I really liked this shot. The only bad part about trying to catch a sunset when you are on the east coast is that you are facing the wrong direction to get the full impact of the sun going down. There was a bit of rain moving in and the air was great. The first couple of days that I was out of town was extremely hot in Beaufort but once I got to Bluffton and Hilton Head on Saturday it had started to cool down quite a bit.
It’s really pleasant at home now. I have the windows open to let the breeze in and haven’t needed the air conditioning at all, which is a huge change from what it was here before I left town last week.
Everyone loves a good party including myself. As a matter of fact we are having one this weekend in honor of my son who is shipping out to Camp LeJeune on Monday morning. I’ll talk about that a bit more later but this is about something that is at the same time almost as important to me and more important to everyone else. World Alzheimer’s Day is the 21st of September (this Friday) and all through the month of September concerned people the world over are holding Purple Parties to raise funds for the Alzheimer’s Association. You will remember that I have posted a couple of times about the Alzheimer’s Association over the last couple of months. While I am seriously against government involvement in charitable organizations and welfare I am all for the involvement of private citizens including myself. I donated a van to the Alzheimer’s Association a couple of weeks ago, and yes it was operational. Hopefully they can sell it for a decent amount and use the funds for something important. I checked the Blue Book value before I called them and it should go for quite a bit.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. One of the really cool things about hosting a Purple Party is that during the month of September all donations that are made are being matched dollar for dollar by The Harrah’s Foundation. Now that’s a big deal. When a large foundation like that gets involved and is matching funds that is the time to help out. The Alzheimer’s Association has set a goal to raise a million dollars this month and you can help out by hosting a Purple Party yourself and to help get started the first 500 people that agree to raise at least $150 get a free World Alzheimer’s Day party kit which includes a DVD of Alzheimer’s Celebrity Champions, speaking points about Alzheimer’s, donation forms and envelopes (remember your donations are tax deductible), cocktail napkins and thank you cards. You will want to register your purple party so that they can send the kit.
When you register your party it allows you to create your own page for the party, send email reminders to guests and even lets your guests make donations online. I know from personal experience that I am more likely to make a serious donation with credit card in hand and a computer screen sitting in front of me where I can check out the group I am making a donation to than I would on a cold call or having someone come to my house.
There are several different ideas for parties as well. It doesn’t have to be some hoighty toighty expensive dinner party either. You can have a birthday party and in lieu of gifts have your guests make donations, or have a yard sale and donate part pof the proceeds, have a poker party and split the pot with the Alzheimer’s Association or do Movie Night and pass around an empty popcorn container to collect donations. There are countless different ideas that you can come up with. Don’t want to have a party or go to one? That’s OK, go to the site and donate the $25 you were going to spend on pizza tonight.
Here’s a couple of photos I took while in Beaufort and Parris Island…
This was shot while leaving Parris Island on Thursday. Quite a bit of the area around the barrier islands in South Carolina is marsh and swamp. Looks like there was some kind of picnic area. If I had not been on such a tight schedule (and with kids) I would have stopped at several of these and taken a bunch more photographs.
This is a shot of the Bay in Beaufort from the waterfront area. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, after Labor Day it seems to turn into a ghost town and we had the entire area pretty much to ourselves.
A couple of pictures I took of the girls on Family Day on Parris Island.
With all of the writing I do on occasion about destinations I’ve been to, want to go to or only wish I could get to, I hit the occasional travel blog to see what other peoples experiences have been. RealTravel travel blog is a fairly informative blog that I like to go to. They have some well written pieces about all sorts of destinations and I enjoy visiting occasionally.
One of the first things that I usually look for after checking out a couple of photographs is how long the site has been around. I want to know that these folks really have an interest in what they are writing about and with RealTravel travel blog there are several hundred posts which means that they just didn’t throw up a website with a couple of posts and a few ads to make a quick buck. They are in it for the long haul and WANT me to read about these places.
What do I like reading most over there? The Florida Keys and Hawaii of course 🙂 That’s pretty much a no-brainer if you’ve been reading here for any amount of time. I have started setting a bit of money aside this time. I REALLY want to go down to the keys in January or February and when our 20th anniversary rolls around Memorial Day weekend next year I am planning a trip to Hawaii finally. Actually it will be a couple of weeks after Memorial Day because school won’t be out until after that, or at least the teachers won’t and I of course never have holidays off. Anyway, I will probably be doing quite a bit of reading at the travel blog as well as other sites between now and then. I only wish I could DRIVE to Hawaii as I hate flying with a passion.
