Diana made her first business trip for her new job on Monday and Tuesday. The destination was San Jose and the meeting seems to have gone well. She was entertained to find a picture of an old typewriter in her room – they show up everywhere since we saw the California Typewriter movie.
This picture from her flight home shows the layer of smoke from the massive California wildfires that continue to burn. The Mendocino fire is now the largest in recorded history with close to 300,000 acres burned.
I dropped Diana off for her flight and we stopped into my favorite Dallas area coffee shop, Redefined coffee in Grapevine, for coffee and a crossword on the way. When I arrived at my office I found a nice new mousepad on my desk – a gift from Mike Mead that merges the Scottish and American flags in a creative way.
On Thursday we flew to Pensacola, Florida to rendezvous with Denny, Anne, Jack, Mason, and Sabine for a long weekend in Navarre beach. Anne’s parents, Carolyn and Jack, have a condo there that they live in during the winter months. Navarre beach is located on a very thin sliver of an island that parallels the coast – it takes just a couple of minutes to walk from the leeward to the gulf side of the island.
We stopped at the Union Public House in Pensacola for a drink and a snack before making the drive. The crab fingers and scotch eggs were very good.
Our next stop was at Joe Patti for fresh seafood. This place had the largest and most impressive array that I’ve seen – amazing variety. Denny picked up some scallops and lump crab meat.
Diana captured this picture of the gorgeous sandy beaches as we drove along the island. Here are some of the lovely views from the condo after we arrived.
Denny and Anne cooked up an amazing feast for dinner including perfectly cooked fresh scallops with tzatziki sauce. That was followed by a pretty wild game of cards against humanity which Mason won, just edging Denny and me.
Diana and I did some work calls first thing in the morning and after a late, lazy breakfast, we headed over to the beach on Friday and stayed there until a thunder storm rolling in from offshore seemed ready to soak us. Then we headed to T.J.s in Navarre proper on the mainland for a late lunch.
Our Friday night entertainment was a walk down to Juana’s to listen to the live band. The music was classic rock which everyone (except maybe Denny) enjoyed. The people watching in the music section of the bar was some of the best I’ve seen in a while with all kinds of characters involved. It became clear why the floor of the bar was nice soft sand.
Saturday morning was a repeat of Friday with a trip over to the beach. The current and waves were much calmer and so we were able to spend some more time playing in the sea. Lunch was at Windjammer on the pier where Anne and Diana had found some impressive sand art on their earlier walk down the beach.
Sunday morning brunch was amazing crab benedicts assembled by Chef Denny, Anne with a small contribution from me. After brunch we enjoyed some quality time on the massive blow up island in the water out behind the condo. Diana tried out Anne’s paddleboard and did very well – no falling at all.
Then it was that awful time again – time to leave the Ogans and fly home to boring, land-locked McKinney. Thanks to Mr. Denny for driving us to the Pensacola airport. The candle that Anne gifted to Diana caused some brief interest from the Pensacola TSA staff.
My cigar cutter and ashtray set up caused me to be stopped for a bag check on the way out of Dallas to Pensacola and I was lucky to get a TSA agent who was also a cigar aficionado and let it pass. So we were able to get extra screening on both legs of the trip.
Jack had Anne send us home with a gift from him (one that didn’t alert TSA) – a piece of wine cork art that is now hanging in our bar area.
A huge thanks to Jack and Carolyn for the use of their condo for an excellent long weekend!
My reading this week has been from the new Paul Simon biography. I’m about half way through and around 1974 when “Still Crazy After All These Years” was released. This has been a very interesting read – I enjoy hearing about the inspiration for the songs and the special recording techniques and musicians used on the various albums. I was interested to learn that the Muscle Shoals “Swampers” were the key musicians on the “Rhymin’ Simon” album – one of my favorites. It’s amazing how many of the records that I love were recorded at Muscle Shoals with that great cadre of musicians.
Here’s a song from that album:
Denny turned me on to a great version of “As Long as I Can See the Light” by My Morning Jacket while we were in Navarre:
And to finish out the music section this week, here’s an excellent song by Little Richard with Jimi Hendrix on guitar and Billy Preston on organ that I heard about through the Immortal Jukebox blog (highly recommended):