"Pawleys Island" by Dorothea Benton Frank

I picked up a copy of this book (among others) at a used book outlet on my return trip from Georgia this past weekend.

I'm so glad I only paid 99 cents for it, because that's about all it was worth. Maybe, less.

What a disappointment!

I didn't expect it to be a literary masterpiece or anything like that, but I was hoping it would make a good, quick summer read . . . you know the kind that will allow you to be transported to a beachy scenario even when you can't make a trip to the coast yourself.

But, in this case, pulp fiction writer Dorothea Benton Frank dishes up a contrived story line and shallow characters.

I think I stopped caring about them when Frank tried to illustrate the age difference between protagonist Rebecca and her attorney Abigail. She would have us believe that a 30-something mom wouldn't know who Yul Brynner was or what a Cabbage Patch doll is?!

Please.

The snooty side of me also took personal offense to the innumerable misspellings, particularly of Hurricane Charley. (Roberts spelled it "Charlie" throughout.)

If you come across this book, and it's going to cost you a dollar or more, don't bother. This kind of tripe will eventually end up as a Lifetime Network production anyway. And, in this case, the movie will HAVE to be better than the book!

Fa and piffle!

Yes, we ARE a city of addicts.

Email addicts, that is.

Yep, AOL has declared Orlando to be the 7th most email-addicted city in the nation.

Here's the full list, in case ye socks are that interested:

1. New York City (go figure)
2. Houston
3. Chicago
4. Detroit
5. San Francisco
6. Sacramento
7. ORLANDO
8. Minneapolis
9. Denver
10. Phoenix

What was more intriguing about this report were the drill-down results that were Orlando-specific:

* 62% of us have checked our email in the bathroom. (Evidently, not using a PC!?!)
* 60% of us have checked our email in bed. (Guilty)
* 32% of us who have hand-held crackberry-like devices leave them on our nightstands.
* 32% of us have checked our email while on a date.
* 31% of us have declared "email bankruptcy," which involves deleting everything in your inbox and starting over with a fresh slate.
* 16% of us have checked our email during a religious service.
* 7% of us have broken-up with someone via email. (I would recommend slydial.com as an alternative . . . see yesterday's post for details on that.)

A couple of cool web sites

I thought I'd pass along two new web sites I discovered recently:

http://www.cuil.com
This is a new search engine, still in its infancy. So, they haven't really worked out all the kinks, yet. But, it's a nice change from the standard google and yahoo searches. I will warn you that search results display images alongside the page descriptions that do not necessarily pertain to the page itself. For instance, I did a search for my ancestor "James Lorenzo Morgan" and did get a hit for a page at some university archive, but for some reason I cannot explain there was a picture of some Green Bay Packer receiver making a touchdown next to it . . . As I said, still a work in progress.

http://www.slydial.com
This is so sneaky, you'll ALMOST feel guilty for using it. Have you ever had to call someone and actually WANTED their voice mail rather than talking to them in person?! Follow the instructions on this site, and you can do just that. It comes in handy for those times when you just want to leave someone a message but don't have time for a full-blown conversation and don't want to be rude about it. Two caveats: (1) This only works on U.S. numbers, and (2) only on MOBILE phones. So, don't try slydialing your cousin in Katmandu.

That's just how we roll . . .

Believe it or not, this is a momentous day in the history of the University of Florida.

For the first time, ye Gators may claim theirs to be the #1 party school in the country . . . at least in the venerable estimation of the Princeton Review.

They've come close in the past, (#2 in 1999, #3 in 1998, and #4 last year). But, this is the first time UF has actually topped the list.

Everybody in this little corner of heaven is just so proud.

Well, except for certain drooling troglodites who lurk about our pitiful state capital. (They could only muster a #10 ranking.)

Party on!

On the road again . . .

Well, ye socks, I am sorry to report that our Thrashers suffered a rather humiliating defeat at the hands of the Alabama champs last night.

Mercifully, they ended the diaster on the diamond in the 5th inning when it became clear they were running away with the game.

