331 Proud of our Election Process

I am becoming one of those "swing voters" I believe. After last night's debate I am swinging both ways. One way more to the moderate side with Mitt Romney, I think he may now be the eventual winner to go up against the socialist liberal Obama. He may be our best shot. But I also am swinging yet and I also liked last night Rick Santorium, he was very strong with his more conservative ideas. The things that ring true to me and I wish Rick had the resources that Mitt has, and the name recognition

So here I swing back and forth between these two and you are asking what the hell happened to your man Newt? Well I think my man Newt may have slipped here in Florida on a banana peel or maybe a squished starfruit and smacked his head hard and somehow lost the vision of a smaller more responsive government. I learned last night that after he promised Naples the winter white house which was fine, he went on to Titusville and promised them a moon colony in 10 years and then in Jacksonville a new naval base? Sorry Newt we don't have the resources for those kind of promises. Your looking to much like a politicion for this voter. I love the way he took on the media and he won my support in doing so but now I find myself leaning more to the candidate to his left and to his right...

But what the heck, I am only one voter and I will bow to the wisdom of the voters here all across our great land. We do have a great process of electing our leaders. I am proud of how we can watch these leaders tough it out in these debates. I have watched all but one of them and I did watch the highlights of it after the fact. This will all come out alright, we will make good educated researched choices in the comeing weeks. As these state elections take place, "we" will decide and the choice will be good..I hope all four of the candidates hang in to the end...they are all good men, all have good ideas to add and in the end we will have a candidate worthy of setting in the oval office and guiding our nation to a smaller more frugal government. I just know it...I love and believe in this great land...

330 Newt's Winter White House....

Newt's bus came to Naples last night. I went 4 hours early which should draw some interesting remarks here on the forum, but I wanted to see and hear him in person. So I took my lawn chair a book called Killing Lincoln and some tea and cheese and headed to the city park...

A rag tag band showed up an hour later so on page 30 I gave up and just enjoyed the music and the fan fare going on. I had a great spot 20 feet from the podium...They gave Newt the key to the city and he said he would hang on to that because they like Naples and it seemed to him that this would make a great "winter white house".

You nay sayers can have your say but this farmer was watching the other night when Newt fielded the loaded question from the CNN reporter about his past. The farmers gut feeling is that this may just have been a "defining moment" in this election process...People are totally fed up with biased reporting of the last few years.

Win or lose I am glad I have donated Newt's campaigne a small amount of bucks, I feel good about it...you all root and toot for your guy who ever it may be...but I hope to be able to cast my vote in the Indiana primary for Mr. Gingrich and again in the fall....

By the way the unscheduled event drew the biggest crowd ever recorded in Cambria Park in down town Naples..Estimated at 6000..Jump in front of Newt's bus if you dare but maybe at your peril.....Oh Newt looks 20 pounds lighter in person, yeal could loose another 20 (like me) but he is healthy and ready for this run....

It was a fun afternoon, not sure how this election will all come out but looking forward to maybe taking in the other candidates if they show up here....I think any of them will be fine in the end...

One more PS here. Many have declared Newt has Billiance but has baggage....
MY thought on this is when this nation is in trouble, who cares about baggage, its the billaince we need....

329 Guest blog today...from Ryan Capecci

It is sometimes unreal that just 2 ½ short years ago Lilly and I made the ultimate commitment to each other for the rest of our lives and were moving in to a 200 square foot garage apartment starting our married life together. Now…. 2 ½ years later here were are, both finished with school, working full time, raising a great golden retriever, and exciting for another new beginning in our life. Lilly will be 23 weeks pregnant tomorrow and is due on Mother’s Day, May 13th. Lilly has been doing really well throughout the pregnancy. She has her ups and downs but has been so strong and is such a wonderful mother. We had the ultrasound performed a few weeks ago and were able to surprise our parents for Christmas with the ultrasound pictures. It was a great surprise. It is an exciting time in our lives and we are definitely ready to take on the challenge of raising a child. Our greatest concern is how Brees is going to react to having a baby brother in the house. Brees is.... i guess you could say SPOILED with the amount of attention he gets from Lilly and I, but people reassure us he will love our little boy as much as we do.

We do have a name picked out.... John Louis Capecci. We both like tradition and we both have/had a grandfather named John. John Griffin is my mom’s dad. He was my only grandpa I was able to meet here on Earth but I know both of my grandpa’s are watching down on us smiling now. Lilly’s grandpa Lahrman…. John (more commonly known as Jack) is the other reason we are picking the name John. He is a great grandfather figure for us and we can’t wait until our little John can go for rides on the tractor with him and sit around the pond castin a line. We will do another guest blog in a month or two with an update on how Lilly is doing and maybe we will even have a picture of the crib that we will be building

