Somebody asked me what it was like coming from the hot, dry desert of Arizona back to hot, humid, central Florida. I lived in Arizona for many years and never believed any of that “it’s a dry heat” nonsense they tell you about the desert. Hot is hot. It’s dry inside an oven, too, but […]
Some very strong storms came through Central Florida Tuesday afternoon and night, with tornado warnings for several areas, including ours. According to the news, only one tornado actually touched down, somewhere in the western half of the state, but we got some really strong wind and a lot of lightning and rain. The weatherman said […]
Yesterday was the last full day for our daughter Tiffany and granddaughter Destiny to be with us, and since it was one of the few nice days weather-wise while they have been here, we decided to introduce them to kayaking. You might think that people who live in Arizona don’t have enough water to go […]
It has been unseasonably cold here in Central Florida, which has curtailed some of the things we wanted to do during our daughter Tiffany and granddaughter Destiny’s visit from Arizona. But we’ve still had some adventures and a lot of laughs. Today I’ll bring you up to date on some of them. In previous blogs, […]
Longtime reader Gerri Poth Beckman and her hubby John are spending some time in our old stomping grounds, the White Mountains of Arizona. Before we went on the road as fulltime RVers, Terry and I lived there and I published the weekly newspaper. The White Mountains are also the setting for my Big Lake mystery […]
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 […]
The other day the weatherman from News Channel 6 in Orlando said that Winter is over and Spring is officially here. But you couldn’t prove that by me yesterday. A cold front came through Central Florida, bringing rain and wind with it and keeping the temperature down in the low 60s all day long. On […]
Quite a few readers have asked how things are going with Terry’s AeroGarden, as well as the citrus trees and perennial peanuts we planted in our yard. Overall, things have been successful, though there have been a couple of setbacks. A week or so ago, we had a cold snap come through Central Florida, with […]
A series of severe thunderstorms came through Central Florida Saturday night, with tornado warnings in several counties, including ours. As usual, the brunt of it went north or south of us, leaving us with periods of heavy rain off and on, but that was about it. But it was still a tense night around here. […]
Wednesday night I finished Fresh Out Of Mojo, my 9th John Lee Quarrels book. It was about 86,000 words before final edits began. The writing took seven weeks and three days. It is in final editing and proofing now, and it will be out next week. It’s a gritty tale with violence and some strong […]
I have been saying happy birthday to different women in my family all week here in the blog, and I told you that there were more to come. And sure enough, there are! Today we celebrate not just one birthday, but two of them. My cousins Bernie (above) and Beverly (below) share the same birthday, […]
Welcome to Florida, where you can experience spring, summer, fall, and winter all in the same week. Sometimes even in the same day! The temperatures have been in the mid to upper 80s for quite a while now, which is too warm for this time of year. Then they suddenly took a nosedive, and we […]
Strong storms raged over Central Florida for much of the day yesterday, with high winds, hail, rain coming down in buckets, and reports of a couple of tornadoes. Some areas got more than their total normal December rainfall in just a few hours. Yeah, it got scary for a while. Sometime around noon our weather […]
It seems like the weather here in central Florida goes from one extreme to the other. Last week we had daytime temperatures in the mid-80s and now we have a cold front headed our way and the weatherman is saying it will bring rain with it and we will be lucky if we hit a […]
It seemed like every day for the last week or two the weatherman has been predicting rain for our area. And though there has been some rain come down around us, all we have had here is a brief shower or two that lasted for a couple of minutes. But that all changed yesterday. A […]
I worked late on Tuesday night, trying to get as much done in my new book as I could. Of course, when I work that late I can’t just flip a switch and turn it off and fall asleep. It takes a while for my mind to unwind and relax. So it was sometime after […]
We have had a cold snap here in central Florida. Wednesday the high was only 59° and it got down to 39° overnight, and yesterday it warmed all the way up to a high of 60° and overnight it dropped down to 40°. Now, compared to what the folks in the Midwest and New England […]
It’s been in the mid-80s here in central Florida for the last couple of weeks, which the weatherman has been calling unseasonably warm. But a cold front is supposed to be coming in this weekend and they are predicting temperatures to fall into the mid-to-upper 70s by the first of the week. That will be […]
We had a lot of e-mails and Facebook posts yesterday from people asking if we were okay. Yes, we’re fine, and we appreciate your concern. The bad weather that hammered much of the southeast Tuesday missed us here in central Florida. We got some rain, but that was about it. We have some of the […]
It started raining hard in the wee hours of the morning yesterday and never stopped for more than a few minutes all day long. Many areas in central Florida were under flood watches, there were a few tornado warnings, and many areas got as much as seven inches of rain! Yes, SEVEN inches! That’s a […]