Assembly Day and Visit to Jupiter

Tuesday, January 13 - a visit to Jupiter, FL

The picture above was taken this evening, after returning from a visit to see Mary in Jupiter. As you can see, Beasley is getting a nibble from AJ.

We traveled to Jupiter this morning to visit with Mary Lawler, an old friend from Beverly, who is now living here. After giving AJ a tour of her condo, we all piled into the Odyssey for a tour of Jupiter, Juno Beach, and Palm Beach. In Jupiter, we stopped at the Jupiter Inlet and took a walk out on the jetty, where there were several fishermen with lines in the water. From there, we had lunch in a little restaurant in Juno Beach, the Juno Beach Fish House, and the food was excellent. After lunch, we traveled south to Palm Beach and visited the Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, where Mary once auditioned for the choir. All along the way, Mary pointed out other interesting sights, which we decided we had to visit at some future time.

We had a wonderful visit with Mary, who looked so much better than the last time we had seen her, just before Thanksgiving. She had recently had knee-replacement surgery, her second one, and was at home recuperating when a vehicle crashed into her condo, coming right into her kitchen, causing some very serious damage. Fortunately, Mary was in another part of the house when this took place. However, the damage has since been repaired, and her recuperation from the surgery is almost complete, so we found her to be in great spirits when we arrived, which was a relief to us.

Yesterday, Monday, was "assembly day" here in PSL. We had purchased a storage bench at BJs, and a Chiminea at Lowes, both of which had to be assembled. The storage bench was easy to assemble, and required no tools. All the pieces just snapped together, and I had it completed within 15 minutes. The Chiminea, on the other hand, proved to be a bit of a challenge to assemble. AJ noted that the box stated that it would take 20 minutes to put together. I began by laying out all the pieces to make sure that I had them all before starting the assembly. I began the assembly at Step #1, and we noted the time. By the time I had tightened the last bolt, about 1 hour had elapsed. At some point during the process, I noticed that the instructions included a caveat just before Step #1 stating that "assembly should be done by two persons". I had not seen this statement before I began the assembly. However, I realized that four persons would have been challenged to assemble this thing in 20 minutes!!

I have been carrying a batch of fire wood in the motor home for well over a year, and we finally got the opportunity to use it last night in the chiminea. I grilled steak tips on our grill for dinner, and while doing that, I was under siege from the mosquitoes, so I was apprehensive about lighting a fire and sitting outside. However, by 7PM the mosquitoes were gone, and it was quite pleasant outside by the fire. You can be sure that we will repeat that scene again and again here, now that we have the chiminea.

Tomorrow night, our niece, Wendy, will arrive to spend a few days escaping the frigid New England weather of late. We anticipate having lts of laughs with her here. On Saturday, sadly, both AJ and Wendy will depart PSL to return to New England. The bright note here is that they are both on the same flight home, so AJ will not have to return alone.

Now that the "ice" is broken, we are hoping that we will get to entertain more family members here in PSL. We just love being able to "show off"our beautiful resort. Just ask AJ.

Be sure to check out the web album to see the pictures of everything I've described above.

Here's the link to the web album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/AssemblyDayAndVisitToJupiterFL?authkey=PeHejjeTXrE&feat=directlink