The USA Pickleball Association recently held its’ National Tournament in Buckeye, Arizona and The Villages were represented by eight of our pickleball players. Now here is the great news, these eight players brought home 13 medals, including 9 gold medals. And these winners thought they were coming to The Villages to retire. I would love to know how many said when I retire I am going to compete in a National Tournament for a Gold Medal, in Pickleball? What is that? Well retire they did and they sure represented their hometown in the grandest of styles.  I can only imagine what a fantastic experience it was for those competing and doing so well, as it was  fantastic just reading about their accomplishments.  I don’t know this for sure but I would have to say The Villages must have more pickleball courts and more players than any other community.  I know of one individual that has been a part of promoting pickleball and has taken paddles to England to help them get off the ground with their own Association.  I also know of some avid golfers splitting their time between courses and courts, or better said clubs and paddles.  It is a sport that appeals to all ages.  On my son, daughter-in-law and grandson’s recent visit they definitely wanted to get some pickleball time in.  And that they did.  The History Of Pickleball can be found at www.usapa.org/aboutUSAPA/history.php and the Barney McCallum Interview at the bottom of the page is extremely interesting.  I want to say Congratulations to those eight players that represented us so well at Nationals. You make us very proud and we thank you.

and The Villages. There are so many great things going on in The Villages and Combat Veterans to Careers has to be one of the best. We all hear and read how our young Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are struggling to find employment, continue with their education, deal with their health issues and still provide for their families.   The Villages, and its residents, as well as community government and local businesses has afforded full support to this program and made it their mission to provide opportunities for veterans who are ready for a life-long, rewarding career in the golf course and landscape maintenance industry.  Yesterday at Lake Sumter Market Square they held a charitable fun walk, appropriately called Walk In Their Boots, where we were able to meet many of the Veterans.  Through this type of direct and personal  contact  with our community…The Villages and the Villagers, the veterans and their families are made to feel welcome and appreciated for their service to our country.  Each veteran will be sponsored by a family of “certified” volunteers who are committed to providing a network of support to them and their families.  How great is that.   I think we will be hearing much more about this program in the future, but if you would like to have more information right now you can call 631-867-8146, or go to 1000 Main St. Suite #248 in Spanish Springs Town Square, or go to www.combatveteranstocareers.org.  The Villages is the gift that keeps giving and this is one more example of a very precious gift they are giving those Veterans that gave so much for us.

wanting to say, if I already told you this story stop me. I actually picked that up from my Grandmother who when in her 80’s was so afraid of repeating herself that she would start every sentence with it. Well this morning I was starting to write about how time flies when I thought didn’t I just recently write about not enough hours in the day  and sure enough I had. Well, it certainly seems to be a problem that we wrestle with here in The Villages. I’ve be fighting with my email, trying to send out 35 emails to a group of golfers, and it took me two days to finally get them out. I loaded the emails into a group, would send the email and only five names would transfer. Then I bit the bullet and loaded all the emails into one email, when I hit send it disappeared, and I won’t bore you with the rest of the things I did with that email, but it really put a dent in my schedule.  I now am behind in the book I’m reading for the Book Club meeting next Tuesday.  Reading will then put me behind on something else I would like to do.  I am not complaining, and I’m sure many of you who can identify with what I am saying, are not complaining either.  Actually the only time I really find myself upset and frustrated is when addressing computer challenges.    A good percentage of people I know never imagined themselves living  in Florida, and I can bet they never imagined themselves hopping out of bed early to get to an activity that they love doing.  Only in The Villages.

for The Villages. As I had mentioned, my son and his family were here for a couple of days and had a good time as usual. My grandson Damian is celebrating his 17th birthday next week and is the son everyone would like to have. He plays Varsity sports, he gets great grades, he’s a natural snow boarder, plays golf but also plays the cello and enjoys being involved in the schools theatrical productions.  He saved enough money, and his parents matched him so he could buy a nice car, a Mini Cooper that scares me to death. My son says he’s not sure he would have made that arrangement with him if he had known how much money he was going to save. He worked this past summer computer monitoring a large construction job and actually found mistakes that computer engineers had not found. Vanderbilt University is pursuing him to be a part of a summer Computer Engineering program, which he may do next summer. So there you have it and all around son, great future, proud parents and grandparents and then we walk into the The Villages Golf Cart Store and he strolls around, the way only  a 17 year old can.  He approaches his father…Dad, you know I could see myself living in the Villages and selling Golf Carts, I would love that and I could make a lot of money while playing pickleball and dragon boating.   When he  saw the blood drain from my son’s face he started working on him by telling him if he did that it would save my son a lot of money.    My son was rightfully concerned as this is the Grandson that for Christmas wanted a Village back pack and when he got it he used it so much he wanted another one (I sent him two), which he uses. It is the same Grandson that several years ago wanted me to change his airline ticket home from Wed. to Friday. He had a friend in The Villages that he had reconnected with and I thought it was to spend more time with Brian. I almost changed his ticket until I found out the reason was he wanted to go out to dinner with the New Jersey group on Thursday night. So, the Golf Cart idea was a real threat. However, the Mother of the son jumped in and pulled the Grandson aside and said Dames, you’re too young so  make this Plan B…experience life and then come and pursue your Village dream.  However, it really warms my heart to think he finds that my life  is AWESOME.  That says a lot for The Villages.  It also is an indicator that The Villages will be passed down from generation to generation and that’s awesome too.

