October 10, 2007

Thursday Thirteen #3: Roadtrips

…or thirteen places I have. Nothing too terribly exotic here but there are cool stories behind each.


Thirteen Things about YOUR NAME

  1. Los Angeles – in 1987 my friend Chris that passed away last year was home on leave and wanted to take his pickup truck back to L.A. with him but didn’t want to drive by himself. I’ve posted about the trip but long story short is that I drove him out there in three days, hung out in L.A. and flew back home and ended up getting a date with this hot girl on the flight back to Atlanta.
  2. Las Vegas – This was a very SHORT stay. We stopped in Vegas on the way to L.A. in ’87 overnight and since I wasn’t yet 18 I got thrown out of Caesar’s Palace.
  3. New Orleans – I’ve been to New Orleans many times over the years, starting with road trips with my friends when I was 17 and most recently in 2005 with the wife. THAT one was a blast and the only one when I have been drinking. It brought a whole new atmosphere to the place.
  4. Naples (Florida) – One of my friends and I rode his Goldwing down to Naples to a convention about 23 years ago. LONG trip on a bike. We stopped with my Great Aunt just north of Tampa and what I remember the most about the trip was going over the Sunshine Skyway. Portions of it are just metal grid. The bike slipped and slid the entire way across and you could see the ocean underneath your feet. Very unsettling but in a pretty cool way. Not that I want to do that again.
  5. Miami – Just across Alligator alley from Naples. We drove down the same year as Naples. One of my ex-girlfriends was living down there and really had nothing to do with our trip down but certainly made it uncomfortable to be there. On the ride back we drove across Alligator Alley and then came up 75. Alligator Alley is pretty cool. Nothing but miles and miles of road, it’s a rather difficult drive.
  6. Daytona Beach – drove down there for another convention. A friend of mine had moved from Atlanta a few years earlier and worked as an aircraft mechanic. He had an apartment right on the beach and we hung with him on one of our many trips to Florida.
  7. New York City. I drove up to Westbrook, Connecticut for a week and during that trip we got to pull up lobster traps and eat what we caught, and made a day trip into NYC. My friend’s dad treated us to dinner at Trader Vic’s. That’s the first time I ever had swordfish and I have loved it ever since.
  8. Natchez, Mississippi – This is a small town and doesn’t seem really worth mentioning but it is one of the friendliest most beautiful places I have ever been. I was a history major during my short-lived college career and history has also intrigued me, so naturally I fell in love with Natchez.
  9. Gatlinburg, Tennessee – This is a small town and pretty much a tourist trap. One one of our vacations to see my parents we stopped in Gatlinburg for the weekend and hung out. It was pretty fun but I would love to go back when there is snow on the ground, around Christmas. It’s supposed to be very nice that time of year. It was pretty damned hot when we went and that always puts a damper on things.
  10. Panama City Florida. The Redneck Riviera. I have been down to P.C. Beach many times. One November about 24 years ago, in November, a group of about ten of us decided that we wanted raw oysters and nothing would do but to make a drive to Panama City. This is when the great Car Wars happened. I can’t find the link to THAT post so I guess I need to write about it some time soon.
  11. The Grand Canyon – When I drove out to L.A. we decided that we couldn’t make the trip without stopping at the Grand Canyon. We were both pretty whipped form non-stop driving so we got there, took a couple of pictures at an overlook, had a smoke and got back in the car and drove away Happy I would love to go back eventually so that I could actually see the place.
  12. Washington D.C. – My parents lived in the Arlington area for about ten years after my dad got transferred by MCI into Crystal City. We have made several trips up there, by car, plane and train and I always had a pretty good time there. I flew up by myself back in ’92 and spent the week with my parents. I literally walked most of the city. Walking the entire length of the Mall will kick your butt.
  13. Hilton Head, SC. Can’t forget about this one. I love the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. I’ve been down to the low country countless times but always seem to find something new and cool.

