Slices of Life on the Beach

The weather has been up and down. One day its freezing (By our standards) the next day its 80 degreees. Go figure. We are expecting a cold front today. Temps should drop down into the 40's. Just in time for Christmas. We plan to go to our friends house for Christmas eve. Should be a blast. They have a new cast iron stove outside to keep everyone warm. We will try to update a little bit more often as season draws near. CYA Tues. 8/3/99 We are over the heat!!!!! It has not been below 80 for over a week. I am tired of this high humidity and heat. Okay, What do you expect from Florida. But...98 on Dabeach. Way too hot. We need just a little break. I have never seen it 98 on Dabeach. Ever!!! Enough of my bitching.

We celebrated our 6 years together very quietly. We toasted with Champaign at 6:15 pm on saturday. Very nice. We spent the whole weekend looking for a place to start our winery. We looked at every nook and cranny of this area. There are a few pretty seedy areas. We did find a very nice spot and it looks like we wil be starting our winery soon. We will keep you posted. It should be fun.

Have you ever wondered why its so nice to live on Dabeach. Well it's like this. Its so nice to have so many nice people who all live in an area because they want too, not because they have too. We always meet people who live around here and they all seem so nice. I guess that's why we live here. Don't want to leave either.

The weather has been HOT!!! Mid 90,s every day. We have had wicked storms all week. Just 8 more weeks until the weather gets back to being nice. Janine and I will be together 6 years on 7/31/99. What a great trip it has been. If you have not read our Love Story (yes, it is long) then take a look. We plan to go to Ft. Meyers for the week end to enjoy each other.

I have been out running everyday this week. It is really hot. Those 5 miles feel a 100 miles. Our 6th year of meeting is on 7/31/99. We hope to celebrate it the same way we did 6 years ago. Janine is going to take off and we hope to go to Fort Meyers beach. BTW, FMB is a great get away for us. 150 miles to the south and real quaint. We are going to look a winery will we are down there. Yes, we are still working on the concept. We have the money...just need the permits.

We had a small get together on saturday. However, with the rain it was a bit on the dreary side. The beer was cold and we smoked a turkey. Had a good time. One thirty came mighty early.

We continue to work on opening a winery on DabeacH. Just need some more information and we shall see where it goes. We will keep you posted.

My brother John and his family are coming to dabeach for the 4th of July. They now have three kids and it should be blast. We are going to our Janet & Rock's place for a pool party. Last time we were there we drank 20 bottles of wine and a full keg of beer. Lots of people walking home that night. Don't forget we have somePics from Dabeach Give them a peek.
Tues 6/14/99 Whew!!! What a weekend. We went to a picinic at Kim & Tom's on saturday. Man was it hot. Not a breeze in sight. They had great cuban sandwiches and a keg. The keg blew around 9:30 pm. There were lots of people and lots of fun. Dabeach is so cool some times. They just installed the direct dish tv system. 210 stations for $80. Whoa... that's alot of tv to watch.

An old friend from high school came to visit saturday night, after the picinic. We sat up until 2:30 am drinking fine red wines. '82 Lascombes and a '92 Conn Creek. They were great. We sat and talked about old times. It was great to see him again. Man, he has 2 kids and a big job. What a tough life. Janine and I can barely take care of ourselves. Let alone 2 kids.

The weather has been very hot. The rain threatens every day, but the sea breeze pushes the storms in land. The temps have been in the low 90's and the water temp is 85. Fishing for those that have a boat has been real good. Trout, snapper, mackarel and snook are running every where. So if you come to visit, bring your gear.

Went fishing around Dabeach yesterday. Not much going on. I went up to Clearwater pass to see how it was up there. Awful!! Not even a bite. Mostly seaweed. I then went to the gulf side and it was not much better. The rays run around this time and the bait fish are scared off. Thus no regular fish. Someone told me they caught a snook over the weekend. Well I didn't see any.

The temps have been creeping up. We are now in the high 80's and 70's for lows. The water is around 84 degrees. Yup, just like bath water. We will keep you updated. We have a few parties this week end. Hope you are all safe.

Wed 5/19/99 A rather quite day at DabeacH. The sun is up and their are no clouds in sight. A great day to go to DabeacH. I just may do that. The fishing has been very good recently. I heard someone caught a cobia off the Dabeach on Sunday. Smoked cobia is great. I may go and get some live shrimp and try my hand at fishing today.

We continue to make our own wine these days. We have made over 40 cases of wine in the past year or so. We give alot of it away, yet we do keep some for storage purposes. We make a sauvignon blanc that is wonderful. It does need time to age though. We have lots of Cabs and Merlots that are in storage. They will be good soon.

We have started growing herbs recently. Everything grows at DabeacH. We have put them in hanging baskets and put them on the deck. Great stuff to use when you're smoking meats. Seeds are tough to start. We tried for months and all we could get to grow was basil. So, we went to Home Depot and for 5 bucks we got all the herbs we wanted. Now they are growing like weeds.