to have company especially when it’s your son and his family. They are arriving this afternoon from New Jersey and they were the lucky ones. No trees down and they had their electric back on in just hours. They have had cousins and nephews staying with them. Teenagers need showers, so it was just a matter of time before they showed up for their too long ritual. Anyway, this trip was planned long before Sandy touched down and the snow they are experiencing today. I keep checking to make sure their flight is still on schedule and so far so good. I also am checking our weather and was disappointed this morning that it was as cool as it is, but the week-end looks great and that’s what’s important. Just wanted to give a heads up regarding my lack of blogging, but time will fly too fast and I will be returning them back to the airport and back to my blog. Have a great week-end.

qualified to be the first golfers to play Evans Prairie on opening day, which was last Friday. It was quite a feat they performed to be the 72  winners of the Golf Quest 2012 Challenge, which was to play the 504 holes of golf in The Villages that were available as of January 2012.  One group called the Iron Men of West Hemingway did it in 43 days.   Perseverance personified is what I would call it, they would probably call it having fun. Another group The Inspirations also performed the feat in 2010 and for doing it back to back their wives surprised them with tickets to the Ryder Cup.  The Fore Golf Divas had something special on their bags.  When the club house was being built there was a large pile of wood scraps and one of the players took four little pieces and made them into bag tags for her foursome, with their names and Fridays date. They will now have the memory and a piece of the clubhouse with them always.  How about the golfer who used the same ball on every hole, that would be an even bigger feat for many of us.  I love that The Villagers all seem to have a story within the story.  I also enjoy the names people assign to their teams such as the above names plus Team No Four Putz, Team Occupy the Villages and how bout Team Double Eagles.  I wonder if the names help their game…did they really have no four putts or double eagles? From the sounds of it Evans Prairie Championship Golf Course also met the challenge of being one of the best courses in the Villages..the Golf Quest participants gave it rave reviews and  thumbs up. Congratulations golfers and Evans Prairie too.

Was a post I wrote and can be found in the archives, (right hand side menu) – January 2012.  It was great advice and I heeded it many times during the year.  However this past week I forgot all about it and when I finally came to my senses I was too late.   If you are not familiar with our Customer Service and have not read Alligator’s etc.,  the Villages has a Customer Service that will direct you to the right Dept. or person that can help you.  They are terrific.  Anyway a week ago Thursday we were returning home after dark and all of a sudden saw a tiny dog frantically running ahead of us on the road.  We stopped to try to catch him,  but he was uncatchable. We left our mission and hoped that he would not get hit by a car and that his owner would find him.  He was a long haired chihuahua.  I know that because the next day he was still running around our street and we were able to get a good look at him , but still could not catch him.  We notified Animal Control and the Humane Society and the radio and figured there was not much more we could do.  We did not see him for a couple of days and then…there he was running by the house.  I tried enticing him with food, although because of the preserve could not leave food out for him.  In fact he would run into the preserve for water which was frightening.  The morning of the seventh day we were both getting exhausted and he would let me get a little closer to him, but not close enough to grab him.  I did see that he was now missing hair from his back legs and he was not the well groomed dog of a week ago.  In frustration I made my rounds of calls and couldn’t get through to Animal Control…who had said they would come out and set a Have a Heart trap for him.  I am familiar with this type of trap and living in the country had experience setting them.  I will get a trap and I will set it.  I tried the rod and gun stores, no traps, Humane Society had traps but they were all out..and as I was searching the phone book I thought Customer Service…call them, maybe they can help.  I called and they told me Property Management has Have A Heart traps that they lend out and all you have to do is sign them out.  They gave me the number and in less that five minutes I was in my car to pick it up.  I kicked myself that I had not called them earlier as I tell people to do.  Unfortunately, when I arrived at Property Management they apologized profusely that all the traps were out and they had called me back but I was gone already.  They would try to locate them and see what they  could do.  I couldn’t wait and headed to Ace Hardware to see if they had any and to my surprise they did.  10 minutes later I am back at Property Management to tell them I got one, and they said we have one coming back this afternoon.  Again I didn’t want to wait as this little guy was fading fast.  I set the trap and baited it with hot dogs as soon as I got home.  I watched that day and all through the night…it was empty.  The next afternoon I was informed that the radio station announced that he was found and they were now looking for the owner.  So someone did catch him, maybe with one of those unavailable traps.  Alls well that ends well and again want to remind you how great Customer Service is.   Their number is 753-4508 and I will take my own advice next time.

