The 7 Mile Grill is our breakfast spot

While acknowledging that we can't enjoy 2 egg breakfasts specials and 3 egg omelets every day of our retirement, we have allowed ourselves to do that all week. We have breakfast everyday at the 7 Mile Grill, right up at the corner of our street. They're open at 7, which has proven to be none too early for us on at least a couple of mornings. And, the local radio station broadcasts live from the end of the bar in the mornings so you get the news while it's fresh. I still haven't gotten over the novelty of watching the announcer speak then looking over to where the radio's playing in the corner and hearing her voice.


Breakfast is great. I'm already happily stuck in a spinach and Swiss cheese omelet rut with tomatoes on the side. And the coffee's good though I do need to stop using cream and ask for milk instead.

Shirley and her husband are from New Jersey. They've owned the 7 Mile Grill for 8 years when they bought it from the Farrell's. Mrs Farrell is our next door neighbor.

If Shirley has her way, they'll be selling the 7 Mile Grill and moving to Costa Rica. The "For Sale" sign is already up. I hope the new owners are as friendly and their omelet's as good.

The Marathon Playhouse and Cinema

We were cruising along OH when I noticed a sign at the side of a strip mall. It's the local playhouse and cinema. There's both. Movies every night in the cinema, which features both regular theater seating as well as cafe table seating, for those who require a larger surface on which to rest their beer.

Meanwhile the playhouse features a large reception area with tons of tables and a bar that also serves snacks. The theater itself is lovely and includes

Can't blog on iPhone? There's an ap for that... Finally an update

Sunday went as planned. Opened my eyes to see the Gulf, breakfast at 7 Mile Grill, walking across 7 mile bridge watching dolphins flipping and frolicking in the distance, a quick walk on Pigeon Key (to use the bathroom), shopping at Publix and West Marine, a few hours at Bahia Honda Beach (kayaking but not swimming -- too cold!), a visit to Marathon Marina to get pricing for storage then happy hour at Lazee Days. In bed by 8 but back up at 11. Probably heard the storm. Read for hours.

Monday we were back at 7 Mile Grill (it's very good!) then back to 7 mile bridge to find out why it world be closed for the day. Shooting something. From conversation at happy hour later, it was likely amazing race. A few nice policemen were blocking the old bridge but not giving any hints. We dropped off flowers for Kitty, got a hat for Peter and a few other things then checked out Sombrero Beach. Lovely. We look forward to going back without swearers. Then we dropped by marathon yacht club and decided we didn't really need to go back there for dinner. Also checked out the closed bridge to Hog Key. Yup it's closed. Eventually back to happy hour then burgers at home. We didn't try to watch sunset, too many clouds.

Tuesday up early to go into Key West. We'll be back by 5:30 for the city council meeting. We got a photo of Dick the dog at West Marine. That was after cruising the streets of key west to help a nice guy from Alabama find his lost car so that he could get on the road to Jupiter to visit his brother before heading home.

So far so good

Trying to get out of Ottawa and post video

http://m.youtube.com/?client=mv-google&xl=xl_tsp&tsp=1&tspv=v2#/watch?xl=xl_blazer&v=_Plh5tidlqc

OK now we're going to embed a video from youtube

on youtube at the video you want, choose embed, and copy the code
Unclick "include related videos"
Then come back to blog and paste the code into Edit Html, not Compose
Then
then
then
I think you go back to Compose
Then I tried preview but it didn't show the vid that I thought I'd pasted



But, as it turned out, the video was fine. I just had to go ahead and publish it.

That was pretty easy I must say.

Though I'm not sure I should have chosen that video!

Embedding a photo into a blog

go to flickr

search once

go to advanced search

bottom of page

creative commons -- click all 3

seach

choose a photo

select actions

choose small or medium

right click on photo

choose properties

grab full url of jpg -- only use jpg

then

then

then

what!!!

select the photo picture above and past the url

Yay!!

Sitting in NYC PRSA Social Networking Course

But still thinking about where I'll be in a couple of weeks. But we're at the part in the course where we start a blog. So, here I am. But, it's important to note that for many reasons, our corporate blog should be on WordPress rather than Blogger, and on our own server.

Now we practice bullets and linking to another website:

• one
• two
• three

So, let's link to best keys vacation.

More Info on Boot Key

Hm, sounds like a dump, literally -- circa 2006, so maybe something has changed, hopefully for the better. We'll just have to head down 20th Street Ocean to find out for ourselves. As it turns out, the bridge to Boot Key is now stuck permanently in the up position so we may not find out much.

Another Sunday Evening Alternative?

Dockside Bar and Grill Sunday Jam 6-10 pm at the Sombrero Marina. Though, the notice on the Dockside website says it's temporarilly closed. So, maybe check out the situation on Saturday when we go over to see the Christmas boat parade.

