Vacation Journal - Day 5

Wednesday 6/20

I slept late again today. It was between 9:30 and 10:00 before I got up; crazy long for me. Walked out onto the dock this morning, and I saw a dolphin really close up. He was close enough for me to hear him breath out when he surfaced. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera, so no pictures.

Later, my wife and I went for a walk. We saw what might have been a hawk. I’m not really sure what it was, but it made a noise I’ve never really heard before. He was smart whatever it was, as we positioned ourselves to see it better, it moved, so I never could get a good view with either the camera or binoculars.

After my in-laws came back from their jaunt downtown, my wife and I decided to head out (without our boy) and do a little shopping out on Tybee Island again. We really like that little island. We did some shopping, had a light lunch, walked out onto the fishing pier, did some more fishing and even played a game of pool. Afterward, we decided to go back to the North Beach Grill from yesterday, and have a drink and look at the ocean. We might have stayed where we were at, but between the rain and the crowds of tourists, we decided the other place would be better. Plus, it would give me a chance to take a good picture of the lighthouse.

We took our time there, and just sorta soaked it all in. It was really nice, and the time was all too quickly slipping away, and we will have to get back in the van, and leave, back to Oklahoma, back to the daily grind, the jobs, responsibilities, and everything else. So, we took some time taking pictures to help us remember.

We came back, and I got probably the best view of a shrimp boat so far as it was anchored not far from our dock.

It was then time for dinner. We had some good shrimp, red potatoes, corn on the cob, summer sausage, and some crabs I caught today (about 7 or so). It was good, scratch that, it was real good!

We sat down, and then planned out route home. We decided not to go back the way we came, so the plan now is to head down to Jacksonville, Florida and then over to New Orleans. Then head home from there. We’ll spend the night somewhere on the way back. But at this moment, not sure where that somewhere will be.

Vacation Journal - Day 4

Tuesday 6/19

What a day! We got up and around, and headed to the Pirate’s House Restaurant for lunch, where we knew that we would meet, Captain Jack Sparrow. We wouldn’t tell my boy that he was going to be there, that was our surprise, but we did say we were headed to the Pirate’s House to eat. And there were all sorts of real pirates that have once been in that place. He was intrigued. Well, he noticed the Captain, and was excited, but kept his excitement down. Anyway, Captain Jack stopped by and chatted with us, and that was wonderful. I couldn’t tell if me or my boy was having a better time. When he found out we were from Oklahoma, he said, “Ahhh, foreigners then. If I’d known that, I’d not’ve sat down.” In the way that only Captain Jack could do, then he stood up, and left.

He came back, sat down, and chatted with us for a while. It was excellent!

Later, when we got back to the house, he was talking to his Nanny, and said, “I didn’t know Captain Jack was real.” Too good!

After dinner, we went down the river front and did a little site seeing and some shopping. Except the fact my boy wanted to come back here so he could play the silly PS2 that was here (we didn’t bring it), it was really nice. I finally threatened him that if he brought up the PS2 again, he’d not play it for the week, or be able to even watch the other kids. The complaining stopped!

Today, we also did some crabbin’. We managed to catch at least 12 crabs. Tomorrow, there is supposed to be some sort of crab stew/soup, or something. We’ll see how that goes.

On one of the tips out to the dock to check on our traps, I FINALLY saw the dolphins that I’ve heard everyone talk about. Seems they come into the river and eat the shrimp that have come out of the marsh. It was cool!

As I sit here and write this, it is raining. I like the rain. Always have. There is a good chance of thunderstorm tomorrow, so we’ll have to see if we’ll get to go to the ocean again tomorrow or not.

Vacation Journal - Day 3

Monday 6/18

Today, my wife and father-in-law made breakfast! It was so good! Scrambled eggs, home made biscuits, and sausage! That’s how every day should start out I really think!

My wife and I went for a walk, and looked around, and here are a few more pictures.

