Tuesday, October 30, 2007

you know your getting old when.......

I went out this past Saturday and had a blast. It started out with watching the Hercs play at Tir Na Nog. This is the first bar that I saw them. It has a great set up for bands, however, the food is not so good (although I did have the chicken kiev, which was pretty good.), so I have not been out there much in a while. The Hercs started at about 7p and played to about 9p and I, quite naturally started drinking at about 7p. Now, I have learned to pace myself, so I didn't drink a lot, but I drank pretty consistently, but I get ahead of my story. After the Hercs finished, I went to Flex, for their costume/ Halloween party. I met up with a friend of mine and since neither one of us were particularly interested in what was happening there, we decided to go to CC. We'll the piano bar at CC had my favorite singer (Greg) and a terrific pianist (I'll have to look up his name). I spent most of the night in the piano bar.

Now to get to the title of this blog. After drinking "slow and steady" through the night Saturday, I felt like crap all day on Sunday. Not part or some, but ALL DAY. I didn't get sick, I didn't feel particularly queasy, I just felt like crap all day. It was a good thing I didn't have anything important to do on Sunday. Oh, the "good old days".............

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

California Fires

Just a quick note to everyone out there to keep the folks in southern CA in your thoughts. My brother and his family live in Carlsbad. I have not talked to them, but they have talked to good ol' mom. According to momma, the closest fire to them is about a ten minute drive away. She says they are packed and ready to go, but as of right now, they aren't too concerned. The worst of the fires are north of them.

Mother nature never seems to tire of humbling us.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Baby Blankets and Christmas Ornaments

October is my busy month. It is when I start making my Christmas ornaments. I have found out through several years of procrastinating that if I do not start my ornaments by October, I usually end up in big trouble. Unfortunately, this year I have two problems. The first I am already working on. I have to finish up a baby blanket for a co-worker's daughter. I agreed to make a blanket when we first learned about the pregnancy, but due to some complications it looks like she could delivery extremely early. Any time from around the end of December on. She is due, I believe sometime around the end of February. I was going to start the blanket after I finished my Christmas ornaments, but that doesn't seem like a good idea now. The second problem is that I do not have a good idea of what I am going to do for ornaments this year. I have a couple of ideas, but nothing firmed up yet. I guess I'll think about it as I crochet. If anyone has any ideas, pass 'em on to me. I can certainly use them.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Bad Afternoon

Something happened yesterday that I thought would "never happen to me". I was helping a co-worker finish up his move. He just had a couple of things left to move and since I have my trusty little truck I agreed to help him. Well, we had just enough rain yesterday to make all the roads slick as sn**. There were accidents everywhere I turned as I tried to get to Craig's old place. I ended up having to go through town at 5p on a Friday evening. Needless to say, what should have been a 15 minute trip took almost 45. That, however, was not the "big story". Once I got there, Craig and I loaded up the truck with an entertainment stand, computer stand, a mattress and various other small stuff. The mattress and computer stand were tied down well and we thought the entertainment stand was OK. We were sooooooo wrong. I think I made it through 2 turns before the stand went ass over head and landed right smack dab in the middle of a 4 lane road. During rush hour! I stopped the truck in the middle of the road, ran around and pulled the stand out of the road to the corner and then quickly got back in my truck and found the closest place to pull over that was safe (a gas station). I have never had something like that fall out of the truck before. That stuff always happens to "other" people. Luckily, Craig wasn't too upset. He "said" he was thinking about getting a new entertainment center anyway. I am not sure if that was true or if he said it just to try to make me feel better.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Williamsburg Scottish Festival

Well, The great Marquise and I made it to the old homestead and the Williamsburg Scottish Festival this past weekend. We left on Friday around noon and had a really nice drive up there. The weather was perfect for driving and the traffic was good, until we hit 664 and 64. We ran into the normal 5 o'clock Friday traffic that started at about 4. All in all, not that bad. The original plan was to head on out to the Yorktown Pub for dinner and drinks Friday evening. Unfortunately, the Pub has had its liqueur license suspended for 30 days, so no drinking for us. We asked the server how much more time they had left and she said 27 days. They had just started their suspension. I kinda feel for them. The place was empty. We ate there and then walked around the Yorktown waterfront for a little while and then headed into Newport News to Keagan's pub. My mom had said that they have music every Friday night there. The place was busy. The beer was not so good. The Marquise and I both ordered Smithwicks. When they arrived, they were .....horrible. I don't know if it was old beer, stale beer, flat beer, or just plan bad beer, but it did not taste like Smithwicks. I am fan of Smithwicks, so I am familiar with how it is supposed to taste, and it should NEVER taster like a cider, or even remotely fruity. The Marquise kept hers, but I sent mine back and got a Guinness instead. The Guinness was a little on the "robust" side, even for a Guinness, but it was much better than the Smithwicks. Keagan's did have music. The band was good, the singer was not. All in all, not a stellar night out.

Saturday afternoon, we went back down to the Yorktown water front and walked around a little there before heading on up to the Yorktown Victory Center. I had been there before, but it was several years ago. I had not realized that they had expanded the facilities a lot. We went out to see one of the reenactments (firing a mortar cannon) first and then went inside to see the "museum" part. We went in through the back door and so actually started from the end of the exhibit. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why none of this seemed in the least bit familiar to me. It wasn't until about 1.5 - 2 hours later that I realized what was going on. Of course by that time, we were tired and heading out the door for lunch.

Just an aside, the next time someone says that previous immigrants were quick to learn English as their new "native" language, there is an exhibit in the museum praising the German immigrants of the late 1700's for managing to keep their native language and customs. There was even a German language newspaper that circulated throughout the colonies. Something to make us all go Hmmmmmm.

Saturday night, we meet up with my brother, his wife and my nephew to head on out to the music festival. One rule: if you drink the "harder" beers, don't order first, or at least watch what the rest of your party is ordering. I was the first to order and everyone else kinda followed along. I ordered a porter. I ended up finishing my brother's beer, my nephew only managed to drink about 3/4 of his and that was over about 2 hours. My sister-in-law finished about half of hers before throwing in the towel. We got there at about 7p and heard 4 bands. The first 2 were not very good. The would have been fine for "daytime" gigs, but I would have preferred something a little more exciting for the evening shows. I was worried that the rest of my family would not really like the experience, and I think that was true of the first half. They seemed to enjoy the second half a lot more. The last two bands, Rathkeltair and Albannach were very good. I had never heard Rathkelter before and was quite impressed. They have one of the most talented bagpipers I have heard so far. Albannach gave probably one of their best performances I have heard this year. Actually, it was the best by far this year. The only better was last year at Tir Na Nog when I first heard them.