I’ve mentioned a couple of times in the blog that rainfall totals for our area of Central Florida are way down this year. We have something like a 5 inch deficit where we are, midway between Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral. So we have definitely been needing some rain, and we got some yesterday. In […]
I had planned on watering our citrus trees and perennial peanut plants yesterday, but sometime early in the morning, we had a pretty good rain and woke up to big puddles in the street, so that saved me one chore. However, it gave us another one to deal with. My Bennington pontoon boat has three […]
Seeing the 21 gun salute rendered for outgoing President Trump on Wednesday reminded me of an incident that I can probably talk about now because I’m sure the statute of limitations has run out. At least I hope so! Many people don’t know that in addition to training officers for the Army, every class at […]
I was online as soon as registrations opened for COVID-19 vaccinations at the Volusia County Fairgrounds yesterday morning and managed to get us registered for ours on Monday afternoon. They had openings today and Friday and again on Monday, and you had to choose a one-hour time slot. I clicked on 10 – 11 a.m. […]
If I had any hair I probably would have pulled it all out yesterday. Yeah, it was that frustrating. With all of the final changes made to my new Tinder Street book, I formatted the e-book version to get it ready to upload to Amazon. I’ve done this many times, and it’s not very hard […]
Every parent wants to raise children who become adults they can be proud of. Adults that they can look at and say to themselves with a smile of self-satisfaction, “Yeah, that’s my kid!” Unfortunately, I don’t do that. As much as it hurts me to admit it, I raised two rotten, selfish kids. My son […]
Friday will be five weeks since I had three RF nerve ablations done on my lower back, and for those who have asked about the results, it has been nothing short of amazing. I can’t believe how much relief you can get from a relatively simple outpatient procedure. Since the day of the procedure, I […]
Thanks to all of you who sent e-mails, text messages, and made Facebook comments about the RF nerve ablation on my back yesterday. We had to be at Park Place Surgical Center in Maitland, Florida, at 2 p.m. We always try to arrive early for an appointment, especially to a place we haven’t been to […]
Writing and storytelling have always come naturally to me, so while I know authors who complain about writer’s block, it’s not something I’ve ever experienced myself. That may be because of my years in the small town newspaper business, where you had to get an edition out on the street, and you couldn’t fill it […]
As a former newspaperman and an independent book author and self-publisher, I hate typos. But I’ve also been at this game long enough to know that they are a part of life, and no matter how carefully you watch for them, they slip in. I have at least three or four proofreaders for every book […]
After driving my Mustang to Daytona Beach a few days ago and some running around I did yesterday in it, it now has 840 miles on the odometer. So I was a little distressed to find rust on one of the bolts that holds the driver’s side door hinge to the car. It lives in […]
Here’s another tale from the Nick Happens file, a collection of true stories about my adventures and misadventures over the years. We all know you can save a lot of money by doing your own vehicle maintenance and simple repairs. I even suggest it in my book The Frugal RVer. The problem is that there […]
An oversize visitor from the north cloaked in red came to visit New Smyrna Beach for the holidays and has been generating a lot of excitement around here. No, I’m not talking about jolly old St. Nick. He comes around every year. This event is probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing. News reports say that this huge […]
Before I do anything else, I want to wish my buddy Greg White happy birthday. Years ago Miss Terry read something that said more Americans were born on October 5th than any other day. I think that’s because they all just wanted to copycat Greg because he gets to hang out with me. But that […]
There is absolutely no question you can ask on an Internet forum that won’t get you a dozen immediate replies, and another 20 or so by the next day. Some of that information may prove useful, but a lot of it is coming from Internet experts who will convince you they know everything there is […]
In a blog post a couple of weeks ago, when I told you about Miss Terry doing some painting at our house, I mentioned that we still had a couple of other home improvement projects we wanted to get done. One of them was insulating our garage. It’s a huge 1100 square foot metal building […]
Lavish plantation homes are the symbol of the antebellum South and throughout the region stretching from Georgia to Mississippi, many fine examples of these old homes have been lovingly preserved and restored. While some remain in private hands, serving as homes or bed and breakfast operations, others are owned by historic preservation organizations that open […]
This past weekend was a quiet one at home, which suited us just fine. We don’t always feel the need to be on the move, and sometimes we like days like that. Florida is in a real drought and in desperate need of rain. Wildfires are burning all over the state. We got a little […]
A topic that often comes up in the seminars I present on fulltiming at RV rallies and other events is making friends on the road. More than one new or wannabe RVer has told me that they wonder if they will have anybody to talk to when they are surrounded by strangers. I am always […]
Note: This story is from my book Highway History And Back Road Mystery. The United States and Canada have enjoyed a long and friendly relationship. Our boundary with our neighbors to the north is the longest unguarded border in the world. But there was a time when a lowly pig almost brought the two nations […]