Tues Nov 30th

Woke up about 8 and had coffee and english muffins on the patio...really nice out low 80's. We decided to run up the coast to Delray beach, about 20 miles, to check out a goodwill up there. After around an hour we didn't find any treasures so we drove toward the coast to check out their beach. Before we got there we stopped at a subway and split a $5 footlong. The beach was nice, but not nearly as nice as our beach. Here is a picture of the delray beach.

We hung out there for a half hour rhen drove sown the coast to our beach...ahhh...paradise.

It was about 5 when we got there, and as you can see not a lot of people out there. But still very nice. We hung out there talking to a couple of strangers till dusk. We went to the car with the intention of going home, but on the way we were passing Crabby Jacks (about 2 blocks from our condo) and decided to stop and have a beer. This is a cool place, we had eaten there before. Food is good and prices are reasonable. On the back of the menu it tells the story of how the owner used to like to come in here, except his wife didn't like it because the waitresses were topless. He bought the place and put shirts on the girls. here are a couple of pics.

I love florida! LOL. Well thats about it for today....supposed to be really nice tomorrow then a cold front. YIKES! I will keep you posted........

Monday, November 29th

We decided to do nothing for Monday, so I did nothing. I checked my ebay and watched the close of our goods. The NY snow globe closed for 46 bucks and she paid. The DVD did not sell. The Adobe software sold for 71 dollars and he paid. The lamp sold for 100 dollars but I got an e-mail from the idiot and he said he could not pay, so I sent a second chance offer to the next bidder. I have to get the goods out today so that is on my prioity list for today. So it was a pretty boring monday.....Sat by the pool and did laundry.
Maybe today will be more exciting...See ya later....alligator

Sunday November 28th

Well, it was Sunday and I was thinking I hadn't updated my hair color experiment results. It did not work. We tried but my hair didn't hardly change color at all, although my gray hair was covered. Kinda weird how you can put blond die in your hair and it does nothing but turn my gray hair auburn.

Bonnie said my hair is lighter..what do you think?

Back to updates....We need to update you on our e-bay ventures...these are the things we got last week at garage sales, well at least the stuff we listed.

e-bay stuff from last week

The snow globe is a 2001 Bloomingdales Christmas special edition...we paid $5 for it. 18 hours left bids @ $36. The Silver looking thing is a Lampe Berger candle thing....we paid $1 for it. 18 hours left and the current bid on it is $96.  Beauty and the beast DVD...Paid $1....no bids yet.  Last is the Adobe 7.0....we paid $1 for it. Current bid is $41.  So far looking good. If we can supplement our income a little every week we should be fine, even with our spending habits. (which we are working on.)

Anyway back to current events, We got up this morning and went to the new green market down by the beach. They just started this last week. We did not buy anything as it was kinda expensive.

The green market..mostly jewelry

We left there and went to a couple of garage sales, where we picked up a couple of e-bay items.
A Lord and Taylor 2000 snow globe, some Disney books, an antique chicken egg cutter, a sterling and turquoise ring and a silver anniversary Hooters flask. We just listed these tonight, so we shall see how it goes.
After the garage sales we went down to the car wash and washed the car and vacuumed it out, and it needed it as we hadn't washed it since last year. The interior was full of sand and when we finished it looked nice.

Bonnie vacuuming

It was about 12:30 when we finished up with the car so we headed to the big swap market in Ft Lauderdale as I needed to pick up a couple of cable splitters for a buck apiece. I had went to target the night before and they wanted 8.69 for each one. Here is another picture of the swap meet.

Swap Market...

We had got there and grabbed some pizza from one of the vendors for a couple of bucks each and washed it down with a coke. We rambled around the grounds for a couple of hours until it clouded up and decided to head for home before the rain caught us. It was roughly 4 in the after noon and we were a couple miles from home when the rain started falling. We got to the condo, ran inside and sat on the patio watching the rain. We love the smell of a rainy day, and it made a nice cool breeze in through the patio. We ate a couple of sandwiches and fruit for dinner and watched a Hallmark movie (coincidentally it had snow globes in it) till bedtime. That was it for our Sunday, hope yours was good to.

