Washington DC

Sitting in my car, I watched umbrellas shielding LSU students from the rain and the drip of Crape Myrtle draped sidewalks. With a few minutes until my wife got off from her job in Himes Hall, I was fascinated with how the water globbed up and refracted the colors from the student apparel. Sometimes boredom just takes over, so I experimented with settings on my digital SLR.

(Click the picture for larger view)

The cell phone rang and my attention now turned to my next assignment near Richmond, VA. Since I'd never been to DC, this seemed like a good opportunity to put things into perspective to how it’s all laid out. This was probably going to be a short one and were that I would have only one weekend to explore.

Rising early one Saturday morning, I drove into Washington DC and found my way to the mall using the Washington Monument as my focusing point. Originally, my plan was to park somewhere and take a tour bus but I had arrived too early and the buses wouldn’t be running for another 1½ so I found a spot between the obelisk and the White House. My walking tour included the WWII, Korean and Viet Nam war memorials as well as the Lincoln Monument.

It was a good thing that I decided to just walk to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. Security was tight and only preauthorized vehicles were allowed near there and I was quite sure I wasn’t on the list. Honestly, I was expecting a bigger deal about the White House, especially the view. As I arrived at the viewing point there were lots of people there taking pictures of each other with the White House in the background. It just seemed further away and much less glamorous. After seeing news correspondents using it as a background,I thought people would be much closer than we were. It was fenced with wrought iron fencing but had hog wire attached to it. Most disappointing was the fact that there were no protesters, no Cindy Sheehans or John Kerrys throwing medals over the fence. I took my obligatory pictures and moved on back to the car, cranked up and drove myself to the Congress and Jefferson Memorials. My feet were flat, knees hurting and just a little tired from all the walking so after driving around a while, I went back south to the little burg near Richmond I was staying.

Sorry I missed you, Mr . Bush, I understand you were on a flight to Iraq at the time. Maybe next time. I'll call first.

Chicago

Reluctantly, I left St Augustine, Florida for a week in Chicago. Quite intimidated by the traffic, I took a hotel near O'Hare and plotted my course downtown then into the fringes of the infamous Southside of Chicago on State Street. Somehow, I could hear the music of Jim Croce singing about "Bad, bad, Leroy Brown, the baddest man in the whole d*mn town, badder than ole King Kong and meaner than a junk yard dog". I turned on to the Eisenhower Expressway and headed toward Lake Michigan and was captivated with the idea that I-290 would actually go through the 3rd floor of the old post office building. I guess it was easier to drive through it than to tear it down.

State Street, once you got past a few sleazy buildings headed south, is in somewhat a a reconstruction mode with new high rise condos selling for just under a half million. Hip young females walked dogs and stopped off at coffee shops where five years ago you might have witnessed a mugging.

When you visit another city, people there go out of their way to show you what they think defines their city. In this case, we were directed to what was supposed to be a really good pizza taste. I had never heard of Uno's Pizza but my partner I was working with wanted to give it a try so we headed north to downtown. Finding Uno's wasn't that big of a deal but finding a parking spot posed more of a challenge but Jon slid into one in the middle of a mud puddle. Celebrating our good fortune, we got out, waded through near ankle deep water, fed the meter and headed a couple of blocks west. Finding a seat, we split a deep crust pizza and waited a short time before being served. Personally, I just didn't see what all the fuss was about and thought the best pizza for me would have to be one of Johnny's Sweep The Kitchen special down in Monroe, Louisiana or perhaps a calzone at one of De Angelo's of Baton Rouge. Uno's crust tasted somewhat like baking powder biscuit dough.

Fortunately, our stay was short lived and honestly, I didn't find the Hyatt much of a bargain. That being said, it truly is an interesting city with the elevated trains and high rises waving at the sky.

September 19, Talk Like A Pirate Day

Arrrrr matey! September 19 is approaching! What's the big deal about September 19, you might ask. Well!....It's National Talk Like A Pirate day and you could be a part of it.

All you have to do on September 19 is talk like a pirate. Here's an example: "Sep-tem-Barrrr nineteenth, arrrr matey, click the pirate!"

If you think loading the dishwasher means getting your wife drunk....you might be a Redneck. - Jeff Foxworthy

Main Entry: red·neck
Pronunciation: 'red-"nek
Function: noun
1 sometimes disparaging : a white member of the Southern rural laboring class
2 often disparaging : a person whose behavior and opinions are similar to those attributed to rednecks
- redneck also red·necked /-"nekt/ adjective

Where did we go wrong? You know, the "redneck" thing. While I never really thought of myself as much of a redneck, the necessity to seek an identity and at least be inclusive within some popular group sometimes makes me lean in that direction.