I am in the process of adding the Payu2Blog blogroll to my site, this is the static entry that I will be keeping it in. If you are on the main page it’s in the extended entry…
She was damn sure right about that one. Would that I could tap my heels together three times and be there. We ARE home now. Rental car is unloaded, clothes are washing and coffee is making by god. It didn’t take too terribly long to clean up after the feline-type critters either, although the must have finished the food yesterday or this morning. Most of them were pretty darned hungry, although a couple of them just wanted to get the hell out.
I’m in the process of pulling pics from my SD card right now. 517, of which there are probably 5 good ones I am sure. Somewhere around 250 the first day so all told I took 750 photos in three and a half days. The way I figure it is that if I shoot enough there are bound to be some really good ones and then I will end up deleting at least 15% of them as crap.
Here’s one from the graduation…
My boy is in the family (row) to the right of the Senior Drill Instructor, just behind his left shoulder. Can’t see him in this photo of course, but I know he’s there.
Took this one shortly after graduation…
I took this last one Friday night. This is the waterfront in Beaufort, South Carolina.
It was really strange. I know that it’s after Labor Day and most of the seaside town slow down but it was really slow down there for a Friday evening. There just wasn’t a whole lot going on.
I still have Friday and Saturday’s photos in the camera but here are some shots from Family Day…
The ‘motivational’ run at 7 AM on Family Day
The other Marine…
Ohh-Rah
Looking for a job?
On their way to the All Weater Training Facility…
Sizing up future lodgings…
The terrain around Parris Island…at low tide of course.
I have around 500 photos from the weekend. Once I get the time to cull through them I will post a few. I have to start getting packed up and take a shower now. I will be back online at some point his evening.
When I ran several restaurants back in the late nineties I had my cell phone as well as a land line. The cell phones were a big pain in the ass and as soon as I went to work in our Norcross office I did away with the hand helds. They were a bit more like fricking walie-talkies in the nineties of course, about three times the size of my current phone. Anyway, back in 2002 oe 2003 it became necessary to go ahead and start using a cell again. With a 150 mile round trip commute every day I decided that it wasn’t a smart idea to go without one. Now we have three, one for the wife and another for the boy. Although his will sit at home until he is at least finished with MCT school I told him he could stay on the plan. It’s cheaper for him and although it’s only $10 for the extra line I will gouge him for about $30 a month to cover the cost of the damnable text messages. Of course over the last few months and my conversion to tweeting on occasion I am guilty of that as well.
I did away with our land line a couple of years ago as well. Considering that I am paying close to $200 a month for our mobile phones due to the amount of work usage mine gets it was just senseless to keep using Bellsouth, the worthless lumps of shit they are. Now if they would let me have DSL without making me have basic phone service they would retain some of my business but since they are only interested in fucking me by making me bundle services I don’t need they get NONE of my business. Take that you rascally retards. I get my Internet through my cable provider and during the on again off again times I can connect through my cell phone for fucking free. Since I have EVDO in my area while it’s not the fastest connection in the world it is somewhat acceptable. I have to use my son’s laptop due to the fact that my bluetooth dongle won’t work on my desktop, but at least I can get on. I hate it when my dongle don’t fit right.
Where the fuck am I going with this boring discussion about cell phone usage? Fuck if I know. I had originally started writing about the fact that my retarded employees call me at all times of the day and night and this has somehow (d)evolved into something else. Anyway, that’s what got me so ill. I am on vacation. I have been on vacation for five days now. I have a hundred employees and all should be aware of this fact. They should be calling their managers and not me, at least while I am on vacation. Then again, they are going to act like their managers and considering the fact that at least four of the calls have been from one my store managers I guess I shouldn’t expect any fucking respect from them. The calls generally go along the lines of “Hello” “Hey, are you busy right now?” “I’m in South Carolina” “Oh, well this is what I nee…” “There’s noting I can do for you while I am on vacation, call your boss” “OK, will you call me when you get back in town?”. “Maybe”.
That’s the bad thing about having gotten rid of the land line. I can’t turn my cell phone off for the simple reason that if there really IS an emergency at work, or a family emergency someone will need to get in touch with me. So I am tortured wth the occasional ringing of the phone…
No, I’m not back in town yet but we are at our friend’s house in Bluffton and I am sitting here sipping my coffee trying to wake up. We will probably head out at some point this morning or at least by noon and make the trek home. Somewhere in there V-Man and I will cross paths and play chicken. One of us will let you know who wins…