Date Driven Activties and Other Places to Go... and Eat, and Snorkel, and rent Bikes and Kayaks

Oops. Wiped out my whole entry and couldn't figure out how to undo. Anyway, just don't want to miss Boot Key Harbor Boat Parade on Saturday, December 11th, aka the day we arrive.

I've also downloaded the Floriday Keys iPhone App though many entries are still without info -- not sure where they pull the info from -- so I'll probable stick with old fashioned web-browsing most of the time.

Looks like we'll also want to head down the OH to The Island -- it's about 6 miles, so we might want to look at renting bikes that day. Come to think of it, maybe we should rent bikes for the week. And Kayaks! Overseas Outfitters is a quick walk from our place, so we should check it out day 1. Wait! Is it open Sunday? Nope, better stop in on our way from Miami, if we can get there before it closes at 3 pm. Geez, I'm already stressed. They don't seem to rent kayaks -- just bikes -- but they'll likely know somewhere that will.

Hey, I just saw that Sombrero Reef Marine Sanctuary and Lighthouse is the #1 rated snorkeling spot in the Keys. And Starfish Snorkel Trips offers 3 trips a day, and they're right next to the 7 Mile Grill in Sea Dog Charters Marina, which is right at our street! We can check them out after breakfast on the first morning... if they're open Sunday! Hm, not sure if they're affiliated with Sea Dog Charters. Hope not, given these reviews.

Speaking of reviews, we'll definitely have to try Porky's Bayside Restaurant and at some point during the week, we should head over to the Marathon Yacht Club -- assuming we've got reciprocal privileges with BYC. Their Tuesday evening Blue Plate Special sounds like a good bet with Happy Hour half price drinks and a bunch of dinner choices for $14.96. And, it's an easy walk from our place.

The Sunset Grille and Raw Bar, across the OH, has a pool party, bbq and DJ dance party combo every Sunday night. Sounds like something you've just got to try once!

Then I want to go to....

Sombrero Beach, which you get to by just following Sombrero Beach Road to the end, natch. It's a nice 3.5 mile walk from our place. The Keys seem small and cozy in memory and legend, but in reality, you can get a pretty good walk getting from point a to point b right in your neighbourhood. I also want to figure out what's going on at Booth Key which is a much shorter walk . The Marathon City Marina is in Boot Key Harbor, but what's actually going on on Boot Key, and can you actually walk there now -- I think I read that the bridge was gone. It's tough to get info on Boot Key because Google matches are mostly for the harbor. Even the Wikipedia entry (aha, that's where I read about the ooc bridge) is a stub, though I can get a look around by following 20th Saint (sic) Ocean on Google Streetview.

If we headed from our place to Sombrero Beach we could also choose to check out the Crane Point Museum and Nature Center on the Gulf side of the road. Of course, there's a 1.5 mile nature trail that you need to tack onto your total distance. Overall, reviews are mixed, but we'll check it out.

Gotta go back to sleet and snow right now, though.

Unlocking the Keys

Well, we went, we saw, we concurred on a sweet semi on the Gulf. It's all ours now, has been for months, and we enjoy knowing that strangers are enjoying it on a fairly regular basis. Did you know that Summer is the second busiest season in the Keys? During the lobster season, locals move out of their homes and into whatever passes for a reasonable roof over their heads in order to capitalize on the influx of crustacean-crazy northern Floridians that flock south to their equivalent of cottage country.

We're actually going to get a chance to stay at our own place in December. It's already booked over Christmas, so we asked Kitty, our property manager, if she thought we'd be safe going the week before (safe = it wouldn't have rented anyway). Turns out the week before Christmas is the second most popular Christmas week and tends to book up once there's nothing left at Christmas. So, we're going two weeks before Christmas.

I am totally looking forward to: opening my eyes in the morning with my head still on the pillow and looking out at the Gulf, going down to the kitchen and making tea while I look out at the Gulf and going back up to the bedroom and out to the porch to drink tea while looking out at the Gulf, then walking up the road to the 7 Mile Grill for breakfast, walking over the old bridge to Pigeon Key then back for a dip in the pool/Gulf, showering, packing a picnic and heading over to Bahia Honda State Park (wherein resides one of the top 10 nicest beaches in the US, according to the Travel Channel) for some swimming and snorkeling, and perhaps a short nap. After that, we can head home, drop our stuff, rinse off the salt and walk across the highway to the Marathon Marina to sit at the Tiki Bar and drink in the local ambiance. For dinner, we might stay there or head back home for a barbecue.

Oh, I forgot, we have to be back home in time to watch the sun set over the Gulf from our deck!! Oh my God, what a day... and we get 7 of them!!

