Pale palomino or Isabelline horse

Juliette Falls Golf Course...

...looking back at the 9th hole.

Lunch break!

Florida "Gator" mailbox

The word, "fan," comes from the word, "fanatic." Many people in Ocala are alumni of the University of Florida. The football team at the U of F is known as the "Gators." Many alumni of the U of F are fans of the football team. They are fanatical! They paint their cars with Gator colors, they wear Gator-colored clothes, the fly Gator flags from their homes, etc.

Then there's at least one fan who bought an old mailbox and turned it into a Gator mailbox.

Coming soon?

This sign has been the window of an empty storefront for about two years. We keep waiting, but no longer think it's "coming soon."

Storm god

McAlister's Deli

This "Islam Car" has returned...

...and was parked in the Heathbrook Market Street parking lot, where it garnered a lot of attention.

Steel is real

The front license plate on this little jewel reads: "If it is not steel, it is not real."

The ghost of Carrabbas

Carrabbas is a fine Italian restaurant chain, with good food and good service. But in the Ocala Carrabbas, there's a problem. As you can plainly see, our Carrabbas has been visited by a ghost of waiters past.

ihmc - Ocala

This is the location of the Ocala office of ihmc (Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition); ihmc also has an office in Pensacola, Florida.

From the ihmc website:

"IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System and is affiliated with several Florida universities.

"Researchers at IHMC pioneer technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. Our human-centered approach often results in systems that can be regarded as cognitive or perceptual prostheses, much as eyeglasses are a sort of ocular prosthesis. These systems fit the human and machine components together in ways that exploit their respective strengths and mitigate their respective weaknesses...

"Current active research areas include: knowledge modeling and sharing, adjustable autonomy, robotics, advanced interfaces and displays, communication and collaboration, computer-mediated learning systems, intelligent data understanding, software agents, expertise studies, work practice simulation, knowledge representation, and other related areas."

Click here for an example of "Human-Machine Trust for Robust Autonomous Systems."

Forever Lawn will clean foreclosures

Sadly, in this economy some people have lost their jobs and thus their ability to continue making house payments. Eventually, the bank forecloses on their loan and they have to move out. There are instances when that has led to such anger on the part of the former homeowners they have "trashed" the property on their way out.

Thus, Forever Lawn. They clean up the mess the homeowners make.

Cats 'n Yarn Kittens

Some folks in Bloggerland may be old enough to remember the Katzenjammer Kids

These are not them. These are the Cats 'n Yarn Kittens.

Beef cattle

According to my sources, there are at least 31 different beef cattle breeds. These are Brahmans.

Ocala claims to be the "Horse Capitol of the World," but we also have a number of cattle ranches/farms in the area. In fact, the property now known as On Top of the World (OTOW) was once part of a huge ranch consisting of many hundreds of acres southwest of Ocala. The Stone Creek property was purchased from OTOW. Surrounding OTOW and Stone Creek is what's left of the ranch known as the Circle Square Ranch, which must consist of several hundred acres.

These Brahman cattle reside on the Circle Square Ranch along with a huge herd of Hereford cattle. Just across the road from the Circle Square Ranch is another large herd of Herefords.

We hope the inexorable rush to development will slow to a crawl; that these delightful rural places continue for many years to provide a respite from the urban sprawl that contaminates so much of Florida's countryside.

An ambulance is waiting...

...but not for me.

On this day, however, some poor soul, who merely went to see the doctor, ended up taking a trip to the hospital in an ambulance.