The good news is, the boys have played so well up to this point that they secured a wild card spot against the North Carolina champs.

The bad news is, it starts at 1pm today, and yours truly had to get back on the road this morning to make it back to our little corner of heaven and get ready for the work week.

But, we're keeping our fingers crossed for Bowden and his teammates! As I reminded them last night, the mighty Gators had to suffer a loss in both their national titles . . . of course, that was football, but I think they got the point.

Anyway, headed south, and will be glad to cross the border back into Florida today!!

Killing a day in Alpharetta

Well, the game against the Alabama team doesn't even START until 8:30pm, so we had a day to kill up in this little corner of . . . well, Georgia.

The not-so-aimless wandering eventually led us to the little village of Crabapple Crossing, where we found the neat little bistro pictured here.

And, just down the road, we met two of the nicest people in Alpharetta: Millie and Robert Huckabay.

It may be that they are originally from Central Florida, or maybe it was the striking similarity between their surname and that of our favorite former presidential candidate. But, whatever it was, we struck up quite a friendly conversation that ended up with them drawing us a map to their homestead outside of town.

There they have collected some early 19th Century cabins from Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, on ten of the most beautifully secluded acres I have seen in these parts. And, they invited us to return in September for a fall festival they host on the grounds. A tempting offer.

Anyway, now we're back at the hotel and getting ready for the big game against the Coosa team. I'll let you know tomorrow how it turned out!

Smashing day, just smashing!

This was the scene along I-75 today, just north of Ashburn, Georgia. Somebody cut-off a truck full of watermelons, causing it to flip and lose its cargo.

It was our only hiccup on the big roadtrip today, and really was not much of one. Surprisingly, it only delayed us about 5 minutes, and it looked like everybody walked away from the accident itself.

Anyway, we were excited to get to the Ripken League regional play-offs up in Alpharetta to see my cousin Bowden Francis and his team represent Florida. Last night, they defeated the hosting Georgia champs, 2-0. Bowden was the starting pitcher, and also scored one of the games only 2 runs. So, he was pretty much the star of the show, in my humble opinion.

We arrived at Ocee Park just in the nick of time to watch the opening pitch against the Virginia champs this afternoon. Unfortunately, Bowden was being held in reserve and only played first base for one inning. But, the team pulled off an astounding 7-0 rout against the boys from Tri-River.

Needless to say, we're all excited in this little corner of . . . well, Georgia. Tomorrow night the Winthrop Thrashers will again represent Florida in the tourny, taking on the Alabama champs . . . and, that will be no easy task from what I hear.

Stay tuned for more notes from the road!

Death of a state icon?

Scientists in this little corner of heaven are stumped.

From the University of Florida to the state's Division of Plant Industry, no one can figure out what is killing the Sabal Palms.

The tree is an official symbol not only of the Sunshine State. It appears both on our flag and on that of South Carolina.

And, some insects are killing them with some microscopic phytoplamsic disease that the eggheads can't as yet identify . . . much less cure.

The disease is often misdiagnosed as malnutrition or excessive trimming, but is much more dangerous than those two reversible maladies.

So far, the worst of this is confined down in the Tampa Bay region.

Let's hope a cure may be found before it spreads to other areas, lest they disappear from our landscape altogether and leave the terrain looking like . . . dare I say it . . . Georgia!

Perish the thought!

Let "Save the Sabal Palm" be our cry!

Veepstakes prediction: PAWLENTY

It's just a gut feeling, but I believe ye socks will be seeing lots of variations (and hopefully less blurry ones!) of this picture over the coming months and years.

The old guy in the foreground is, of course, the presumptive Republican (?!) nominee for president.

But, it's the guy in the background that I want you to notice. He's Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota.

And, I firmly believe he will be the next Vice President of the United States . . . or, at least, the GOP's next candidate for that office.

I say this based on the conventional wisdom that McCain's candidacy hinges on his running mate selection, probably more-so than any other candidate in recent memory.

