Another week gone, we're already deep into February and it looks like winter is on it's return here in Florida.
The temperatures have been rising, around 80F, the nights don't cool off much, and the weather seems to have stabilized overall. 
It's still windy though. Every day around 10am it picks up and it keeps blowing until deep in the night.

Valentine's day has come and gone. We didn't 'do' much, other than an e-card and a surf-and-turf dinner of shrimp and steak, followed by (my first attempt of) Chocolate Lava cakes ....

 

O man, o man, those were SO good! (and surprisingly easy)

See that chocolate oozing out ... m-m-m!

In between James' work and some Sundays with bad weather, we finally managed to squeeze out a beach-day this Sunday!
We crossed the bridge over the Indian River Lagoon and went to the beach at Indialantic. 
Fortunately we'd decided to go fairly early around 10am, just after the marine-layer had burned off, so there still was plenty of (paid) parking, whereas when we left people were driving in circles around the parking lot trying to find a spot.

The beach wasn't very busy yet either and we had lots of room to stretch out and try for a little bit of a sun-tan.

We were careful not to over-do it though, and after a leisurely walk along the waterline (we even stuck our feet in the ocean!), we called it a day after about 2 hours.
We had our picture taken by a nice lady  ...

 

Such a cute couple!

(I'll not show the pictures of our blinding white legs ... nobody needs to go through THAT!)

This crazy looking jeep sat in the parking lot. It was covered in pictures of a soldiers in different wars .. 'to remember the Veterans who died' ...

We had some delicious pizza at Bizzarro for lunch.

It is a very popular place (right behind the beach) and people were lining up to order. 

Rightfully so though, because that was a great New York style pizza (thin crust)!

Things at the campground are just going their usual quiet way. 
People hang out in the pool or attend bingo or play a rousing game of Bocce (just kidding) and they walk their dogs in an endless procession ..
Talking about dogs, we had a little bit of excitement in that department on Tuesday afternoon, when they set up a 'doggie-lure' circuit in the dog-park.

Some immediately took to it, whereas others needed some time, some were afraid of the lure and some didn't even give it a second (or first) look!

     

These two couldn't get enough of it though. They had to be stopped after a while since it was warm and they were almost keeling over from the heat and exhaustion!

While I was at the dock the other day, this Good Year Blimp passed by. I've never seen one up-close and this was the first time that I had a clear look of the gondola hanging underneath the thing.

 

 

I thought it was much bigger (the gondola, not the blimp)!

Bird-wise I haven't seen much new this week, other than the first one on the left in the picture below, a little Kingfisher. 
I'm familiar with the sound he makes, due to him being the 9-o'clock bird of my Audubon bird-clock, but I don't see him very often. Cool!

         

My little friend the Blue Heron on the right had somewhat of a 'bad-hair-day' standing in the wind like that. He looked so cute!

And very often these 'three stooges' take up residence at the end of the dock there. Just preening and drying their feathers.

I love Pelicans ..

And than, once again, there's the umpteenth installment of the continuing saga of 'the big truck'!
Let's see, last week I talked about blowing the Turbo-charger and that we had to wait for a new one.
OK. Well, the thing arrived on Friday, I think, it's all a blur these days, and it didn't get installed until Monday (of course).
And guess what ... AGAIN, after installing, there was a drip of water, leaking from somewhere else, into the oil!

UN-BE-LIEVABLE!

To make a long story short, after working on it all of the next day, they think they have figured it out. 
It's most likely NOT a crack in the block (thank goodness), which is what they first thought, but it looks like it is coming from the newly installed oil-cooler!
Fortunately this is under warranty so the part was send back and another is already on it's way. Pfffffffff ....
If (IF) this was the problem, it should (SHOULD) be resolved real soon and maybe (MAYBE) they'll have it running again by the weekend!

As far as our spot here in the campground, they've managed to shuffle some reservations around and we don't have to move to another spot this coming week! We're very happy about that, as you can imagine.
We can also stay at least until the 1st of April, and after that there will be no problem to stay any longer since almost everybody will start to leave.
But let's hope we'll be long gone by than!

- to be continued -

The wind is always blowing here (as supposed to the west-coast which is a lot calmer or so we have heard). As you can see, the 'river' gets a little choppy every now and than.

But the sun has been out every day, and it has reached into the low 80's for the last couple of days! 

It felt more humid too, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that we had a storm coming our way, which arrived last night and which dumped quite a lot of rain on our heads.

OK, lets see, what have we been doing this week?

Last Sunday we went to a puppy show of the Space Coast Kennel Club in Wickham Park, our previous campground.

Dayle and Brian were there, showing their new Tibetan Spaniel puppy, Paige. (They are the people we are borrowing the truck from.) 

It was a fun event, there were a lot of pups and all of them just beyond cute!
I almost ended up taking Paige's brother, who was also there (and who beat her in the ring), home with me, since I tended to him while his 'mother' was showing an other dog. 
Such a cute and sweet little fluff-ball!

  

This is Dayle with Paige. She's just 4 months old .

Other than dogs (and there are a whole lot of those around at this campground too), I'm not seeing to many other interesting critters at the moment.

