Travels with Gunther and Kara

It’s Superbowl Sunday and nobody here really cares much about the game…we don’t watch much NFL anyway but we have the game on for the commercials.

After Mass this morning (Connie is continuing to improve a little bit; feels pretty good today and her cough is improving) we stopped by Walmart for some groceries then lunch…afterwards Connie took a nap in the afternoon while Neil went on a bike ride and then had a siesta out in the Zero Gravity recliner in the sun. They all woke up about 1600 and after a shower and dumping the house’s holding tanks Neil made some home made chili for dinner. Beef, onions, a can of chopped green chilis and some spices…he served it over some leftover mashed ‘taters from the other day’s breaded pork dinner and topped it with some cheese and onion dip. A wine cooler and it turned into a pretty decent dinner…we’re having cookies later on and maybe a little Gosling’s rum on the rocks.

So far the commercials are pretty much a bust…the Oreo one was the best and it was only decent, not spectacular.

Tomorrow Connie has to do some work since she wont’ get much done Tuesday through Thursday as we’re going down to Key West for a couple of days of fun. Then early Tuesday morning we’re off for the 6 hour drive down but we’ll probably have a couple of stops for hikes, picture taking and lunch on the way. Don’t really know what we’re going to go see and do while we’re down there but there are lots of things to do and we’re looking forward to a couple of fun days.

Connie has been working on our plans for next winter down in Texas; she’s still in the info gathering phase and we’ll talk about the options in a week or so. Our plans are to get location firmed up and a reservation made before we leave here on March 1.

Cyas.

Today was a really great day. It was cool when we got up but after coffee and breakfast Neil headed off about 0845 or so to visit Ozzie and Harriet again with his new super long zoom lens. He took over 700 shots today but condensed it down to about 300 that he kept and the 15 or so here are the best of the bunch.

Right after he got there he snapped Ozzie sitting on the nest; he was practically standing on the highway for this shot.

Shortly after this shot there was an action shot as he hopped over to the nest to check on the young’ins.

Then he picked up some breakfast for one of the eaglets.

There was a Red Headed Woodpecker on an adjacent tree.

Then Harriet showed up to perch on a nearby tree; first alone and then she was joined by the Red Headed.

Then she flew back to the nest which is out of the picture to the left here.

A Red Tailed Hawk stopped for a bit on a nearby tree and a Kildeer was hunting something to eat on the ground.

Ozzie and Harriet both came back to the nest after a brief fly around.

Then had to man battle stations to drive off a couple of intruder juvenile Bald Eagles.

The adults took off and after a couple of very close passes drove the juveniles off; he didn’t get a a shot of the near collision but here is one of the adults in pursuit.

There was a minor horse disagreement in a field just past the nesting tree.

and an American Kestrel perched on another nearby tree.

As well as a yearling snacking on grass under the nest.

All in all a really great day of picture taking. I was going to post this nice flight sequence of one of the adults but this post is already photo intensive enough so I managed to restrain myself.

Heading home we had some lunch then Neil went on a bike ride while Connie took a nap as she’s still not feeling up to par. Dinner was thinly pounded pork tenderloin coated with flour/egg wash/panko bread crumbs and fried crispy; accented with a shallot/wine/lemon sauce. Garlic mashed potatoes and left over veggies from the other night completed the dinner. Quite yummy.

Neil’s replacement hard drive was shipped from Illinois yesterday so it should be here early next week. Don’t know what we’re doing for the weekend yet but Tuesday we’re off to Key West for a couple of days of fun. Should be some good birding on the way down and we’ll make sure to take a lot of pictures of the celebrations down in the Conch Republic to post.

Cyas.

It rained really hard last night about 0300 or 0400; woke everybody up bouncing off of the roof. No thunder, just heavy rain. Luckily it didn’t last too long and tapered off to a softer drizzle after 15 minutes or so and we fell back to sleep. We kinda slept in and by the time we woke up, had coffee and some English muffins with nooks and crannies for breakfast it was getting onto 1100. It had turned into a really nice day by that time so Neil went on a run while Connie started working. As he was coming back into the park afterwards he noticed the UPS truck dropping off the daily batch of packages at the office so he picked up our new 50-500mm zoom lens for the Nikon D7000 DSLR. He’s planning on taking another run down to Ozzie and Harriet’s nest tomorrow or Saturday to check out it’s long distance performance. 

