Blue Eyes

Yesterday afternoon at our little local farmer's market I found first of the season blueberries at $2.00 a pound. That's like six times less as expensive than at the grocery store and they were very fresh, picked earlier yesterday. I selected a pound bag and started digging in my jeans pocket for two bucks. As I was getting the cash, I asked the snowbird lady behind the table if they were rabbiteyes, knowing full well the variety but trying to make conversation.

"No Dear, these are B L U E B E R R I E S."

Damn Yankees.

GATORS "Orange & Blue "Spring Game

GATORS Orange & Blue Spring Game
Originally uploaded by flaurella.

This picture was taken at the GATOR Spring game this past weekend by The Gainesville Sun. If you click on the pic and go to the original as posted on FLICKR, (or GatorSports) you can see the notes and exactly where W4D, daughter Kait, and her SO, John, are noted and marked.

I just have one other comment on my GATORS this Spring and that is, "We so totally ROCK!" Don't bet on anyone else to win the National Championship (NCAA for my friends across the Pond) this coming football season. It's raining men, and GATORS! Halleluia!

Still Celebrating

Happy Birthday, Mr. Man.

You get to celebrate right through the weekend.


Party on, Dude!

Gifted Eggs

Gifted Eggs
Originally uploaded by flaurella.

These beautiful eggs were made for W4D by our friend, Linda Gail. She used fresh flowers and leaves from her yard, positioned them on each egg and carefully wrapped each egg in hosery before boiling them in a solution of water and red onion skins.

Hard to see in this picture but the chlorophyll from the leaves tints the flora silhouettes on the eggs a pale green that is lovely against the rich brown and sienna of the onion skin dye.

What a pity to crack and eat them but deviled eggs are calling my name...

Marshmallow Dreams

Oh, Mama!
I wish I had me this here Peep Hat:


Compliments of one of my fave blogs:
COLOR ME KATIE

You know how I love the Peeps!

Two for a Dollar

The Peep Factory

Queen of Peeps New Pet (long story)

There's more if you want to search the Peeps...

Dear Peeps

A Happy Easter and Spring to all!

Flashback

Good grief, there is movement here!
Something twitched. Keys clattered.

It's been almost two years. Does anyone still read my drivel?

It took me over an hour to get back into my blog. Yes, it has been so long that I forgot passwords, email addy changes and even how to sign in.

I was browsing through some old Flaurella entries and found that I am making the exact same dinner today as I was four years ago on this very date.

You can find out what it is and get the instructions here.

I'll be back again soon but not every single day.
Catch me if you can.

They're Everywhere

Mickey Dee's in Yokohama, Japan.



Note the barber pole next door.

Minato Mirai Manyo Club

"A relaxing hot spa formed through the amalgamation of city beautification and harmony. Hot water is brought in daily with tank lorries from Yugawara and Atami. "




Tranquil bath setting


Here is the site where Kaitlin took the Japanese bath. The web site is in Japanese but there are many lovely photos. Let the front page play a long time for there are lots of pictures and many repeat before new ones appear in no particular order. Then, try clicking each link down the left side and viewing all the photos. Even the food looks yummy.

I don't understand the TV Lounge room but Kait says they had plenty of American TV in there so maybe American TV is a relaxation thing that is popular among the Japanese.

Just lovely. What a night view from there, too!
Wish I could go ...

http://www.manyo.co.jp/mm21/

NFNC Week

I have proclaimed this week, "National Flaurella's Not Cooking Week." It's too hot to cook and I am sick of cooking and I'm not gonna take it anymore. Hayell, I may proclaim the whole month of August as "National Flaurella's Not Cooking Month."

So, I email W4D ( for the benefit of you new readers, that's an acronym for What's 4 Dinner, the nickname of my DH since that is always the foremost question on his mind) and in a complete role reversal, I ask:

"What's for dinner?"

Back comes his email reply.

"Dinner tonight will be culinary combination of flower (sic) and yeast, covered in a vegetable garden of delectable delights, surrounded by cardboard and brought to you in a recreational all terrain vehicle."

I think that means he's planning on picking up Domino's Pizza in the RAV on his way home from work.


.

Naked in Japan

The latest missive from daughter, Kaitlin
Her current mood: Rejuvenated




In her words:
So I spent all of Tuesday naked. It was exciting. First we got lost in Yokohama and walked for about five miles before we finally found Landmark Tower. Then we found the big Ferris Wheel and the World Bazaar. Then we found it. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary. A tall hotel called Jumbo. Not fancy or run down. Fairly normal. Until you get in the elevator. The hotel had nine floors. Yet the elevator only went to floors 1,2,3, and 7. So we took the elevator to the 7th floor.