We spent the rest of the morning, trying to figure out what we should do. We finally decided we’d go to the ocean and play today. So, we got around, and headed to Dollar General for the things you forget to pack. You know, beach towels, sun screen, beach toys, that sort of thing. We then head to a grocery store (next door to save time) and buy drinks. Next stop, Payless to buy me some beach going shoes. Didn’t get the (payless version of ) Crock flip-flops since they were not in my size, but did get a cool pair. And my wife got the black pair of crock-flops that she really wanted for Mother’s day. (I got here the white ones cause I didn’t realize she specifically asked for black.

Anyway, we are now done shopping, so it’s off to the beach!

We have a great time! Shoot, saying we had a great time is an understatement! The sand was a fine grain sand, so it was nice. There were people around, but not so many you couldn’t have fun. My boy even found a few kids to play with.

We all got to play together, and that was what mattered. I even got a chance to get out and take some pictures. I wished we were there at sun-up instead of sun set cause some of the pictures I wanted to take were backlit. But I still had some wonderful pictures!

After we finally left, we decided to find a place to eat, and have some sea food. I mean, we ARE at the beach. We ended up eating at a little place right next to where we parked, the North Beach Grill.

We asked for their specials, and they started rolling off steak specials. We informed the waiter that we were from Oklahoma. We have cattle. What do they have in the seafood category? He chuckled and proceeded with other specials. We started out with some chips and salsa. And after just that, my boy said we should eat here for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I couldn’t really blame him, cause it was good. We ordered our food. And while waiting on it, my boy got up to go to the bathroom, took about 3 steps, stopped, and projectile vomited!!! It was so gross, and I felt so bad! Luckily, the people closest to it (which was on the far side of us) had a little one, so I’m sure it wasn’t the worse they had ever seen. I felt so bad though. I carried my boy to the restroom, and checked on him. He said he was fine, and wanted to stay and eat (our food hadn’t even gotten there yet) so I had him wash his hands and face and to finish using it. Everyone there was excellent, especially our waiter who donned on some rubber gloves, got a bucked of water, and proceeded to clean up the mess! We had at least 2 of the staff stop by and check on our boy. That really impressed me. We still have not clue what caused it. My guess is some sea water in the belly, followed by sweet tea and chips and HOT salsa.

Dinner came, and it was wonderful! My boy had a burger and fries. I had a crab cake sandwich, and my beautiful wife had a sautéed shrimp dinner. There isn’t much to say about dinner. It was just excellent. Like my son, I would love to go back there before we leave and have more, but part of the fun and exciting part of vacations, is going and doing things you’ve not done before. (Second vacations are for repeat visits!!!)

As we left, I turned, and the moon, mars/Venus and the lighthouse on Tybee Island were all there a-glow! It was too cool. I tried taking a picture of it, but I’m not real happy with they way they turned out, but this one isn’t too bad.

As we left, we made sure we had our camera out, cause we saw a sign coming into the island that is unlike any sign us land-lovers have ever seen, and we just HAD to get it’s picture.

Vacation Journal - Day 2

Sunday 6/17

When we finally stopped for breakfast in Alabama and I was ready! When the guy asked me what I wanted to drink, I just sat there looking at him like he was speaking a foreign language.

Later, after my 3 hours of sleep, I was riding along, and we kept seeing what looked like the arms that come down in front of train tracks. We couldn’t figure out what they were for, well, at one of the stops we took I asked. They use it to block traffic when evacuating for hurricanes. Made since, just not something you see in Oklahoma.

We got here around 5:30ish or so on Sunday evening. Just in time for dinner. First, I’d like to say thanks to Dave for loaning me his GPS system; we had very little problems finding this place with it (just a bit but that was because of road construction that it didn’t know about, which was around the town we ate breakfast in).

Anyway, off that tangent. We ate, and then I walked around the plantation a bit. Here is where we are at.

