Lost A Couple of Days…..

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It’s been another of those weeks where my time at the computer was “parsed” between being at meetings/events and handling other obligations.

We did spend Sunday though at the annual Rum Renaissance Festival put on by the Burrs, who moved the festival this year up to Fort Lauderdale to the Broward Convention Center. It’s a nice location being only a couple of miles from the airport and having three hotels within a 10-minute walk. The Hilton is at the marina which gives an extra treat if you enjoy seeing boats coming and going.

Since it was the first year in the new location, there will no doubt be some changes based on experience and feedback. There are only one or two suggestions we will make. Anyway, the festival had 70 vendors, some interesting seminars, music to relax to, and plenty of fun people to talk to. Hubby is more the run drinker than I am, but the way we actually became involved is because when I spun the character of Chris Green off to create the series featuring her – Deadly Doubloons, False Front, and Georgina’s Grief – I decided to make her a lover of sipping rums. In searching around to include different rums in the stories, I found http://www.robsrum.com and didn’t realize at the time a friendship would develop from that initial inquiry. It can indeed be a small world.

 

Lessons Not Necessarily Wanted….

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Emotional content alert. The recent death of celebrities brought the unsettling discussion of suicide and one of those things learned as part of being an Army Officer. I did not have to deal with a fatal suicide personally, although there were some in other units within my organization which meant I did help provide support to those commanders. The point is, each time there is a suicide, the professionals performed a “psychological autopsy” as part of the report. There are also often incidents that range from attempts, to gestures, to ideation; all of which are what they sound like. In the course of my career, I had several conversations about this range and came to understand, in lay terms, basically six categories. In a term I  use as “intensity”, there is suicide as euthanasia, which has of course been discussed at great length in the “right to die” movement. I’m not going to get into that subject.

There is literally suicide that borders on accidental. If an individual reaches the stage where he or she makes the decision, quite possibly on impulse, the situation may spiral beyond control. Sadly, we did have this with some military members. Certain over-the-counter pain relief medication will not out-and-out kill in a “drug overdose”, but it can do such severe kidney damage that death soon follows. The individual, when initially recovered, can determine things can be worked out, yet nothing can be done medically.

Individuals who find themselves in such a dark place, they can, and do, commit suicide can choose to leave a letter to at least try to help those who will grieve understand why they have done so. It may not seem to be something that helps with the loss, but it can bring some measure. In situations where there is no explanation, it can be even more devastating.

There is then, in my opinion, the cruelest which is the vengeful act. Other than in the situation of mutually agreed euthanasia, these are the cases of murder/suicide. In not doing physical harm, there is also the situation where an individual leaves a note/letter blaming a person or persons for the act. This may be accompanied by ensuring the individual/individuals being blamed find the deceased.

I generally have admiration for people who work with suicide hotlines because they can, and do help. Yes, there are highly emotional people who are “just seeking attention” which is another subject. But for the person who is genuinely reaching out, such a call may be the very thing that enables him or her to find a way back “from the brink”. Depression is not the same thing as “the blues” and if you do know someone who suffers from depression, I would urge you to know what local resources are available and/or go to https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org

 

Entering A New Phase…..

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With June rolling around, I checked to discover that yes, indeed, I should be signing up for Medicare as I am within a little over 60 days from my birthday. There is a special provision for military because we no longer qualify to be seen at military facilities except in a very few places; none of which are near here. We don’t qualify for VA because neither of us have enough disability.Quite frankly, that’s not a bad trade-off.

Anyway, we have a special process we go through – well, actually I guess it’s just an additional step we have to take. I found the 44-page brochure I downloaded and will read through it this coming week. Once I’ve got that part figured out, I’ll go onto the government site to register. Several high school friends who post on Facebook have already done so. With an August birthday, I’m later in the year. Like most people “in the range” we have received a huge number of phone calls and mailings about all the different choices. I do hope it isn’t as confusing as it seems at first look. We currently have a supplement we have to pay, but they’re among the people we haven’t heard from. My impression is they don’t operate in that particular area. I suppose I should ask the direct question.

A friend who is approaching a birthday that shall we just say is above the 65 mark doesn’t like to acknowledge the number. She also hates to be reminded of the saying, “You only have two choices”, so we don’t make that comment. In actuality, you can choose to ignore your age and only respond to the question when it is needed for medical purposes. Although it doesn’t take any years away, it is an option.

Ah, A Tale of a Tail….

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There are certain puns one cannot resist and this is such an occasion. I’ve posted before about geckos and so forth as part of living in South Florida. We have a wide variety of them and do enjoy watching them outdoors. When we get one in the house we always try to gently return them to outside even though that doesn’t always meet with success.