There are several reasons, but especially these:
* He's old.
* He's failed (at least to date) to rally the conservative base behind his candidacy since the primaries ended.
* He's lacking in executive experience.

Picking Pawlenty would answer all these criticisms. He's young (for a politician of his caliber). He's a CONSISTENT conservative. And, he's done a great job picking-up the pieces up in Minnesota since Jesse "The Body" Ventura left the governor's mansion in St. Paul.

Add to that the fact that the GOP convention is being held up there this go-round, and you've got all the key ingredients.

Anyway, this theory is something I've been tossing around (off-line) for the last 3 or 4 months, to those who would listen. And, now I'm confident enough to post it here:

McCain will pick Pawlenty.

The folly of ignoring history's lessons

As the junior senator from Illinois prances about on the world stage this week, making friends and captivating the "mainstream" media, I find it awfully ironic that he is able to do this with any degree of personal safety.

Oh, but, that's right. The surge worked. So, now, all the cut-and-run folks can actually show up in Baghdad in their tie-dye and Birkenstocks without too much risk of getting blown into atheistic oblivion.

Why is it the same folks who just love to play Monday morning quarterback about how we went to war with Iraq are the same folks who are wearing blinders when it comes to the success our troops are currently enjoying over there?

They really do need to crack a history book or two or three.

Don't they understand a rapid withdrawal of American military might from Iraq will create a tremendous power vacuum in which Al-Qaeda and Iran will be able to launch terrorist attacks on regional democracies AND on the U.S. homeland itself?

Read a little Florida history, and pay particular attention to the lesson Old Hickory taught the Seminoles.

Don't they understand that failure to win this round in Iraq can only result in Iraq War III?

Read a little about Woodrow Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles.

Do they really want to pass such grave obligations to future generations?

That would be a cop-out nearly without parallel in the pantheon of American history.

If he is drinking that kind of Kool-aid, the Democratic nominee is too naive to be our president.

Democrat lies to scare voters into government take-over of healthcare

While the "mainstream" media is busy tripping all over itself in their grand effort to make the junior senator from Illinois appear competent on his overseas travels this week, yours truly would like to shift focus to his domestic agenda. I like to call it his "Contract Against America."

Neither he nor his ilk in the Democratic Party are above citing bogus numbers (a.k.a. "lying") to scare voters into believing their socialist propaganda. In this little corner of heaven, we remember all too well the shenanigans of our late not-so-great pill-popping governor Lawton "Smiles for Miles" Chiles.

Well, now their presumptive presidential nominee is propagating the lie that there are 47 million uninsured Americans. And, of course, the only answer is to have the federal government take-over that entire sector of our economy. Bureaucrats know best, don't ya know?!

Poppycock and balderdash!

I refer to the real numbers compiled by the Congressional Budget Office to arrive at the following:

47.00 million "uninsured" in this country at any given time.
-21.15 million who are only temporarily between coverage (less than 4 month gap)
-10.00 million non-citizens (for whom I don't believe we have any obligation to pay)
-7.65 million who are eligible for Medicare or other state-level programs but have failed to apply

= 8.2 million truly long-term uninsured.

That is nothing to be crowing about, to be sure. But, neither does it warrant the higher taxes and bigger government the latest media star is advocating.

Don't believe the hype!

John Adams

Like most Americans, I'm afraid yours truly has never fully appreciated our second president: John Adams.

For me, anyway, he always seemed to pale in comparison to his contemporaries: Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, et al.

He enjoyed some increased popularity several years ago, when David McCullough published a masterful biography.

I admit to buying the tome, but confess I only read the section on the Alien and Sedition Act.

Fortunately, somebody over at HBO must've read the entire thing and realized it would make a good cable mini-series.

But, I missed the original run since I am too cheap to pay Bright House Networks for anything more than their basic cable package (and that only for clear reception that can no longer be found over the public airwaves).

Now, however, the entire series is available on DVD at your local Blockbuster. It being so beastly hot outside, I could think of no better way to spend this Sunday afternoon.