Vacation Journal - Day 1

Saturday 6/16

My boy was up with a coughing fit Friday night/Saturday morning, so we were up with that. Then he woke up around 8:30 on Saturday feeling what seemed refreshed. I got some packing done, and went with my mother-in-law to get the van. My boy and I did some shopping, hit the library, and had some lunch (not necessarily in that order). I got a chance to bake some chocolate chip cookies, and then my wonderful wife and I loaded up the van with the majority of our stuff, and I took it over to my mother-in-laws so she could load her stuff and come and get us after Vacation Bible School. Then home I went and laid down for about an hour. Managed about a 30 minute sleep out of that hour of lying down, then it was time to get around and ready for VBS.

After VBS, we called my in-laws, and I got a shower and cleaned up by the time they got to the house. We finished loading up the van and we got off around 8:30-9:00 or so. Our first stop was the airport. My wife had to fill out some papers to be added as an additional driver to the van. I took her license earlier in the day, but without here signature, that didn’t do any good. After that, QT for some caffeine, cause I’m going to have a very long night ahead of me, and I didn’t get as much sleep Friday night as I liked or as long of a nap as I would have liked.

For the most part, I didn’t have as much trouble as I was afraid of, especially considering how tired I was feeling at only 11:30 as everyone else was starting to dose off.

Back from Vacation

We're back from vacation.

We had a really good time. I've written posts while I was away, but didn't have access to post them, so I'll be posting them each day (two posts at most).

Happy Anniversary my Love

Today is my 9th wedding anniversary, and I love my wife more today than when we were married!

I love our anniversaries. It's cool to look back. As I was telling my dearest love it's hard to believe we have been married for 9 years.

She is such a wonderful woman! I'm so blessed to have her as my wife.

wedding picture

picture taken a couple weeks ago at our daughters graduation.

Happy Anniversary my Love! I love you.

Cheap Movies

I found out that some movie theaters have specials during the summer.

The Owasso 10 is one of those theaters. For $9/person, you can get a season pass. The run the same movie every wed-fri, and there are 10 movies scheduled. If you don't want to go every week, you can buy tickets there for $2/person.
Click the link for movies and times.

The AMC 20 has a free movie, every wednesday from June 27 to August 15 (except for July 4th)
Click the link for movies and times.

To see more theaters, check out this.

YEA!

We voted today on a new pastor at church.

I'll give more details later. Just excited.

picasa flickr

100_5546.JPG
Originally uploaded by jarrard@swbell.net

Today, I found a plug-in for Picasa that lets you upload pictures to Flickr.

http://picasa2flickr.sourceforge.net/

If you like Flickr and Picasa you'll probably love this!

First day of summer break

Today was my boy's first day of summer break!

He slept late, laid around the house in his underwear, and by 11 he was "bored". hehe

More Mozilla

As many of you know, I love Firefox. I use it for about 95% of my web browsing (that other 5% is at work where they can't manage to write apps that work on anything but IE).

Anyway, I recently got Mozilla's Thunderbird for an email client at home. I have Outlook, and have the 3 email accounts I check and my wifes on it. However, every time I went to send an email, I'd forget to change from the default account (my wifes) to mine, so it always looked like she was emailing people.

So, to reduce confusion (mainly for the people that never understood why my wife was emailing them), I downloaded Thunderbird. And so far I like it.

While looking at add-on's and the like tonight, I saw reference to 2 other projects. The SeaMonkey Project and Calendar Project.

The SeaMonkey Project is "Web-browser, advanced e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and HTML editing made simple -- all your Internet needs in one application."

The Calendar Project is broken into two, Sunbird and Lightning
Sunbird is a stand alone calendar program while Lightning embeds the calendar into Thunderbird.

I installed Lightning tonight, and linked it to my Google Calendars with a add-on I found called Provider.

It appears that all will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

So, don't have (or want) Microsoft Outlook, you might want to give one of these a try.

Flag Ceremony

The Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Brownies were all invited to help take down and fold the Service men's flags at Floral Haven. This is a yearly event.