After a shower we had some lunch then Connie worked awhile while Neil did some computer stuff around the house. Around 1600 we headed out for dinner and a recital. Dinner was at the Gator Bite Tail and Ale about 20 miles south of us over toward Sanibel Island. We had fried grouper sandwiches with fries and a couple of beers. The fish was fresh caught and was really good. After that we headed over to the Shell Point Resort which is mostly inhabited by old people. Luckily they also have a concert and recital series for the residents and today’s recital was by the pianist Thomas Pandolfi. Mr. Pandolfi is the accompanist for the New Dominion Chorale that Connie used to sing with. He played for about 2 hours with some explanation of the various pieces and how they fit together in the evolution of piano composition and performance. Beethoven, Brahms, Lizst, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Chopin and other composers were featured with an encore ensemble of Andrew Lloyd Weber tunes from Phantom of the Opera. He’s a pretty good pianist and the recital was great fun. Afterwards we stopped by the reception for a few minutes then headed home. We’ve got a couple of left over brownies that Neil is going to nuke to heat them up and top them with ice cream for desert.

Tomorrow he’s planning on heading out fairly early to get some more eagle pictures…we have no idea what is on Connie’s list of things to do tomorrow.

Cyas.

Not much doing since my last post on Friday. Connie’s still sick with whatever crud she has…sinuses hurt, aches, fever, coughing, nose running, post nasal drip running; the whole works. We all had a flu shot so it’s unlikely to be flu…but obviously there is some other respiratory bug running around. Her face has really been hurting up in her sinuses so it’s most likely a sinus infection. That’s bad because it’s an infection …but it’s good in that sinus infections are generally bacteria based and not viral based…which means they’re a lot harder to be contagious with…which means the rest of us are less likely to catch it from her…which is a good thing.

So it’s been pretty much get up, drink coffee, sit around, Neil goes running, eat dinner…wash, rinse, repeat since Friday.

Luckily she’s feeling a bit more chipper today although still coughing and sounds terrible but is actually feeling a lot better. She’s got a doctors appointment tomorrow and another one Wednesday. She was also pretty successful at her job for NVCC today…just sent out the request for intern placements this morning and already has 7 of 14 slots she needs; she’s getting the affiliated labs to respond to her better than her boss did by nurturing relationships better with the lab personnel and making sure all of the paperwork for her students is in order well before they arrive at the lab. She’ll be up at her maximum 40 hours for the 2 week pay period when it closes on Thursday and will likely be pretty close for both pay periods in February before it slacks off a bit in March through early May. Luckily her slack period (summer) pretty much coincides with the period when we want to be free to do fun stuff.

Dinner tonite will be Tilapia filets…Neil’s still deciding what to do with them. We had to break down and turn the A/C on today…it’s up in the mid 80’s and pretty toasty so we fired it up around noon and it’s nice and cool in the house now.

Our new long lens for the DSLR got shipped today and is supposed to be here Thursday. The failed hard drive went back to OWC for replacement under warranty and is as far as Chicago but should likely be delivered tomorrow or Wednesday…with the replacement drive to us by the middle of next week or so.

Neil completed a mini upgrade to our IT systems. Got a new wireless access point that has gigabit ethernet so it can actually use the full 802.11n speed that the wireless part supports as well as a gigabit switch to replace the old slow switch and a 3 TB hard drive to hang off the Airport as another back up for the files on our Mac Mini server. He’s been doing backups to another drive (the failed one getting replaced) but it’s still attached to the server so all the backups are in the same location in the coach. We also have an offsite backup of important stuff to the cloud but our relatively low internet bandwidth (the biggest disadvantage to RV life we’ve found…park WiFi ain’t FIOS for speed or throughput) means that our offsite backup only happens weekly instead of daily like it used to be in the house. He’s got a couple of bare hard drives in BAT and the car that get carried in and the server duplicated every couple of weeks but that’s a manual backup and doesn’t happen unless we remember to do it. Adding this new drive to the Airport at least gives us a daily backup not attached to the server so  that if it takes a dump and kills all the drives attached to it (unlikely but possible) the one on the airport will be more up to date. Way more than you wanted to know about our backup strategies I know but I’m waiting on Connie to get finished working so we can go out for a walk.

If you’re interested in a more complete description of how to build an IT and communications system in an RV let me know and I’ll post a more detailed list of what we’ve got and how it all works.

Cyas.

Today was a sort of fun day combined with a couple of errands. After coffee and breakfast we headed off about 3 miles from the park where there a pair of nesting Bald Eagles with their nest between a church parking lot and a horse farm about 50 yards from the highway. This pair has nested in this tree for the past 4-5 years and are nicknamed Ozzie and Harriet. There is a live webcam in the tree that you can click here to see Fort Myers Eagle Cam . They have a pair of chicks that are about 2-3 weeks old named Hope and Charity. We spent about an hour and a half watching them today; the parking area is about 50 yards from the nest.