Saturday, November 27th

We got up excited to get to the garage sales and every thing was looking good. We grabbed some coffee and hit the road. unlike last week we did not make a list and it proved to be our downfall. We just struggled to find very many sales, became frustrated and quit. You have to understand the road system down here to understand this. They have a series of major roads laid out in a grid like a tic tac toe board. These roads are basically smaller highways and we found out most people do not put signs on these roads as the traffic is passing by to quickly. The speed limit on them is 45 but the traffic flo is about 55. Anyway we went home around noon, ate lunch and took naps. We really didn't do much till about 7:30 when we decided to run to the beach and see what was going on down there. I messed around with the camera to see if I could figure out the shutter speed so I could take some night shots. I sort of did and took these shots. Hopefully I will get better with practice.

I took this from the beach..pitch black out there

took this one from the boardwalk..the pier

this one from the same spot looking at some restaurants

Deerfield Beach Pier

We then walked down to the sea side shops and grabbed a sandwich and a cold beverage....


Nice night..low 70's/ great beer...low 30's

 After dinner we were going to go home but decided to run down A1A to lighthouse point park. on the way over there we saw these ocean side home with the x-mas decorations on. I pulled over and snapped this pic.

rich guy's decoration..this is one house!

The rest are pictures of the lighthouse park.

That's the lighthouse with the light on top

Some lights on the other side...just cool looking

lighthouse park

November 25th and 26th

Thanksgiving day and we had plans to go to the casino and eat a traditional turkey dinner complete with all the fixings, however, as we were driving south to the casino we passed the exit. Change of plans! We were thinking if you can't go eat mom's cooking and be with the family, the next best thing would be Thanksgiving dinner in Key West. Off we headed for the 200 mile journey (the same distance from our house in Des Moines to mom's house in Sioux City). It was sunny and nice when we left Ft Lauderdale and by the time we hit Key Largo it was cloudy and started sprinkling. The weather was still quite warm 80 degrees.

Bonnie walking to the tiki bar

Me checking the menu

About half way down the keys we stopped at this tiki bar to have a drink. I was looking at the menu thinking about eating but we decided to wait till we got to Key West. We arrived at Key West about 6 PM grabbed a room at the Bayside Motel, a real quaint little place right on the waters edge. It was dark and my battery in my camera went dead so I could not take any photos the rest of the night. We went to a little place just off Duval St. called Duffys. It had a sign outside that said "Thanksgiving diner with all the fixings" so we thought thats just what the Dr ordered. The place was quite small, probably seating 50 tops, but full with a wait.
They had the turkey priced at 25 bucks a piece, but they also had prime rib at 18 bucks, no brainer, prime rib it would be. It was outstanding! We finished our meal and walked down Duval street checking out all the shops. It was not real crowded, and as one of the clerks we talked to said it was because of thanksgiving. It suited us fine as we had a nice time walking up and back. It was getting late...time to get to the room. We stopped and got some beer and batteries for the camera so I took this picture right before we went to bed.
This was on our little patio..9:00 at night and still 80..Wow...I love Florida!

Ahhh..a nitecap

We went to bed and were awakened about 2:30 AM by the sound of heavy rainfall on the roof. We both got up and went to the patio where we witnessed an absolute tropical downpour!! Buckets of water. We went back to sleep. When we awoke about 7AM we walked out to the patio and the clouds were just beginning to disperse. Looked to be a beautiful day! And it was! Bonnie made a pot of coffee and we went outside to sit and drink it. These next two shots were from outside our room.

view off our patio

Bonnie bringing more coffee

We relaxed, sat and drank coffee and just enjoyed the moment.