Both Paul Giamatti (John Adams) and Laura Linney (Abigail Adams) deliver amazing performances.

The only drawback was that I can only check-out 2 DVD's at a time, and this is a 3-disc series! So, I feel like I've been left hanging about 2/3 of the way thru the story!!

Memorializing B.G.

We gathered today to memorialize my great-uncle B.G. Brown at Rosemont Baptist Church, where he served as pastor in the 1960s and 70s. It was really a beautiful service. For ye socks who were unable to attend, here's how it went down (to the best of my feeble memory):

* Aunt Diane started things off by keeping her promise to play the piano.

* Their grandson Andrew Howerton read a poem written by his sister, who couldn't be at the services because she is stationed in Iraq with the US Air Force.

* Their daughter Debbie read some selected Bible verses.

* One of B.G.' classmates from Stetson spoke. He said it was something they had agreed over 50 years ago, that whichever one of them outlived the other would speak at the memorial services. And, he had always hoped it would be the other way around.

* Their son David read some remembrances of his dad, which reminded me a lot of a similar reading he had done at his grandmother's funeral several years ago. Both, were very well written and delivered.

* The floor was opened for anyone in attendance to say a few words about BG. Among those that stood up were Kenny Burns, Aunt Dot, Uncle Richard, some guy who was ironically named Bill Morgan but apparently not related, the car dealer Bill Norman, Priscilla Burns, and several other people I didn't know.

* Their son Danny memorialized B.G. in song. His voice is almost operatic.

* Walter Routh, who had served alongside B.G. when he was pastoring the old Miller Street Baptist Church in Orlando, and who is now suffering from Parkinson's Disease too, delivered the benediction.

I'm sure I left a few things out, but that should give you a basic feel for the events of the day if you were unable to make it in person.

If it wasn't clear before today, everyone who walked away from the services were made profoundly aware how very many lives B.G. touched before he was taken from us.

Help find Caylee

Ye out-of-town socks may as yet be unaware of the drama unfolding in this little corner of heaven, so let me give you the "heads-up."

We are all wrapped-up in trying to find this missing little girl, Caylee Anthony.

To learn the whole story, and see if you can help reunite her with her family, check out this web site:

http://www.helpfindcaylee.com/

Soggy in the dryer!

Well, after some trials and tribulations, I finally got the electrician back to the house today to get some juice flowing to the new dryer outlet.

Now, I'm having trouble with my washer!

Sad as it sounds, I was really looking forward to getting a couple loads of laundry done around here. It had been piling up for just over a week, and things were getting a little desperate.

Anyway, when I went to pull the first load of clothes out of the washer to throw them in the newly-operational dryer, I found them still sitting in the agitator in about 3 inches of water!

I wrung them out as best I could, and threw the soggy mess into the dryer so I could see what was going on inside the washer.

Leaving it empty, I ran just the spin cycle, and that seemed to clear up most of the problem.

But, when I ran the second load, I had the same problem. And, of course the soggy stuff in the dryer was still too soggy to pull out to make room for the second load . . .

ARGGHHHH!

Any of ye socks have an idea of how to proceed? Could it possibly be something simple and cheap?! Please say, YES! I've already spent way too much money on renovations these last few weeks, and need a big repair bill as much as I need another hole in my head!

The Magic Number is 270

In the Electoral College, that is.

Now, there's a place on the web where you can manipulate a map of the good ol' USofA to assign the electoral votes of each state to one candidate or another.

http://www.270towin.com/

Check it out for yourself, if you dare.

I played with most recent poll figures, and came up with some bad news for John McCain.

If things follow those numbers, he will lose to the junior senator from Illinois by a count of 331 to 207.

But, a lot can happen between now and November, right?!

Satire from The New Yorker

It's probably safe to say ye socks from this little corner of heaven are not frequent readers of The New Yorker magazine.

So, you may be unaware of the recent cover that is causing more than its fair share of controversy in political circles this week.