Obviously I am not a world-traveler or anything, but I do like going to see new places with new people. Hopefully I will have thirteen more to post about in a couple of years.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

Thursday Thirteen Participants

1. Gabrielle

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Virtuous Republic, , The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog’s Weblog, Jeanette’s Celebrity Corner, The Populist, Webloggin, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, third world county, The Pink Flamingo, High Desert Wanderer, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: ,

Mailboxes

mailbox.jpg
I’ve been thinking about several different home improvement projects that I would like to finally get completed in 2008 and putting in a new mailbox is one of them. After looking around at the local home improvement stores for mailboxes as well as online, I finally decided that something along the lines of the one pictured is what I want.

I am pretty sure that I could do that myself, rather than paying someone. I am not particularly good at woodworking and building things but I can follow directions and think that I would be able to build a column mailbox, although it might take me a couple of days. I have to move very slowly to get something like that done correctly.

24 Hours Ago…

…is part of what I have been listening to today.

Now Playing: Savatage – Edge of Thorns – Labyrinths [Instrumental]

More on the Cleveland Shooting

Here are a few more news reports I picked up after I got home from work this evening.

This is an interview with one of the students after the shooting

 

Technorati Tags: ,

Get Budget Flights with CheapoAir!

Although I hate flying with a passion, when I do I always try to get the cheapest flight. At one point in time that meant that I would book flights through Airtran, and the last few years I have used online booking sites such as Hotwire and some of the others to try and make sure that I get a great deal. CheapoAir is one I had never heard of until last week and they have some great deals.

cheapo I searched for several different destinations to see what kind of deals I could get and was able to find some really good ones. A flight from Atlanta to Key West in two weeks on American Airlines would run me about $172 with one plane switch. That is an amazing deal to Key West, particularly since this month starts the tourist season down there.

About half of the flying I’ve done over the last few years has been for business, and although work pays for that stuff, in the end it hits my P&L and eventually my stock. What that means is that any kind of flight that I have to take, I make sure that I am saving money. I wouldn’t throw my own money away so why would I throw away my company’s money? After all, I plan to retire eventually and every penny I save makes that a little closer. One Click or Call Does It All, Call Customer Support 24/7 at 212-478-0335. If you are REALLY interested in saving money go check these guys out at CheapoAir.

Long Evening…

I had originally planned on being home shortly after eight but unfortunately it didn’t work out as planned. I had to finish putting up the truck that came in earlier with the weekly food delivery, do the weekly paperwork for the week, finish the paperwork that my manager had not done for three days, and then clean her darned office. I was not particularly happy with her by the time I finished. I still didn’t get everything done that I had planned on today so I ended up leaving her with a long list of stuff to take care of before she can leave tomorrow afternoon.

I’m all about getting the hell out of there as early as possible but the fact is that we aren’t supposed to leave until certain key things are done and she just doesn’t seem to care. Hopefully I can get her motivated enough to start doing things the right way pretty shortly because if not one of us is going to be gone by Christmas and it damn sure isn’t going to be me.

Now Playing: Savatage – Edge of Thorns – Skraggy’s Tomb

Untitled post

RePete wasn’t feeling very well today apparently. The wife called me at 11 and asked me if I could go pick her up from school. She seems fine to me but she normally doesn’t complain and spent most of the morning in the teacher’s lap. We have just sort of hung out today. We came home and she ate lunch and then we napped (it was worth picking her up just for that) and she’s been hanging out coloring for quite some time.

There is a down side and that is the fact that if we have to miss any work for something like this we have to make up the hours, so as soon as the wife gets home I have to go back in for a few hours. That’s OK, I have a bunch of paperwork I need to get finished anyway. I am still going to try and be home by eightish as it would be nice to see the rest of my family for a little while before they go to bed.

Cleveland Shooting

I received a tweet from Slobokan and almost imemdiately afterward got a breaking news email from CNN about a shooting spree at a school in Cleveland, Ohio. Apparently a 14-year-old in at a Cleveland high school started shooting at teachers and students, wounding four before he was killed. According to the article at CNN it’s not known right now if he took his own life or if the police shot him. A also don’t know if that’s just some junk the CNN reporter stuck in there or if they think he may have killed himself.

cleveland The victims include two adult men, 57 and 42 and two teenage males at 14 and 17 years old.