We did run down to old town and grabbed a couple of pictures...check these out

Christmas in paradise

A street artist

I just liked this sign

Duval Street

The infamous roosters of Key West

Zoom lens in action

 When we finally got ready we decided to go to the beach and see what Key West beaches were all about.

Key West beach is awesome

relaxing

want to go sailing?

The beaches were spectacular as advertised! Except for this guy....WTF?

WTF

Click on this pic...LOL....he was an old guy....We are still laughing! The front was even worse, if you can believe it. It was just a sock over his ding dong. We couldn't believe it was real. We saw other beach combers laughing as well. Any ways as we were leaving I have been trying to figure out my self timer on the camera and figured it out and took this picture.

How cute we are....

We decided to head for home as it is quite a drive back up to our place in Deerfield Beach. Robyn and Sarah, Bonnie wanted me to tell you guys we did do some black Friday shopping as we stopped into a bealls outlet store and they had 70% off of all clearance items. We were driving along enjoying the spectacular scenery, and I can assure you it is spectacular, when we were in Big Pine Key we decided to stop and get a key lime pie. We ended up taking a side road back into the island just to explore a bit. We wanted to look for some Key deer, as they are an endangered species. There are only an estimated  300 to 800 left in existence. In 1955   there were only 25 left on earth. At least they are making a comeback. We were looking not really believing we would find one when, much to our surprise I spotted one coming out of the woods.
It looked like a regular deer, but much smaller. They stand only 26 inches at the shoulder and weigh between 44 to 64 pounds. They only exist in the Florida keys. This one was an adult female about 40 pounds.

Key deer

She was very shy and would run every time we tried to get close. We spent quite a bit of time watching this little deer. After about a half hour we continued down the road and spotted 2 more. I slammed the brakes on and got out of the car. these two were a little bit bigger (approx 55 pounds) and much more friendly as you can see in the picture.

Hey! don't feed the key deer!

We found out later you are not supposed to feed the key deer. Oooops. It was quite a thrill to get so up and personal with a member of an endangered species! We felt very fortunate to see them. Bonnie said to disregard the big butt, LOL. She really did not want to use this picture but it was good for size reference. LOL again! As we got back on the road we discussed how lucky we are to get to experience these moments. We will never take for granted the beauty of nature or our good fortune that allows us the opportunity to enjoy this part of life. We got back on the road and I got some cool landscape shots.

Over looking the start of the 7 mile bridge

We walked down to the water and I saw this guy in the water

Crab

As we continued our drive we stopped back in marathon where we had been at the tiki bar and marina on the way down to grab a drink. As we were walking back to the bar I took this picture...

I just liked this picture

Right after I snapped this picture a little girl ran up to us and said there was a manatee under the dock. WOW what are the odds of finding two endangered species in one day! There are only an estimated 2000 to 3000 Florida manatee left in existence. He was right under the dock sleeping. Luckily there was a floating platform right next to him and we were able to lay on the platform and get some great pictures of him. Bonnie and the little girl actually got to touch him! I wanted to get into the water to see it but my camera is not waterproof.

Nap time

These creatures are magnificent!

We sent quite a bit of time with the manatee and it was getting late so we jumped back in the car and continued our homeward journey. We got back to Our condo about 8:30 in the evening. We had a great trip and were sitting on the patio enjoying a piece of key lime pie reflecting on our Thanksgiving trip when Bonnie made a great point. She said that was exactly why we wanted to retire early...to be able to enjoy some of life's simple pleasures while we are healthy enough to enjoy them. I doubt most retired people could have climbed down off the dock to the floating platform, then lay down to get close enough to touch that manatee.
We sat and really thought about how lucky we are....and we do feel lucky! We only wish all of our loved ones could experience this day! Man...we love being retired! That's all from south Florida as we must get some shut eye....big day tomorrow...Garage sales day! By the way our treasures from last week are doing great on e-bay!!! Looking good!



The day before Thanksgiving

We got up at 8Am and were bumming around the house, when we decided to go to the beach. It was a perfect day...sunny and low 80's. We ate some sourdough toast around 10 am packed up some bottled water and headed to the beach.

