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Like many Michiganders, we headed south for our spring break. Our destination was Florida. Normally you don’t want to go to Florida during spring break, as it is overrun with crazy college kids, but this was our high school’s spring break which was a couple weeks after most college’s spring break weeks.

It takes long enough to drive there that we decided to take two days to drive it.

Day 1:
Not a lot to report here. We took the boys to a Waffle House for the first time. It was fine, and now they can say they’ve been.

Our destination this day was just outside Atlanta. We got there with some daylight left, and we had been sitting in the car for several hours, so we took a short hike after dinner.

There was a small parking lot and trailhead by the Chattahoochee River. We picked it because it had the remains of an old mill on site, which the boys liked scrambling around.

Then it was evening, then morning the next day.

Day 2:
Our second day was a little more exciting than the first day. Still a lot of driving, from Atlanta to Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay was not our actual destination, but it was on the way and I wanted to see manatees and TECO has one of the better manatee viewing areas.

TECO is an electric power plant that uses the water from the bay/channel for cooling. The result of cooling the power plant is that the water in the channel gets the extra heat and makes it cozy for certain wildlife.

We walked down the boardwalk to the end and saw that the channel is separated from the rest of the bay, all the way out. I think so that manatees that come for the warm water don’t end up in a boating area.

But despite all the great reviews and the whole setup, we did not see any manatees. All we saw were some fish, like this:

Someone at the viewing area told us “Due to the recent hot spell of weather, the channel got too warm for the manatees, so they moved out into deeper water. If you had been here a week ago, you would have seen a lot of them.”

So no manatees for us. We bought a manatee trinket at the souvenir shop as a reminder of this occasion.

On the plus side, the manatee viewing station also had a stingray tank, where you could try to pet a stingray as it swam past you. Maybe they called them just rays, because they’re not the stinging type. At least we got to do that.

Then we continued on our way to the house, had dinner, confirmed timing for the next day’s plans, and went to bed.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

Day 3:
This was our first full day in Florida. Our plan was to go to Sanibel Island and enjoy the beach. And maybe find some interesting shells.

For those of you not familiar with that area of Florida, there are lots of beaches, and almost enough parking. And the parking is not free. It was only about $5 per hour, cheaper than most cities, but you do have to have your phone to pay online.

The groups of islands in that area are connected via bridges for the most part. Here is the view getting onto Sanibel.

We chose Sanibel because we heard it had a lot of shells. What was interesting was there wasn’t much sand – the beach was all tiny bits of broken shells. But the boys did find some shells, including a couple that were alive. Most of the good shells had been taken, the beach was full of other people also looking for shells.

Our first stop was right after the bridge, at the lighthouse.

I thought the lighthouse was rather bleak. I later saw pictures of what it looked like before the last hurricane and it was not so bleak back then.

And here’s what the beach looked like

For lunch that day, we had packed a lunch. We found another beach, this one with some shade, and sat in our beach chairs and watched the ocean. Here’s the view from our picnic spot.

We ended up driving to about 3 different beaches, trying them out and seeing if the shells were better anywhere.

Then we drove back to the house for dinner, confirmed timing for the next day’s plans, played Phase 10, and went to bed.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

To Be Continued…

Here is a random assortment of photos from recent weeks, mostly wildlife but not all.

First up, many people are saying this year is a bad year for ticks. I would rephrase it to say it is a bad year for people, due to ticks. For the ticks themselves, this is a good year.

Either way, we normally find a few ticks per year, and they’ve always been dog ticks, which I find is a relief because they are listed as transmitting neither Lyme disease not Alpha Gal.

On a side note, I wonder if an alpha male gets Alpha Gal syndrome do they cancel out?

Back on topic, I usually can feel them crawling on me and pluck them off before anything happens. Somehow this one ended up on my leg during the night, as I woke up to a severe itch on my leg. It was not a typical itchy feeling, something a little more substantial, and that caused me to look at what was causing that.

The burny itchy feeling was caused by the tick’s bite, which is a good sign because that means I can’t get bitten without noticing it, so I’ll be able to remove any ticks before the 24-hour window expires. And when I pulled the tick off, I saw it was not a dog tick. I got my first deer tick.

Any ticks I find, I stick them to tape, then fold the tape over and press it so the tick is really stuck, then throw it away. I don’t care what tape – Scotch, painter, duct, etc. In this case the closest thing at hand was blue painters tape so that’s what the background is.

Next up, Some Wife decided the bathroom needed a refresh, so she found a sink/vanity on Facebook marketplace that she liked and we picked it up. For the few days that we had it but I hadn’t pulled out the old sink yet, it was sitting outside. It was in a sheltered area so it didn’t get rained on, but it was not otherwise protected from anything.

I saw this frog was appreciating the coolness of the porcelain and decided to hang out on the sink for a while.

