Today was the Oriental Dog Parade! This is a highly anticipated event, (a fund raiser) drawing 88 entrants this year. The weather cooperated, blustery but sunny. For the most part everyone was very well behaved, with lots of posing for pictures in between the butt sniffing and grass marking. They ranged in size from 3 lbs to 125lbs, most dressed to look like their owners, or vice versa.

Cutest.

On the back of Rasta Dog "Fred Spot Marley", he even had dreads.

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The work continues here. Steve has built and fibre glassed the new dinghy chocks/aft storage container. I'll post pics when it's installed. I've been busy scanning the contents of the file box onto the hard drive, so we can throw away (shred) 10 years of taxes, insurance papers, Visa statements, etc. The scanning part isn't so bad, but the renaming and moving of each thing is awful. I'm at the point where I'm just going to put all the rest in a general file as a big random mess. Info will be in there somewhere, should we ever need it.

Product Testing

Behold, the amazing $2 bar of skin softening, rash removing, give-me-a-whole-new-personality, lavender and green tea, goats milk soap. This very highly recommended stuff is supposed to help me not break out from all the sunscreen I have to wear to keep my dermatologist happy, but turns me into a scratching, miserable mess. It's called After the Sun and made by Beekman 1802, in New York. If it works half as well as it smells, (and it honestly smells so good, I want to just take a small nibble) then I'm cured. I'll let you know. You'll have to let me know about the new personality.

Daily Walk

Chairs along the sea wall, waiting for a good cup of coffee and a little chat.

The Chowder Cook Off at the Oriental Inn.

The always changing board at the Fulcher Seafood counter, today was a salmon kind of day.

We've been walking a lot around Oriental this winter, working off the seafood and rum. For a very small village, there's always new stuff to see. What I'm really liking is that now when we wave at the cars driving by, (very-upper-Midwest-small-town-can't-stop-it-reflex: you wave at everyone going by), we usually know the driver. If Steve were still in the Air Force, this would mean it's time to move. Since we're retired now and can make up our own darn minds about what to do and where to do it, we think we'll stay a few more weeks. Try out those chairs by the seawall.

Little Red Bird

Spring is springing out all over here. 70 and sunny today. We saw our first dandelions this week and the birds are building all over the place. The magnolia trees are budding, I hope we're here long enough to see them in bloom, they're my favorite. I saw this little red bird this morning up by the dock house and couldn't find it in my Audubon Guide. It was bright red all over and had stripes on it's stomach, sparrow sized (the bird, not the stripes). Anyone?

We've been doing a lot of boat stuff lately, trying to make the most of the 110 power while we still have it. I'm looking forward to leaving the dock and doing some exploring on the Outer Banks before all the tourists show up. Time to feel like sailors again.