VALENTINE’S DAY – Feb 13th


Penny and I usually do not celebrate holidays like Valentines Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day on the actual day. We usually celebrate the day before when restaurants are not as crowded. That’s what we did today. So we made Feb 13th our Valentines day.


The day began with egg-in-a-basket. Instead of a circle cut in the bread I used a heart-shape. The weather was threatening and we were under a tornado watch all morning. Our plan was to go to lunch at Copeland’s in Pensacola and just explore the rest of the day. We haven’t spent much time in Pensacola for the past few years. Almost everything we used to go over there for is now available here or out in Destin. There has been a lot of change over there, too, so exploring made sense.


We rode over on Hwy 98 and noted how it was unusual now to find a stretch of road with no development on it. It used to be that except for Navarre there was very little on that drive. Now there is a Publix a couple Wal-Marts, Lowes, and every bank and fast food joint. There are a good number of Churches, too.


We got over there well before the 11 o’clock opening time of Copeland’s so we checked out a couple of likely hardwood sites. We found a place with a decent selection – not as much as in Quincy. They also had some interesting plywoods and even had hardwood veneers on MDF (medium density fiberboard). Penny did all the legwork on finding this place. I appreciate her help and support with my new hobby. We also found we hadn’t lost our touch in steaming up the car windows! When we came out of the first hardwood place – one that had no wood – we dashed to the car in the rain. Then we sat there as I punched in the address of the next place in the GPS. Ours is a low-end GPS and putting in a location takes a few minutes. When we got through we found the windows all fogged up from the evaporation off our clothes.


We got to Copeland’s at 11:10 in a downpour. We were pleased to get a parking place right by the door. We sat for a couple of minutes until the rain let up a little and then dashed for the door. That’s where we read the hand-written note “We will open at 1200 today”. So we dashed back to the car and went off in search of some Quilting shops.


We found out when we got back to Copeland’s that the kitchen was behind in preparation and the wait staff was undermanned. So they moved opening time to noon. We both enjoyed our meals and we had good service. When we came out the Sun was beginning to poke through the clouds. We ended up going to Lowes, Pet Supermarket, Office Max, Hobby Lobby, Beals, Ross, Shoe Station, and JoAnne’s, By then Penny had had it so we joined the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic to get to I-10 and head home. We stopped at a Wendy's and had a small dinner while we watched the traffic finally thin out. Then it was home to relax, watch TV and play with Brie.


Penny and I enjoy spending a day together like this. We celebrated Valentine’s, did a little exploring and shopping in places we had interest in. The key to the enjoyment was just spending time together.