Not much to report for the past couple of days…we got a whole bunch more packages in from Amazon and Apple with stuff we bought…Neil’s new iPad Mini with Retina, a creeper to get under the house and BAT, some Maldon Sea Salt since we’re about out, and other tremendously exciting stuff like that.

It was pretty cold on Tuesday night…low about 39. Neil is wondering what this stuff is, Florida is supposed to be warm ya know.

Connie got some tickets to the Naples Symphony the other night…they were playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. It ain’t the Saint Saëns Organ Symphony…but they know both of those pieces pretty well and they were well performed. Connie thought the antics of the conductor were ridiculous…he did very little conducting and a lot of performing for the audience…including putting his hands underneath and flapping his elbows like chicken wings during the section of Pictures subtitled Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks. Neil thinks she gets way too invested in what the conductor is doing…he doesn’t watch the conductor much, thinks that professional musicians don’t need much directing anyway, and believes that the conductor’s actions are mostly performing for the audience anyway.

After some discussion…Neil moved his Elks membership from the Lodge up in Fairfax to the one here in North Fort Myers where we always go for Bingo and Taco Night…we picked up his new membership card on Tuesday at Bingo…Neil got roped into being the Bingo caller as the little old lady that runs it didn’t have anybody else to do it. We’ll be down here for at least two more winter seasons so we might as well be members of this lodge as it’s closer to being our ‘local’ lodge than Fairfax is…although we lived there for 30 years we weren’t members of that lodge until after we hit the road in the RV and are unlikely to ever live in that area again as it’s too cold and too expensive.

After our year in review post last time I was looking at our list of all the places we have been and figured out that we’ve been to 49 of the 50 states and 4 of the 13 Canadian provinces…here are a couple of pics showing all the places we have been. While I was at it I found a countries visited map page as well so I’ve also included one for the 16 countries we have been to. Guess we better get to work on the country list as we are way, way behind the 8-ball on that list.

I keep telling Neil to get up early and head down to see about getting ya’ll some more eagle pictures…but he hasn’t gotten himself a ‘round tuit yet…but I’ll keep nagging him. He’s after Connie to pick a day and let’s head off and do some Fun Stuff© but she hasn’t gotten her ‘round tuit either so I don’t know what I’m gonna do about them. Maybe I’ll schedule some Fun Stuff© and kick them out of the house.

Neil did finally figure out how to get our Weber Q120 BBQ grill to work off of the propane system in the house. The little bottles that you hook directly to the grill cost about 8 bucks a pound for propane and they’re always running out and you need to get a new one. So, when we got the rig built we had a low pressure (downstream of the regulator) connection with a grill quick disconnect run over to the curb side where it would be next to the patio. The idea was that we would just plug our grill in. Turns out that most small grills have a regulator built into the control knob…and you can’t have two regulators in the circuit or it won’t work right. He talked to a guy on one of his RV forums and found out the right couple of adapters to get; adding those to the grill ended up with a 3/8 inch flare connector and he found a hose with that connector on one end and the quick disconnect on the other end. He’s got the adapters and the hose is on order. Once that’s hooked up we can just run the grill off of our pair of 40 pound tanks in the house. Filling them only costs about 2.25 a pound which means we can grill more cheaply and won’t run out at an inopportune moment (like when the chicken is half done and the company will be here in 30 minutes or something like that).

Neil’s sort of bummed that Oklahoma beat Alabama the other night…but then Alabama didn’t play very well (granted a lot of that was due to Oklahoma playing very well). He’ll just have to wait ’til next year.

We were really hoping that Auburn would beat FSU and bring home a 5^th consecutive championship to the state of Alabama…but they lost on a last minute TD. Neil thought the pass interference call in the end zone that basically decided the game was a little ticky-tack with the way the refs had let the defensive backs on both sides manhandle receivers the whole game…he thinks that if they’re going to call the game loosely and let the players play to change that in the last minute of the game is unfair to both sides. Still though…FSU did drive the length of the field to score in the last minute of the game so you can’t say that they did not deserve to win…but dadnabbit the wrong team won.

I know that we’ve been sort of slack on pictures since arriving here in Fort Myers…but it seems that we’ve just been too busy to have much time for Fun Stuff© these days. What with two trips out of town for funeral and wedding, Connie being busy with organizing her students, cold and rainy weather and just general laziness…we just haven’t gotten out much. So, I had Neil dig through his Aperture library and pull out a few photos that you haven’t seen before…although they’re not of things that you haven’t seen before.

Here’s a Little Green Heron from our trip to Shark Valley in the ‘Glades last year

A Wood Stork from the same trip…they’re beautiful birds in flight but have a face that only a mother could love

A gator by the Shark Valley tramway…as you can see he’s about 4 or 5 feet from the pavement and we rode our bikes right past him.

An Eastern Bluebird at North Flats Nature Preserve over on Pine Island.

A Yellow Crowned Night Heron from one of our kayak trips through the marsh.

A Gopher Tortoise from over on Pine Island.

Harriet sitting near the nest while Ozzie watches over last year’s eaglets.

And finally a couple of shots from Canyonlands and Arches National Parks during our summer travels out west…in the second shot it’s about 1,500 feet down to the first level of the valley and another 2,000 feet or so down to the bottom and the cliffs across the far side are 8 or 10 miles away from where the photo was taken. Quite an impressive hole in the ground don’t you think?

Cyas.