The cartoon satirizes a laundry list of image problems the junior senator from Illinois and his supporters have failed to fully address:

* There's his overly-strident better (?!) half in her camo pants and boots toting a machine gun.

* The power couple are engaging in their trademark fist bump, as if they've just successively hoodwinked somebody . . . or a large percentage of the general population.

* There's the junior senator in Middle Eastern garb.

* Old Glory smolders in the fireplace.

* A framed portrait of Osama bin Laden occupies a prominent place over the mantle in the background.

Really, it's all just laughable, isn't it?!

Well, not according to the presumptive Democratic nominee. He's apparently fuming over this little piece of satire. Rather than laughing it off and pointing out all the absurdities it highlights, he's nearly spinning out of control.

I think the reaction says an awful lot more about the candidate than the cartoon ever could have hoped.

Don't you?

Latest photos of the niblings

Big Brother 10

Tis the season . . . for Big Brother, that is.

My not-so-secret guilty pleasure for quite some time has been this voyeuristic summertime "reality" show on CBS.

Hey! At least I don't watch that American Idol tripe on Fox!

Anyway, Season 10 of BB kicks-off tonight at 8pm.

It promises to be a doozy of a group of houseguests this time around.

I've already got two favorites:

#1 is Angie, the 29-year-old pharmaceutical sales rep from this little corner of heaven. Gotta support the hometown girl, right?

#2 is Jerry, the 75-year-old great-grandfather of 4 from Texas. He's got to be the oldest houseguest ever, and I'm interested to see what kind of dimension all his life experience might bring to the "game."

Oh, well, I better get back to my work so I won't feel so guilty about watching this show later tonight.

I hope ye socks are having as good/productive weekend as yours truly!

Robinson's in Apopka

I spent the better part of the last six years as a resident of the city of Apopka in this little corner of heaven.

And, I must have passed a little greasy spoon called Robinson's (at 301 West Main Street) hundreds of times in all my comings and goings.

But, I never stopped there to sample the cuisine until this morning.

It was a rendezvous point for the kindly souls who agreed to haul my washer and dryer from the Lake Hammer Chalet down to the new digs in College Park.

Anyway, I'm sorry to say that I wasn't missing anything all those times I passed this place by.

My "experience" at Robinson's started off with a thieving newspaper vending machine out front, followed-up by a completely unsympathetic staff.

Once inside, I discovered the booths were designed to cram as many unwitting patrons into the dining room as possible with no thought whatsoever to comfort.

And, for all this, my breakfast (which is generally the most inexpensive meal of the day) cost me more than $7.

I won't be going back to this greasy spoon!

Equating barefoot golf caddies to lynching victims

Believe it or not, that is exactly what one idiot on the Orlando city council tried to do yesterday.

On opening day of the newly-refurbished city-owned Dubsdread Golfcourse, the adjacent Taproom restaurant had the audacity to re-hang a series of old sepia-toned photos that have been a feature of the establishment since they were taken in the 1930s. The nerve of it!

One of the pictures features an African American caddy, who happens to be barefoot. Yours truly is unashamedly posting a copy of said picture here, despite the possible scandal and mayhem that may ensue in this little corner of the blogosphere.

Anyway, one of the attendees of the grand reopening raised the initial objection to the photo, and was ignored for the idiot he or she evidently is.

Not to be deterred, the offendee ran crying and hand-wringing to the always-credible Daisy Lynum, who has been wasting space down at City Hall for years. Always eager to pounce on anything with the slightest potential of racial divisiveness, but without so much as bothering to actually view the photo herself, she demanded it be relegated to the collections of The History Center and made the following declaration to local media: "They say it's a part of history, but so is lynching and killing. Do we keep those pictures on display?"

What an idiot.

I mean, who in their right mind could equate a barefoot caddy to the victim of racial violence?! I'm pretty sure the caddy in question was working voluntarily for those evil white golfers in the photo. And, I'm pretty sure a lot of their evil white children were running around barefoot, too. It's Florida. It's warm. It was in the middle of The Great Depression. Things like that happened.

