How We Keep Our Trees Warm in Florida on a Chilly Day

Photos taken in downtown St. Petersburg.

Neon Signs, 4th Street, St Petersburg

When we first moved to the St Petersburg area, I was fascinated with the vintage neon signs. These signs, with their exterior illumination of neon tubes, wouldn't have survived long in Alaska. I've always told myself to photo them some day because some have disappeared to progress since we've been here. Well, today was a start. I drove up and down 4th street north and took photos.

 

The Banyan Tree motel

China City restaurant

El Cap hamburger joint

The Kentucky Motel - can't help but think there may have been a painting in the center of this sign at one time.

The Landmark Motel

Not sure if this sign is vintage or if it is just well kept/preserved but it does have exterior neon.

 And finally, the most impressive Sunken Gardens sign. It's the largest one I know of and I love how the flowers awe outlined in neon. I've seen this one at dusk and it's impressive.

My next task is to photo more on 34th street. There's one there that I really like.

Pelican Pete

The Mayor of the City of St. Petersburg, where I work, held a .pumpkin decorating/carving contest between city departments. I was conscripted to create the entry for our department. The theme was "your vision of the city" and each department was allowed to submit only 1 pumpkin (actually, one entry as it turns out because some creations used more than 1 pumpkin)

This photo shows the start of the project. There is the mayor's new theme "the sun shines here" taped to the pumpkin for carving and the beginning of the paper mache pelican. I started by making bendable wings of cardboard, the head and beak of cardboard and aluminum foil, and the feet of cardboard and cut up plastic straws. I watched You Tube videos and learned you can just masking tape things together and then paper mache over them.

I loved how the feet turned out! I actually looked at lots of photo and read up to try to make them as authentic as a paper mached pelican foot can be ;)

The head, neck, and breast are three toilet paper cones taped together with a wad of aluminum foil at the top for the head. Then I cut into the head and inserted the cardboard beak. I split the bottom toilet paper cone into strip so that I could spread it out and paper mache a breast/shoulder. In this photo I have done the paper mache and it's drying.

Here the wings are drying and I was trying to get them to dry with a bend in the wings - that didn't happen. Instead, I ended up with wing that were floppy on the ends. By the time I was finished with the project, the wings didn't have much play. Oh, so that I could attach the wings to the pumpkin, I taped 2 metal kitchen skewers to the back of each wing before paper mache. They worked really well.

Once the paper mache was dry (overnight) I spray painted everything white as a primer. Then I went to buy pain and feathers and decided that my brown pelican was going to be a white pelican. I'm a realistic and practical person (sometimes) and realized that painting in detail would be difficult and probably fraught with errors. In addition, purchasing brown feathers would have been very expensive. So, since the city's Pelican Pete logo is always white (negative space, actually) on other colors AND because these white turkey feathers were way cheaper than the brown ones, I decided on a White Pelican.

With all the pelican parts constructed, I spent the next night carving the pumpkin. This was a huge and heavy pumpkin so I ended up sitting it on pillows on the couch to do the deed. I bought a new Exacto knife and carving kit at Michael's and that carving kit turned out to be so much easier than the Exacto. I decided not to clean out the pumpkin because my experience in Florida has been that they don't last long once carved open. Plus, when you clean it out the carving of the Sun Shines Here logo would have been more difficult I would have to worry about the parts becoming unattached from the pumpkin. I was actually happy with the way it turned out considering my drawing was free hand.

So, Wednesday before the contest on Friday, I was at lunch with a coworker talking about the contest and we said it would be cool if Pelican Pete could sit on a green bench. At one time downtown St Pete had tons of green benches and people came out in droves to sit on them and visit while taking in the sun. They are gone now but there are plenty of things in town that honor or remember these days gone by. Back to the story, we got back to the office and called her husband, who was off that day, and asked if he could make it. He asked when we needed it and we said in two and half hours, lol. By the way, it took two cans of spray paint to make that bench green because it sucked up the paint.

