The weather forecast today is for lots of sun and much warmer than the past few days with expected high's of 20 degrees C or 70 F and as we needed a good walk today to stretch the muscles and rather than repeat our previous walk we decided that we would walk down Honore Avenue until we reached the Target Store near the Sarasota Crossing Mall, it's about 2.5 miles from here roughly each way. So off we trotted, actually more like a fast walk really and it took us about 75 minutes to reach almost our destination by which time it was getting warm and so we stopped at Starbucks for an iced coffee and a little sit down.
Whilst enjoying our coffee outside the shop there were a mother and daughter talking in a typical loud way about the daughters current romantic challenges where she had divorced or perhaps separated (we did not know which) and she was looking to buy a new condo and although, as she said, she had 'beautiful credit' it soon became obvious that she was looking to borrow some money from her mum. We think that perhaps she still lived with her ex and kept talking about still being f******g married which she repeated over and over again. We left after five minutes as we could not take it anymore. I guess it's a bit like an Adult Coronation Street with some really good swearing thrown in for good measure.
The 'Target' store is huge and sells most things you can think of except perhaps coffins as non were in evidence but from TV's to washing up liquid and bicycles to toothpaste, you want it and boy have they got it. It's about the size of two football pitches and easy to get lost. People have been known to go missing in here for weeks on end as it's so large.
Lunch was at the 'Firehouse Sub' which is a chain of stores set up by ex firemen and they sell really good sandwiches etc, which we will no doubt visit again. The walk back was a little slower as neither of us would admit to the other that our legs were beginning to get tired but it was a great walk of about 5 miles and then some extra stuff around the stores. The Sat Nav now appears to be not working at all as it spends all its time looking for a GPS signal. Even standing in the middle of the Target car park and holding the bloody thing in the air for ten minutes did not improve the situation at all. We had planned to use it to check how far we had walked Oh well back to a map and a wife sat nav.
We got home around 4 pm and lay exhausted on the settee and watched the news. There is a strong anti-Obama feeling going on at the moment with his public approval getting lower each day. His public health bill has been watered down by the various factions and when you see some of these idiot Senators on the TV, it becomes clear that they do not want Obama to succeed where Bush failed and they will stop at nothing to stop this bill. The US economy seems to be improving although unemployment is still climbing although other indicators are showing rising inventory in Companies and higher productivity whilst the Dow is climbing back up. One item hitting the papers is that although all of the US banks have now paid back the money to the Government after being bailed out last year, and they even paid a high interest rate on the money, they are still to be heavily taxed for the next year or so to teach them to be more careful in future. There is currently a Government investigation in to the 'games the bankers played' and this is causing many white collar Bank CEO's to squirm in front of the TV cameras as their misdemeanours come to light, needless to say the press are lapping it up. Strange however is the fact that the major American car makers who also received huge government loans and have not paid them back are not being pressured at all at this time to return the cash, perhaps the auto makers who are based in Obama's original home town have something to do with it.
House prices are very low indeed in this and many other states and for those with spare cash, now is the time to buy as it won't get any better than this for a long while to come. We are thinking of buying a one acre plot of land next to the beach at Sarasota where we can place our caravan although we have still not worked out a route from Walton on Thames to Sarasota yet as the b*****y Sat Nav won't work. Ha