I snapped a quick shot of this little guy (a Brown Anole) who was soaking up the sun on the asphalt path in the park. Not the safest place for a lizard to sit if you ask me, but they are fast, I must say that, so they usually outrun the cars ... usually.

And in the shallow waters along the shore, right at the start of the dock, I noticed this Blue Crab. 

He was safe from me, but I know lots of people like to catch and eat them here ..

James is still working hard. He actually picks up even more work while working, from people who see him doing stuff for their neighbors and want the same thing done at their house.

Like these stairs and little deck. This is his second one in the same street ..

 

 

I just 'keep the home fires burning' as they say .. like baking an upside down pineapple cake. 

This one came out exceptionally well, if I say so myself. Moist, sweet, fruity, just delicious!

 

And than there are those who just snore their days away ...

 

If one pillow is good, two are better, I guess ...
 

And now for the big question ... is the truck ready? Weeeeellll .. eh, NO!

Can you believe it? For starters, as I mentioned in the previous post, it should have been done last Friday and, guess what, it wasn't.

But, they had it all put together, and under pressure (whatever that means), and they were watching it through the weekend to see if it would hold or leak.

Well, everything looked fine on Monday, so they closed everything up and on Tuesday (today) they went for a test-drive and .. wait for it .. they blew the Turbo-charger!

On inspection they found that the bearing had gone out, so the thing is toast. 

Right. Unbelievable. We have just no luck. Whatsoever. Ever.

So, a new one has to be ordered and we wait once again ... 

I start to believe we will never get out of here. Maybe it's a sign. We're not supposed to leave. We're doomed to stay in Florida. Lord help us!

 Waaaahhhh!!!

 

Checking the crab-traps

 

Oh boy, three weeks without a post!I better get something going.

The problem is that I really don't have much to write about. 

Let's see if I can come up with something ... maybe the weather, always a good filler.

The days have been rather cool for the time of the year, actually they've been flat-out cold, with temperatures around the high 50's, low 60's, cloudy skies and strong winds. One night was particularly stormy with wind speeds of 25 and gusts of 30!

(This of course is nothing if you compare it to the poor folks north of us, where temperatures have plummeted below zero in some places and snow has been falling non-stop for weeks on end now.)

It's been foggy in the mornings which sometimes makes for nice pictures, so one such morning I braved the elements to get some nice hazy shots of this guy checking his crab traps ..

A flock of pelicans were on his heels, following him from buoy to buoy, trying to snatch up some of the small fish and shells and mussels  that might come up with the traps ..

The storm had moved one of the anchored boats at the dock all the way to the other side. The anchor must still be attached, but I guess it got pulled up and dragged for a bit .

    

I like these 'moody' shots ..

I was happily surprised at the dock one morning by this beautiful Roseate Spoonbill. He really stood out among all the grey of the day.

It's pale pink color identifies him as a youngster ..

James has been working 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, so we don't do much sight-seeing at the moment.

We only went for one 'outing' in these last couple of weeks, besides the weekly grocery-runs of course, and that was to the local flee market.

It's one of the largest ones in Florida, and only a couple of miles from us, so we decided to check it out 'while we were in the neighborhood'.

They were right, it is huge, but  I didn't really like the place. Yes, there is a big variety of things to look at, there is something for everyone, but a lot of it was new, cheap merchandise of the 'made in China-' or Dollar Store-variety or really just junk from someone's attic.
Mixed in between were a variety of stalls selling fudge, pralines and pop-corn, some fruit and veggies that looked a little past their date, and several food stalls that sold the usual junk-food. 
The Greek wraps and Gyros we had for lunch were actually very tasty, so it wasn't all bad. 

 
All in all we weren't too impressed but, as they say, it 'kept us off the street' and filled a couple of hours, just relaxing and not doing anything.

At the moment the weather is a lot better, the temperatures are up in the 70's, and are going to go up even more by the end of the week (which actually makes it too warm for this time of the year).
Flowers are everywhere despite the 'winter' .. this being Florida, of course ..

At first I thought these were buds of a Hibiscus that had not fully opened yet, but they're actually Turk's Caps and will stay that way.

Here's some more from around the neighborhood :

It's winter .. somewhere?

I'm also working on a nightmare of a puzzle! It claims to be the smallest one in the world (of 1000 pieces).
The pieces are less than half the size of 'normal' ones, and the 'cut' is pretty much the same for all of them, so you have to go almost strictly by the image .. for which I keep a pair of magnifying glasses at hand!

This one is going to be very slow in the making!

And finally, last but not least, some good news about the truck! 
It appears that by the end of the week it will be back together and, hopefully, running! Yeah!
The waiting was on a part that was back-ordered (of course), but it has come in and they are working on putting the engine back where it belongs .. in the truck. What a concept ..
Soooo, if all goes as planned (ha!), James will be test driving it this weekend. 
(And I'll be sitting at home waiting anxiously for the call to come and pick him up if anything goes wrong .. as you can imagine, I'm not convinced it will be smooth sailing from now on)

I believe it when I see it! (pretty much my mantra)

Let's bow our heads and cross our fingers ..