Fortunately, sanity prevailed in the person of Byron Brooks, the city's Chief Administrative Officer, who also happens to be an African American. He actually took the time to view the photo and refuted Lynum's half-cocked assessment of it, saying he "didn't feel it depicted any kind of racial stereotype--it's just a period picture."

Right on, Byron!

When will our elected officials, and particularly the lovely Ms. Lynum, get off their duffs and start addressing the real concerns of their constituents? It is their political grandstanding that needs to be relegated to the dustbin of history, not photos of our forebears hanging on the walls at golf course tap rooms.

Okay, off the soap box now. Have a good weekend. Maybe, work in a couple rounds of golf while you're at it, ok?!

Evan Almighty

I decided to take a little break from all the home improvement tonight.

Well, that's not entirely true . . . I did paint some trim work in the living room. But, that didn't take very long.

Anyway, I got myself some microwave popcorn and a root beer and sat myself down in front of ye olde DVD player to watch the latest arrival from blockbuster.com: Evan Almighty.

A lot of critics panned this flick when it hit the theaters last year.

Maybe, I was just in the right frame of mind this evening, but I really enjoyed it.

In a nutshell, God (played by Morgan Freeman) tells a modern day Noah named Evan who was recently elected to Congress (played by the hillarious Steve Carell) to build an ark . . . not just to teach him a lesson, but also to thwart the evil intentions of another congressman (played by John Goodman).

Anyway, this movie was good, clean fun. Check it out for yourselves if that's the sort of entertainment you're looking for this weekend!

A long way to go to do laundry

Lest ye socks forget, I still haven't been able to sell or rent the olde Lake Hammer Chalet.

Mostly because I haven't even put it on the market, yet.

I still want to do some touch-up painting and give it a deep cleaning before we call in a realtor.

But, in addition to all that, Le Chalet is also still home to my washer and dryer set. At least until Saturday.

In the mean time, I had to drive up here to get a week's worth of laundry done.

While its churning, however, I can start doing some of that aforementioned prep work.

Guess, I should've brought one of those paint brushes from last night . . .

Break out the paint brushes

That's right, ye socks, yours truly is actually getting personally involved in the home renovations over on Elizabeth Avenue.

I had a co-worker helping me several weeks ago, and he did a pretty good job painting the master bedroom and livingroom.

But, he missed an area that was still covered by paneling, and promised he'd come back later to remedy that situation.

Anyway, I got tired of waiting tonight, and decided that was really something I was perfectly capable of doing myself.

So, here goes nothing . . .

Going to the dogs?

Despite my recent post about the bad dog owner who let her pets drink from and urinate on a public water fountain, ye socks know I am an animal lover at heart.

Well, while I was unpacking at the new abode, I discovered a beautiful dog nosing around my back yard. (I don't have a fence, so I guess that pretty much gave her the license to roam.)

Anyway, when I went to investigate, I discovered the pooch in question belongs to my new neighbors Greg and Gail. And, she had a "big brother."

Gail gave me a mini-lesson on the breed, English Springer Spaniel. And, believe it or not, I am now contemplating a puppy. It may be a year or so before I act on it, but the seed has been planted.

If you want to plant a seed of your own, check out this breeder web site:

http://www.churchillenglishspringers.com

Click on the "Puppies" tab, and you can find out all about a litter of eleven--yes ELEVEN--pups who were born in May. (8 females, and 3 males) They even have a live puppy cam. So, even if you cannot adopt one yourself, you can at least have a desktop menagerie for entertainment.

Cheers!

The ties that bind?

Ok, ye socks, I'm feeling a little frustrated. So, let me vent a little.

I feel like I can't really get anything major done on my first full day in the new house, because the renovations aren't 100% complete.

I can't even mow the yard, because they haven't hauled-away all the stuff from the kitchen/bath demo.

And, I'm not going to waste my time unpacking stuff for the rooms that haven't been painted. But, I can't start painting, because the rooms that need a fresh coat are still playing host to tools and supplies.