Next up, bagel day! We do not have a pet in our house, but we have the next closest thing, which is sourdough starter. Gotta feed and water it regularly. Some Wife ends up baking something sourdough-ish about once a week. Usually it’s a loaf of bread – sometimes plain, sometimes chocolate-chip, sometimes feta-dill, sometimes cheddar-bacon. But this particular week we did not bake bread loaves, we made bagels. Here it is near the end of the boiling process.

Last up, a lone wild turkey. We get wild turkeys around our yard. It’s always fun hearing them. Them, and the cranes. Or herons. I can’t tell cranes and herons apart but I know what the ones we get sound like.

The wild turkeys are in flocks, sometimes 5, sometimes 12, or any similar number. But occasionally there will be a lone turkey wandering by himself. The first few times we saw a lone turkey we thought he was lost, like he got separated from his flock and was looking for them. But knowing how some flocks/packs work, now I wonder if he’s an adolescent male who broke off on purpose to start his own flock.

I was working in the kitchen and heard a noise at our patio door. Birds do occasionally fly into our patio door so I thought it was that again. After the second time, I went to see what was going on, and I saw the lone turkey, pecking at our window. He saw me and started wandering away, but I was able to get this picture of him.

I was thinking, “Don’t you want to lean way over and check on the grill?” But no, he wandered away unharmed.

I expect this to appeal to chicken farmers in Louisiana, but I’m posting it here for all to see in case someone else might be amused too.

For a recent trip, I reserved the hotel online a few months ahead of time, as is usual.

What was unusual was that they emailed me 3 days before the trip and asked me to check-in online.

This has been a thing with airlines for many years now, but they limit it to 24 hours. And it still doesn’t make sense as it is; I wish they would rename it to “obtain your boarding pass” rather than “check-in”, because “check-in” means that you are there.

Back to the hotel email: I thought I would humor them though, and see what the process was for checking into a hotel 3 days before I get there. It’s not like they’ve been waiting to see what gate assignment the terminal gave them, and I don’t need a boarding pass to get into the hotel.

I answered a few general questions, and then the next screen they wanted me to upload photos of my ID. It was at that point that I decided I did not want to waste any more of my time doing the job of the hotel clerk. Not that the job of a hotel clerk is bad, but they’re getting paid to do that paperwork, I am not.

So I just closed that browser tab and did not finish checking in online. It’s not like it saves me any steps – I still have to go to the front desk to get my key.

When I got to the hotel, 3 days later as planned, I just walked up to the front desk and checked-in like usual and no one asked or cared if I checked-in online before I got there.

More and more things are getting “self-service” options, and in some cases it makes sense. I like having the option at the grocery store to do the self-checkout. In that case I know the benefits versus responsibilities. For the airlines, if I’m not checking any bags I know the benefit of getting my boarding pass online is that I can skip the counter.

In the case of the hotel, they did not present any benefits to me – it’s just extra work for me for no reason. So unless they can convince me why I should check-in early, I won’t be bothered to do it.

In the last week or so, we had the announcement of the 2026 NFL schedule. Now that we know who will play whom and when, we can start predicting wins and losses.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. View results of previous football seasons.

2025 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Los Angeles Chargers = 14-3

Only one team made the list of consensus picks, and how they actually did was

• Los Angeles Chargers = 11-6

Not quite on, but not way off either.

Read the rest of this entry »

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2025 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2025 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It was just Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2025. Last year’s champion, Liam has repeated as the most popular boy’s name in the US, for the third year, so the trend is official. Liam and Noah and Oliver repeated as the top 3, but Liam’s lead is dwindling.
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again, and by a similar margin as last year, and no signs of slowing down.

Some Stats

• In the top 11 names for the boys, names 1-4 are the same, and then 5-11 have a bunch of shakeup since last year.
• The top 5 names for the girls are the same as 2024, with the only order change being Charlotte overtaking Emma for spot 4. Then 6-10 get all mixed up.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 1.
• New this year, Charlotte is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 4.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (247/1000 vs. 170/1000 alternates)
• Kayson once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 10, well above Kayden with only 6.
• Kehlani once again took the top honor for the girls with 6 ways to spell it, just barely above several names with 5 variations each.

2025 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Charcuterie boards were all the rage, and I think they might be most of the rage these days still. I was thinking about charcuteries boards. Not the arrangement of food on a surface, but the board itself – the piece of wood that holds the food.

Like this:

That caused a little problem because I was trying to look up a picture of the wooden board, but how do you look up a board used for charcuterie board without using the term “charcuterie board”? I looked up “charcuterie board empty” and other things, but the search engines saw the term “charcuterie board” and they thought to themselves “oh yeah, we know what a charcuterie board is, we’ll get you plenty of pictures of charcuterie boards” and they never thought to themselves to use the whole phrase I typed and what it actually meant.

I was able to find one eventually, I forget what term I used, maybe “wooden board for serving food” or something.

But all that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is to show you my idea for how I would make a charcuterie board, if I were to get into making charcuterie boards.

Behold, the

Sharkuterie Board