Category: Personal

I’m in my hotel suite in Norfolk.  I figured a suite would be good if other bloggity types wanted to come over.  It was also all they had left.  I’ll be having dinner with an old friend, then hitting the hotel bar if anyone wants to join.  At least I hope this hotel has a bar.  Not to worry, though.  I do have a backup plan.

Tomorrow the trek to Blackwater begins!

Sebastian and I spoke while he was headed down to the tip of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He promised me that he would take photos of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge & Tunnel system since I have never seen it, and I was looking forward to it.

He also mentioned that it was apparent he crossed some kind of weather system line since it very suddenly got hot and humid in southern Delaware. I suspect the haze in the photos is evidence of the humidity and not camera quality.

Greetings from Bridgeville, Delaware. Home of Ralph and Paul Adams Scrapple company, and a former employer of mine (long story). Just making my way down the Delmarva. Should arrive in Norfolk in a few hours.

It’s time for me to depart.  Next stop, Norfolk, Virginia.  Home to a healthy portion of the United States Navy, among other things.  I’ll be traveling down the Delmarva, crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.  I’ll be seeing more of Delaware than most people should ever really see, but hey, at least I can carry in Delaware, and lower Delaware is home to Dogfish Head Brewery.  After Norfolk, we’re in the hands of Para, and will be on our way to a formerly secret location in North Carolina, that’s home to Blackwater.

I will be blogging while I am down there, but I’m going to ask Bitter to add a bit of filler for times when I’m offline.

My patio awning is all rotted to hell.  Both the roof and the fascia board were put on wrong, causing the roof to curl up at the lip, making a pool of water looking for some place to go.  Well, it found a place

I’m home from work today because we have some contractors coming over today to give us estimates.  I thought about doing it myself, but I think I would probably take too long.

I asked Bitter to head out and obtain, for our sacreligious three bean chili, some cheap beer.  I said “Maybe a 12 pack of Rolling Rock or something.”  What she got was an eight pack of Rolling Rock, since the local bar (thanks to Pennsylvania’s byzantine liquor laws) only has limited 12 pack selection.  Well, eight pack would be fine, except that they are bottles of beer apparently marketed to midgets, at seven whole ounces a piece.  So really, the eight pack is like a four and a half pack.  I told Bitter:

“These are the .223 of beer.  I mean, sure, it’s beer, but it takes twice as many to knock a man down.”

I’ll be sticking to my full house Victory Hop Devils from this point forward.  It might not be the prototypical “cheap beer” but it’s cheap enough, and it’s a hell of a lot better than Rolling Rock.

Well, I was getting ready to head to the range to get some chrony readings for a .223 load I wanted to try, and then some thunderstorms rolled through.  Damn.  Took the power out, which is why the blog was down.  Power is back on now, and I’m making a three bean chili.  At least the parts of it that didn’t end up on the floor.

See, Bitter opened up the cans for me, but I didn’t know she had one of those safety can openers.  You know, the ones that open the can from the side rather than from the top.  So about and hour later, I go to pick up the can of crushed tomatoes, and my brain failed to register “open can!” so I proceeded to spill the contents all over the floor, the stove, and myself.  Ooops.

Anyways, for dinner tonight, Chili, Texas toast, and cheap beer.

UPDATE: I loved the Chili, beans and all.  Bitter considers beans in Chili to be sacrilidge.  To avoid reigniting The Civil War, we decided that we could cut out some of the beans and add more meat.  It’s a compromise we can hopefully live with.

Finally got my iPhone. Had a few problems getting the number porter over from T-Mobile, but I’m posting this from the phone, so it’s working fine now. Still getting used to the touch of the screen keyboard, and the rancid taste of Kool Aid in my mouth.

I played sideline mallets in high school band.  Yep, I’m a band geek, and still have the jacket and letter to prove it.  Someone must have put some video up on YouTube, because you can see me, 17 friggin years ago, in a high school band competition.  I know it’s a competition because Nov 2 1991 was a Saturday, and Fridays were football games, and Saturdays were competitions.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-oxWrjAhZM[/youtube]

On the sideline mallets, I’m the second in from the right.  The girl one in from the left I had a horrible crush on.  The first song in our show was “An American in Paris” by George Gershwin, followed by “Take the A-Train” by Duke Ellington.  I seem to remember the other one was the theme from Twin Peaks, then another bit called “Va Va Voom”.  The funny thing is, I think if you put me in front of a set of mallets today, I could probably still play bits of that show.

From band geek to gun nut.  It’s funny sometimes the directions life goes in.  The really funny thing is, I still enjoy competition, even though I suck about as much at shooting as I did at sideline precussion.

A friend of mine has a mysterious pyrotechnic, or at least we think it’s a pyrotechnic.  It’s basically a giant cake with a fuse sticking out of it.  It was found in his dad’s basement.  No idea what it does, or how old it is.

We’re thinking it’s either going to put on a nice pyrotechnic display, or blow a giant hole in the yard.  Needless to say, it can’t be set off in our quiet suburbs.  Has anyone seen such a pyrotechnic device before?  Any idea what it does?  Should I be scared?