know about diving.  Really dude?  Really?  Funny.  We did go back!

We got our call and went to Black Barley and it was an OK burger, but it wasn’t the best… so with that we have all had a full burger and some fries and/or onion rings along with beers for the others and a soda and water for me… so we were content and stopped there… 

Friday Butch and I decided to go out and do it again, this time we went to Woodlands again and that one DID impress. It was a sweet waffle burger with bacon and such on there.. this is the full burger and we split it… it was HUGE.  I think icould have eaten the whole thing - less the salad.  Their coffee’s were sugar free and yummy as well, so bonus!!

And Wild Wings for their Korean inspired burger with a pretzel bun (my favorite)… it didn’t impress, but you know, it’s burgers, so we ate it all… ha!  Their onion rings were way better than Big Picture burgers however :)

SATURDAY Barbara and I hit one as well with Wilsons as they were the sweets shop - they had a cupcake burger with fries… the fries were super messy and crumbly, so impossible to eat… the cupcake was tasty - they had two and the fries so Barbara and I split it - one cupcake each :)

And with that Burger week was over.

Hurricane Helena

We were hearing rumblings about this hurricane from the weekend prior with dire warnings of 100mph winds anticipated.

The storm was to land on Thursday night Friday morning.  it did pass through here at 2am.  The good news is that we were on the left hand side of it all, so we got the LESSER winds as they spin counter clockwise - meaning the right side is the side you do NOT want to be on.  There were places about an hour south (Valdosta) that got creamed and got a lot of damage and lots north that have been on the news that they really suffered with the water and flooding that caused devastation.  

We we DID have some killer winds and I was woken up at 5:30am to the flag trying to be pulled off the flagpole - the ONE thing we forgot to pull down overnight.  Butch had even pulled in my bird feeders and such but forgot that one thing.  At 6:00 or 6:30 when I found out that there was no going back to sleep I got up, got ready, got dressed (unusual for me) and went out to take the flag down as the wind was still whipping.  I got out there, started to let it down as it’s a telescoping pole… the first release of the first level had it spray water all down the front of me.  I had to laugh as it was a LOT of water just shot at me out the thumb hole where the pin is pushed in.  I chuckled, and went on to the other levels - being VERY mindful to aim that dang hole away from me and it was a smart move as it continued to spew water out at each level that was let down.  I pulled the wet flag to the back yard and hung it up to dry on my hammock stand.  

The news on the rain front was that it started to rain at about 9 pm on Wednesday.  We thought Liz beat the rain home as she left headed north after doing a burger week run with us in Warner Robins.  Thats another story that will follow.  

Anyway we started out with Thursday morning at 3.25” of rain overnight… 

By the end of Thursday there was another 2.75” or a tad more…

By the end of Friday and the end of the rain we had another 4.6” of rain…

Are you adding this up?  Yep, that is OVEr 10” of rain in two days… lots of rain, so I’m grateful that the amount of rain and the amount of the water IN The ground in that we didn’t have a lot of trees down.  By Friday we had clear sky’s with white puffy clouds.  There was still a bit of wind that was there, but mostly stiff breezes here.  I sent a video to my siblings who were also very surprised that we had blue skys as the news on the west coast really showed us still under cloud cover and bad weather.  SO… all is well here from this storm.  Electricity stayed up the whole time and we’re very blessed that we had such an easy time of it.

40 year high school reunion

I love in-flight sunsets  this one lasted a long time as we were flying towards it :)

The flowering sage was pretty outside the hotel. 

I went to Joan’s (aka Jody) house to visit with her BUT first some random shopping and an estate sale!! The haul was trains and I called on the expert via phone. 

And yes I had to get all this into one carry on suitcase and a small bag. I made it work and even scrounged for bubblewrap behind Ross. Hahaha. I don’t believe in buying something that a store tosses all the time!! Would have been $10 at the dollar store for enough to wrap all these!

Anyway. We visited for a few hours then Linda showed up and we visited some more before going to the event. 

I won the basket for furthest traveled. The gift basket I chose was purely for the koozies of Barstow 20 year reunion (apparently they overbought that year) and a Chiquita Rosita restaurant one.  The other things were kids vitamins, pepto, pregnancy test, KY jelly and condoms. Not sure the reason. Linda took the KY, condoms and pregnancy test for her 19 year old and Joan took the vitamins and pepto. I just wanted the koozies. The most MORTIFYING part was everyone was yelling “who is she?”  Yeah. I made ZERO impression in high school. Hahaha. I only went to see two people. Mission accomplished. 

And we missed the group photo as they had finished the events and turned up the music and the lights down. So we left. THEN they turned them back on and took a group photo. Quite a few of us missed it. Sadly. 

There IS proof we were there :)

Linda and i prearranged to be at the same hotel then we discovered Nancy Lorelli Yomogida and her husband so we got to visit with them a bit more Sunday morning. 

Photos while driving around. 


That is smoke in the distance. From THIS fire that expanded greatly in the three days I was there. Here is the shot of them as we were landing 

LOTS of smoke. 

While I was meeting with Marlene Tarbox Frazier there was a BIG storm with lots of phone warnings about flash floods and when we walked out we discovered there was hail. Lots of hail!

It was so fun to see Marlene. She was part of the Mormon crowd that hung out. We were the “bad kids” of that group! 

Food was good. Company was better!

Yes, I crossed running water going to Joan’s in a flash flood warning.  I’m crazy like that. We said our final farewell and I headed back to the hotel to get packed and just chill :)

Good morning Barstow and farewell 

Canon pass. Traffic was a bear. Good news?  Liz sent a message at 5am California time. Better news I was already awake due to my super early morning. 

Smoke was NOT cleared with the one small storm either. 

Traffic traffic traffic. BUT a I was super early to allow for me to go to Sam’s club for gas on my way to the car rental return. 

New pool liner

Why it was needed. Book at that fading!!!

Ewh!!

There is a divot in the left side and a dribble to the deep end for a smaller leak…

The hole on the far side of the pool that is 1/2 the size of the drain was a BIG leak. 

Smoothed out and newly padded for the liner :)

BLUE!!

Starting to fill again!



FULL and note the covers on the returns and the drains are BLUE as well. Pretty