respublica

What the Blue Umbrella sees

No one seems to want the pretty blue umbrella today, it's too nice out on the beach for just sitting.

White caps, but not too rough, warm water, soft sand.

There goes a seagull

And a young boy

Maybe this guy could make use of the umbrella

Nope

The Pied Piper of Seagulls

The states of happiness and unhappiness

Gallup has completed a study which lists the happiest states and unhappiest states. You may not be surprised at the state where people are happiest, but you may be surprised at how different the other happy top ten are.

Happiest: Hawaii, North Dakota, Minnesota, Utah, Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Montana.

Unhappiest: West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Delaware, Ohio, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, and Nevada

Florida sort of surprises me because people go there in droves. Maybe that is why the people who actually live there are unhappy, too many tourists clogging up the roads and stores and attractions. I also think it may be because Florida does not have good pizza and I say this from personal experience, being in Florida this week. Chicken wings are weirdly prepared as well.

How can Missouri be unhappy and Kansas be happy? Ah. Kansas keeps beating Missouri in BB.

Sunrise

Well, hello my mother in law.

Cardinals spring training workout

We drove down to Jupiter this morning hoping to see the St. Louis Cardinals doing some workout drills at Roger Dean Stadium.

And the Cardinals were on all the practice fields and fans could walk in for free and wander from field to field watching what they liked. Spring training games begin on Monday so the crowd was not as big as it will be next week, but everyone there was very knowledgeable about the game and the players.

Here's a look at what we saw.

Hey, there's Red Schoendienst!

And there's Mike Shannon!

Pitchers and catchers including Carpenter and Wainwright

And David Freese! Everyone's favorite right now.

He looks fantastic.

Then look! There's Dale

Yes, the baseball fan was talking on the phone.

Here are a few more of the scenes we saw

Yes there are such things as All Star Toilets

And for seminary folks...

The Cards use Gators down in Jupiter!

Seagulls

They're everywhere around here and are darn cute. No matter how many signs there are telling you not to feed them, they still come right up to you and beg.

If we can't have Ferdie, a seagull will have to do.

Don't feed the birds

Miner's Theater TIF founds still on hold

The Collinsville city council voted to table the request from CARD for 100,000 dollars in TIF funds as reimbursement for work done on the Miner's in 2011. The council wants to meet with the acting director of the park district to see if there is any business plan in effect for the future funding of the theater before agreeing to compensate.

Collinsville's meetings are online almost immediately on the city's website so the public can watch the entire meeting, this is just a phenomenal piece of technology for residents. It is so cool to sit down here in Florida and watch the whole meeting. Anyway..

Back in 2008 the then council voted unanimously to fund structural and infrastructual work on the Miner's to the tune of 500,000 dollars, 100,000 a year for 5 years. The vote last night was to pay the monies for work done in 2011, but there is dissatisfaction with not having received any kind of business funding plan coming from the park district, part of the agreement in 2008.

While some on the council want to honor the agreement, but go no further, others believe CARD has been negligent in not holding up their part of the deal. So, the vote was tabled in order to see if there is in reality any kind of plan.

 

Ye old Driftwood Inn

We're staying at the ancient Vero Beach landmark, the Driftwood Inn. Constructed in 1937 as the private residence of Waldo Sexton, it soon became a hotel. Lots of different woods, stone, tile and sea and ship artifacts were used to build the inn. It's very laid back with no attempt at pretension, lots of beachfront right out the door.

Our room has two floors separated by one of those winding circular stairways and is right in the middle of this picture. We have a balcony off the second floor and a porch off the first.

The MAtH plans on naps. Naps?! with a view like this?

The Driftwood is celebrating 75 years tonight complete with a replica of the structure made into a cake. The cake reminds me of all those nights watching the food network cake decorating challenges.

Looks good, can you say Fondant?

 

The wired world constantly amazes

There are still people who aren't interested the wired world, don't see any benefit, think it's a waste of time, but they're missing out. I doubt a day goes by that I'm not in awe of the technical marvels we have.

This week I'm especially grateful, we may be in Florida for a few days but can read the St. Louis papers, facetime with our kids, keep up with what is going on in the world, blog, tweet, download photos, read a book. We're powering the laptop with my iPhone's personal hotspot which gives us a fast wireless connection. It's amazing stuff.