WTF?
In 1999, after a couple of years fiddling with that blogging thing on various other people's domains, I thought I had enough things to say to merit my very own corner of this here interweb. In 2007, I suddenly ran out of ammo. Thankfully, that didn't last forever... So, I'm back. Still not dead yet. Like a phoenix from the ashes. Behold.
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October 31, 2002
:: New pictures! ::
Earlier this month, I spent a week in Marco Island, FL (15 miles south of Naples, just off the SW coast of Florida) visiting a friend who moved down there in the spring. After I'd been there for a few days looking around, we rented a boat and had a lovely day of wildlife-spotting. Unfortunately, the pictures of the bald eagle, manatee and dolphin didn't come out, but at least I got to see them, and these shots should give some idea of the natural beauty of the place.
But the natural beauty is not all there is to the island. Oh gracious no. True, Marco Island is an idyllic tropical paradise, but there's a dark and seedy underbelly. See, once you've been to the beach and out on the boat a few times (we're assuming you live there, and aren't just visiting - as far as I'm concerned, a week of beaches and boats and bars and beers was just what the doctor ordered), you begin to notice that there's not much else to do - except drink, which is what most people wind up doing most of the time they're there. Most of the people on the island are tourists, and most of the tourists are retirees, which doesn't make for a stimulating atmosphere - unless, of course, you're a retiree too.
Which I am not.
Although I spent most of my time very pleasantly, and made friends with a few locals who work in the bars and restaurants (as does the friend whom I went to visit), by the time the week was up, I was ready to come home.
One of the strangest things about the Island, which is to say the most unexpected, was the food. I expected, coming to a resort town on the Gulf of Mexico, to be eating a lot of fresh, delicious seafood. Gulf shrimp, yum! Oddly, I soon discovered that most of the seafood you get on the island is frozen. Besides which, shrimp and grouper are pretty much your only options (unless there's a special on somewhere), and I'm told that often the grouper isn't even grouper but something else entirely. Not that anyone notices this, because pretty much everything is deep fried and served in a basket. Around the third day, I figured I'd try to circumvent the fast-track to cardiac arrest and try the salad bar. I found iceberg lettuce, a few washed-out looking tomatoes, and a huge assortment of mayonnaise-based 'salads': potato salad, tuna salad, chicken salad, even some kind of 3-bean salad swimming in mayonnaise, the likes of which I had never before seen. The dressings were thick and gloppy, every one. Sighing, I doused my lettuce and tomato in a little lo-cal ranch and returned to the table. I think I wound up having deep fried snapper in a basket later on.
October 30, 2002
:: Up and at 'em! ::
Well, folks, we're back. Sort of. Since nobody (ahem) actually coughed up a design for this thing, it's going to be moving around a lot (and probably pretty messy) for the next week or so as I get things organized. But in the meantime, let it be known that I am indeed still leaving to travel, and that my departure date is irrevocably fixed for November 14, 2002 at 7:00 a.m.