Monday 6 Mar 06

We are vaguely planning to get to the ocean today, the parents think we can manage it even tho we won't be ready to leave until about 11a and they have to be back in time to go to a C.O.P. dedication of a new law enforcement facility at Indian River Community College at 5p and then do their actual C.O.P. shift from 10p-1a, so my sister came up with a better idea: she'll entertain me until she has to go to her meeting at 8p. we met for lunch at a florida seafood restaurant only a few blocks from M&D's house called R.J. Gator's. i did not order the alligator on the menu, or any other of the freaky fish that cool people eat and act like they enjoy, i stuck with the chicken fingers. my sister and mother both had conch soup, and my father had a burger. then i changed drivers and went with my sister; my mother took her car and went to the drug store and Father walked home. My sister is a speed shopper, she filled her cart in about 15 minutes, because she needed to get home to put dinner in the crock pot. Her daughter, my niece Natalie, came home from school and made ramen noodles for a snack, something she's been doing for years. She reminded us she has a bowling lesson so i got to see her bowl, and she is a terrific bowler. I think her high game is 267, and Nat told me her record is 9 strikes in a row! After bowling, we stopped by to see Nat's quarterhorse, Jessa.

When we got to her home, my brother-in-law was sorting and packaging seeds of native florida plants to restore them at "the ranch", bluefield ranch mitigation bank that he owns and operates. here's how it works, as i understand it: say a developer wants to develop a parcel with an acre of wetlands on it. he is not allowed to destroy the wetlands unless he promises to replace them at a 2 to 1 ratio for the acre he wants to pave over. then he contacts my bro-in-law and leases the requisite amount of property. my bro-in-law, meanwhile, is restoring the ranch to it's native condition so it can fulfill it's role as replacement environment.

He told me about the ranch, but then i asked him about the struggle that he spearheaded to defeat a coal-fired power plant that had already won preliminary approval from the county commissioners. he told me about the meticulous planning it took to orchestrate the defeat, culminating in a unamimous vote 5-0 to reject florida power and light's application after an 11-1/2 hour meeting that started at 6p and had 81 people address the board. it didn't hurt that fpl was basically unscrupulous and unprincipalled.