From what I read, the school itself is an off-campus setting, mainly for kids that get kicked out of normal high school, special-ed, or troubled kids.

At some point today I should be getting video or a news article or two and I will post it here just as soon as I get it.

Technorati Tags: ,

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

Trackposted to Nuke’s, Perri Nelson’s Website, third world county, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog’s Weblog, Jeanette’s Celebrity Corner, The Populist, Webloggin, The Pink Flamingo, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Wordless Wednesday

Appropriate for Blogtoberfest 2007 here are some shots from last year. Enough with the words, let’s get with the wordless.

Buzz.jpg
ellieswg.jpg
georgia blodgers 2006 050.jpg

Technorati:

Atlanta…

We had a pretty good time last night. All of the usual suspects were there, and I got the chance to meet Blackfive as well. Guess I need to update the sidebar again but I think I shall wait until after this weekend. I will get to that shortly.

Line of the evening:

“Am I in the right fucking church?”

It’s been at least fifteen years or so since I have been in the area where we ended up last night and boy has it changed. Actually I have been to a couple of concerts prior to the Omni getting torn down but that was normally a case of riding the train in, going straight into the Omni and watching the show. It is amazing how different Marietta Street has changed since the days of the Metroplex.

I arrived a little early and took a walk around Centennial Park since I have never been there. Shot a couple of photos with my new phone mainly just to try it out. Noting worth posting, but the pictures are pretty darn good.

I finally wandered down to the Embassy Suites where we were to meet up. Elisson and Shovel Boy arrived shortly after and we went on in to Ruth’s Chris Steak House for a drink and to await the others. It wasn’t long before Blackfive arrived and we all sat around and chatted for awhile awaiting the rest of the group. Three beers later (for me anyway, I was the light-weight since I had to get up early today) and everyone else arrived.

Rather than spend a small fortune we got a cab ride a few blocks away. According to the information desk whom Blackfive had to threaten with bodily injury (maybe not) to get the information out of, there was an Indian restaurant four blocks away. It was more like eight, at least driving it. Had we walked it might have been four or five taking shortcuts.

I had some kind of shrimp dish, which was pretty good, particularly after adding a wee bit of this spicy mango stuff. Indian food looks so damned nasty, yet is pretty good. I couldn’t eat it every night as some folks can, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed the conversation, although as usual I was pretty quiet and just took it all in. It is interesting to note that although people are slightly different than their blog personas you can usually tell who is who because their stories sound just like their blogs. The more entertaining and popular ones are usually also the entertaining and ‘popular’ conversationalists as well.

At one point in the evening we did have to steer clear of the shovel fiasco and go back to the ‘safe’ topics of religion and politics, but Eric had to make clear what had happened last October. It was nice hearing it from his side, which actually closely mirrored what I have heard from other bloggers, minus the wide-eyed fear Smile What is interesting is that he is having us back (not that I was able to make it last year). I doubt if I can get the time off and I think that may even be the weekend of Pete’s birthday party, but I will damn sure try, particularly since I may or may not end up skipping out on this weekend.

That brings me to my conundrum. I am really torn about this coming weekend. I am extremely angry with my boss and work right now, as I am on duty this weekend. I have four choices at present. Either I skip the weekend entirely and go to work while the wife and our friend attend, or I attend as planned and commute home Saturday and Sunday morning. The big problem is that I don’t particularly want to drive three and a half hours at four in the morning, particularly after a night of heavy drinking. My other choice is to go, and then drive home Friday night, go to work Saturday, drive back up there and drive back home Sunday morning. That choice entails not drinking at all because as I said before, I am a lightweight. I just don’t drive after drinking. I had three beers in all last night, and although I was nowhere even close to buzzing when we finally left the restaurant last night, I was ready to take a damned nap and those last few miles home were done with the air and radio blasting and the windows open. My last choice is just to say “fuck you” and go, take care of business over the phone and deal with being in trouble when I get home. They won’t fire me or anything, I am about 99.9% sure of that, but it doesn’t mean that they will make my life any easier. At some point between now and then I guess I will make up my mind.