Four Senior Citizens Get Crabs!

Wednesday night Mystery Dinner

Last night we went all the way across the bay to Clearwater. Target was Joe's Crab Shack. Lee and I had gone there quite some time back and loved it. Somehow just never seem to get back there. Their feature item is their "Crab Daddy Bucket." You get this huge water bucket sized but shorter and bigger around bucket full of a wonderful steamed variety of crabs. Lee and I got the Crab Daddy which had a half of a Dungeness Crab, half a Snow Crab and half a King Crab. You also get three small potatoes in their skins and a big ear of corn. There are several flavors to choose from. We go the Chesapeake Bay flavor which is the traditional crab boil seasoning. Alma got just the Dungeness Crab bucket and Jim not being very adventurous got a crab cake salad. It was all very good. Every now and then they would rev up the music really loud and all the servers would get up and do a different line dance. All very entertaining and fun.

On to the evenings finally, our bowling games. All I can say is the girls rocked once again. We took the guys on both the games. Both Alma and I were totally in our groove. Dummy me I didn't even take pictures but I can assure you they were both good games. We will see what next week brings. Oops! i forgot! We have other plans for next week. Will have to write that one up for you. Till then here's from the "Four Crabby Senior Citizens"

Broken Records

Wednesday Night Mystery Dinner & Broken Records

So we didn't have computer for most of two days. Our battery backup surge protector died so began the saga of deciding on whether to get a new battery or a new unit. First I called Best Buy and after being on hold for 15 minutes (which seemed like 1 hour) I got an associate who told me they didn't sell the batteries but I could get one from Batteries Plus. I asked him what a new unit would run. He said $59.95. OK Called Batteries plus. Yes they have the battery I need. It is $39.95. OK off we go to Batteries Plus. Yup they had it alright but they didn't mention I needed two of these batteries. Now we are up to $80 more with tax. So we go to Best Buy to get the $59.00 special. After talking to the salesman, Bryan, we found for hooking two computers to the system we needed a bigger more powerful unit than the $59.00 special. OK made sense to us so we bought the $129.00 unit and home we went. We tried to hook it up and the battery would beep constantly. By now it is time to get ready to go out for out Mystery Dinner. Its Alma's turn to pick. More of that later. Any way then next morning I got up and fiddled around with this new unit and no dice. When Lee installed the battery (following the pictorial instructions) I said I think you have to peel off that label that is on the battery. He showed me the picture and yup looked like it stayed on and you just shove the battery in. To shorten a long story bottom line we took the thing back to Best Buy and the "Geek" that was manning the "Geek Squad Desk" missed that one too. Finely a manager or someone else got involved and he pulled off the labels and bingo the thing worked. So we are up and running.

So Wednesday night Mystery Dinner took us over to South Tampa to a place called Datz Delicatessen. It was a little Delicatessen with a restaurant and a very lively and noisy bar. Looks like one of the watering holes for the after work crowd. Lots of young working people having their happy hour. Then to add to the din there was a family next table over who had a screamer child. The father wanted to take the kid out but the mother said "NO SHE IS NOT GOING TO WIN. SHE HAS TO LEARN THAT" So she held the kid on her lap pinning down her arms and let her scream till she got tired of it. We were glad when they left. Noise aside it was a very interesting place and the food was pretty good to boot. We were upstairs on a balcony type thing that over looked the main floor. Our view was the deli part. We sat the guy put a piece of cake on a plate for someone that could have satisfied 4 lumberjacks. Our portions were also humongous. We left fully fed and entertained and headed home for out final entertainment. Broken records! The girls managed to beat the Guys thanks to Alma's all time high score of 235. The next game the guys rallied with Lee's first 200 game actually it was a 201 to be exact. We all had fun even Jim and I seem to be struggling these days. Keep tuned for more Wednesday night fun.

By the way. How do you like Alma's and my bowling shoes. The first thing we do when we get to our bowling alley is change into our bowling shoes. My slippers and Alma's bare feet. LOL

Wednesday Mystery Dinner - Restaurant Review

So the trip to Alaska is now just a fond memory and 3059 pictures that I continually try to sort out to put the best of the best in some sort of order. Now as I wonder what I can write about on my blog the idea came to me last night after going out with our BFF's for out long standing date, our "Wednesday Night Mystery Dinner" As most of you may know we go out on Wednesday nights with our BFF's Jim and Alma. The plan is each week one of us gets to choose the restaurant we will go to and the big mystery is on the other couple until we pull up to the restaurant in question. We have had great fun with this for quite some time. The whole thing evolved some time back when we were going to one of these local organizations (no names mentioned here) where you get this "great" meal for $5.00 per person. Great bargain and food not too bad. That is until you have had the same thing for several weeks. After that it gets to be very boring and not that great. We had an executive meeting of the team and decided we should go out to a place of our choosing and have better fare for our night out. So thence our special night was begun. The plan has evolved from that first night. The first night we (by unanimous decision and not too much discussion we decided on Willies Fish Camp (f/k/a Fat Willies.) While we enjoyed Willies we decided we wanted to branch out and then we evolved into each person having a turn at picking a different restaurant and the other couple wouldn't know were were going until we got there. We have had a lot of fun with this and gone to such places as the very good but very pricey Melting Pot and such out of the way places as Cherry Pockets tucked away into the orange groves surrounding Lake Wales only to be found if you have a good GPS system. The search was all worthwhile as the food was good and plenty and very reasonable. The surroundings were rustic and tucked away on a beautiful little like. We have done Mexican, Italian, Japanese, Fish & Steak Houses. Very seldom are we disappointed with what ever choice is made. The next evolution of our Wednesday Night Mystery Dinner was to add our final entertainment of the evening. We all go back to our house (Lee & I) and bowl on the Wii. Now we have a the most fun with this. Of course the big competition is for the Girls to try to beat the Guys. Lee was a terrible bowler at first but is coming along fantastically (due to my tutelage) You know they always used to tell me "You don't have to be a good bowler to teach someone. All you have to know is the theory and technicalities behind it all" So as I teach him where to put his ball and how to throw it I keep getting more and more discombobulated. But we do have fun.

Now as to this weeks Restaurant! Lois, a friend of mine, who goes out more than I do or at least is more imaginative than I told me of a place called Shrimp Boat. So that was the place of the week. We went last night (Thursday) due to my daughters birthday on Wednesday. The ambiance was great. Many beautiful murals of marinas with sail boats etc. All very nautical. They even had all green lights on the right as you went in and red lights on the left side. The old navigational marking of "Red Right Return". Guess in case you have too much to drink with your dinner you can find your way out lol. The food was excellent. I had a trio of sauteed bay scallops, hand breaded shrimp and crab Au gratin with a potato pancake on the side. It was excellent. Everyone had something different and all looked very good. They had a wonderful garlic cheese bread basket and weren't too cheap to give us a second basket (more full than the first) without extra charge as another restaurant (who shall remain nameless) did.

Now we have a few more place we want to try out but a favor here if I may. If any of the readers know of a really good place to go send me a note on my email. jeanannh@aol.com. Would appreciate it. Now I know I have some out of town and out of state readers so just keep it local please.