Thursday January 8th 2026

Today’s weather was the first day in a while that could reasonably be called normal. The early days this week started foggy and ended cloudy. This was the first day that was sunny all day. The temperature even reached 80 a few degrees above normal.

The other thing that is back to “normal” is the traffic. The heavy pre-holiday traffic is gone, but the normal winter snowbird enhanced traffic remains. The traffic inside stores like Walmart has actually gotten worse. They have reduced the number of staff assigned to checkouts so it takes longer to get out of the store.

I’ve been focused on chores around my base camp this week. They seem to pop up out of nowhere and take longer than intended. Today an overfilled draw decided it needed to brake the draw slides. It may take a contortionist to fix it. All of the little things combined have kept me from getting to Disney. The crowds were back to an acceptably level on Monday, but now they are back up to high levels for Disney’s Marathon weekend.

The other thing keep me busy and a little bit frustrating is setting up a new computer. While I enjoy the overall task, getting things like my picture editing software running in time to publish this blog has been a challenge. The new version doesn’t support the batch commands I developed for the previous version. It is impossible to explain, but it has taken three computers just to get one little blog entry published.

Sunday January 4th 2026

Note: My January 1st blog entry is now posted and available.

The temperature this weekend has returned to normal. Last weeks sixty degree high are back to the mid seventies. Higher temperatures are in the forecast for later in the week. The downside is the bright sun has disappeared. Each day has been cloudy at best and Saturday evening even included some rain.

Rain is really needed. The central Florida area particularly near the Gulf coast are in a drought. Pond and lake levels are down. I watched a particularly difficult boat launch today. The drop off at the end of the ramp came too soon for the boat trailer tires. The guy managed to get everything out, but it took a lot of power and spinning wheels. Another example of the low water level, here at the park, is the visible island in the middle of the retention pond. It is usually fully submerged. Finally in the drought indicators is the ban on fireworks in the county. New Years Eve was quiet.

The weekend has been relaxing. I accomplished a few chores, but others have been deferred. My bougainvillea plant is back in a rapid growth phase. It hasn’t needed attention for over a month, but it needs a “hair” cut again. It looks good from a distance. Up close it looks shaggy. Trimming it is easy. Picking up the clippings and taking them to the park’s dumpsters is another matter.

Thursday January 1st 2026

This post is being posted on January 3rd and back dated to the 1st. Sleep got in my way on New Years day.

Happy New Year

My New Years day focused on a tradition I’ve had since childhood. Watching the Tournament of Roses Parade has been a requirement. In the early 60s my parents took me to some of their friends with a color TV to watch the parade in “living color”. This was quite an event that lasted several years until we had a color TV of our own.

In the mid 1990s I took a tour to the Los Angeles area to see the parade. A lot of it was a disappointment. The hotel was on the other side of the county. We had to leave around 4:30AM to get to the parade route before 6:30 or 7AM when they shut the streets down. The bleacher seating was crowded cold aluminum that you were pretty much stuck in for a couple of hours before the parade even started. Then you got to watch two plus hours of parade from a viewing location inferior to the TV view by far. The seats were probably one hundred feet from the actual floats.

The best part of the parade tour was viewing the floats parked after the parade. You can get up close enough to see the actual flowers and mechanics of the floats. A few years after my tour experience I was back in the LA area. This time I only went to see the floats being decorated and the post parade viewing. I watched the actual parade on TV from my hotel room. This was the best of both types of viewing.

Watching this years parade on TV I felt bad for all the spectators. Waiting for and watching the parade in the rain must have been terrible. It was just cold the year I sat in the grandstands.