2010 March 7 Sunday
After lunch here, we went to Celebration again. We took a long walk along the three lakes to do some bird watching and picture taking. [Sending pictures soon.] We ate a light supper at the Market Street Café along the lakefront downtown. Linda had a cup of mushroom soup with a half-sandwich of BLT, and I had chili. It was good, but the best thing was the peach-raspberry cobbler that we took home and shared later.

2010 March 8 Monday
After lunch here, we went to Target. We had our usual Starbucks treat, and Linda shopped while I sat and read my book. Then we went to check out another Wyndham resort, Cypress Palms, which is just a few blocks west of this resort. We are thinking about future stays, and it has some advantages over Star Island. It doesn’t have near as much space around the resort and has no lake to fish in [just a large pond], but it does have a better room floor plan for the smaller room, which uses fewer points. It has two pools, and we walked around the area and talked to a couple who were staying there. They have stayed at both resorts and were helpful. We stopped at the check-in and got good information. They said if we stayed there, we could go to Star Island to use those facilities since they are sister properties, so I still could fish in the lake. Looks like a good possibility for a future stay. Next, we went to the library at Celebration to check it out. It’s small, but has a nice collection and nice area to sit and read. The librarian was very nice and told us non-residents can get a card for a year for $15. We will do that next year, for sure. We can go there now and read anything they have, but we can’t check out anything. Looks like a good place to go on a rainy day. When we got back to the resort, I went for a 45-minute bike ride, then we had supper here.

WEATHER: High 75, low 54. The good news - 70’s for several days. The bad news - possible rain for the next 3 days.

FL NEWS: (1) “PRISONERS TO MOW ORLANDO MEDIANS”
With budget cuts paring back landscaping along city roads, Orlando is bringing the old-fashioned chain gang to The City Beautiful. Last year, Dyer and the City Council cut overall spending by $62 million to avoid a budget deficit. Some of the savings came by drastically reducing how often medians along city streets are maintained. Mowing, edging, weed control and tree pruning were all scaled back. Litter control was reduced so much that city officials predicted they wouldn't have time to pick it all up, threatening Orlando's moniker as "The City Beautiful."
Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties each use inmates from county jails to do some maintenance on county roads. But Orlando has not. The inmates won't be paid, but the city will pay the guards' salaries and supply all of the crews' equipment, including leased vans, trailers, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers and trimmers. City officials said that only non-violent, minimum-security inmates who have not been convicted of a sexual offense will be allowed on work crews. They won't work in residential areas, or near schools during drop-off and pickup times.
(2) “SEAWORLD RECONSIDERS USING KILLER WHALE AGAIN”
SeaWorld said Tuesday that it is reconsidering whether to keep using the 6-ton killer whale that drowned its trainer last month in performances for audiences. In the immediate aftermath of the Feb. 24 tragedy, SeaWorld said it intended to return Tilikum to shows. But SeaWorld has subsequently decided not to make any decisions about its interactions with killer whales until it has completed an internal review of training and safety policies.
At 12,000 pounds, Tilikum is the largest of the 26 killer whales in the company’s collection and roughly twice as large as the next biggest at SeaWorld Orlando. He has also been linked to two deaths in the past. As such, SeaWorld has developed a series of safety protocols specifically for Tilikum. For example, only the company’s most experienced trainers are permitted to work with Tilikum and none is allowed to swim with him, as they routinely do with other killer whales.