Another year, another quiet Thanksgiving in Gainesville. Later on this week, we’ll be celebrating my daughter’s 4th birthday. Still coming to terms with how quickly the time passes. Choosing to stay local and not visit family is a choice made for one reason: my daughter loves birthday celebrations at her home. She’s been planning what she wants for months now. When it comes down to it, choosing to make her birthday special is an easy choice....
Last Thanksgiving, thanks to Covid, Thanksgiving was quieter than normal. This year, travel is expected to be close to pre-pandemic levels (air travel alone is expected to be 91% of what it was pre-pandemic). This said, we’re staying in Gainesville for the holiday and having a quiet celebration. Some of my family will joining my parents in Fort Lauderdale (which is looking like a decent, although smaller, turn out). We opted to stay in Gainesville primarily for AnneMarie....
Normally, I write these posts the night before Thanksgiving… after all, Thanksgiving remains my absolute favorite holiday. A time to gather with family (remember…. friends are the family you choose), express gratitude, and eat great food. The gather part this year didn’t happen thanks to the pandemic. Losing the bakery and not seeing family/friends since February made it hard to focus on what we have to be thankful for… not as hard as when Ricardo was murdered, but honestly it’s been a shit year....
Been a rough few months for the wife’s business and sadly, we had to announce the closure of Bearkery® earlier this week. For 10 years, I’ve watched Yeni pour her heart and sole into the bakery and although we saw it coming and prepared, the end was nonetheless heartbreaking. She’s done some amazing work… gained some incredible press (now and then)… and started the bakery from absolutely nothing. I couldn’t be more proud of my amazing wife....
11 years and 1 branch (shown above)
Hoping that everyone is staying safe and seeing the impact to many of my friends has been nothing short of devastating. Our favorite local restaurants have resorted to take-out and if they’re lucky are getting 25% of the business they’d normally receive. (Quick shout out to Blue Water Bay here in North Florida and if you’re anywhere near Maggie Valley, NC, check out Frankie’s) The bakery has seen all events for the rest of the year cancelled… which includes weddings, graduations, caterings, and well… everything. We’ve been very grateful for all the orders to the bakery’s online store (and Yeni literally yells “woo hoo” when an order comes in). ...
She runs a tight kitchen for sure. ...
So, AnneMarie entered our lives about 6 weeks ago, and despite all of the amazing advice from all my family and friends, I underestimated the amount of disruption a newborn brings. ...
TL/DR; We’re all good. No damage to the house (that we can see), power is back, Internet is back — we are very fortunate. We started feeling some wind Sunday evening and the rain hadn’t let up since Saturday night. We received more than 12 inches of rain. We lost power on Sunday, regained it, and then lost it hard at 1am Monday morning. The bakery lost power 11pm Sunday night....
This morning (2017-09-09), Irma has decided to take a westwardly stroll towards the gulf. This is very good news for South Florida, but less exciting for us here in North Florida. Not good news for Tampa area. For Gainesville, we now have an increased amount of wind expected. Although higher than we’d like, it still is much less than anything the islands would have experienced. The good thing about Gainesville is we have an incredible amount of trees to help break up the wind....