2010 March 9 Tuesday
After lunch here, I went fishing off the dock in Lake Cecile. Again, no bites. Linda sat and read. Both sand hill cranes were at the nest, and they did there call once. It was very loud when you are only 20 feet away! Now there is only one egg in the nest, so we wonder if a predator got the other one, or what happened to it. While sitting on the deck, we also saw some moorhens, an osprey, an egret, a little blue heron, and a limpkin. Before supper, Linda took a long walk, and I took a long bike ride. I rode out of the resort and went around the lake. Along the way, I saw a pileated woodpecker - they are huge! Supper here, then American Idol. In general the girls seemed to be a little better, except for a couple of them. Is Simon meaner this year, or do we just forget how he is?

WEATHER: High 75, low 56. The forecast has changed, and now the rain is not coming until Thursday, maybe. Then heavy rain Friday. Forecast says 81 on Wednesday, then back to upper 70’s for several days.

FL NEWS: (1) “ CELEBRITY RESORTS FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY” [I always felt like Orlando had overbuilt for tourist stays, because when searching for timeshare places, there ALWAYS is lots of availability here. On my bike ride yesterday, I notice that it was just one little motel after another along Hwy.192. When driving, we notice all the major motel chains within a mile or two. And that’s not including all the resorts! So with the economy not good, this headline was not surprising.]
Celebrity Resorts LLC and its affiliates have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing tens of millions in estimated liabilities. The Orlando-based time-share company listed just two unsecured creditors, but about three dozen other filings listed pages of additional creditors.
In the bankruptcy filings, the company's chief executive officer, Jared Myers, said he is owed $680,812 in unpaid compensation. Celebrity Resorts began showing signs of distress as early as July 2008, when it announced it was cutting an unspecified number of jobs and eliminating an area of its marketing business that was unprofitable. The company has properties in 13 locations across the U.S. It was formerly known as Resort World, a family-owned business that started selling time shares in the Caribbean in the 1970s and then in the Orlando area in the 1980s.
(2) “SEAWORLD CALL PETA BANNER A STUNT”
Shortly after an airborne PETA banner urged SeaWorld to release its animals from "prison," the theme park criticized today's aerial protest as an expensive publicity stunt by an "extremist organization." "We're left to wonder how many animals in need could've been helped with the thousands of dollars spent on PETA's latest exercise in theatrics," the message posted on SeaWorld's Web site said. "This publicity stunt proved once again that PETA is an extremist organization far more interested in photo opportunities than helping animals." PETA sent a small plane pulling a banner above the theme park that said: "SeaWorld: Let Whales and Dolphins Out of Prison. PETA.” PETA's banner "served no purpose other than to again compound the sadness and grief being experienced by those SeaWorld employees closest to Dawn Brancheau,'' the SeaWorld message said. After Brancheau's death, PETA renewed its call for SeaWorld to "transfer all its dolphins — including orcas — to transitional coastal sanctuaries and stop confining oceangoing mammals to small enclosures that to them are like bathtubs," a statement from PETA said. While PETA was flying a banner, SeaWorld was helping animals, the theme park said. "Right now our animal care teams are treating more than 50 rescued wild animals, including representatives of three endangered or threatened species, and preparing those animals for return to the wild. In just the past nine weeks SeaWorld parks have rescued and treated nearly 1,000 animals and most have already been returned to the ocean," the statement added.