Sunday 5/16/99 What a stellar morning. It's arounf 65 and the sun is just coming up. A light breeze out of the north is bringing in dry air. We are going to DabeacH today. Taking a few "roadies" to enjoy. We had some major rain on Friday. A waterspout was seen off DabeacH. Cool....

Our kegger is really cold now. Actually too cold. I have to defrost it every day. Cause it freezes over. Got to replace the thermostat. We are still looking into opening a winery. It would be so neat to do so. A lot of work though. We will keep you posted as to our progress.

Wed 05/12/99 Dabeach is a wonderful place to live these days. The days are not really very hot and the nights are relatively mild. We sat out last night with some friends "testing " our new keg miester. We tried to use a fridge as a tap for a keg of beer. The fridge was too warm and the beer was foamy. So, we went to a local used appliance place (Bad Boys) and they had a used kegger for a 100 bucks. It needed some work, but our friends are quite handy. We finally got it running and the beer is 43 degrees. Just perfect. I think we drank half the keg to make sure it would stay cold.

We had a get together last week. There were over 40 people coming and going. All beach people. We had a blast. No cops came this time. Sometimes our music gets a little load, and the cops ride by and "ask" us to tone it down. Of course we comply.Pics from Dabeach

We often wonder if any one ever reads this stuff we write. Maybe one day people will let us know. Hope all is well with everyone. Peace from dabeach.

Tuesday 04/20/99 We are finally getting our state back. Dabeach is becoming quieter and the roads are becoming more passable. Season is almost over. We have had great weather the last few days, highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's. To us it is a bit chilly. I have enjoyed walking on our new expanded beach. They added 100 feet of beach over the winter. The sand is soft and there are lots of shells. Really nice to have a beach again.

We are planning a get together for May 1st. We have invited all the local beach bums to join in the gathering. It should be a lot of fun. My brother John will be in town with a few of his buddies. We always have fun when he comes into town. We will keep you updated.

Tuesday 04/13/99 What a lovely day. The birds are chirping and the breezes are blowing out of the north. Dabeach is wonderful. Got a chance to walk out in the sunshine yesterday. I hurt my hip really bad about 2 months ago. It has been a long recovery. So, being able to walk is a real treat. However, during my recovery I screwed up my knee. It's a bite getting old.

Sunday 04/11/99 It has been a long time since we updated the slices of life. Time has passed and so has the ride we have been on. Janine has found employment in the customer service area. I have found the unemployment line. Seems I did too good of a job and they laid me off. Oh well. Life goes on. The person I hired has been able to do the fundementals of my job. Not much else.

We are going to DabeacH today. the weather has been great. I have been looking into opening a wine making store in the area. Been doing a bunch of research. We shall see where it takes us. Meanwhile the locals have been coming out of their cacoons and are starting to go to DabeacH. We will update you soon as to what is happening. CYA.

Monday 12/08/97Well it sure is cold here. It has not gotten out of the 50's all weekend. We have both got colds and all we did was sit and sneeze and cough all weekend. Seems this thing is going around. Everyone has the same symptoms. Sore throat, runny nose and a bad cough. Well, we both haveit and it will go away soon.

The Indian Rocks Beach Christmas parade is this weekend. It has to be the funniest parade I have ever seen. They ride up and down every road throwing candy to all the people sitting in their lawn chairs. I drove the mayor one year and we had such a good time. The people here are so nice. However, the parade reminds of Mayberry(SP?). The whole town gets in to it. The best part is when the boats put on the night parade. So much fun, and great displays too. More as we get closer to the weekend. CYA.

Friday 12/05/97BRRRRRR!!!!! Its getting cold here. We have had a wonderful week of some of the best weather I have ever seen. I have been running on Dabeach every day and it has been just a sheer joy. However, tonight the forecast is for the lows to be in the 30's. What!!!! That is going to be cold. The highs are not going above 60. It will be a great weekend to go get a Christmas tree. Well it would be, but I have come down with a nasty cold. It came on me like the descent of the locust. It started as a cough 2 days ago and now is a deep chest cold. I have not had one this bad in some time. Great to see Jamie back and visiting us again.

Sunday 11/30/97 A rather dreary and somber day. It is so quiet and peaceful today. This is get away day for all of our visitors on Dabeach. People leave early when it rains. Oh well...nice to see them come and visit and just as nice to see them go home. We had to turn on the A/C last night. Too darn humid to sleep. It struck me odd that we would run the A/C on the last day of November. Welcome to Florida. We hope all of you had a nice time this weekend. All it seemed we did was laze around and enjoy the time off. We are going to have a heat wave this week. The forecast is for highs in the mis 80's. Whew...way too hot for this time of year. We will keep you posted.

Saturday 11/29/97 We certainly have enjoyed some great weather these days. A little cool a times....but still very nice. Today is sort of rainy and warm. There are lots of clouds and the forecast is for major rain on Sunday. Seems like a good day for rita's to me. Dabeach has been wonderful. We went out to Dabeach last night around midnight to enjoy the peace and quiet. Some times life gets so tangled a little bit of peace never hurt anyone. We saw a friend out there sitting with his date for the evening. Seems you never know who you will see out on Dabeach.