328 Paradise Found and now another Harvest

The last couple nights I have spent with my motor home in the Sam's Club parking lot in South Fort Myers Florida. It was great pulling in Sunday night as they were closing the club at 6 PM. I always circle the parking lots and choose a place as far away from the front door as I can possible get. That way the store does not ask you to move. I guess Sam Walton made it known before he died that RV's would always be welcome at his stores I have heard. It must be true as in all my travels and stops at Sams and Walmart I was only ask to leave one time and that was in Arizona, a large town that had a city ordanence against RV stoping in store parking lots over night. If you have a RV that is more or less self contained you can "dry camp" we call it for a day or two or three if you lucky with out running a generator or anything. I have 4 large storage batteries that provide power for quite a long period of time. Not for air conditioning but for microwave, coffee pot, TV's etc and of course the water pump. I carry 80 gallons of fresh water and have two 40 gallon holding tanks for black and grey water. It all works real well and I am glad the RV industry came up with these amenities for us who enjoy travel and really don't enjoy carrying luggage in and out of motels every day. And of course the real luxury of it all is driving down the road and having a cold drink and sandwich or other snacks served you as you motor down the pike...Life is good...so good...
Anyway today I arrived Naples/Silver Lakes RV resort snuggled in between Naples and Marco Island. I had renters still on my lot and did get to meet them...They were from Chicago and wish to come back in April after we and my next renter leave, so that is good. My first job each year is to get my hose hooked up and wash down the lot before I pull on it. I enjoy cleaning the cracks where they sawed the concrete to keep it from cracking and washing all the crud that collects there each year. Ants like to hide in there so I give them a bath they will not soon forget and then tomorrow I will add a little ant poison to those cracks also and that should then let them know that Jack is back and that means they need to move maybe to the lot next door...Jack is Back
Well the second pic as you can see I have a harvest to take care of here. My blog title of Corn, Beans and Naples one farmers rotation has truly become just that. Up north I harvest the corn and the beans and now my farming down here has begun to pay off also. Starfruit tree is absolutely loaded this year. I may have to spend a little on shipping and send some of these puppies north...I would guess there is over 200 on the tree with about 50 that had fallen to the ground already. My corn and beans were not anything to write home about this year but my south 40 is really producing this year...40 feet not acres but who's counting.
Are they beautiful or what? God had such an imagination when he made stuff for us did he not?.. I surely think so anyway and I bet when Adam named this one it did not take a lot of thought. It is surely a star...And they are very good, I have eaten three of them tonight...It was 75 maybe today..still at 730 it is 69 degrees...Paradise has been found....

327 On the road with Jack

I am on my way to Paradise, that being for me at least my RV Lot in Silver Lakes. Located between Marco Island and Naples Florida. I had time to kill this year as my renters of my lot kind of like the place...which is good as it bring in bucks for me...to help pay for the taxes and maintenance cost of owning such a garden spot in Florida. I went down I 65 all the way to Atmore Alabama to check on a friend I met on the USMC website called together we served...I met Pete on the site as I liked what he posted on the forums. So we became friends through the years. I visited him in maybe 2005 or so on my way back from Florida just to check him out....He was genuine so we stayed friends....My wife died of cancer in 2007 and his wife died of cancer shortly after that.

So we had that in common and I decided this year I would stop by since not pressed for time and see how he is doing. Thus my first pic here of Pete's home in Atmore Alabama...We went out to dinner after a visit to his home...Went to Dave Catfish house...then back to his home....I visited with Pete for a short time and then went back to the motor home for a good nights sleep.
Today I left Atmore headed for Naples Florida...The RV rentals called me today telling me my current renters would like to stay till Tuesday of next week...They have been good renters so I decided to slow my trip and accomodate them for their stay on my lot...So I slowed up a bit..I was on I-10 heading for I 75 when I got the call...so I decided to slow way up and take my time getting to Naples...I got off the Interstate and headed down US 19/27 am currently holed up in Perry Florida....At no less a Walmart seen in the second pic here...So here I am just finished a double martini and a steak and baked sweet potato....life is good....Walmart has been accomodating and has not "run me off" so I am thinking I may just sleep here in the coach and see what tomorrow brings...On the rode with Jack...

326 OH OH its "Cycled Seasonalality"

Wow, it has been nice here in the midwest. I went outside today to do a little yard work as it feels like springtime here. And sure enough this little guy who usually greets me in late March sometimes early March, has gotten a bit confused....He is gonna get his butt froze good very soon. It will be interesting though to see if he does this again in March won't it...will have to report on that to you if and when it happens...My money say's it will, but I more than not bet the wrong way, so we will see. I can report this, this is not global warming, this is just "cycled seasonalality". I can almost guarantee we will pay for this as yearly temps seem to always average out by years end...We may have a fridged late Jan through even some of March or we may not and then experience a cool summer with frost in July even but somehow this will even out. Its just weather, we get it all the time, every day. And rest assured the guys that can not predict what it will be 30 days from now have no better record or knowledge of what it will be 5, 10 or 100 years from now. So just enjoy it and don't fret about it...It is just "weather"....a great start to a good year...The year we turn our nation from upside down to right side up...Yep, it is gonna happen, I just know that more than half the people will wish it to....

Enjoying the many Republican debates. They are gaining stature and knowledge of what it will take to be a good President and Commmander In Chief of our Nation. What it will take to Lead us back through the mine field we have entered...I really believe this will be a good year for us all...