How to fill time in retirement

Being born and raised in Vermont, I learned to love Maple Syrup, and all the ways it can be used. But not everyone knows how it comes about, some believing the syrup comes out of the tree as is, kind of like the sap from a pine tree. Well, I now live in Florida, and I do not get to participate in the production of maple syrup, but through social networking, I have friends that share photos of this fine art called "Sugaring." Up front, I want to thank friends for posting pictures that I can steal for this post. They include my nephew Jared Provoncha with photos at Steve Dow Sugarhouse. His brother Israel who lives near Bethel. My friend Sally Cadoret and her husband at their place. My old baseball catcher Joe Widli at his place near Royalton. And my friend Will Staats who hides from the rest of the world as a game warden. Most people have heard of a sugar house or sugar shack. This is the place where the miracle of maple sugar making happens. They come in different shapes ...

Sometimes, you just have to go back to a place to dine, that you like. My nephew Brandon had a visitor from Vermont down for a few days of fishing. Rob Fenn, a chef at a wonderful restaurant called Jessica's in my hometown of Middlebury, was that friend. They had spent the whole day in Melbourne Beach surf fishing, and they were hot, thirsty and hungry. It was just nearing 5 PM so I asked them if they wanted to meet me at Ocean 302. I knew both of them had never been there, so I drove down to meet them. The place opens at 4 PM on Wednesdays so when we entered we basically had our choice of tables. I think there were maybe four other people dining, but it was early. We choose a hightop table for three near the bar and ordered a craft beer for each of us. I saw they had Brussels Kale Blossoms as a sharable. One of my other new favorite restaurants is Rising Tide at Port Canaveral, and they also have this appetizer on their menu. I ordered it before but they were out....

My latest new restaurant for 2018 is called Beachside Seafood and it is located behind the Pizza Hut on A1A in Indialantic Florida. Napkins at the tables which as you will see are very necessary. After my bi-annual doctor's appointment in January, it was decided that I should focus on eating more healthy and try to lessen the portions I eat. Here is an example of a vegetarian dinner I made at home. Freshly sliced tomato, avocado & mango. A few stuffed olives and some chips, made with kale & chia (green) and sweet potato & plantain (red) with some herb and olive/pecan spreads. Well, let's see what I had at this new restaurant. On this trip, I was with my friend Nancy, who I owed a Birthday dinner. She wanted to try a new place so this is what I choose. We arrived early (around 5) on a Friday and the place only had a few other tables occupied. Here is an outside photo of the place I stole from their website. Hey, I am giving them credit... ...

I am a hoarder of digital files. My pictues folder currently has 60,132 files. I will admit, 50K of those are photos I took or have scanned, but that leaves about 10K of stuff, hoarded by me through the years off the Internet, or saved attachments of emails. I like to place the files into folders so I can find them, but even that becomes complicated with this many files. Usually, I move any files from the top folder into sub-folders. I just did that recently so there were no files at the top. But in two months, there are 13 files in the folder. Let's take a look... An Australian Spider Chart, sent it to some friends who hate spiders. One of those inspirational posters, this one with a bad joke... A selfie of the cast of the movie "The Big Sick". Well, why would I have that? Kumail Nanjiani (taking the photo), Holly Hunter, Ray Romano...Nope. Fourth person from the right, the lady with the big gold necklace. She went with her friend Zenobia Shroff who was in ...

In retirement, I needed to start to set personal goals. There always room for self improvement and learning new skills. One of my goals is to spend an hour each week where I go out and practice my photography. This can include many different things, but mostly it is just becoming comfortable with my camera. Here are some of the photos I took on this week's practice. When I went outside this morning to put the trash bin out and to pick up the morning paper, it was only 42F and my car had iced windows. That is way too cold for Florida in March. But the sun was shining brightly and I saw that the sunflower my neighbor had looked very happy for the warmth of the sun. I noticed another plant that I hope is suppose to be white and was not affected by the cold temperatures. I love the little red blooms at the end of each cactus stem. It was sitting in the shade and provided a look of being frozen... I decided my practice would be at the Brevard Zoo. I stopped at the Pineda In...