We spent Thanksgiving day cooking a huge 27 pound turkey. It was just Janine and I. We really enjoy cooking and Thanksgiving is a great excuse to cook. We had all the required menu items. This is the first time since we moved to Dabeach we had Thanksgiving together during the day. We have always had to work before.

Today Indian Rocks has their city wide yard sale. The rain may slow it down a bit, however, the town will be crawling with people searching for bargins. Last year there must have been 10,000 people crawling the streets looking for junk. The yard sale has been a tradition for years. Everyone gets in to the act. People from all over town put their junk out for display. You will see people riding their bikes carrying the stuff they found along the way. Great fun.

Friday 11/14/97 What a crappy few days we have had. It has been cloudy,rainy and windy for 3 days now. It is depressing. We are expecting a cold front this weekend. It should go down into the 40's by Sunday. Whew....that's cold for us. Meanwhile, we sit and watch it rain. It poured yesterday. The rain was coming down sideways for a while. The rain sure slowed the visitors. Nobody around the past few days. Things are pretty quiet for us. Just working for a living and waiting for the weekends. (Wasn't that Loverboy who sang "Working for the weekend"?) BTW, if any one knows the group who sang "Listen to the rythm of the falling rain" would you please E-Mail us. I have been going crazy trying to remember the name. See Ya soon...On Dabeach of course. Bye!

Tuesday 11/11/97A cool and dreary morning. No sunshine and a bit on the chilly side. Dabeach is fairly quiet today. It's a national holiday. Banks are closed and dabeach should be crowded with visitors. We have to go to work this morning. Oh well, it pays the bills. We are planning a beer making party this weekend. We have offered to help Kim, Tom and Lisa make beer. We have collected enough fermenters to let them use ours. We have switched from plastic to all glass. We now have 5 glass carboys. Two for brewing and three for racking. Racking a beer for three weeks seems to mellow out the beer significantly. The problem is it takes so long to carbonate. Our hope is to go to draft soon. We have brewed 13 batches so far. The best is batch 7. A classic ale made from scratch. we lagered the beer and it has been wonderful. It will only get better as time goes on.
A special note to Jamie. Thanks for all the support. We needed a little push to update our slices of life. We very seldom hear from people who read our site. We know they come to visit.....A little encouragement goes a long way. We may even update our love story soon. The pressure is off at work for awhile so my brain can turn to other thoughts. Let us know what you think.

Saturday 11/08/97Good Morning to all of our readers. We are in for a cold snap this week end. A bit on the chilly side. (Yeah right...65 degrees and their cold?) Well, it does get cold here on dabeach. We certainly have enjoyed the change of season. On sunday we borrowed a smoker and did a turkey breast. Seems so right to sit out side with a sweatshirt on, poking at a fire. Of course, then everything smelled like smoke. The turkey breast came out great.
Speaking of turkey. Our favorite holiday is coming fast. We love making a turkey dinner and all the fixin's. We try to find the largest turkey we can find and have so many left overs. This will be the first time since 1993 we have had the long weekend off together. We will really enjoy it.
BTW, if any one has any info on Cedar Key, Fl. please write us. We would love to hear about that area. We want to do a weekend there, but don't know anything about it. Also, we want to send a warm thanks to Jamie for the kindly boot in the pants. Yes this is a good stress releaver. We just need to find the time. Thanks for your suport.

Thursday 10/23/97I guess the time has come to recognize the strains of working have kept us from keeping up with our "Slices of Life". We have thought of just letting it go to electronic heaven....but, we worked so hard to get this far. Well here goes.
Our lives have changed again, Janine has come to work with me. How things have changed. For many years I worked with her and she made the money. Now the roles have reversed. She is enjoying her new job. Mine has certainly caused a great deal of stress for me. However i have been out running 5 miles everyday for the last 4 weeks to help manage the stress. Seems to work.
Beer making also comsumes a great deal of our time. We now have 10 batches made. We sure have learned a great deal over the last 2 months. More on beer making as we go on.

Saturday 9/20/97Seems as though time just flies by so quick these days. We have been so busy working...It's tough to get time to update our "Slices of life". DabeacH has been very nice the last few weeks. It's about time the cool fronts start to come through. We have tired of the furnace of the summer. The A/C has been on since April, we would love to just open the windows and let the fresh air in. That day will come soon. Can't wait.
We will be married one year this Monday. We are having a cook out on Sunday to mark the day. Our friends from the UK are in town for a fortnight. We really look forward to their visits. They really enjoy the american cook outs. So that's why we are having one on sunday.
We have decided to try our hand at making beer. It sure has been fun. We are on our 4th batch. Brewing beer is really pretty easy. Getting a beer to taste good is the hard part. Our first batch tastes good. We will see how the rest does. We will keep you posted. If anyone has a good recipe. Feel free to send it on to us. We would love to try making it. Thanks.