My boy and I went with about 5 other boys from our pack (and their parents) to help.

We got there, got signed in, and had the event explained to us. We lined up, and had a parade to the center. (on the route there, I found my grandpa's flag) Once we reached the center, Taps was played. Then the flags in the circle around the main large flag were lowered and folded. While this occurred, I took my boy back to see my grandpa's flag. Which he was very interested to see.

After the main flag was lowered, all the scouts were released to start lowering and folding the flags.

Here are some pictures.

Grandpa's Flag

Graduation!!!

First off,

WOO HOO!

Ok, now that that is out of my system...

I am so proud of my daughter. She made it to graduation. I wasn't always sure she was going to make it, but she did. There was much blood, sweat and tears leading up to this day.

She was so nervous tonight it was funny. It was a good thing she didn't have to give a speech or she might have died!

We had a really good time. My wife and I made much noise as they called her name and she walked across the stage!

It took me forever to find her after graduation, but I finally did thanks to my wife who called me and lead me to them.

We came home for some homemade salsa, guacamole, and the like. We also had some cake which my mom made and decorated. It was really good.

1 down, 1 to go (in 11 years).

Some Senior Pictures

Ok, here are a couple of senior pictures that I thought I would go ahead and post. I was waiting for my second batch to come in, but figured in my cousin complained in my last post that there wasn't any pictures, I'd go ahead and show you two.

(Click for larger images)

Happy Mother's Day

I wanted to wish all the mothers that read this a Happy Mother's Day.

And for those of you who aren't mothers, go make your mothers Mother's Day happy :)

Senior Pictures

Yesterday, we got my daughters Senior pictures taken.

I'm not sure there is anything more difficult than narrowing down pictures to get.

You'll see some soon.

USS Batfish

Saturday, the Cub Scouts went the USS Batfish Volunteer day. To help clean and get the Batfish ready for a reunion of the crew that had served on the Batfish during WWII.

The Batfish was a WWII Diesel Submarine. We were lucky enough to get a tour of it from one of the men that had served on the Batfish. The cub scouts really had a good time. We got there late because of a soccer game (which was pretty good), but we made it for lunch and the tours. And afterward, most people were headed home, but I made sure we got some work so my boy could work.

This was not only a Batfish memorial, but also a war memorial as they had other items there.

If you have never been, I'd urge you to go. I went once as a kid/teenager (don't remember how old I was), and this was my second time there.

Garden

I did some more work in my garden the past 2 weekends.

Last weekend, I re-planted tomatoes, bell peppers, and jalapeño peppers that the late freeze we had killed.

This weekend, I was able to plant my corn. In a couple more weeks, I'll plant my pole beans and squash. Later this week, I hope to plant some cucumbers.

Yesterday and today, I picked 2 strawberries. But unfortunately, the birds and/or bugs got to enjoy the them, instead of me.

And finally, I noticed that my blackberry bush had blooms on it tonight. They weren't there yesterday when I mowed.

Beam us up Scotty

What kind of nerd fan would I be if I didn't bring this up.

Today, (Saturday), some of actor James Doohan's (Scotty from Star Trek) ashes will be launched into space.

You can ready more about it here.

Raingutter Regatta

Tonight was my son's Raingutter Regatta at the Pack meeting.

Instead of doing the normal boat, we got creative and made a catamaran. My boy helped design it, sand it, and paint it. Though I did the cutting on the boat.

So, at tonights race, well, let's just say he kicked some booty. :)

He ended up in 1st place of the Tiger Cubs!!!

He was so happy.

Here is his Pirate Catamaran!

Here is his boat along with some of the other boats.

He was racing another Catamaran. I thought he was going to get beat. And I would have been upset since I told his den master what

2007 RainGutter Regatta

First Place Tigers
(BTW, those are cannons on the side)

Tonight, he also got his Bobcat and Tiger badges along with a slew of belt-loops

Church Web Page.

Wow, I've been gone a while huh?

