So the top song on the 885 Greatest Songs of All Time was Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road. Not surprising considering the location. The rest of the top 10 was:
2 IMAGINE by JOHN LENNON
3 LIKE A ROLLING STONE by BOB DYLAN
4 IN MY LIFE by BEATLES
5 SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL by ROLLING STONES
6 BORN TO RUN by BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
7 INTO THE MYSTIC by VAN MORRISON
8 A DAY IN THE LIFE by BEATLES
9 HEY JUDE by BEATLES
10 ONE by U2

No arguments, except for the Van Morrison song which seems out of place.

Last week I took Caitlin to a youth group she attends and had dinner at a tiny place in Media called La Belle Epoque Cafe. I really wanted to like this place - an intimate space with quiet music and what appeared to be an interesting bistro-type menu. The mushroom bisque soup was the first warning sign. It somehow managed to be both watery and way too spicy at the same time. After tasting the first few bites I didn't mention the fact that the bowl was only about 1/3 full. The chicken, mushroom, onion and spinach crepe was a gigantic square of tasteless, chewy pseudo-crepe around tasteless, chewy chicken. This one doesn't even warrant a return visit.

After I finished dinner, such as it was, it was still too early to pick up Caitlin. I sat in the car and tried out the wireless cellular card in my laptop (it did work, but is irritatingly slow). It was dark by this time, so I sat in the car with the little reading light turned on. For no more than 30 minutes. When I tried to start the car to leave, there was that sickening click-click-click sound that only a dead battery can make. With visions of having to wait an hour or more for AAA to show up, I let the car sit for a few minutes, always believing that sometimes things just need to rest a while and then they'll be right as rain. This time it actually worked and the battery revived itself enough to start the car. I don't even dare wonder what allowed this resurrection to occur.

My room here in lovely Sarasota, FL overlooks a tiny marina. How wonderful, I thought, when I checked in. How was I to know that the sleek, dangerous looking speed boats docked in the marina would roar to life *very* early on a Sunday morning and then be apparently required by law to rev their engines for at least 30 minutes each before they pulled out of the marina? It's now 3:30 and the roaring and revving hasn't stopped yet. One can only hope that darkness will snuff out this incessant noise.