Stormy Weather

Ahhhh, beautiful, sunny, tropical Florida! Since we had the Nor'easter this past week, I've been thinking of memorable storms. This is a pic of the "No Name" storm of 1993 (I think), in Dunedin. The photo was taken from the front porch of my parent's house. Now you know why my mother opted to move back to MA. Just right of center there are two cars with only the roofs left showing. My parents did not have beach front or ocean front property. Their house was two houses up the street from Edgewater Drive which ran parallel to the intracoastal waterway. Beyond the waterway (or St. Joseph's Sound) is Clearwater Beach and Caladesi Island State Park. The property where my parents lived is 6 feet above mean high tide. Fortunately the house was built (1940) with a crawl space underneath. The water completely surrounded their house nearly filling the crawl space, coming just 2 inches from rising into the house. Our power was out but phones still worked. My mom had called me at 4 a.m. asking "when is high tide?" They had whitecaps on the front lawn! So...the picture...is looking southwest across the driveway corner of their property, across the street (Lyndhurst), and across the front lawn of Schiller International University, Edgewater Drive, Saint Joseph Sound and Clearwater Beach beyond.

I had driven to their house to help out. I drove in the opposite end of their street and made it to about a half block away before having to park. Amanda was 10. She was with me. I had my old sea boots on from sailing days. I got Amanda up on my back and started wading down the sidewalk. My boots had rotted with age and water began pouring in! It was sort of amusing to be trying to drag my feet along wearing water filled boots. As I approached the house my dad was backing the mini-van out the drive from the garage in the rear. He opened the window and yelled to me. "Do you want to go out to breakfast?" Oh sure, why not! Mom's a wreck in the house, I'm soggy, Amanda is giggling on my back. I took Amanda to the door and left her with my mom. Dad and I had a nice breakfast out!

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Other things I forgot about this week.....

Not only was the lady at the "Times" insensitive, but the guy that delivers the bundles of papers to our house decided to leave them at my folks drive instead of mine. On Friday I called to tell the paper to speak to him about it. Did it matter...NO. I had to haul huge bundles across frozen snow on the yard this morning in the dark. I was very irritated and they will hear about it come Monday.

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I got in touch with an exec at the TV show CSI Miami about the artwork used in a show possibly being by me. He emailed back. First, they keep no records of set items. Second, they have changed set dressers recently. So....still guessing.