Somewhere along the course of events, the "mutts" of South pretty much found themselves positioned low in the racial and cultural pecking order for national prominence. One morning we woke up and found we had been swamped by hyphenated tags. Bruno is an Italian-American, Clarence is an African-American, Joan is a Native-American, etc. You get the drift. I've never heard anyone seriously call themselves a Redneck-American. While Redneckdom is generally thought of as being from the South, I've been told that not all Rednecks are Southerners. There are claims that the denizens of the Upper Pennisula of Michigan, known as Yoopers (UPers), can pretty much stand toe to toe with Bubba in LA (Lower Alabama) when it comes to Redneck prowess. There are unsubstantiated rumors that there are even European-Rednecks but I never heard of Icelandic or African Rednecks.

All that being said, you have to admit, often the butt of jokes, Rednecks have held their heads high and proud. famous Rednecks have included Jerry Clower, Larry the Cable Guy, Jeff Foxworthy and many others.

So, if you're are a Redneck, sympathize with Rednecks or just want to be able to identify one, check out this web site.

http://www.lilligren.com/Redneck/

Mercedes

This morning, a co-worker called on the phone and we were talking about California. In the fall of '05 and into the spring of '06, I spent 8 months out in Calabasas, California in the northwest corner of Los Angeles County. Along with a couple of gigs on Maui, I count it as one of my most pleasant assignments.

In the business center that had our office, a lady by the name of Mercedes was the parking lot attendant. Mercedes lived 25 miles away and she worked two shifts there. One by day where she watched the lot and cars for the business residents and the evening shift where she collected parking fees from patrons of nearby restaurants. Some people may have been content to sit on their tufts and waited for some agency to put them on some program but not her. She put in as many as 16 hours 4 days a week and another 8 for Saturday and Sunday. I don't care what you say, that's a lot of work even if you do get Tuesdays off.

Every day, I would take a break and walk the bank deposit up a few hundred yards to the Bank Of America in a trendy little shopping center and would sometimes bring Jane and Lori back a treat from the Coffee Bean and Tea Company. Often, I would bring Mercedes something back as well. She loved vanilla lattes.

Southern California isn't known for it's bad weather and often, in the late winter, temperatures would hover in the mid 70s and rarely did it rain. She sat vigilant in a plastic chair behind her Ford Explorer under the large eucalyptus and china berry trees and admonished the botox vixens to park within the painted lines of the parking lot. I always wondered why Mercedes would be wearing a rain coat and holding an umbrella in the seemingly pristine atmosphere. After curiosity finally festered one day, I screwed up my courage and asked why she had an umbrella when it wasn't raining. She took a sip of her latte, grinned, shrugged and remarked, "Oh Senor,............. it keeps the birds from pooping on my head."

Feeling Average?

So, at best, sometimes you feel just "average"? How cool would it be if we could just make it mandatory that others saw us from a photoshop reality? Way cool.

Magazines do it all the time and keep the celebrity royal appealing to us.

Check Faith Hill out
Click the Redbook picture.

Mermaid

When Christopher Columbus came to the new world 600 years ago, he spotted what he thought was a mermaid and wrote that they were not quite as beautiful as the paintings he had seen. You have to wonder what was going through the poor man's mind.

Well.............................duh Chris, I think you spent too many days on that ship.

This was my first time in Florida waters in SCUBA gear...but first, let me plug Rachel and Don Domingo and my friends at Maui Dreams Dive Company in Kihei, Maui, HI. Maui Dreams is where I consider my birthplace in diving therefore everyone else will always be compared to them.

Looking for a manatee dive, I was plugging around on the internet and found American Pro Dive Shop in Crystal Springs and was more than pleased with my experience. It seems you don't SCUBA with manatees but snorkel. Since this was summer and the waters are warm (73 degrees) there weren't very many manatees to spot but we managed to locate a couple. We slipped into the water pretty early before the other shops had arrived. Captain Keith dropped anchor in pretty shallow water and we approached the manatees. Most of my experience has been in salt water and the green algae and less than pristine visibility took some getting used to. The manatees were easily approachable and we spent quite a time photographing and just hanging out. After about 30 minutes we left the area and went out further to the caverns. The caverns were much clearer and we dropped into the hole where some of the fresh spring water was coming from. Our depth was eventually around 50 feet and saw several blue crabs, blue catfish, shrimp and a gobe or two. I would advise you to book your dives early because they fill up fairly rapidly.

There's this marker in the entrance of the cavern that seems to be a prophecy of sorts. In the mid 80's, manatees were down to 1,500-2,000 in the USA. According to the dive masters at the dive shop, populations now could be somewhere between 6 and 8 thousand. They've now become "protected" as opposed to "endangered".


Here's a montage of my dive with the manatee.

Click here.

FedEx vs. Government Bureaucracy -- Newt Gingrich

Curmudgeon

Main Entry: cur·mud·geon
(click the speaker button)
Function: noun
Pronunciation: (")k&r-'m&-j&n
: a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man
- cur·mud·geon·li·ness /-le-n&s/ noun
- cur·mud·geon·ly /-le/ adjective

I'm blaming it on the airline industry this week. Yep, I'm becoming a curmudgeon of sorts. Now there are those of which I have a familiar relationship would beg to contest the word "becoming" but let's not be nit-picky.

In the middle of last week I found it necessary to leave Huntsville, Alabammer and head for the sunny beaches of Saint Augustine, Florida. After scrambling out of bed very early Wednesday morning, I did my last minute packing, loaded up the bags and headed out just a short distance to the airport. Realizing I needed to turn the rental car in with a full tank, I stopped off at an all night gas station where the pumps refused pump more than 15 cents worth in a minute. Realizing it would be noon before it would fill, I blasted off in search for another. After a quick fill up at the Chevron station I hit the road in a light rain and after missing my turn I realized my timing might be in jeopardy. After a 5 minute detour I got back to the right road and made it into the rental car lane, turned the car in and dragged my two bags to the check-in counter.

The man at the counter eased my fears about being late by good naturedly telling me that the 7 AM flight now would be the 9:15 AM flight and that since my Delta Connection in Jacksonville would be very long gone by the time I got there, I would have the opportunity of enjoying the ambiance of Atlanta's accommodations complete with airline employees who would be coming to work that day with a very nasty attitude that would surpass the one I was quickly gaining. Hmmmph!

Mr. Friendly at the counter had already used the word "weather" a lot and so other people in the airport were calling loudly on the cell phones and using "weather" in their conversations as well. It seems the crew was late arriving the night before and they would need rack time to fulfill layover requirements. With expectations already hardening in my head, I entertained myself on the internet by informing several people (who could probably have cared less) that I would not be arriving in Jacksonville at 11:30 AM but would be arriving at 1:50 PM instead....due to "weather". Oh well, not so bad, I kept telling myself. I could be in St Augustine by 3:30. Oh, I had forgotten I was flying on Delta. My bad.

The 9:15 flight became the 9:30 flight and as we sat in the cabin waiting to move, then the WWA-Waitress With Attitude (flight attendant) informed us that it was federal holy law that we must abide by airline employee's instructions and that we should not disable the smoke detector in the privy. She also used the word "weather" several times. Many were not impressed.

Eventually arriving in ATL, I grabbed some lunch at a Chinese place run by a bunch of Russians, sat on a stool facing a wall and listened to lots of folk talk loudly on their phones about the "weather". "Weather" had caught on pretty well and "weather" was now the blame of everything small and great from a bad hair day to splinters in chop-sticks.

The waiting area for my flight was overcrowded because of the "weather" and Delta was almost giddy for having "weather' to blame for all their maladies. The scapegoat for being late every other delay is up for speculation. I sat for quite a while afraid to give up the seat I had waited several minutes for but eventually got up when they announced new departure times twice. I went to the shops and looked at overpriced things I would never really buy and took my chances in the aisles nearly being run over by those carts hustling pre-teens and old(er) people with walkers to different gates.

Eventually Jacksonville became a reality but by then, due to "weather", I now found myself in traffic headed for St Augustine that would rival any day on the I-10 in Baton Rouge. At 6 PM, I checked myself into the hotel, ate at the IHOP and awaited more adventures in travel.

Abysmal Use Of Airwaves

Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough and another twit argue over the Paris Hilton story. I actually agree with Brzezinski but why is there even a need for MSNBC? Hold on, there's a point to this blog.

Last night, I became distracted while popping a bag of microwave popcorn and before I knew it, the room was full of smoke burning my lungs with the smoke alarm piercing my already partially deaf ears. I grabbed the bag, put it in the sink and ran water over it and tried to open the window but success was fleeting, for the window had a stop bolted on it and prevented it from opening more than 4 inches. With my lungs choking, the alarm squealing and room visibility hazy, I opened the door for a fresh breath and met a wide eyed woman who thought she was going to have to bail out of the second story. "Is everything alright?" she asked. I coughed and told her it was merely burning popcorn. Rolling her eyes she retreated into her hole in the wall and I went back in the room hoping 10 firetrucks wouldn't appear outside my window.

What's the point of this diatribe? I'm surfing the web looking at useless stuff while everything I own that's washable is in the laundromat downstairs. I've even used up an entire container of Febreeze but I can still smell it. So, that's why you're reading this pointless piece of garbage, that with a large dose of boredom is why I was even watching the MSNBC drivel. I get to blame surfing the web and finding this stuff on my adventures with Orville Redenbacher.