Once we got there we had no problem getting a parking place, so we figured it wouldn't be too packed and we were right. It was actually hot sitting in the sand so bonnie wanted to get in and I agreed. This is her version of getting in....

and this is my version....

We sat out there till 12:30 and Bonnie wanted to go get lunch...I told her I didn't get enough sun, she said we were probably burnt. She was right.  We walked to the car to drop off our chairs and cooler, then walked back to the pier cafe. we each had a kosher hot dog (I asked what it was..he said just a hot dog) sat in the shade and ate...not bad.

We went home, played on our laptops, then Bonnie took a nap. When she woke up we decided to run to Walmart to get a couple of things, one being some hair color. I am trying a new experiment....blonde hair. LOL. What the heck..you only live once. It is dark outside now we are waiting for survivor to come on and eating. I got egg sandwich with grapes, while Bonnie has salad with grapes. I will probably have blonde hair next post..unless I chicken out...Stay tuned!

November 23rd

Well My car brakes started squeaking this weekend and I knew we needed new front pads. we called around town to find out how much pads would cost and after about 10 calls the best price we had found was 120 bucks. Ouch. We kept calling and bonnie found one place, that was close to our condo that said they would do it for 79.95. I took the car over there and told the guy do not come in and tell me I need the rotors turned because I am not going to do it. He was surprisingly honest and came in and told me they didn't need to be turned. Most places always tell you they need to be turned even if they don't. I was so happy I took advantage of his 9.99 oil change as well. I got home about 12:30 and Bonnie said we needed to go to big lots to get toilet paper and a couple of other things, so off we went. 8 hours and 10 Goodwill's and 2nd hand shops later we got home. Bonnie can really shop! Those of you who know her know I am not kidding. LOL
We sat around this evening watching DWTS final and I played a little poker with my mom. (she is good).
kinda a boring day so I am off to bed to see what tomorrow brings....And I guarantee no shopping! (I hope)

November 21 and 22

Had a hectic night last night and was unable to post...sorry. My son had a falling out with his CW girlfriend and I spent time speaking with him on the phone. These are the situations you worry about as a parent. Anyway back to the post. Sunday morning we were very excited about this "huge" Charity sale in Boca.
We were expecting a 100+ vendor turnout and instead got about 10 vendors.

The "huge" boca sale

We were kind of disappointed as we found no treasures to take home with us. We decided to go to Ft Lauderdale to the Swap Market and look around. We had been there once before and it is fairly large. It is held on a 10 screen drive in theatre. We were very surprised when we showed up as it was packed.

Ft Lauderdale Swap Meet

That picture does not do the swap meet justice as it is probably 10 acres of nothing but tables. Some of them are like garage sales and some of them have new merchandise. We stayed for about 3 hours and decided to go home and get ready to go out to dinner. We had that coupon for Watercolors, remember?

It was a very nice night and we sat on the patio right over the water. Bonnie had the Steak sandwich and coffee while I had a Beer and cheeseburger in Paradise. It was very good, and while  we ate they had this little guy singing love songs.

Bonnie getting ready to order at Watercolors

The Jimmy Bufffett impersonator



After dinner in the parking lot (remember I was buzzed)



With me buzzed (I had 2 beers) we left and went to the beach for a moonlit walk....Very romantic!

Then home to bed! This morning (Monday) Bonnie had a t-shirt she had to return to Bealls so she ran down there while I listed some of the treasures we found onto e-bay. she got home about 12:30 so we ran to the beach to work on our tans. Much more room on the beach than there was on Saturday as you can see.

Beach this afternoon (82 degrees)

We sat out for about an hour and a half then decided to run down to the lighthouse park to look for Manatees again. Unfortunately we could not find any, although the park was very nice.

Lighthouse park

Coconuts

Thats all for now, I got to watch a movie....then sleep like a baby...good night all!