just to make you jealous...

This morning, my roommate, Derek, and I were delighted to see on the CNN weather report that while the Midwest was being dumped on by another winter storm, the Tampa Bay area would enjoy the highest temperatures in the nation. I treasured each of the 78 wonderful degrees that graced Florida today as we paused our sailing adventures and took in some of the sights in the area, namely, Myakka State Park and Siesta Beach in Sarasota.

At Myakka, we canoed with alligators--I only saw one, but at five feet from our canoe, and with its ominously beady eyes and hulking body, one was plenty enough for me. Later we drove to Siesta Key to experience what is hailed as the world's finest, whitest sand. Throughout the day I discovered that we are pretty adept at entertaining ourselves. First we played "Ethical Moral Dilemmas," a game we made up in which we pose, well, you guessed it, ethical moral dilemmas. Annica the philosophy minor borrowed some harrowing hypothetical situations from her ethics class (if you could kill one person to save 19 or walk away knowing they would all be murdered, which would you choose?) while Derek agonized over his equal love for international development and dogs (if you could eradicate malaria in Cameroon but you had to kick a puppy to do it, would you do it?). After this game, Abigail and I, the scintillating and saucy English majors of the group, began writing acrostics with everyone's names--not quite G-rated enough for the blog. Finally, Abigail and Annica (also a splendid art major) drew up a rousing rendition of Name That Bum--pictured below. All in all, a pretty spectacular day, I'd say.

Myakka. Not a cloud in the sky.

Walking on Siesta's famously cool, heat-resistant sand.

Name That Bum.

Annica reads aloud to us from some assigned reading for class (yes, we do indeed get homework done).