I should probably take it as a sign from above and mark this Sunday down as a "day of rest." That's hard to do, though, because my mental "to-do" list keeps growing and growing. And, I don't even have the luxury of television to numb my skull since it isn't scheduled to be hooked-up til tomorrow.

I guess I could do like they did in the old days and read a book or something . . .

No, wait, how 'bout watching a DVD? I don't need cable for that . . . now, if I could only put my hands on my copy of The Patriot, that might be an appropriate finale for this holiday weekend!

A new place to lay my head

Well, even though I moved the bulk of my stuff over to the new place yesterday, I still spent last night up at the Lake Hammer Chalet.

Kinda had to since my bed was still up there.

It was too big to break-up and carry downstairs, at least for me and my crew. So, it had to wait along with the guest bed and the huge entertainment center.

Hiring professionals cost me a pretty penny, but I guess you get what you pay for.

Now, all that's left up in Apopka is a collection of odds and ends in the garage and a bunch of cleaning supplies.

Pretty exhausted right now.

Guess it's time to crawl into bed and spend my first night in the new place . . .

Happy 4th of July!

Well, ye socks, not only is today Independence Day, it was also MOVING DAY in this little corner of heaven.

That meant a lot of hard work, and not just for yours truly.

And, of course, it felt like the hottest day of the year, which it very well could have been.

Anyway, I am incredibly blessed with a lot of good friends and family who help me thru times like this.

And, sometimes, they even bring me flowers and cake.

I hope you all had an equally awesome holiday!

Rev. Billy Gene Brown (1931-2008)

I am very sorry to report the death of my great-uncle Billy Gene "BG" Brown.

He ended a 6-year battle with Parkinson's Disease at 4:15 yesterday morning, requesting his body be donated to medical research to help find a cure for this terrible illness.

BG celebrated his 76th birthday this past December 7th. Though born in Miami, he spent his formative years in Plymouth and attended Apopka High School.

After serving with the US Navy (and riding out a terrific hurricane in Charleston Harbor!) he returned to this little corner of heaven to marry my great-aunt Diane Morgan on August 28, 1953--almost 55 years ago. Together they operated His Way Ministries for many years. They have three children (David, Debbie, and Danny) as well as several grandchildren and great-granchildren.

Memorial services are scheduled at two of the churches BG served as pastor:

* 7/6/08 (Sunday) - 1pm - Corinth Baptist Church, Clinton, Missouri.

* 7/19/08 (Saturday) - 2pm - Rosemont Baptist Church, Orlando, Florida.

All that meat and no potatoes

Believe it or not, that is actually the title of an old Fats Waller song from 1941.

I remember discovering it on an old vinyl record I picked up at a garage sale as a kid, and just heard it again these many (many, many) years later. The lyrics are just as rib tickling to me today as they were then, so thought I'd share:

All that meat, and no potatoes
Just ain't right, like green tomatoes
Yeah, I'm waiting
Palpatatin'
But all that meat, and no potatoes

All that meat, and no potatoes
All that food, to the alligators, yeah
Hold me steady
I am ready
With all that meat and no potatoes

I don't think that peas are bad
With me, most anything goes
I look in the pot, I'm fit to fight
'Cause woman, you know that mess ain't right.

All that meat, and no potatoes
Just ain't right, like green tomatoes
Yes, I'm steamin'
I'm really screamin'
All that meat and no potatoes.

The final stretch

Well, ye socks, I am pleased to report there IS a light at the end of the tunnel . . . at least in terms of the renovations at the Elizabeth Avenue house. Here's some photographic evidence for your perusal.

Home Depot was kind enough to deliver all of the kitchen appliances today. Alan says they should be installed and running by tomorrow.



In the mean time, our favorite renovator was busy constructing a platform for the new bathroom cabinet. This will raise it up to "tall people standards."



None of the other photos of the new Avonite countertops turned out, but this shot of the built-in desk should give you an idea of what it looks like.