What I Love About St. Pete - Our new hometown

Sometime before the holidays we will be moving into our new renovated/remodeled/additioned home in the Old Northeast section of St. Pete. Its been a long road to get to that point and we are READY to say "we live in ST. Pete". Which is a good thing since its taken us 2 years and more money that expected to get permits and construct our dream retirement home. (jerry would say nightmare...but he'll feel better when we're done).

We spend several weeks a month here now, renting a small furnished apartment a few blocks from the house. We are beginning to feel a bit "at home" here.

So what do I love about St. Pete this week? Diner 437, our fave restaurant in town. Chef Domenica Macchia has created a wonderful "home cooking" with a twist menu and SHE is a delight. I "met" her through Twitter via a post by @thestew (thanks guy!). She is fun, opinionated (in a good way), real, cooks REAL food, and is adventurous. Today we went for lunch and had her wet-aged (by Domenica herself) prime rib. Oh my gosh...divine...which absolutely perfect mashed potatoes. Can't wait to introduce Jason to her potatoes.

But there is more to St Pete besides good food. Last night we went to see the Rays play against the Yankees (sadly they lost) at the Tropicana Dome (The Trop). We bicycled there. Yes, me! Yes, to a major MLB ballfield. Even though we live in a quiet, homey, historic neighborhood, we are within 2 miles of the Trop. And there is a major bike path much of the way. We left the Trop on our bikes and were almost home before a lot of the people got out of the parking lot in their cars! Great fun!

And then there's people. We've become good friends with our architect John and his wife Susan. And now with our contractor Emil. We're making acquaintances with people through twitter (yes, I just said Twitter) mainly associated with food (good thing there are a lot of walking trails and sidewalks here...i'm going to need it to walk off all the dining opportunities).

Now if we can just stop finding dry rot and termite damage so we concentrate on building the new part of the house rather than rebuilding the old part! (see http://www.annettesspot.blogspot.com/ for the saga of the house).

Long Time No Post

The last few months have been a blur and I've sadly neglected this blog. Managed to keep up with Facebook and Flickr and am trying out Twitter. But am just often too weary to post. But I've renewed my conviction to keep this one up. So first. check out http://www.annettesspot.blogspot.com/ I've made several posts with updates on our new place in St. Pete. That will get you up to date on that aspect of our life. I've promised myself to update my travel blog with our June trip to Nashville and our July trip to Montreal. In the meanwhile you can check out www.flickr.com/photos/abaesel to catch some of the photos.

For now...here is a photo from today in St. Pete. This was a giant thunderhead with an enormous "anvil" which fortunately headed northwest instead of over st. pete.