When the doors opened it looked like nothing more than a gift shop. We walked up the counter and handed them our credit cards as we had been instructed to do before arriving. They gave us a key and a ticket. We took off our shoes at the entrance and put them in bags. Then we went to another counter and gave them our tickets. They gave each of us a Kimono. We entered through the pink drapes. Found our lockers and removed and placed our clothes in the lockers. Then through the second set of curtains we saw it. An entire room full of wonderful smells and showers that you sit down at so we sat down at our showers. We each washed with the best soaps and shampoos and conditioners.

Then we entered the first room. The salt sauna. You cover your body in salt and then sit and sweat it off. It gets rid of all the dead skin and cleans your pores. After a rinse we entered the Herbal Sauna. This is where you sit in a very hot room and breathe in green tea and you clean out your airway and your pores. Then we entered the hot springs. Pools of hot water that soften and heal your skin. After a few hours we went down and enjoyed a massive array of foods at the dinning area. Then more saunas and springs including the outdoor foot springs located on the roof. That we enjoyed at night with the city all alight. To end our evening we all enjoyed full body massages with rosemary and mint massage oils.

Everywhere we went we were naked except in the dinning area where we wore our Kimono. At the end of the night we each bought a Kimono to wear later and to take pictures in since we were not allowed any pictures in the bath house. My hair has never been this soft or my skin so nice. It was truly a memorable experience.

I even bought a little bag of the salt to bring home. The one thing that did make me giggle was all of the hot springs baths had signs on them both in English and Japanese that stated "this water is not portable."
--

Here are some interesting links and photos online:

* Nice slide show of Yokohama

* Landmark tower cam

* Learn more about Japanese public baths

* Enjoyment in Yokohama

* Check out this blog for some fab pictures of the area
in Yokohama where Kait spent the day naked.

Daytooni

I'm back from my trip to Daytona Beach or as I like to call it, Daytoonie. Had a great bird's eye view of the action from our room at the Hilton. The hotel was not up to my Hilton standards but then, it is the beach and people are very casual. Still I shall never get used to see people parade around shirtless or in bikini's in hotel lobbys.

Regardless, I had fun watching the endless parade of beach activities, the para-sails, boats, fishermen, beach rides, boardwalk, dramatic lifeguard rescues (about 40 per day) to say nothing about the gorgeous hunks that are Daytona Beach lifeguards. They not only look good, they work hard. But, I digress.

What is it about the beach that inspires one to start drinking early in the afternoon? While DH was attending meetings, I spent my afternoons sipping martinis and enjoying the panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean from the 11th floor. All in all, not a bad way to spend the better part of a week.

I can't make this gall-danged flash badge thing work, so please click the single picture below and view all my Daytona pictures at FLICKR. There are captions if you view each one or you can speed through them with the slide show feature.

Okay, so they aren't that good but ...
Made ya look!

Sunny Beaches

On a brief trip to Melbourne Beach, a long barrier island on the East Coast of Florida a few weeks ago, the beach was deserted at 5:00 in the afternoon.


Five o'clock Shadows

The next morning, high tide brought the surf so close that from our bedroom window, it looked like we were right over the ocean.


Sunny Morning at Melbourne Beach

A Gai-jin* in Japan

Typhoons and earthquakes, oh, my!

Kaitlin writes from Japan:

"Saturday and Sunday we were in the middle of a Typhoon. Monday, we had earthquakes. At 11:30 pm Monday night, Negishi felt tremors that reached 4.5 and made our beds shake. I felt like I was in The Exorcist."

Levitating Bed



Sign in front of Kait's housing

Her first typhoon was fairly uneventful.

"It was nothing more than a tropical depression as far as Florida would be concerned. Here however, they were freaking out. We were on TCCOR 1 (Tropical Cyclone Condition Of Readiness 1). This means the typhoon was right on top of us. In the middle of the typhoon the fire alarm went off and we were all sent running from our rooms in our pajamas into the very early morning rain. Talk about a wake up call."


She lives in this building

Kaitlin is collecting the chopsticks from every restaurant she visits and most of them are written in "Japanese letters from one of their three alphabets" so she's not entirely sure what the names actually are. She sends her love to family and friends and says she misses everyone "very, very, very much."

* A gai-jin is a foreigner, not necessarily an American but anyone who is not Japanese.