Happy Birthday to My Wife!

Last week we celebrated my wife's birthday with a couple beers and a few friends at the ballpark.

Happy birthday to the best wife ever. :)

Spring Flowers

Two weekends ago my wife started her Spring Home Beautification project. It consisted of flowers in the side yard, the front porch and the back porch.

Here are the marigolds she neatly mulched and planted in the side yard. Notice the freshly trimmed grass in the background? That was my contribution.

And here are some red flowers. I don't have a clue what they're called. Perhaps lilies or petunias? They're red and that's good enough for me.

Yellow flowers on the front porch!


Purple-ish, kinda white flowers!


And last but not least, our friend the frog. He protects the flower bed on the back porch from those rascally deer that use our property as a feeding ground/bed.


Nice work, my wife!

Cats are Whacky

Weird.
And weird.

Lake Norman, NC

Last weekend my wife and I headed south to Lake Norman, North Carolina. The in-laws rented a small cabin on the lake for the week and we figured we visit for a couple days. Here are a few snapshots of the trip!




This is one of my wife's bridesmaids and her new son Quinn. Isn't he cute? We stopped to have lunch with them before we rolled into town. They live only a few minutes away.



Here's the view from the back porch of the cabin. It was located 50 yards or so away from the lake.


This is my father-in-law rowing in his shell just off of our dock. This was just after sunrise.


I'm preppin' to do some fishing.


Here's one of the channel cats I caught. It was a decent size. The next one I caught actually stabbed with one of his stingers and caused me to bleed all over the dock. Nice, right? lol


We rented a boat for an afternoon and drove around Lake Norman. It really is a very pretty place and I highly recommend it if you're looking for a relaxing vacation. The prices are outstanding in the off-season.


Here's my father-in-law throwing in a line from the boat. He's got his rally cap on.


Perhaps my wife's favorite part of the trip... our friend the turtle. She fed him bread.


Here's my father-in-law and I preparing some turtle soup. Just kidding! We were peeling shrimp for dinner. Such a messy job!

So, yeah... Lake Norman comes highly recommended!

A Historic Weekend in WV

Last Friday evening the Mrs. and I headed to the Greenbrier located in White Sulpher Springs, WV. The Greenbrier was founded in 1778 and is famous vacation spot for many celebrities and political figures. Perhaps it's most famous for "the Bunker." This was a chamber designed for the POTUS in the event of a nuclear holocaust in the 1950s.



It looks very presidential, doesn't it?

Notice the colors. Pretty much everything was teal. Not really what you'd expect, eh?

Definitely different and slightly pretty, in my opinion. Is it weird that I found my next destination more interesting?

Early Saturday morning I crossed the state and headed to Moundsville, WV to help a friend film a documentary about a serial killer named Harry Powers called "Romeo Must Hang." He is believed to have killed many others, but only five murders were ever confirmed. Harry would contact women by mail and promise them love and money. They'd move to be with him and then he'd kill them and take their belongings. And yeah, I played the part of Harry.



This is the outside of the State Pen. Even the outside looks crazy, right? It was opened in 1876 and closed in 1995. There were at least 94 executions here. Many people were hanged (like Harry Powers), while others met their maker in the electric chair.

It was even spookier inside. Here's where the majority of prisoners were kept. There are four stories of cells. It smelled of dust and metal. There was nothing comforting about the place.


Two people stayed in each cell. Crazy.


Here's the shower. I think I'd rather be dirty.

And, of course, Old Sparky. This is the original electric chair of the WV State Pen. I don't even want to know what the bucket of water is for.

A couple of interesting stories from the Harry Powers experience:

I had a lot of spare time between shoots, so I wandered around the prison by myself. Right before dusk I visited the 2nd floor infirmary where the prisoners received medical attention. There was no power in the prison, but the glow from outside made it bright enough to see. There were rooms with x-ray equipment, large baths, dentist chairs and hospital beds, some majorly creepy stuff. At the end of the infirmary there was a dark area with tons of open doors that you couldn't see into. It was just too dark. As I passed a couple of the rooms, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I immediately turned around and hurried back down the hall and down the steps. I got a little weirded out, but I still don't believe in ghosts.

Speaking of ghosts, as I walked around the prison dressed as Harry Powers, everyone looked at me like I just kicked their dog. At first it didn't occur to me that people knew who Harry Powers was, but man, they definitely did. Everyone working at the prison or visiting that night on "ghost tours" knew Harry's story. People even stopped to take pictures with me. VERY VERY WEIRD.

Bringing Harry Powers back to life for a couple of days was fun, but geez, that dude was a jerk. And seriously, the Greenbrier is overrated, but it's a lot more pleasant than the state pen!

The 2009-10 WVU Basketball Highlight Video

I always anticipate the release of this video. This year it's in three parts because there were just so many darn highlights.

Here you go:

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

BP and their Environmental Disaster

Last week a BP owned oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana. Over ten people were killed or are presumed dead, but sadly that's not even the biggest concern. The oil rig eventually sank into the ocean uncapping its main oil line stemming from the ocean floor. The result: possibly the biggest US environmental disaster in our short history.

Just yesterday, nine days after the rig exploded, I saw a BP representative asking for help from the government and other oil companies. This means two things. 1 - they have not received additional help from the government or other oil companies and 2 - nobody (the oil company, other oil companies, the government or other parties) were prepared for this. Now, believe me, I am a huge fan of Barry Obama, but why the hell has it taken ten days for the White House to be hugely concerned about this situation? Hurricane Katrina anyone?

That very same BP representative told CNN that the oil could continue pumping out of this line for up to 90 days. That's three months! That's 5000 barrels of oil a day. That's completely unfathomable. How can they be this unprepared?

To me, it's the same as Big Coal. Big Oil has buddied up with politicians and allowed for relaxed regulations. It makes zero sense to me that we have no immediate solution to a problem that's not that unlikely to occur. Somewhere, somehow, a lot of people have dropped the ball and this time, wildlife is going to pay the price.

So, pray, hope, meditate, cross your fingers or do whatever it is you do when you want a certain outcome to the future, that "officials" are able to turn off this destructive line of environment hating, United States sludge in the very near future. It isn't that hard to figure out just how devastating this could be. 90 days of this and we'll be worrying about much more than the Louisiana and Florida wildlife.

Please, someone, start overreacting.