This Week on the Island

The Weather: Another beautiful week. A cold front moved in the last of the week end and dropped the high for Saturday to 65 degrees. Had to get out the 'big boy' pants. It was in the low 70's by Sunday.

The local Parrot Head Club had planned a Tsunami fund raiser event for Valentines weekend, but we have had to move it to the next week end (Feb 18th). I am looking forward to the charity event.

Big Foot the Cat: Big foot (seven toes) is a large orange cat that lives in the Truman Annex. Some people that live here in the Winter and Maine in the Summer, took Big Foot back to Maine with them. The people from Maine have been on trial for stealing the cat. The Trial is now over and Big Foot must be returned to it's rightful owner. I don't think we have heard the last of this. http://www.keysnews.com/370241492988125.bsp.htm

Another cat story. A woman here in town wanted to adopt a stray cat she called Lady, so she went around the neighborhood asking who's cat it was. It seems her large overweight male cat, (Fatso) was in love with Lady. It turned out that the stray cat was a Maine Coon named Ty, short for Tycoon, and she was a he. The woman, thinking 'oh well, this is Key West' , adopted Ty from it's former owner. Fatso and Ty are inseparable. http://www.fanciers.com/breed-faqs/maine-coon-faq.html

Fort Zackery Taylor and Key West were Union outposts during the Civil War. This Saturday we had a parade of Union and Confederate Soldiers down Duval to the Fort. There were sea and land battles re-enacted although there were actually no civil war battles here. We in Key West like to re-enact things that never happened.

Spring Break is normally from the first weekend in March until Easter. Since Easter is something like the first full moon after the vernal equinox, http://wilstar.com/holidays/easter.htm that means that Easter can be from March 22nd to April 25th. This year Easter is the last Sunday in March so we will have a short Spring Break. I love Spring Break, We have a bunch of young kids away from home for the first time and they want to party. It makes for some interesting sights and events.

------------------------------------------Interesting---------------------------------------------

When the city dug out the Key West Bight, they used the fill to build up around the bight and created a lot of land. Caroline Street used to be waterfront but now is 1 block from the bight. It is slightly uphill from Caroline street to the bight and the street drains empty into the bight. The corner of Elizabeth and Green floods when we have a high tide and a full moon. Monday night was the highest I have ever seen the tide here. The water had the intersection at Green and Elizabeth under about 1 foot of water and Caroline Street had water running up out of the street drains and down the street. This is called a Proxigean tide http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/moon/Tides.shtml and is caused by the alignment of the earth, moon and sun. Hope we never have a hurricane with one of these tides.