She still hasn't been in touch, I'm going to

e-mail her. I'm sure she just lost my e-mail address.

She doesn't call, she doesn't write

Well, so far, not so good. I did tell the agent not to send us a bunch of listings that perfectly met our criteria but would be sold before we could get down to see them. But I didn't specifically bar her from contact with us before the May trip. To be fair, she admitted that she wasn't at the office when we talked so maybe she's waiting until she gets back to e-mail me. Though I'm not sure what she should e-mail me about since I don't want to see listings until we're actually ready to see them. I guess I just expected a little "hey, great to meet you on the phone, can't wait to get together in person to help you find a perfect spot in the Keys" or something like that. It is possible that despite my careful phonetic pronunciation and use of code words for potentially confusing letters ("B"as in Bob, "P" as in Peter) that she may have mis-spelled my e-mail address. But you would think if that was the case, the e-mail would bounce back and she would become concerned and try to track me down. She would still have most of my name spelled correctly and there's really no one with an even similar name in Ottawa. And she does know I'm from Ottawa. Maybe she was just pretending that she would be in contact but she's really not interested in trying to address our huge demands and low budget. She did seem to be almost rushing me off the phone, come to think of it. I had to keep saying, "there's just one more thing..." everytime she tried to say goodbye. Well, I'll give her a couple more days and then decide how to proceed ie whether to send her an e-mail (one more chance!) or just look for another sympathetic looking agent and hope they answer my call.

OK, we've got an agent, I think

Using a scientifically proven method of agent selection, I googled "best agent in Florida keys" and reviewed the list of agents who know a thing or two about SEO (or, at least, hire people who do). From that long list, I then reviewed each agent's website for the specific data that would determine whether or not he or she would be a good fit for us, specifically: did I like they way he or she looked? Having short-listed to one candidate who looked nice and approachable, despite being wildly successful, and who only covers the Lower Keys, despite the fact that we want to investigate both the Upper and Lower Keys, I did my diligence and gave her a call. As the phone rang, I planned the final test of her suitability ie would she pick up? If she did, that was a sign that she's the right agent for us.

This level of exactitude and commitment to a logical, thorough and, frankly gruelling, agent selection process, is not for everyone. We'll see if it was worth the 7 minutes I invested. She seems really nice on the phone -- so far, so good.

Time to find an agent

Despite a few years spent as an agent myself, I'm not quite sure how to go about looking for an agent. Sure, there's lots there but we really don't have time to make a mistake -- if we end up with someone we don't like/trust/feel is doing the job, it's a bit late to switch once we're down there. I keep thinking we'll have to "interview" a few but not sure how to even construct the short list. Big listing agents aren't necessarily the ones that will take the time needed to help us -- we can be very demanding, and by "we", I mean Peter -- but those are the ones that you see alot of online. Haven't noticed anything about buyer's brokers yet, so will check that out first. Of course, we still want to be able to check our private sales -- FSBO's -- especially since the home we now live in and love was a private. We could get a referral from an agent here but I'm not sure that puts us any further ahead, though the agent here would get a referral fee just for passing us along.

South Africa got us thinking about Florida

Spending Christmas and New Year's with Peter's father in South Africa, we got to thinking about winter warmth and the lack thereof in Ottawa and whether or not we would like to look forward to a future devoid of winter warmth or... not.

This line of thinking quickly led us back to the old idea of getting a retirement place in Florida. With retirement a possibility in 5 years, but Florida housing prices likely to be nicely recovered by then, we wondered yet again whether we shouldn't consider buying something now and renting it out until we're ready for it.

And because these thoughts entered our heads when we were on holidays, and our minds not consumed by work and kids and other daily cares, they were able to take root and flourish. We started researching the various coasts and cities of Florida, looking for a fit. We started on the Gulf but Peter doesn't like that side for sailing though we understand that the many of the cities and towns are more appealing than Atlantic alternatives. Moving along the Atlantic, we reviewed data on average listing and selling prices and looked at the county just above Palm Beach -- Port St. Lucie? After reading mixed comments from residents and visitors -- and not finding anything online that screamed "YOU MUST RETIRE HERE", Peter brought up the Keys. I hadn't considered it, thinking they would likely be too expensive. But then we worked out how much we could spend if we sold the cottage and suddenly the Keys seemed achievable.

Well really, we have no idea at this point if we'll find something we like that we can also afford but there at least appear to be some possibilities based on the MLS listings we've reviewed.

So we've booked off to spend a week in May in Key Largo at a little local hotel on the beach -- we're actually staying in a little housekeeping cottage so we can even cook our own meals at night and enjoy the sunset with a bottle of wine as we consider whether that's something we want to do for the rest of our lives.