The City of Tampa made a big mistake this week when new street signs went up downtown. Instead of the signs, at the corner of Ashley and Kennedy, was spelled incorrectly. The offending sign, which is spelled “Kenndey” will be removed and corrected tonight.

This makes the sign in front of the local high school saying “EarlEy dismissal today” seem a little easier to bear.

Several years ago, my husband and I got the chance to see The Who, in concert, for free. Friends of ours had been offered tickets at work, and apparently couldn’t GIVE them away. Our seats were in the nosebleed section of the St. Pete Times Forum, but it was great seeing legends in concert. The fans who bought tickets for this week’s show at the Ford Amphitheater weren’t so lucky - minutes after The Who came on stage, Roger Daltry walked off, and the show was cancelled due to his illness. Pete Townshend announced that the show would be rescheduled for 2 weeks from now.

Extreme Makeover visited a home in South Tampa back in January. You may remember hearing about the Tate Family in the news - back in June of 2006, a small plane crashed into their home, killing the pilot and destroying the house. Thanks to Extreme Makeover, the Tates have a brand new home. The episode featuring the tates aired March 4th.

The Tampa Bay area has been in a slump as far as real estate is concerned, since 2006. My husband and I sold our home in November of 2005, just before things started to go south. We were lucky to sell when we did, because we got top dollar.

In our new neighborhood, there are several homes that were purchased and built by investors hoping to make a quick buck. You can easily tell which ones were purchased by investors, because they’re the ones sitting empty. They can’t sell them, and they can’t even rent them out. There’s simply too much supply, and not enough demand.

My husband and I were over at Citrus Park Mall earlier this week, with the family in tow, and decided to head across the street to Smokey Bones for dinner. We tried to go to the one in Clearwater when it first opened a few years ago, but the wait was 2 hours, so we skipped it. After hearing rave reviews from friends, I was anxious to try it, but I was so disappointed.

The restaurant wasn’t crowded (it was a Monday night) so we were seated immediately. Our waitress was extremely slow. After taking our drink orders, she came by our table 2 or 3 more times on her way to other places, without our drinks. Our dinner order (ribs, a BBQ sandwich, and 3 kids meals) took almost 25 minutes. We saw tables that came in after us get served before us. Finally, our food came out - Jim’s ribs were dry, my sandwich was dry, and the kids meals were ok. For the price, I’ve had better BBQ at much smaller local chains, like Pit Boss. Our meal was $50 for the meals, drinks (one beer) and the cornbread appetizer, which was good, but nothing special.

My husband and I spent some time looking into cruises of the Mediterranean recently. Living in Florida, when someone says “cruise” you tend to think of all of the ships leaving from Tampa, Miami, and Port Canaveral. But there’s a whole cruise ship industry that does nothing but sail the Mediterranean Sea! Most of the cruises we looked at left from Barcelona, Spain. If we were to do a vacation like this, staying a few days before and after in our departure city would be a must. You can find and book Barcelona hotels online, so I read up a bit about the city to see what there is to see there!

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain. There is a lot of Gothic architecture to soak up, as well as good food and warm sandy beaches. Easy To Book has a great map feature on their website which allows you to see exactly where each hotel is located within the city, as well as what attractions and points of interest are nearby.

Touch A Truck
March 9th from 10am til 1pm
Veteran Memorial Park on Hicks Road
Hudson, FL

What’s Touch A Truck? It’s an event with all kinds of trucks - from a dump truck to firetrucks to a big rig! If you’ve got a kid wild about trucks, this is a must see event. The kids always have fun seeing the trucks in person, and may even get to honk horns or climb on trucks!