I couldn’t get closer for a shot of this one, but part of his tail is missing. In actuality, I saw him several days ago and much more of the tail was gone. This is their defense mechanism to allow escape from predators and the tail will eventually grown back. This particular gecko hangs around in the flowering shrubs by the front door and so has a fair amount of foliage to hide in which I imagine is what happened when perhaps a bird went after him. I’ll keep an eye on him (well, okay, I guess it could be a her) and see if he is still around as the tail regrows.

By the way, if you haven’t been into the short story archives on my website, there is one entitled, “A Gecko in the Umbrella”, you can enjoy:

https://charliehudson.net/stories/story200604.html

“Hiding” Versus “Deceiving”…..

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“Writers read” is more or less a mantra, although I have to admit, how and what I read has changed since I started writing. I don’t mean changed as in when I was younger and absolutely devoured Victoria Holt, had my stretch of Louis L’amour (really), and the classic science fiction novels that gave way to other interests. I look at books differently now simply because I understand more about the mechanics of character and plot development. In knowing more about how books get onto the best seller lists also means I realize being a “best seller” doesn’t mean the book is something I’ll like. I actually tend to steer clear of them until I get a personal recommendation from someone I trust.

Anyway, I finished a book the other day that was one of these dual-time ones, although there was only a 20ish year gap as a daughter was attempting to learn about the tragic death of her parents. The earlier parts were told from the view of her deceased mother. A number of twists were of course revealed along the way with the “big one” coming in the next to the last chapter. I was sort of on the fence as to whether I was enjoying the story, but wanted to see how everything played out. Now comes my annoyance with the way the “big twist” was crafted. In setting one up, an author has a couple of standard choices. Information is completely withheld from the reader or only hinted at. The other is for a character to “think” or “say” things to the reader that are false until the “truth” comes out. In this case, that was the method chosen as the character of the mother repeatedly described angst over a tragedy from her teen years while knowing full well what had actually happened. Don’t get me wrong, it was consistent for the character to lie in dialog with other characters. It was her “internal” dialog that was unnecessarily deceptive. There was another I stopped reading a while back for something similar.Hubby says I’m becoming nit-picking and there could be an element of that.

Soggy Weekend….

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I always have great sympathy when people have worked hard to plan an event, especially an outdoor one, and Mother Nature intervenes. The official hurricane season is not supposed to begin until the first week of June and we all know that it isn’t really until later we have to start paying attention. Except this is one of those unusual years when the first named storm, Tropical Storm Alberto, apparently doesn’t follow the calendar properly. It began as a possible “depression” and gained in its movement toward us. Not surprisingly, with the memories, and quite frankly damage, from last year’s storms still fresh, many people are a bit concerned as to if it is a portent. Allegedly not even though it isn’t following the standard pattern. Some of the planned events have been rescheduled and some of the smaller ones will probably be cancelled with sighs and shakes of heads.

One of the drawbacks to South Florida and the Keys is indeed the outdoor nature of our attractions. Once a small craft advisory goes into effect, diving, fishing, scenic cruises are pretty much shut down as is strolling through the national parks and frequenting outside dining. Since some restaurants have limited indoor seating, that can have a definite impact. This can be the time to catch up on movie-going, wandering through the malls, and discovering the different museums.

I will be getting caught up with a number of tasks today and tomorrow is probably okay since the event I am scheduled to attend is in fact at the Seminole Theatre. I’m not certain how fast the storm will be moving and it could be out of this area before tomorrow afternoon. Ah well, at least we won’t have to put water in the pool for a few days.

 

Not Sure What To Call The Dish….

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Every now and then, we deviate from certain recipes purely because of particular ingredients we have on hand. The other night we had planned to do Snapper Vera Cruz. When we make that, there is usually sauce left over and we’ve had leftover sauce from other dishes lately. We also happened to have extra sun dried tomatoes in olive oil because there was a buy-one-get-one at the store. So, instead of using a can of tomatoes, if I used a smaller amount of sun dried ones, that would give us a nice sauce without leftovers. On the other hand, sun dried tomatoes are normally with Italian dishes (at least for us) and not Southwestern cuisine. Anyway, we proceeded with flavoring the snapper fillets with a seafood blend a friend created and gave us for Christmas. Seasoning for the diced onions, sun dried tomatoes, and can of green chilies was a Chipotle sea-salt, black pepper, and cumin. It was 3-4 minutes sauteing the veggies in the skillet, then pushing the veggies to the sides of the skillet to cook the fillets around 4 minutes, turn and cover the top of the fillets with the vegetables for another 4 minutes. It was a simple, one-pan dish and didn’t use a lid.

The recipe worked, although we agreed a little more cumin would have been better and we might add garlic next time. Again, we tend to not use garlic in Southwestern dishes, but since we obviously had already “blended cuisines”, there was no reason not to consider it for the next time. We couldn’t come to agreement about what to call it and are open to suggestions. Oh, and there were no leftovers.