When I was young my Grandmother wintered in Florida and came north in the summer. In the 40’s & 50’s Florida was a prescription for the relief of arthritis pain, which she suffered severly, so the minute the cool mornings appeared she packed and headed for the train station, where she bought her ticket. Waving good-bye was always sad, as it seemed everyday was special when she visited. She knew she was headed back to Florida to face hurricane season, but the relief from pain that the warm weather brought her, outweighed any thoughts she had of staying. . Years later when I moved to Florida one of my first questions to my new neighbors concerned hurricanes. They assured me that we were inland enough that we do get them but little damage is done. That has been true so far. I never thought I would be in Florida trying to get through to our children in NJ and NY to make sure they made it through the storm safely. They did, narrowly. One son had 10 trees down and five hit the house. No structural damage but oh what a clean up mess he has on his hands. Another had two trees down that wrapped around his vehilcles avoiding serious damage to the them. However, in both cases it was scary that they were outside trying to save the cars and get a generator out of a shed, when the wind picked up fiercely and trees started snapping. As I said fortunately they are safe as had they been hit by one of those trees it could have been very tragic. They both live in Northern New Jersey, directly west of New York City, close to the Pennsylvania border, and again I never thought I would be worring about them, I figured they would be worrying about me.  I am very thankful and am hoping all your family and friends located in the North East were as fortunate as my family and made it safely through.

Barefoot no more.  All my life I have gone barefooted and never had a problem, although I have had many warnings of the terrible things that might befall me. My sons spent their early years barefooted, as the theory was they developed better arches. Not really thinking the theory out, the arches probably were developed from sharp objects poking tender little feet. Anyway we all survived, including my sons’ arches,  until last week. I should say it started a month ago when I was in the yard barefooted and suddenly I looked down and my foot was covered with ants.  I quickly brushed them off, but about six or seven bit me. They do sting like crazy and itch and itch and itch, about three weeks worth. They finally heeled and I thought that was the end of it. A week ago Saturday I happened to be outdoors and one little ant got in my sandal. Again a sting and I thought here we go again, however just one bite, I can do this. When I went to bed that night it itched a little bit, however I tosssed and turned all night from the itching, got up and put cortizone cream on my foot a few times and each time realized my foot was getting bigger and redder. That one little ant bite had activated the old bites and they were just as inflamed as the new bite. By 4 am the swelling and redness was above my ankle and heading up my leg.  I thought I better get to the Emergency Room, this is not good.  As I showered and dressed I kept thinking I better eat something, I better bring something to read, I better prepare myself for a long wait.  I had heard stories all my life, of long waits in Emergency Rooms, had heard how when the snowbirds come back the wait at The Villages’ Hospital is long.  I had also heard that The Villages’ Hospital had opened up an Emergency Room annex or Urgent Care associated with the hospital which I thought was a wonderful idea.  I armed myself with snacks and patience and headed over.  I walked in and I thought I was in the wrong place, maybe they moved the Emergency Room.  I looked around and sure enough I saw someone behind the desk who was all set to help me.  Within minutes I had my wrist band attached and was escorted to a cubicle to await the Doctor.  It took a little while to see a Doctor, as there were a few patients ahead of me that I did not see, but I heard.  I left in record time and  the Emergency Room was still empty.  It was a very pleasant experience and the fact that the ant anecdote worked immediately, made my Emergency Room visit even more pleasant.  I couldn’t help but think that perhaps because of the emphasis on health care;  from doctors and facilities to surveys and  seminars, not to mention an empty Emergency Room,  we truly are the Healthiest Hometown.  Just another reason I love living here.