Friday, May 22, 2015

Welcome Dingbatters!

The Memorial Day weekend is upon us; I went out for some errands late this afternoon and watched as four cars ran the red light on Harbor heading South. They pulled out onto US Highway 24, the fourth car in line had a driver who I thought was recording these near-wrecks on her phone, seems as though she was merely texting. OK, I'm never in favor of more laws but let's go ahead and banish driving while distracted. That means phone, food, makeup in the mirror, fooling around with the 500+ channels on the radio (yes I know I'm guilty of all of these, wait, not the makeup thing), drinking your $5.00 iced coffee.........I mean everything. LEO sees you doing anything but driving, pulled over.Where's Ralph Nader when you need him? Later I sat through three green turn lights as people slowly pulled away when the light turned green. Why slowly? Because we, ahem I mean they were all looking at their handheld devices. Seat-belt laws made people use them, ban handhelds while driving! OK I'll stop.
Here's what TS Ana looked like:
We were fortunate. 
I forgot to tell you that when I was in Charlotte I looked for Tiger, never could find him. His game is so poor right now I think he spends a lot of time in the woods.

60 years old, and looking every bit of it. In Philadelphia and Hershey among other places this week, not my most productive week but I do enjoy that part of the country. My great-grandfather did a little soldering up there about 150 years ago, and I always heard they (that would be us, as in the South during those recent unpleasantries)  got there and didn't like it...in July 1863. I love it in that area. I wasn't able to go to Gettysburg this time but I enjoyed Hershey.
Got home a little late last night, the prop from Charlotte to New Bern decided to let most of the line of thunderstorms get in front of us before we came in. I was sitting in the #1 row, no, not first class, the seat that faces aft and I got to experience turbulence backwards. Fortunately I didn't throw up, I threw down but that's another story for another time. But here is the funny part, when we landed we had to sit in the plane because airport officials said there was too much lightning in the area for us to walk to the terminal. As the guy in front of me (remember I'm facing the stern) said" "ironic ain't it?" That vodka/tonic tasted a little better than usual when I got to 28557.

And speaking of psychos something has been bothering me lately. A couple of weeks ago I was in a hotel room, yes, most of my stories start that way........and I couldn't sleep.......another standard I know; anyway I turned on the TV and watched a couple of episodes of Bonanza on some network that only has ads for walkers, wheelchairs, stair-climbing wheelchairs, 911 dialers, tubs with doors, where was I? Oh yeah, they skipped right past the boner medicine into another age group completely. But I did enjoy watching the Cartwright family move from one dilemma to another. But after I went to sleep I thought about it, I just watched them kill a whole bunch of bad guys, then slap each other on the back and eat supper. (Michael Landon on Johnny Carson when Johnny asked if any of the Cartwright family was gay: "No none of us was, but fortunately Hop Sing was") Again, where was I? Oh yeah, hell Ben killed at least five one night by himself including his "friend" whose wife was hot for some of that Cartwright gold. No moral conscience? And this was 1960's family television brought to you by Chevrolet.
I'm done, it's 7:25 PM and Jackson, Elizabeth and Daisy are on the way, there's bacon and sausage to grill and two pounds of shrimp to steam. The weather looks good, I hope we are going to try for cobia tomorrow.

Northern European Adventure Cruise in August, 2024: Tuesday 8/13/2024  Drove to Raleigh, lunch at Panera’s. TAR went to Nanny’s, I made call...