Birthdays, Beaches, Secret Shopping and Skunks!

Today was a busy day - hubby's birthday and secret shopping...hmmm ' Hubby, I'm taking you out for nice steak dinner.' don't tell him I'm getting reimbursed for it and we will be timing everything ;-) He was supposed to have the whole day off today, but worked from 7 - 1 so got home about 1.30pm...and then told me we had to go to the driving licencing office to replace his licence as it ran out today!...hmmm..how exciting!

We went for a spot of lunch at Moe's Southwest Grill, which my friend Anne would love has she is 'jalapeno' head and they'll pile them high for you.. and then programmed the Tom Tom to take us to the DL office...big mistake. We had the choice of 3 main offices and the closest one to us was the only one that took non-US citizen license applications...fine for me, but for hubby we did not need to wait 1 1/2 hours in the queue! Fortunately the nice lady on the reception desk pointed is in the direction of the tax collector offices which can also renew licenses. We scanned the page of locations she gave us and saw one was in Neptune Beach ...hmmm, that sound nice we thought lets go there..

Well for anyone needing to renew their licence then this is the office to go to. Clean, welcoming efficient staff, perfect in fact. We were in and out in 7 mins! and then decided as we were nearly by the sea that we'd take a drive from Neptune Beach up the coast a little to see what was there.
Firstly we'll be back to Neptune beach as the little restaurants and boardwalks look super cute,

but today we were in the mood for a nose past all the great beach houses on the coast here.

We drove slowly up the coast towards Atlantic Beach and passed the most gorgeous places (reminder to self ..buy lottery ticket!), lots of the houses covered in cedar shingle on the outsides, making them look old world (most of them are very modern though!) mixed in with more modern designed property. We drove past a house for sale..pretty innocuous from the road side....I thought...hmm that looks nice (daydreaming about living at the beach) so this morning I tracked it down on the Internet! My innocuous little house is actually a mansion and nearly $4.5 million! It seams that the roadside is the 'crappy' part and it goes all the way back to the beach... 6500 sq ft, with a guest house and of course a gorgeous pool...hmmm, lets do the calculations...our house wouldn't even cover the deposit, and then we'd have a $20K mortgage a month...hmmm how the other half live!..but nice to dream!

The road we were on was Beach Avenue - it's beautiful with lots of gorgeous over hanging trees, and beautiful flowers. We saw a parking area with beach access and decided to stop..I'm glad we did as the beach was nearly empty, the sun was blazing down and the sea was super warm.

Beach both ways nearly empty..probably an easy day for the life guards!

We walked along the beach for about a mile...it's long beautifully clean sand and it's great to look at all the expensive houses backing up to the beach...the only time I wouldn't want one of these is during a hurricane, its a fab place to live.

Hubby enjoying the warm water

Hubby getting hit by a big wave!

But all good things must come to an end, we still had secret shopping to do tonight and Gary was at home and he was going to mad at us when he smelt the beach...he loves the beach! (Incidentally he can go to the beach here, we just need a tag for him - I am investigating how to get one now)

We arrived back at the apartment, Gary went crazy of course so I took him for a walk to calm him down...we were just rounding the corner when I spotted a skunk...it was one of those 'wish i had a camera' moments, he also spotted us and slopped off into the undergrowth by the woods..I wondered whether Gary would be able to pick his scent up... well I was very proud of our hairy son..he was on it nearly immediately and with bum in the air and nose to the ground, tail wagging furiously, he took us to all the places the skunk had been ( fortunately not to the skunk itself!)..I had to drag him back to the apartment...at least we know his nose works now!

Then it was off secret shopping...a nice steak restaurant in Jax beach. The food was good, our waitress excellent, the hostess was useless...guess she won't be getting too many Brownie points on my report...!! The best bit, it will be free when I submit my report, which is what I'm off to do now.

Thunderstorms and Secret Shopping....

Ok, so this is my last free day before the Open starts along with the cricket..I shall be listening to TMS (Test Match Special) on the laptop and watching the golf on the TV...I re-iterated to Gary today that we shall be having short walks tomorrow, he looked at me dolefully ... and then rolled over for a tummy tickle..I'm not sure he understands.


Today, however, I took him for two extra long walks...well that was the plan anyway. The morning walk worked out well, plenty of distanced covered, the sun out and not too hot yet (maybe 80?) Gary finding a new stick to play with and all good with the world...this afternoon was a different matter. We had only gone about 1/2 a mile when there was a large clap of thunder...a bit weird as it appeared to still be sunny...but that is a sign to turn around and make a move back to safety.


Within a shouting distance of the apartment it started to rain, and if you have never been to Florida, it rarely just 'spits', we ran the last few yards and Gary sprinted up the stairs...I'm not much of a sprinter and he dragged me up the last few. Seconds later the world was ending...

This was just a snippet..it actually got worse, and to his credit Gary only lifted his head up once when the power got knocked out for a few seconds and the room went dark... it was pretty miserable for about 30 mins...appearing to be about 9pm instead of mid afternoon. Anyway it's stopped now thankfully and Gary has been lying next to the balcony window waiting for the re-commencement of his walk....

That would have to wait because I was off to the Mall to do some secret shopping. Mystery shopping is a tool used by market research companies to measure quality of retail service or gather specific information about products and services. Mystery shoppers posing as normal customers perform specific tasks—such as purchasing a product, asking questions, registering complaints or behaving in a certain way – and then provide detailed reports about their experiences. I can't tell you who I was shopping today, but it's a national chain...it's quite fun when you know how associates are supposed to behaving..fortunately for today's 'victims' they had been well trained and performed well...kudos to them..

Oh well I'm training some clients online in Australia this evening, so time to sign off, but with an upcoming trip planned down under there should be some interesting opportunities to blog about it in the near future.

Until tomorrow..although if you have no interest in cricket or golf you may want to leave off reading for a few days!!