3/21

Home again, just in time to buy a new furnace and maybe a generator.  Also just in time to mourn the loss by my Villanova Wildcats.

3/13

Suit cases are packed and in the car.  Tomorrow we will relax and have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.  Then we hit the road Sun AM, heading to Greenville, then Ashevillie.

We had no internet connection for 4 days this week.  Harbor Communications stopped by this AM and installed a modem.  What a joke that company is, but the owner of our condo says that their "competition" is no better..

3/5

Our winter vacation will soon end.  We leave on 3/15 and head to Greenville SC on the way to the Biltmore, which has an exhibit on Downtown Abbey.  J is a big fan.  We stayed at the Biltmore a few years ago, and wanted to do so again - until we heard that 2 nights would cost us over $1,000.  No thanks.  After a tour of Ashville, we head to Nashville.

Yesterday and the day before were perfect days in paradise.  It stopped raining, the sun returned, and temp rose into the 70s.  One day I spent an hour or two on the balcony, reading and smoking what will probably be my last cigar before A2 thaws out so I can sit on the deck..  Yesterday we ate at Lulu's (Jimmy B's crazy sista), and I asked about a bushwacker, which every place down here has on the menu, but I have never tried.  The waitress sent us to Pirate's Cove, which  she said is a hangout for restaurant and bar workers.  It's in the middle of nowhere and you have to be really thirsty and/or want to hide.  But it is a beautiful setting on a body of water large enough for tugs pushing barges to traverse.  Sometimes I watch the Food channel program Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, and yesterday I wondered why they have never visited this place.  Rustic?  Too kind.  Dump is more like it.  But people were friendly and the bushwacker (ice cream drink with rum and ???) was tasty.  One was enough.