It rained for a couple of hours last night and early this morning. I enjoy listening to the sound of it on the roof, and really enjoy that none of it seemed to be finding its way inside the trailer, or at least none of it right over the bed like the leak in the last trailer did.
   So I slept well, other than hearing the electricity go off around 6:00 a.m. It became real apparent that something wasn't right because the CPAP machine I use for sleep apnea abruptly stopped blowing air up my nose. Since the type of mask I use is essentially made up of form fitting nasal cannula, when the air stopped flowing, my lungs started objecting to the lack of air right away. No real safety problem with that, the fix is as easy as opening my mouth. But it did wake me up again, and I didn't get back to sleep until the power came back on about 20 minutes later.
    Once up this morning it was a nice morning to kick back and relax for awhile. I worked on pictures again today, (that will be an ongoing daily process), and got all of my dishes done and the trailer picked up.
   I loaded all the dirty laundry up this afternoon and took it down to Ocala to do it at a local laundry mat there. I only had a couple of loads so it didn't take much more than an hour to get it all washed, dried and folded up and put in the basket.
   After that it was off to some lunch at a local Chinese Buffet I know of there in town. I'm not sure why I go to those kinds of places, the food isn't all that great and I always manage to way over eat. And yet about once a month this craving comes over me that I can't hardly control. I am hoping that after today it will go back to sleep for another month or so, if not longer.
    I did a quick round of grocery shopping after lunch and then headed back to the trailer, making several phone calls to friends along the way. I got a new GPS unit for the truck a couple of years ago and one of the features, other than not getting me as lost as Emma, my last unit did, is that I can make hands free phone calls on it. It is probably still not as safe as sitting still in my trailer while talking, but it doesn't seem to be any worse than talking to someone else in the truck with me.
     I've been busy the past couple of days working on pictures I took while down in the Caribbean on the island of St. Croix. The latest batch are all pictures of the contra dancing we did on two days while there. Our usual dancing is at night from 8:00 to 11:00, but two of the days there we had short day dances instead of, or in addition to, the regular night dance. I don't usually do many of the day dances because it is just too hot down there on most days, so I took the opportunity to snap some dance pictures since I am usually too busy dancing at night to be bothered with using my camera. I must confess that I am not very good with this type of picture taking, but enough of them came out well enough that it seemed like a good idea to post some to let everyone see what it is all about. I will not annotate most of them because most people won't recognize who most of the dancers are, but I'll say a word or two about a few of them.

St. Croix Contra Dance Week - Feb 3-10, 2016

Dance Photos - Part I

A view from our condo balcony toward the dance tent. A look to the left would of shown the swimming pool with the beach about 100' beyond.

Somewhere around 170 people at the dance week this year. It made for some crowded dancing at times with 4 full lines at night. Day dances were less crowded usually.

My girlfriend Rima on the left with her good friend Tracy.

 Gotta love those twirly skirts.

The band, Wild Asparagus, minus George Marshall in this shot, but with our other caller Lisa Greenleaf.

Lisa

Lisa Greenleaf

Becky on fiddle and David on flute, sax, penny whistle and, the instrument he is playing, the bombard.

A standard contra dance, if there is such a thing, starts out with two couples facing each other in a long line of such couples. (See photo above). After several dance maneuvers performed by each of the couples, either together or individually, the idea is to pass by that couple you had been dancing with and go on to the next couple in the line, where you will do it all over again. As you progress up and down the line you should be "learning" the dance so that the caller can soon stop calling the dance sequence. Once you reach the top or bottom of the line you generally switch sides with your partner, wait out one sequence and then start back in with a couple that is coming towards you. But of course, all dances are different and many do just the opposite of what I just described. It is one of the reasons why it is so much fun, and despite sounding like it would be hard, it is in fact very easy to learn and do. It is done all over the world these days, but more so in the U.S., and once you know the basics you can go anywhere they have it and dance with fun people. Oh did I mention you usually change partners between dances because it really doesn't matter who your partner is because you are really dancing with pretty much everybody in line.