Alabama, Part 3

Monday was pretty stressful around midday.  We found out that our flight out the next day was canceled due to weather, weather that we didn't have yet.  We settled down once we were rescheduled for the same times on Wednesday.  So we went out to eat again, maybe even for lunch and dinner, I don't remember. I think it was after dinner that we all walked down to the shore, though.  It was a wonderful view in any direction, especially my wife's direction. ;)


On Tuesday it got interesting.  It was rain with temperatures at or just below freezing during the day.  We went out to lunch at Lambert's - home of the Throwed Rolls, I remember this one because of the weather.  The roads were fine while we were out.  On the way back we stopped at a few places so I could get some whiskey, but to no avail.  Stores were shutting down.

These people did not know how to handle a little ice and it scared them.  Or rather, the a lot of ice that would eventually accumulate because they don't have salt or experience scared them a bit.  Anyway, I got a picture of icicles on a palm tree and on a porch, and settled for a couple beers that night.  Oh, and the 'chase the ace' game kept us entertained, along with watching the news people freak out.

Wednesday morning I was up early again so went down to the frozen beach.  Ice coated everything, yet it was thin, rough ice, not a slippery as it could have been had it been thicker.  I did not slip on the beachwalk or the frozen beach but I could have if I tried.  It was this morning that I found a lot of interesting shells, large shells, and even a couple starfish up on the beach.  I also saw quite a few dead jellyfish on my morning walks.  I did find a small sand dollar for my Mom but, unfortunately, it broke on the way back upstairs.  It was the only whole one I saw on the beach, any day we were there.

When I got back to the condo things got weird again.  Or flight out that day was canceled.  Again.  Pensacola airport was shut down until further notice.  Later our flight from Atlanta to Madison was rescheduled for later that night, but there was no possible way to get to Atlanta in time even in good weather (unless we could fly there!).  My wife spent a lot of time on the phone; we could fly out of Mobile, about an hour and a half away, on Friday or we could wait until Saturday to fly out of Pensacola, a half hour away.

Alabama, Part 2

On Sunday morning, January 26, I got up relatively early and before everyone else, so I thought I'd venture out and down to the beach.  It was a bit chilly out, but there was no one around yet and I seemed to be one of the first to leave my footprints on the shore.  I found several shells, but nothing very interesting yet.

Later we took a drive, they took us on a loop up to Mobile and back.  On the way we stopped at a local restaurant, one of the 5 or 6 Tacky Jack's in the region.  Tacky Jack's is a colorful place, inside and out.  It seems to be one of those places that must be visited when in the area.  If I'm down there again I would like to try a different location.

After lunch we hopped on the ferry across Mobile Bay.  It was an interesting trip, lasting about 45 minutes, that took us past a few platforms on the bay like you can see above Kate and Mom in the pic.  I took a picture of an informational sign on the ferry to read later.  That platform (different than the one in the picture - there were dozens as far as you can see) is in only 11 feet of water! 

After the ferry and a short drive into Mobile, we found the USS Alabama in a complex that included several planes, helicopters and tanks.  We didn't pay to go inside or board the ship, but we were able to see much just from the parking lot.  It would take several hours to do the tour and see everything, but I was happy with what I saw.

It was a long drive, but since it was Sunday the traffic was good and we loved our stops and all the scenery.  I didn't take pictures of where we went to dinner any time on this trip, so I forget what was dinner this night, but we were good with everywhere we ate out on this trip.  We did NOT go to the Waffle House, but I probably saw 18 different ones - they were everywhere.

Alabama, Part 1

My Mom and her husband Dan left for the gulf coast of Alabama shortly after the new year and are staying until the beginning of March in a luxury condo on the Gulf of Mexico.  As a Christmas present, they offered trips to all their kids to come down and spend some time with them.  We had never taken a vacation in winter before so we accepted their generous offer.

A week ago Saturday we flew from Madison to Atlanta to Pensacola.  As we were flying from Atlanta to Pensacola I thought of Mike Firesmith, the Hickory Head Hermit in the right column.  Perhaps we flew right over him, I'm not sure where he is exactly in Georgia.

The Pensacola airport was a bit smaller than Madison, I'm not sure why that surprised me.  Mom and Dan were there to pick us up and drive the half hour west to Orange Beach, Alabama, kind of a suburb of Gulf Shores.  The Blue Angels fly out of the Pensacola airport.  They said they've seen them flying since they've been down, but we did not see them in our time there.

