Update on Hurricane Isaias, a Category 1 hurricane reaching a peak intensity of 85 mph.
On August 1, the storm made landfall on North Andros, Bahamas, which is just across the Tongue of the Ocean from Compass Cay. This storm followed much the same track as Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Rick and I were on Compass Cay through Hurricane Sandy. Captain Barry Flannigan was at Compass Cay with Sea Clef throughout this storm and posted regular Facebook updates. His latest update assures that all is well at Compass Cay and they sustained no damage from this storm. We were very glad that we were there this year the weekend before the storm hit.
Saturday, August 1 through Saturday August 8 :
8/1, Saturday – As of this morning, Florida has 470,386 confirmed cases of Coronavirus.
Routine Activities for this month include:
Both Dad and I watching on-line church service on Sunday, and; going for a 45-minute workout on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the Lakewood Ranch YMCA. Me volunteering in the church office and the North River Care Pregnancy Center on Tuesdays and spending some time with Jackie Sosville on Thursdays.
Monday, August 3 was two friend’s birthdays. I called Deborah Ross to wish her a happy birthday and to set up a lunch date. Then, in the afternoon I went to a surprise birthday party for Bill Baker at the Palmetto Moose Club arranged by his wife, Ruth with her friend, Michelle. Pictured below are Traci, Ruth, Bill and Lisa. Traci and Lisa are Bill’s daughters.
On Tuesday, I volunteered at both the church office and the pregnancy center and had lunch with my oldest granddaughter, Vanessa, who has just moved back into the area. After lunch, she spent a few hours with me volunteering at North River Care. Another victim to Coronavirus – I just received a notice from my niece, Christina, that she and Wim have to postpone their wedding which was scheduled to take place in Nebraska on October 2.
If you have been a reader of this blog, you know that our friend, Ken Sosville, passed away on June 30th. I have not been able to see his wife, Jackie, since the beginning of July because she had the coronavirus. She has now recovered and I was happy to be able to go over to her house Thursday morning. She is still trying to deal with the myriad of things that widows have to deal with and I am hoping that I can be of some help to her in that regard. We went over her list of things to do and she made a call to the cable company to start the process of changing the cable account into her name. They will send some paperwork within the next few days, then she will have to go into the office to accomplish the switch. Next we took pictures of a radio control airplane that Ken had bought a number of years ago (we think 2011), but never even taken out of the box. Below is a picture from the box. We did a lot of on-line research to determine the value of the plane and its accessories. We think it, along with some spare parts, is worth about $200. If anyone is interested, let me know.
At noon, we decided we had done enough work and went out to eat at Tide Tables Restaurant which is located on the Intracoastal Waterway on the southeast end of the Cortez Bridge www.tidetablescortez.com where we both had a grouper sandwich. Um, um, good!
The rest of the week was routine except that Saturday, August 8th was my great-nephew, Michael’s 22nd birthday.
Sunday, August 9 through Saturday August 15:
Nothing much out of the ordinary happened this week. Thursday, August 13th, would have been my maternal grandmother’s birthday and was my sister-in-law’s birthday as well as her granddaughter’s birthday. I saw my doctor on Thursday for a 3-month checkup due to having diabetes. He said my sugar was higher than it should be but attributed it to lots of things related to the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday, I attended a very nice “Celebration of Life” service for Ed Groover at my church. He was one of the people to see on our visitation committee list. Also, his son, Rick Groover, is a board member of the North River Care Pregnancy Center which I also serve on. And, he was the uncle of a friend from church, Wanda Rhoades.
Sunday, August 16 through Saturday August 22:
Before we watched the on-line services on Sunday, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a small turtle crawling in my yard. Emma and I went out to investigate one of God’s creations.
I got a much needed massage on Monday and did my normal volunteer work on Tuesday but was surprised by beautiful flowers from nephew, Mat, and Lindsay to thank me for our trip to Compass Cay in the Exuma chain of the Bahama Islands.
On Wednesday, 8/19, I enjoyed lunch with Deborah Ross at BYC before going with Dad to the YMCA. I went back to the North River Care Pregnancy Center on Thursday so the staff could go offsite to continue cleaning out the old office to relinquish occupancy back to Palm View First Baptist. Friday morning I received more than 25 pictures from Jeanne Reeves that she had taken at the Bradenton Yacht Club over the years of Ken Sosville. I downloaded them, then renamed and saved each one to my computer and then edited them and saved them to a flash drive to give to Jackie so that the pictures can be used for a slide show at Ken’s Celebration of Life (which will be Saturday, September 12th). One of my favorite photos from Jeanne was the one below.
So, they offer a lot of lucrative offers for the http://cute-n-tiny.com/category/cute-animals/page/66/ online cialis doctors if they promote this medicine to their patients with all precautions, guidelines and the right dosage.
Sunday, August 23 through Saturday August 30:
At the end of Sunday’s service, our long-time minister of music, Jeff Sheffield, announced that he will be retiring by the end of this calendar year to relocate to Winter Haven to be closer to his 90-year-old father. On Monday, I took Dad to the Ft. Hamer Dental Center for a toothache. The dentist told us that he had two very infected teeth and recommended that they come out. We will return in a week to have the stiches removed. Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with normal activities. On Thursday, 8/27, I took pictures of Ken to Jackie at her sister, Barbara’s house for review. While there, I also scanned and added a half dozen more pictures that came from Barbara. Friday morning I met with Jackie and Barbara at funeral home in the morning to make the final arrangements for Ken’s service and the internment of his ashes. Ken Sosville’s Celebration of Life will take place at Groover’s Funeral Home at Mansion Memorial Park on Ellenton-Gillette Road on Saturday, September 12. Visitation will start at 6:30 pm with the Celebration starting at 7:30 p.m. Since Ken’s final wishes were to “go out with a bang”, fireworks will follow the Celebration.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, birthday parties, as we know them, are not possible. So Kellie arranged for a small birthday parade to wish Emma a happy 7th birthday. It was scheduled for the day before her birthday because it would be hard for people to participate on a workday. Emma was very surprised and happy. After the parade, a small impromptu get-together happened around the pool until it started to rain! I didn’t get a picture of the parade, because I was leading it. But some of her friends gave her a sign, a balloon and some gifts.
My youngest granddaughter, Emma, was born on 8/31, 7 years ago. She was born prematurely at Sarasota Memorial Hospital at 11:37 a.m. weighing in at three pounds and at a length of 11 inches.
Dad and I decided to give her our gifts at noon. They included a bracelet, a water bottle with her name on it and a new “sand lot” set of golf clubs. The pictures below are not to scale.
Her other grandparents are coming over this evening, so there will be more present opening then and we will join them all for some birthday cake. Dad returned to the dentist today to get the stitches removed from his mouth from the two extractions last week. They said that he is healing well and they don’t need to see him again until he decides it is time to get his teeth cleaned. We had more rain today, so it was nice to just “hang out” around the house in the afternoon.
Our journey has been inspired by Joy and Steve Fredrick. You can see more of their story at