The finished pelican on the bench! Because our narrative is about him resting on a green bench after trick or treating in Billing & Collections (my department), I put a loot bag with candy on his wing. Once we got him to City Hall I had to rethink that because it was pulling down on the wing and you could see the skewer. So, I set it on the table by the vignette. Turns out lots of people had bowls of candy by their entries so it was perfect.

And this is the photo of the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor with our entry. Notice the sign that says "#1 Bad to the Bone" indicating we won first place!!!! I never win anything so I was tickeled.

Home Show

Last weekend Jerry & I attended a home show held at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. The "trop" is home to the Tampa Bay Rays that went to the world series last year (but lost to Philadelphia :).

I thought these Christmas-themed balloons decorations were really cool and creative. First was a GIANT wreath.

Then there were two balloon toy soldiers flanking the entrance to the field where the vendors set up.

Pet Food Warehouse

I was in my favorite store again this week - Pet Food Warehouse in St. Pete. LOL, I used to think that stores like Nordstrom were my favorite! How things change.....

In the vein of high end merchandise, the dinosaur above is a $99.99 toy. This one is called TuffZilla - a 7 on the tough scale. This thing was HUGE - 27" tall. Too big for my ratties was an impressive toy none the less. Click here if you want to see more info on these tuff toys that I buy for my dogs. I prefer the sea creature line because of the shapes and the tuff factor of 6.

This is an interesting new toy. It is already flat so there's no stuffing to strew all over the house; however, it does have squeakers - many of them! I ended up buying this toy and Eddie was happy with it right away.

Look at the size of that dog treat! They also have a 5" version but this was impressive. I guess I was impressed by the sheer size of things that day. LOL The Merrick Company makes lots of good chewies that I feel safe giving to my ratties. No rawhide in my house (ok, will make exception for compressed rawhide). Learn more here.

Now that's a bully stick! I can just see my Eddie trying to walk though a doorway with in his mouth, LOL. More info here. I ended up getting Moo Tubes.

Here's a shot of the chewie area. Bulley stick, lamb spizzels, etc. This store is amaizing - they have everything you've ever heard of. Plus, pineapple popcicles for humans. Yummt!

This is one size of a huge displayer of packaged treats. Plus there are more treats on end caps and other areas in the store. They also have raw food in frozen * in freeze dried and in two brands with several varities each. They now also have fresh food that Daisey LOVES.

Green Thumb Sunday

In honor of Green Thumb Sunday, I worked in my yard. NOT!!! My Kodiak friends Jim & Sandy are in Tampa and had a day away from their business so we went out. It was a BEAUTIFUL day - temperature perfect, very light breeze. You couldn't pay for a better day. We went to the Museum of Fine Arts then ate burgers & fries at Johnny Rocket. A very nice day on Beach Drive in St. Petersburg indeed.

Here we are in front of the Kapok tree in Straub Park. These trees can grow to 150 feet! Sandy commented on the smoothness of the bark. These trees are drought deciduous meaning they shed leaves during the dry season (they are a tropical rainforrest tree) and get these large flower pod on them.

Check out the size of the flowers! Granted, Sandy has a thin wrist and forarm but the flowers are big. They made a bit of a thud when they fell from up high too.

Here's two photos of the tree. It's impossible to get in it's entirety without giving up detail.

Litterbug

Litterbug = my pet peeve! And by golly was I peeved yesterday.

So, I was driving west on 1st avenue in St. Pete talking to my Dad on the cell phone (I know, I know, but he was in the hospital) and I was following behind a cab, taxi, whatever you call it. (Is there a difference?) Anyway, I see this cab driver arm come out and throw trash out the window! I could not believe my eyes.

As I am talking to my Dad I am fishing through my purse (phone on sholder now) trying to locate a pen to write down the cab's licence# when it dawns on me I could just hang up and call because the phone number of the company is on the vehicle!