The development where they were staying had two buildings, the tallest buildings in the area as far we could see.   Luxury condos that were built at an unfortunate time, in the late 2000's when the market crashed, so only two of the four planned buildings were built.

We arrived about midday and settled in after a lunch out.  Temperatures were probably in the low sixties, not very warm but better than where we came from.  Madison was about to get another blast of stupid-cold air.  Meanwhile, we were adjusting to this view:

Super Sunday 2014

My precious Packers are not playing today, but otherwise there are several reasons to support either team in this year's Super Bowl.  My reasons lean to ex-Badgers and conference, meaning I will be cheering for the Seattle Seahawks today. If they do not win, then I will be happy for Peyton Manning and Montee Ball.  Either way, my Packers are not there so my disappointment is over no matter who wins today. I just hope it is a real good game to watch.

Have fun today, everyone! 

Home!

Better late than never.  Details later, tonight we play with the cats, just relax, and go to bed.

Wouldn't It Be Nice..

Watch and mute the first, play the second.  Watch at least as long as the song plays, anyway...

This And Thats

Been kind of a slow week around here.  I haven't done this in a while now, but here's a bit of this and some of that...


--I've tried to post twice now this past week, but blogger still won't allow that.  Just wanted to share a couple great things from B&P - but not enough to save, upload to my flickr, then post.  How does everyone else post pictures they find?  Upload? By url?   So far I get the impression that it is a glitch with Blogger, but this has been over a week now since it started.  Lately when I try to add a pic by url it freezes so all I can do is close the whole Blogger tab/window.  I think this is what is called hyperlinking, and I've heard that it can be frowned upon.  I never thought my little site would bother anything.  I'm showing my lack of computer smarts here, aren't I?

--Another 'Polar Vortex' is upon us.  Stock up on bread and toilet paper! *Yawn.*  Temperatures will generally be single digits during the day and negative single digits over night, actual F temperatures.  Just another day in the life, lately...  Many people around me are starting to get a little exasperated with the weather.  I've just been calling it the 'dog days of winter.'  I don't like it either, but what can you do?

--It has been an exciting/disappointing/laughable year for sports in Wisconsin.  Milwaukee Brewers:  Braun gets busted for doping and the team nosedives.  (On a side note: Work friend and personal good acquaintance Al has passed.  Second from the left in the pic here.)  Badger Football:  Another disappointing end to what started to be a very promising season - and yet another bowl loss - but expectations have been high.  Green Bay Packers:  Only won the division because the division was terrible.  Still, you got to have something to hang your hat on.  Milwaukee Bucks:  I have no words and they have no game.  Badger Basketball:  Here we still have hope!  They started out 16-0 but have lost their last two games.  Hopefully it's a good wake up call.  Everyone has fun shooting baskets but everybody has to play a little defense, too.  If they can get back to that, they may still go far.


That's enough for now, there are other things I need to do in my short time before bed.  PTFO

House Cleaning Here

I've been doing a little house cleaning, so to speak, around the site and such.  All lists in the right column have updated links if needed and some new additions here and there.  I have also been holding on to some video links for a while now, yet I still haven't posted.  Now is the time.  Just an interesting time lapse video from last year about our city, Madison.


And movie references to Wisconsin.

There.  I'm not saying my 'house' is totally clean, but just one room at a time, and this room is done for now...

Forty Degrees of Winter

Yesterday morning when I left for work the local TV station of choice reported -14ºF.  This morning when I left for work the same local TV station of choice reported 26ºF.  That was a 40 degree difference from one morning to the next - and still below the freezing point!  Precipitation this evening has been rain, only the temperature has fluctuated a bit and the ground is still frozen so roads have gotten icy.  With temps around freezing and the rain/ice combo I don't think we'll be running any early morning errands.