Here is a picture of Ozzie as he jumped from farther up the tree to the nest to feed the chicks.

and here is a shot of him as he looked up from ripping whatever fish he was dismembering for their lunch.

Neil grabbed a shot of the horse in the field under their nest during a break in the action.

and shortly after this got a nice sequence as Ozzie took of, flew almost directly over our heads, circled a couple of minutes and then landed again.

All of the above shots were taken with the highway about 50 years to the left of the nest…so Neil finally wandered around the side of the tree with the highway behind him and got a nice shot of Ozzie sitting up watching for Harriet to return.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to get a decent shot of Harriet today; she was soaring very high over the nest most of the time we were there. Conversation with another birdwatcher at the viewing area (he comes there 5 days a week during nesting season) indicated that Ozzie was more of a homebody and rarely left the nest more than 10 minutes at a time while Harriet likes to soar very high and stays up for hours despite Ozzie calling her to come and watch the nest.

Neil is already planning another couple of trips down to take some more shots hoping he can get some clearer shots of both the adults as well as the chicks. Eagles mate for life and return each year to the same nest…this pair is expected to have at least another 10 years of active nesting here unless they abandon the location. He’s also seriously considering getting a longer lens for their Nikon DSLR…although the 18-200mm Nikon zoom they have is an excellent primary traveling lens it just doesn’t have the magnification needed for really good shots of far away wildlife.

Dinner was Taco Salad and beer at the Elks…Neil and Connie both say that the food is really good…and you can’t go wrong with dinner and a pitcher of beer for under 20 bucks. Connie went off to Bingo at the park afterwards…maybe she’ll win again. She won 34 dollars the other night at the Elks Bingo.

Cyas.

Today was a fun day. We had to close the windows last night since the expected low was down in the 50’s so once we got up we fired up the fireplace and got the house temp up to warm enough to have coffee. Once we had some caffeine in us Neil fixed us some English Muffins for breakfast and then we got dressed and headed off to the Babcock Webb Wildlife Management area about 15 miles from Seminole. This is a state conservation and hunting area (closed to hunting right now) that is about 50 square miles or so. We were originally going to go on a hike but once we got there, saw how overgrown the trail was, and Neil figured there would be rattlesnakes out sunning themselves as it warmed up from the 60’s we decided to just go on a bike ride instead. We did about 8 or 9 miles on graded/gravel roads and rode through a variety of pine prairie type areas as well as a few wetter pond areas. The first thing we saw was a Red Shouldered Hawk…it flew up from the right side of the road we were riding on and passed within about 5 feet of Connie…must not have known she was there. Scared the heck out of her. Too quick to get any pictures but Neil was able to see enough details to identify it.

Heading on down the road we ran across a Great Egret and a Common Egret.

As well as a Red Cockaded Woodpecker. There are about 12 nesting colonies of these in the management area…they’re pretty similar to a Red Headed Woodpecker in size and coloring.

Finally we saw Connie’s obligatory flower so we grabbed a shot of that.

After that we finished the last 3 miles or so back to the car which was good for Connie since she was bonked (bike racer term for tuckered out). We had a granola bar for snack then headed home where we had some lunch and rested out in the sun under the awning. 

Came in and fixed dinner…Three Cheese Ravioli with garlic/bacon/shallots/pine nuts and some Parmesan grated over the top. Yummy. Connie headed off to choir practice and Neil headed down to the Computer Club at the park to see who needs their computer fixed.

Cyas.

Monday was another work day ’round Casa de Laubenthal as Connie hit it early firing up e VPN and logging into the NVCC college network. After she had worked for 2 hours she figured out it was a college holiday so she’s just gonna put her hours down tomorrow.
Neil pulled out the 2012 tax folder and started work on that fun job. Due to Congress and e President’s bickering who knows when the actual forms will be approved by the bandits, er Infernal Revenue Service but he was able to get all of their deductions figgered out and punched into the database. As soon as the TurboTax program gets delivered this week he will be all ready to go except for the forms updates and getting in all the W2s, 1099s and such. Hopefully the extra 500 bucks a quarter he paid in estimated taxes will be about right. He also finished up their final financial analysis for their returns in 2012, I can report at we don’t have to sell the rig or stay in slummy campgrounds yet.
Today is more work for Connie and a bike ride and picking up packages for Neil. He got us a gigabit Ethernet capable Airport Base Station a couple weeks back and has a gigabit switch and 3TB hard drive for backup to upgrade the rig’s IT systems a bit. Connie will just gripe that he changed things around though.
Dinner will be some leftover pasta/pork/lemon stuff made into a casserole with some cheese crunchy topping and a couple of rolls tossed into the oven. After that it will be time for Bingo and Beer at the Elks.
CYAs.