So I call them and say I want to make a complaint about a driver. They asked "what did he do?" I explained the driver is throwing his trash out the car on 1st avenue and littering the city downtown. They asked if I could identify the car. I said that I could because I am behind it in traffic right now and gave them the car#, licence plate info, make, model & color of the vehicle although I suspect they are all white with the black bat logo.

He said "OK" but it just didn't feel like enough dialog to me so I asked him if the company was going to take responsibility for the trash. I believe the question surprized him but he said yes and assured me they would look into it.

Do you believe there is a chance in you-know-where that they sent that cab driver to pick up his/her trash?

I took this photo from the web site and blocked out the faces because I have no idea who was in that cab - I was behind him/her. I asked a coworker who used to be a St. Petersburg police officer if I had called the police instead of report littering if they would have come. She said it has been a long while since she was on the force but that it was unlikely. She said the police would probably have to witness the littering to write a ticket.

So basically there is no recourse unless the cab company follows through on it's word :(

Eddie's Day Out

Eddie & I started the day at the Largo dog park near our house. I decided I had enough dog park photos for a while at least. Then we went to Dunkin Donuts because I "needed" coffee and Eddie "needed" a munchkin. Next we were off to the Pet Food Warehouse in St. Pete - an amaizing store!

Eddie couldn't wait to get across the parking lot and into the store.

The store is quite large and such a large assortment of foods. All these "rare" brands that I have only heard of on internet social networking sites are here, in real life. Today I bought dehydrated raw food.

Eddie was ok until we came around a corner and met a Boston face to face. I thought it best to have a time out in the cart for a while. They had a Santa photo fundraiser going on so after Ed's photo shoot he settled down. I guess the strange man in the wierd clothing holding him took him down a notch.

So, Ed was able to resume his shopping.

Many good smells but unfortuantely, Eddie already blew is allowance so no new treats today.

Mamma still had a little allowance and picked up this!

Edward had such a full morning that he could barely keep his eyes open during the car ride home.

Changes at Work

I borrowed these images from the City's web site to show off where I work :) The City has a huge photo gallery if you are interested in seeing more of beautiful St. Petersburg. (click on images for larger view)

This is image of the north side of Central avenue coming from my building. I believe Centrla Ave is almost solely responsible for the sustinence of the government worker as witnessed by the number of eateries you see in this photo.

This is a skyline view of the downdown area. Notice the tall black building. I work across the street. Mostly what you see of my building is the parking garage, looks kinda yellow. It is to the right of the black building and about half the height.

This is the St. Petersburg pier. Shops, restaurants, events, boats, etc. There is even a floating wedding chapel!

This is Baywalk. shops, restaurants, movies, and art. Baywalk and the surrounding area is very walkable and browsable 9is that a word?).

I'm up wide awake at 3am so thought I would write a boring blog about work. Perhaps it will put me back to sleep! LOL

Worked very late tonight moving to a different workstation. Starting Tuesday (Monday is a holiday) I will be assuming a new position. No applause, it's a lateral move. But, that's OK - it gves me an opportunity to learn something new and important to the organization.

Tonight we had to do the desk switches which also involves phone extensions and computer changes. I moved from being a customer Service Supervisor in the call center to being a Customer Service Sueprvisor in the adjustments section (commonly referred to as the Billing Supervisor). The Administrative Secretary moved into my old position and a customer Service Representative moved into hers. But, the desk swapping didn't stop there. The CSR came from a different floor meaning we added one body to our floor (same department).

So to make room for the person who previously held my new position, we started by moving a person who spends most of his day in the field into the conference room that is set up like an office (actually it was my office at one time, LOL). This meant we could move another CSR into his space which worked out well because one function she does requires a bit more space. With her space freed up we were able to move another CSR who sits a bit far away from the rest of the call center into the other CSRs space and bring her closer to the pack. Her space was then occupied by the person who was sitting where the person I am replacing is going.

Got all that? Tp add to it, some phone extension were moved and some stayed the same and only the names were changed in the directory. Plus, Tuesday some computers will be moved - some will stay. I had to draw myself a schematic to keep up with it all!

See, told you it was boring,
Vickie