I've been busy doing all sorts of things.

At the top, I've set up a web page for my church. You can see it at www.tricountyskiatook.org You may, or may not, be surprised at how hard it is to find a domain name.

I think it looks pretty good. I've got some help to keep it updated. So, we'll see how it goes.

Prom 2007

Well, today is prom. Not just prom, but this year, it's senior prom! After much drama and to-do. They finally got off. I ended up taking some pictures at Woodward Park. In fact, there were several of us taking pictures.

This is the four girls. Mine is in the pink poofy dress.

My daughter and her friend.

My two kids. He was having fun, but that was the best picture of him I got.

My daughter and her date!

Senior Tea

Today, was Senior Tea day. Best I can tell, it's a day where mother and daughter get to dress up and have a tea party. My wife took several pictures. It was interesting to see pictures of these girls that I've know since they were 9 or so, and how grown up they look.

Here are a couple pictures of my wife and daughter.

What month is it?

You gotta love Oklahoma weather. (Ok, not really)

It is currently 83 degrees at 6:25 pm. I saw one thermometer that read 88.
Tomorrows high is 62, Wednesday is 55. Chance of frost by the weekend.

Crazy!

XP Background prolems continued

In my last post I had a problem with not being able to change my background.

That other fix seemed to work, but I was having problems with it reverting back, and not being able to change my wallpaper.

Well, if you have that problem, try this (which was finally the solution that worked for me.

Run REGEDIT then go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Delete the Wallpaper Value

It worked for me.

XP Background prolems

Yesterday or the day before, my work computer freaked out and afterward, I was not able to change my background. Everything was greyed out. So, after searching my blog for the solution (cause I was sure I've talked about this before) but was unable to find it. So, I hit Google. I tried one solution, no dice.

Then I found http://www.thespykiller.co.uk/files/cleandesktop.exe you download it, and run it, and it will fix it so you can change your background.

You can read this forum which is where I found it.

Bird Creek

On my drive in this morning, I took a look at Bird Creek to see how much water was in it. It was FULL! I haven't seen that much water in Bird Creek in ages!!!

Now I know why there are flood warnings and watches all over Northeaster Oklahoma, especially with more rain coming in tonight.

We needed it. Maybe not the average person, but the lakes and ponds were very low. When I was at Skiatook last weekend, you could see how low it really was. These rains should really help. No way Skiatook will gain the 12 feet it's below, but ever bit helps when you're trying to get a lake back up to normal.

Fishing Trip

We went out on our fishing trip Saturday. Me, my dad and my boy went out. We got there about 8:30ish or so and we fished till almost 4.

The only 2 fish we landed (both by my dad) are below. Only one was keepable. Normally, we would have thrown him back when we were done, but my wife told my boy to catch us dinner. So he was insistent that we brought home some fish.

I told my wife, it was her dinner. We'd have to eat something else :)

Probably about a 5 inch bass. He was tiny.

Good sized crappie. A few more, and we would be eating well!

Relaxation

Work has been so crazy lately. Long hours, high stress. You know, that kind of stuff. It's Saturday, and I've got plans for some hopefully relaxing time and (if I'm lucky) some good eats!

I'm headed to Skiatook lake today for some fishing! I know my son and my dad are going, and there is a possibility that my grandfather may go as well.

I'm really looking forward to this, now if I can only manage to come home with a bunch of fish, I'll be doing great!

Timechange

I hate time change. Especially Spring forward. That hour of lost sleep is murder. I really wish we would just adjust the clocks, and leave them that way. I don't care which way to leave them, just leave them.

I don't mind the fall back one as much as the spring one. There is something about the falling back of the clock, and the getting darker earlier, that just puts me in that snug feeling where I'm ready for bed, and want to curl up by a nice fire (if I had a fire place).

But, it's spring. And I do like Spring... It's my third favorite season (right behind Fall and Winter) but unfortunately, Spring means Summer isn't far away. And I don't care for summer (though I do love bikini's especially on my wife).

