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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods Florida It Happened to Me Music

Last Sunday’s accordion gig in Bonita Springs

It’s been over a year since I’ve played with Tom Hood’s band, the Tropical Sons. 2024 was an unusually busy year for me, with a month-long trip to Asia, then getting laid off and having to kick my side hustle consultancy into my main gig (which is still ongoing), followed by other things ranging from my mom’s 80th birthday to hurricanes.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from Tom, asking how I was, and if I’d like to make the drive down to Bonita Springs to play a gig as part of their first annual World Ukulele Day. I’m not a uke player, but Tom is, and as the bandleader and President of the Tampa Bay Ukulele Society, he’s “ukulele” enough for the rest of the band to count.

Since neither Anitra nor I had been to Bonita Springs before, and my cut of the gig money would easily cover gas and a nice dinner, she joined me last Sunday for the two-and-a-half hour drive to the Shangri-La Springs hotel, where the gig was to take place.

Following the Code of the Good Bandmate, I arrived an hour ahead of the gig with my gear — accordions, microphone, mic stand, amplifier, assorted audio and power cords — at the ready. I got set up quickly, and there was plenty of time to get a nice brunch at their restaurant, Harvest & Wisdom, before the gig…

…but alas, a mix-up in the kitchen left us waiting for breakfast for 45 minutes. By the time they got things straightened out, it was time for me to hit the stage. I quickly had a little bit of my food before our first number.

Anitra explained what happened to the staff at the restaurant, and to their credit, they “comped” us as an apology for making us wait unreasonably long and causing me to miss out before the performance. They put my breakfast in a take-out box (see the pic above), and I managed to tuck into it during the break after our first set.

Delay aside, it was really good. I had the key lime pancakes with a side of sausage patties (see above), and they were buttery with a cake-y texture and downright delicious.

Anitra had a macadamia/coconut waffle (see above) that was also tasty. Both were keto-friendly and gluten-free, which was great, since we like to share food, and one of us has a wheat allergy.

Mild annoyance of our delayed breakfast aside, I’d gladly eat at Harvest & Wisdom again — their menu is interesting, and their food is really good!

As for the gig, it went well. Despite not having played with the band — Tom Hood on vocals, ukulele, and harmonica, Dave Helm on bass and vocals — we easily meshed together, sounded good, and had a lot of fun.

I’ve already been invited to join the Tropical Sons for Tampa Bay Ukulele Days 2025, which happens on the weekend of March 21 – 23.

Here are some photos and video from the gig:

My thanks to Anitra for taking the photos and video!

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Florida It Happened to Me The Current Situation

Palm trees and a puffy vest

Joey de Villa in a swetaer, wool blazer, and puffy vest, smiling in his front yeard, with palm trees behind him.

My friends in my old home town, Toronto, won’t find Tampa’s current temperatures cold, but by local standards, it’s downright frigid.

The past couple of mornings have started at a temperature that Torontonians would consider balmy this time of year: 4°C (39°F). With Tampa’s humidity typically in the 90% range, it feels more like 0°C (32°F). I pulled out the olive drab puffy vest that my Dad gave to me as a Christmas gift ages ago — he had a thing for giving me warm clothing — and snapped the photo above to let my Mom know how I’m doing.

Map of northern and central Florida, showing temperatures in cities from Gainesville in the north and as far south as Lakeland and Melbourne.
I added the temperatures in REAL units, as opposed to Herr Doktor von Fahrenheit’s old-timey measure for phlogiston in the ether.

It looks like it’s going to get a little colder this weekend, which is going to be a challenge for the sizable portion of the local population that’s perpetually in shorts and flip-flops.

But at least it isn’t snowing in Tampa…

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Florida Florida of the Day funny Tampa Bay

Headline of the day

Wfla.com headline with picture of steak on grill: “St. Pete Steakhouse to be Transformed Into Funeral Home.”

It would be even more funny and frightening is the transformation was going the other way.

(By the way, here’s the article.)

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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #14: Good thing I didn’t put away the generator!

As Murphy’s Law would have it, moments after posting yesterday that I hadn’t yet put away our generator just in case the repairs to our neighborhood power didn’t stick…

…the power went out.

Shortly after that, our poor FedEx guy dropped off this heavy beast at our front door. I would have helped him, but I was in our back yard starting up the generator:

Just about every “battery generator” (a strange misnomer) went on sale during the period between Hurricanes Helene and Milton. EcoFlow seems to be the current favorite with both Wirecutter and a lot of its users, and they had a good package deal, so I ordered one. Alas, it arraived after Milton.

This is the Delta Pro, which stores 3600 watt-hours of energy, charges off a wall outlet, car “cigarette lighter” outlet, or solar panels. The package deal includes a 400 watt solar panel and a smaller power station, the River, whose job will be to power a CPAP and bedroom fan during power outages.

I’m charging the beast as I write this. More reports later, especially if I end up needing to use it!

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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #13: I haven’t put away the generator yet

Here’s “Lil’ Red,” a generator we bought from a friend of the family a few years back, which I have lovingly maintained for the past couple of years. We finally put it to use during Hurricane Milton to keep the fridge and freezer cold, to power cooking appliances and provide that tiny bit of power that our gas-powered tankless water heater needs, and to power wifi (our Frontier fiber connection stayed up almost the entire time) and laptops and charge phones.

I haven’t put Lil’ Red away just yet because no power restoration is perfect. We got power back on Saturday afternoon, but lost it later that evening due to problems with a nearby tree falling on a power line. We’ve got it back Sunday afternoon, but there’ve been reports of occasional hours-long outages, which is understandable considering the scope of Milton’s damage. I’ll put it away this weekend after first running the engine dry to remove the remaining gasoline — gas degrades over time, and storing a generator with gas in the tank is asking for a lot of cleaning and repair later.

I’m also looking at this bad boy pictured above for future use, as this one can be hooked up to our natural gas line, and I’d like to be able to use the additional watts to run a couple of fans and recharge our EcoFlow power station

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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #12: You don’t need a drone, just a pole and a phone!

Tap to view at full size.

A day or two after Hurricane Milton tore its way through town, someone posted on the local Facebook groups offering their services to fly a drone over your house to check for roof damage — for $75.00.

You can also do what I did and get roughly the same effect for FREE with your smartphone and a long pole or board, as pictured in this post.

Tap to view at full size.

I write mobile apps for fun, and I keep a couple of old Android phones handy, as they have all sorts of uses, such as hurricane FM radios (I’ll write about this in a later post) and cameras that I don’t feel too bad about putting at risk.

So I took one of my old Androids — a Moto x4, which was a great mid-range phone that offered a lot of bang for the buck back in 2017 — and securely taped it to a long slat from a the renovation project from when we moved in. I knew it would come in handy someday.

You might be tempted to use duct tape, but I figured that for a half-hour’s use, the annoyance of having to peel it off the phone wasn’t worth it. I used masking tape from the spot in our utility closet that I call the “attach things to other things shelf” (if you don’t have one, you might want to establish one).

Tape it in a way so that you can use the controls on your phone’s “camera” app, set it to video, start recording, and raise the pole! You can extend the viewing angle and reach by standing on a ladder.

Here’s a sample from my recordings:

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Florida It Happened to Me Tampa Bay The Current Situation

Hurricane Milton post #11: Clean-up

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A good chunk of today was devoted to cleaning up all the tree and plant debris left in Milton’s wake. I’m grateful to have to do it — the canopy of trees over our ’hood probably absorbed a lot of the hurricane’s energy and blunted the force that would’ve been applied to us and our homes.

Pictured above: me — below: Anitra!

Tap to view at full size.