Chickies, cheeses, and beachies.

I meant to post days ago, an immediate follow-up to my first St. Joe update post. But I get easily sidetracked these days, and I just lost my writing mojo. But I'm here now, so hopefully it was worth the wait. :)

Before I take you back to the beach, I would like to officially and publicly reaffirm my support of the chicken and all our feathered friends. I tend to be a little suggestible, but I figure as long as it's for a good cause, so be it, right? Anyway, my new library hold finally came in today and I started reading Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet (there's also a website I haven't checked out yet: The Kind Life). I've only gotten through the first few chapters, but they are all on the evils of meat, dairy, and sugar, to us, the planet, and, obviously, the various animals. I won't share anything specific that I read (I don't want to be one to push unsolicited preachery), but I'll just say this: I immediately went to the store and bought soy milk, soy cheese, brown rice (yuck!), lemon sorbet (gotta have a treat!), and a bunch of veggies. And I think it's safe to say the flirting I've been doing with reconsidering meat is out the window. I just don't want to be ok with it. I also never thought about/considered how the treatment of chickies comes into play for eggs (I know, duh, but I didn't), and now I have severe egg guilt. I don't know that I can kick the habit but I'm going to think about it a lot. For now, my goal will be to try to be as vegan-friendly during the week as I can (I can't make any promises for when the weekend rolls around and I'm forced ["forced" haha] to go out to eat with Bradford) and continue my veggie quest in general. It's been almost a whole year now. High five, biker chicken!

Ok, as promised, back to the beach (and how fitting, as it finally feels like summer today). Tuesday it was gloomy and rainy, but I went to the beach anyway. I had the whole place to myself, and I ignored the "Private Beach" signs and walked for an hour. I was at Jean Klock Park this day, which is technically in Benton Harbor. So far, it's my favorite all-around beach.

Later that evening, Brad and I drove over to Silver Beach (the main beach in St. Joe) and hit up Silver Beach Pizza for, well, some pizza, based on our realtor's recommendation. It's right on the train tracks and practically on the beach, so I assumed it was meant only for beach goers and tourists, but it was jam packed on an off-season Tuesday night, so I guess not. We had a great meal and can check another thing off our list: yummy pizza.

Nacho cheese, with breadsticks! Mmm.



Don't you love my dairy-heavy meal after my above-mentioned vegan discussion?



I brought the comb!

After dinner, since the weather finally cleared up, we walked down to the beach and over to the pier, having the sunset almost entirely to ourselves. We kept looking at each other and saying, "Can you believe this is going to be HOME?"

I pinch you, future town!

Wednesday was finally a beautiful sunny day, and warm, so I ditched my "drive around and see what's what" plan and drove over to Lion's Park, which is just to the left of Silver Beach, with a stretch of lovely beach homes between them. They're doing some sort of "construction" (f-in-law Bob explained it to me, and it's something about moving water around or something? But I've since totally forgotten what he said) but they weren't actually doing anything, so once I walked beyond the kid-full playground area and out in front of the homes, I had the beach all to myself again. I even found MY spot. A small little inlet covey thing, with shallow pools and a sandbar. I spent the afternoon there with my smuggled-out hotel towels and Molly Ringwald's new book.

And that night, because it was so beautiful, we grabbed dinner at one of the places downtown that has an outdoor patio, overlooking the water from above. A lovely view, once the pompous ass college kid sitting in the way of our view went away and took his annoying voice with him. ("OMG, I keep forgetting I'm not in Spain anymore! * titter titter * Silly me!")

I must also mention that house hunting in St. Joe went great, and we found our "dream house." Nothing we can do about that until our house sells, but worth noting. Also worth noting was Brad's use of "entertaining" in reference to space in a house. One of our most hated House Hunters terms. You know better than that, Bradford! (He better not say "man cave" or it's over!) And lastly, while house-talkin, this isn't the neighborhood of our dream house, but I sure wish it was: