Ode to 2012

A roller coaster of a year has just gone by

One big low but many a high

The death of my dad filled me with grief

It will be anything but brief

His passing helps me appreciate life more

So I look forward to what 2013 has in store

Merry Christmas

Celebrating 125 Years!

The little town I live in celebrated its 125th birthday on December 7th. There were all kinds of activities going on around town the week before.

The Colonel and I helped to hang a timeline of the city's history in one of the downtown buildings. The timeline was visited by many people and was featured in the local paper.

 A luncheon and dinner were held too. The Colonel, his parents and I attended the luncheon. The food had a southern flair: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, rolls and for dessert, banana pudding.

As we were eating our lunches, a 25 year-old time capsule was opened.

Below is a picture of some of the items that people thought were important enough to put in the time capsule back in 1987. Someone had put in a roll of toilet paper with a note saying, I don't know what you use now, but this is what we used. I hardly think cleaning the human backside would/could have changed all that much in 25 years. Notice the Big Gulp cup...someone knew back in 1987 that a Big Gulp would be an endangered species in some parts of the country now.

There was also entertainment. A local choir group sang some Christmas carols. They were pretty good.

On the day of the actual birthday celebration, several activities were planned and they would begin around 7 p.m.

There was one activity that The Colonel and I visited that was not part of the birthday celebration activities. Since it was December 7th and the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, one of the local cemeteries was having a memorial service with over 2,000 luminaries spread throughout the grounds. We did not watch the memorial service; we walked around, appreciating all of the luminaries.

As we walked around I spied a statue of St. Matthew. As I got closer to the statue I began to laugh and called The Colonel to me. St. Matthew had some Spanish moss growing out of his nose.

I picked St. Matthew's nose and freed it from the epiphyte. Now he could breathe easier.

We headed into town for the birthday festivities. There was Christmas music, birthday cake (enough to feed 2,000), lighting of the town's Christmas tree (32-foot tall with 9,000 lights), a parade with the local high school band and Santa and the Mrs. in a fire truck...and snow (bubbles)!

This is Bob "Fig" Newton. He was instrumental in getting the town's Christmas tree last year. He campaigned and raised the $33,000 to purchase the tree. It is the same kind of tree that can be found at Disney World, Sea World and Universal Studios.

Santa and Mrs. Claus exited the fire truck at another one of our town's pretty Christmas trees.

The Colonel and I enjoyed our evening...we love our little town. 

Wordless Wednesday

The Better End of the Deal

A few months ago I asked my dear friend if she would please knit a brain hat for The Colonel and I so that we could wear them during our town's annual Halloween walk. She said she would and the payment for doing so was a copy of a Snowy Egret picture I took and posted as a Wordless Wednesday a while back.

My very talented friend's handiwork (picture taken from her blog):

My Snowy Egret picture:

I think The Colonel and I got the better end of the deal. We love our brain hats!

It is always great fun to walk downtown on Halloween to see the children (and adults) in their costumes and look at all of the decorations.

I usually wear a bit of a costume as I walk downtown. One year I had my vampire teeth in and another year I wore arm coverings that made it look like my arms were covered in tattoos (I wore them one time to fool my mother-in-law...it worked). The Colonel and I couldn't wait to wear our brain hats on Halloween.

In addition to my brain hat I wore a scrub top and hung a stethoscope around my neck. I went downtown as a "Brain Surgeon".

The following pictures are some of what I saw on my annual Halloween walk this year:

The cute babies...

The interesting adults...

Some lawn decor...

Wordless Wednesday

Tastes Like a Million Bucks

Not in the too distant past, The Colonel and I were invited to have dinner at a local yacht club by a friend and his wife who are members there. We were joined by a mutual friend and his wife.

This dinner was my first time inside the yacht club (The Colonel had been there before). I had seen the club from the waterside when The Colonel and I kayaked near it in the past.

The club was pretty inside. There were big windows that framed the gorgeous harbor outside. Our table was in the corner, near the windows.

The sky was a rich blue that was dotted with majestic, bright white, Cumulus clouds. The sky and clouds changed beautifully as the sun set throughout our dinner. I wish I could have taken a picture of this, but I did not think it was appropriate to be "Rain Man-like" by whipping out my camera and snapping away within the walls of a yacht club, so the picture you see below was taken off of the Internet (our table was in that exact corner but it was larger and set for six).

I was looking over the menu and was having some difficulty deciding what I wanted to eat for dinner. My friend, being a member of the club, suggested I have the crab cakes. She said I needed to order not one, but two, so that I could take one home for my breakfast the next day.

Something else she said persuaded me to order the crab cakes. She said that they were $100,000 crab cakes. $100,000 crab cakes?!?...glad I wasn't paying the bill.

She further explained her statement. She told me that the chef of the yacht club had won a Southern Living Cook-Off with his "Down-South Crab Cakes with Collard Greens and Roasted-Garlic Beurre Blanc" recipe and was awarded the prize of $100,000.

The crab cakes tasted like a million bucks! There were huge pieces of succulent crab meat in each cake and the bed of collard greens were the most delicious I had ever eaten (and I have eaten quite a bit, being a "Displaced Northerner" for several years now). The roasted-garlic beurre blanc part of the crab cake ensemble was exquisite. Who doesn't like roasted garlic and butter?

I enjoyed one crab cake for dinner that evening and brought the other home for my breakfast the next morning as my friend suggested. The Colonel did not order the award-winning crab cakes and when he had a bite of my breakfast he immediately wished he had. He said maybe we should join the yacht club just for the crab cakes.

I don't believe owning a yacht is a prerequisite...we do have a flotilla of kayaks.