That's it.  I just wanted to relate that here.  I wanted to do it earlier but we went out for dinner and drinks and you get distracted and stuff happens...  Happy Weekend!  For the rest of the season, hopefully, our weather will not be news.  PTFO

Surviving the Big Chill

It actually hasn't been too hard to deal with this deep freeze lately.  Our cars have started every day even though it has been right around -13ºF each morning this week as I have left for work.  Just be smart and bundle up, and my wife has started her car at work a few times during the day the past few days just in case.  Work has been a skeleton crew on Monday and Tuesday.  Even though today is only a little better, almost, if not all, came to work today.  Strange how you can just get used to even the harshest conditions.   The cold has done wonders for our cutting further down on smoking - not that we smoked a ton before.  Also, with this weather the difference in our old and new windows is HUGE.  As it is the furnace is running very often, if we had not replaced the windows I'm not sure it could keep up near as well.  Now on Friday we are expecting more snow and for a time it may even turn over to rain, they say.  Progress!?  Or probably ice...


On a side note, I will not be making a collage video of NYE.  Sorry, friends, I just didn't have enough good video to go through the trouble.   Blogger is a little balky right now (maybe almost frozen as well) so I can't add another pic at the moment, so here, just watch last year's video again, same bar and mostly the same people.  PTFO

Fahrenheit/Celsius and Degrees Symbol

The high temperature for Monday is -13º Fahrenheit (-25º Celsius).  Wind chill expected may be up to -50º F (-46º C).  The low temperature that day is -25º F (-32º C).  The governor is talking about closing the schools in the state (,others are looking into if he actually has that power, but that's another odd story altogether).  That is wicked, stupid cold, and will be 'going plaid' - my wife's reference to the Spaceballs movie.  Tomorrow is actually supposed to be nicer than it has been in a while, but at only about 23ºF (-5º C) it is the mild calm before the proverbial storm.

On a related note, I like to know what I'm reading (and writing) and in the U.S., well, we're about the only ones that use Fahrenheit exclusively anymore.  So when I read something about temperature from another part of the world I want to understand what is being related, especially at this time of year for us in the northern hemisphere.

Because of this I actually (finally) took the time to learn how to make the º symbol (alt - 0186).  I also now have a widget on the right side that converts C to F and back, just so I have a handy place I know to go and check what I read more easily than going and googling some converter - if I feel like going through the trouble.  Perhaps I can learn enough, if I use it enough here, that I'll just understand the difference naturally.

Anyway, the point of this post was to complain about the cruelly cold temperatures coming up.  We'll survive, it certainly isn't the end of the world.  But it is unusual and will make for a very bad day for a lot of people.  Hopefully not us or you.  PTFO

2014: The Morning After

First, the night before rant: 
As I write this we are waiting for friends to arrive for a short NYE party here, then we'll all go out to the bar.  Exactly the same as the last two years, and I feel even worse about it.  Why not just a house party?  I'm too old to want to go out for 'amateur night,' anymore.  We waited and waited for someone to come up with a different plan, hoping one of our friends would step up.  That didn't happen so a couple days ago my wife invited everyone over for the same thing as the last two years, snacks and drinks here then move it to a local bar that we never go to normally but have been to for, well, this will be three years in a row on NYE.  I'm getting too old for this.  It is not a holiday to me, it is Tuesday and tomorrow is a day off and the Capital One bowl at noon - go Badgers!

Maybe one of these years I can get my way and stay in and go to bed early.  I've had enough.  Period.  That's enough of me ranting.  This narration will now pick up tomorrow morning, so we'll see how it went.  Exactly the same, I presume...

Now, New Year's morning realizations:
I was pessimistic, as usual.  The nap helped me A LOT.  My wife looked absolutely beautiful.  The bar was not overly crowded.  And we have pretty good friends. 

Hung over?    Well, yes, we got home about 1:30 in the morning and I wound up staying up until 4 a.m.  Now I have just a short time to finish writing this, shower up, and finish reading all that I want about the Badger game at noon.  All in all, an earlier night and less alcohol is what I would like out of NYE, even though it never really turns out that way.

Sometimes I can be a whiny little bitch and I was the last few days about going out last night.  I'm not saying I'm wrong, because I would still like to act my age more and not go out and not drink too much, but it never really turns out as bad as I fear.  Oh well, lesson learned...  And next year it will probably play out the same way.  Just wait. 

Happy New Year, everyone!



I didn't get a lot of good pictures, but here is Jerome and Terry whooping it up about midnight.  I did get some video, I will take the time to review those later and reserve the right to post one if it doesn't suck.

Oh, and flickr is still being a real pain.  I may have to find another way to get my pictures posted on my site.*

*fixed