Underwater Favorites……

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Juvenile Spotted Drum

I think divers are much like birders when it comes to certain aspects. There are the regular species you encounter depending on your region. You enjoy them and for some people even the “ordinary” bring a pleasure others don’t necessarily understand. Or perhaps it’s a combination of a setting such as forest, park, meadow, a back yard with bushes or feeders. Underwater is similar in that you can have reefs of different variety such as “patch”, “walls,” “finger”, artificial like shipwrecks which may be like the title of my non-fiction book, Islands in the Sand. The geographic location of those types of reefs dictates what species of marine creatures you will find just as the geographic location of bird habitat dictates what species of birds are seen. Yes, you do have migrations, more so among the bird population I think. There are absolutely known marine migrations which is why you get great white sharks cruising through Florida at times.

Anyway, one of the reasons our Key Largo reefs have an abundance of marine life is they have had increased protection for a couple of decades now. We don’t have the spectacular corals found deeper in the Caribbean, but we also aren’t over-fished. Among my favorites are angels, tiny blue chromis, yellow-headed jawfish, puffers, spade fish, spotted drums, trunks, midnight parrots, and file fish. Those fall into the category of regularly seen, but not quite as ordinary as squirrel fish and yellowtail snappers. On the non-fish side, I always look for sea cucumbers, anemones, tiny shrimp,  and do enjoy seeing lobsters. Everyone always wants to see eels, turtles, rays, sharks, Goliath Groupers – the “big stuff” for our region. While we have all those, you simply never know if you’ll see one or not when diving. The more often you’re in the water, the greater your chances obviously.

The point to travel to other dive destinations is in general to see creatures you don’t have here. Fiji was a great example. On the drive from the airport to the resort, the driver was proudly pointing out tropical features like palm trees and hibiscus – hardly anything new for us. Underwater though were amazing masses of soft corals and so many species native to the South Pacific such as “unicorn” fish.

The only disadvantage of our local reefs are they tend to be out where a boat is required instead of places where you can just gear up and go off the shore. But the sheer volume of marine life and good dive conditions throughout much of the year is why people come.

And the Lapse This Time Is…….

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Actually, the gap in posting is two-fold. There was, once again a two-day, well, parts of three days network outage like the ones I have previously vented about. And there was, and continues to be, back-to-back functions and obligations that require time and cause me to shift my priorities. Today, in fact, is virtually non-stop although if all goes well, it will include diving. We’ll see what Mother Nature has in store for us.

Speaking of Mother Nature, Military Appreciation Day is one of those annual events that doesn’t have exactly a fixed day. Military Appreciation Month is May. The first time the City held the event, they had it right around Memorial Day, but that has some drawbacks for timing. They swapped and decided to kick off the month with the event and that does work well except this year they weren’t able to do that. So it was Saturday. A tremendous amount of planning and effort goes into getting together the demonstrations of things like military vehicles, weapons on display, a physical challenge for team competition, and so forth. It is all outside and as the day approached, so did a front coming in. The forecast was looking problematic, but the decision was made to continue and hope for the best. The rain did hold off for most of the set-up. Light rain started in and a number of people had their umbrellas and rain jackets handy. Now, who knows if the collective pleas had any impact since they usually don’t, but the rain did stop. Things were wiped off and while it was mostly overcast, clouds are not liquid. There were probably people who decided not to risk it, yet the ones who turned out had fun. I was of course at the downtown museum  although I could see the displays close to me and I spent a few minutes walking around after I locked up. It was a successful day for sure.

Key West Spots….

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Hubby and I made our way to Key West yesterday to spend the night for the first time. Friends we’ve not seen in many years had a port call for a few hours and we linked up at First Flight, a restaurant and brewery previously known as Kelly’s Caribbean Restaurant and Brewery. With parking the issue it is, I booked us into a small inn about a 25-minute walk from the center of town. The mostly open air place was good and we all had a great time getting caught up. Hubby and I paced ourselves a bit since we intended to remain in the center and have dinner at another place. We did wander to Mallory Square after, but with sunset scheduled for almost 8:00 p.m., we didn’t want to bother with it. We did, however, go into Sloppy Joe’s for a drink and some excellent music.

Before leaving the inn, Hubby suggested I take the umbrella to ward off rain. Rain that wasn’t actually predicted except maybe a brief shower. That turned out to not be the case. It did start as a light shower and for a little while seemed as if it would move off. We were on our way to the A&B Lobster House and close to a CVS. Since the small umbrella we had wasn’t really doing the job, Hubby took shelter under an awning with some other people and I popped in to buy another umbrella. The deal with any umbrella, however, is it doesn’t do much to shelter your legs or your shoes, especially not when there are apparent drainage problems with the streets. On the other hand, the restaurant we were going to was closed-in rather than open air like many of them. A higher end place for sure than First Flight, but an excellent meal and the rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time we left. It did stop within a short time as we walked back.