Anyway, enough rambling about lack of sleep. I'm ready now if it wasn't for work.

oh well.

Netflix

I love Netflix. I've talked about them before I'm pretty sure. I could just image what my life would have been like if they existed when I was single.

Well, recently they have added the ability to stream movies directly from them.

I've been awaiting the day that option was available to me. They are slowly turning it on for their subscribers. Well, after about a month of waiting, I was really going crazy. I wanted to be able to stream movies to my PC.

Now, normally, I wouldn't care. When I want to watch a movie, I want to watch it in my living room on my big TV and surround sound. However, I love movies playing as background noise. So, how cool could this be at work? But still no access.

Well, about a week or 2 ago, I was looking at this Gizmodo post, and they had a link you could click that would give your Netflix account access. So, when I clicked this link, and I checked my account, I had access. I was so happy.

So, what do I think? Selection was surprisingly good. And that is all I know. I've been so busy, that I haven't even had the chance to listen to a movie.

I do know that you'll get 1 hour of viewing for every $1 you spend on your account. Oh, and it requires IE. (No firefox here).

UPDATE: While going back and looking at the article, some people said the link had stopped working and later, people said it did work. So, if you're interested give it a shot. if it doesn't work, stop back by and try again later, who knows. Worse case, you should have it in June.

Planting

Yesterday, I got out and did some more work in the garden. I did lots of raking to get out some of grass that was in there. After that, I went to Atwoods to get some stuff...

I ended up getting 6 jalapeño plants, 3 bell peppers, 6 tomatoes, and some onion sets. I also got some lettuce, spinach, cilantro and corn seeds.

We may try a Three Sisters Garden where I'm planting the corn. Basically, you plant your corn followed by some pole beans. The beans climb up the corn stalks. Then you plant squash as a ground cover all in the same area. It lets you get more out of a small space. Sounds interesting. Not sure if we'll do the beans or not, but the corn and squash are going to happen.

This year, instead of using wimpy tomato cages, I picked up 2 stock panels. We cut them in half and tried staking them to the ground. (we had to make do with finding stakes around the house. I may go get some t-posts before the tomatoes start using the support.

I still need to mulch the garden, but it was dark, and I was tired when I finished yesterday.

Gardening

Wow, 2 posts in as many days, what's up with that?

Anyway, I feel pretty lousy today. Not sure if it's a cold or allergies. For me, the only difference is if I can make others sick. I would have stayed home today but I have too much to do at work. I got home today, and my wife said she was surprised I hadn't started my garden.

I have been too actually. So tonight, instead of sitting on the couch relaxing like I really planned to do, I took the tiller, and got to work.

I got everything tilled, which is a good thing since the pull broke. I pulled it right out. So, no stopping till it's done. It's an old tiller. It was (I guess is) my grandmothers tiller. But she doesn't use it anymore, so I have it.

While I was working, I put it in reverse, and the reverse broke. So that made backing up even harder.

I now have some work to do on the tiller, but I don't see a reason not to try to fix it. It may be old, but it is tougher than anything I could buy today.

I'm not sure what I'm going to plant yet. I know jalapenos and tomatoes. Other than that, no clue.

Hello?

Man, where have I been? Not blogging, that is for certain, huh?

Last Saturday was a busy day.
That morning, I was at the soccer fields helping get them ready for this years games. We were doing the initial marking of the fields, fixing bleachers, fixing nets, filling holes. I was there from 8 till 12:30, and I was one tired puppy when I came home.

That evening we had a Cub Scout banquet where my boy was suppose to get his Tiger badge, but because of a communication problem, they didn't get their awards. The promotion ceremony for the 2nd year Webelos into Boy Scouts was really cool.

Because of that, we missed the eclipse, but we did catch a really cool moon.



Work has been crazy, and I mean real crazy. So bad, I haven't wanted to go, but I have.

Hopefully, it wont be another week and a half till my next update.