Good dog, good times and good beer ...

Meet Rocky. He lives next door to King and Queen of The Porch. The adorable chocolate labrador is rambunctious in the morning, but he's a lovely dog and sometimes obedient, or is that simply the makeshift barricade to prevent Rocky from devouring a lovely plate of ham and eggs, made by the King, this morning? Rocky and I just returned from the park. It's easy to see why Topeekeegee Yugnee Park is known as T.Y. Park for short. It apparently is a Native American tribal name for "meeting or gathering place." Anyway, Rocky isn't so rambuncious anymore, but rather resting at home. He's tired.

What else has been going on this week? Well, Murf and I went to spring training for the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets in Fort Myers and Port Saint Lucie respectively. More on that later, although I have included another gratuitious car shot. I reckon the vehicle supplied by the good people at Enterprise Rent-A-Car looks like a girl should be driving it, hence the name Christine Chevrolet, alias Hollywood Champagne. I'm hoping to close out the trip in style and in something more manly when I hire a car in San Francisco next week for my Pacific Coast Highway leg. But that's nearly the end of the trip and I don't want to think about that yet.

As a token of my appreciation I took the King and Queen out for dinner last week. There was one proviso: we had to go to Outback Stakehouse, which was founded in Florida almost 20 years ago. Rather than trying to be original, I'll simply lift the company information from their website and say that it's "an Australian steakhouse concept open for dinner only. Although beef and steak items make up a good portion of the menu, the concept offers a variety of chicken, ribs, seafood, and pasta dishes". Well, Outback forgot to mention they also serve Australian beer! While they were out of most types, they still had Coopers Sparkling Ale and we almost drank them out of that too! The King is now a fan and has even mentioned he might join the Coopers Club. It was a great night. I devoured my steak, a 20-ounce T-Bone called The Melbourne. We also had a Bloomin' Onion, which, simply put, is an deep fried onion. We're going out for dinner now, meaning I have to go. Now. But I hope you'll be feasting on more of the bloomin' blog later on.