Lets go to the beach!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a picture to help warm up your soul before the snow storm hits. This was taken at Daytona Beach in 2006. This may be the last ass stamp you get to see at any beach for a few days.

I think I may head out tomorrow for a nice walk in the storm and bring my camera along with me. I may be able to get some nice winter shots are the hood.

If I have power I will finish up my Monsanto story and post that this weekend. There will be no driving if the weather is as bad as they predict.

Peace my friends. Enjoy your weekend. I know I will.

We are going to get hammered

I need to go to the store today and get new windshield wiper blades and an ice scraper. If the weather dudes are correct we are going to get hammered with snow. They are saying we are going to get 6 - 12 inches of snow starting late Friday and going through the day Saturday.
I may stop at Home Depot and get some concrete blocks or something heavy to put in the bed of the truck. The truck has no weight in the rear and some weight in the bed will help with traction.

I may end up taking a nice walk Saturday in the snow and get some pictures of the snow. If the predictions come true I will not be out driving this weekend at all. Should be interesting to say the least. Hopefully it holds off till work is done. I can imagine driving around here will not be good if this starts early.

This picture is from a car show in Georgia in 2006. I came across this car show in some little town while driving through the mountains south of the western part of Georgia.

Do you want to buy a Toyota?

Times Marches On Tracey Lawrence

Tammy said yesterday that time flies. Well this song is another version of that saying. Things keep moving forward even when the world seems to be going backwards much of the time.

The State of the Union speech is tonite. It will be interesting to see where Obama heads during this speech. Is he going to make so amends and try to make peace with the public or will it cause more divide. Interesting thing is many polls are actually not blaming him but blaming the Congress and Senate. Kind of amazing really.

ALL the people I work with are hard core Republicans. I love to spare with them. Once again the outsider at work in many ways. :)

Yes this song is a repeat post.

Good morning

I saw something on the news this morning about the Sawtooth School for Visual Arts in Winston Salem. They offer all types of art classes and many are one day classes. Some of them sound pretty cool. I am going to look into taking a one day class in something. I saw a class next month for making pottery bowls. You get to make three bowls in the class. You keep two of them and the third one will be used in a fundraising event in April. It sounds like a pretty neat event. Since I like pottery this may be a neat way to get introduced to it.

Looks likes another employee of Law Enforcement Supply will be leaving and coming to work at Dana Safety Supply. This will be big and really put a hurt on my old employers. Between the two of us we can get a nice hold on Florida. It will help the sales team we have there become really focused.

I have to get a new auto insurance company. Esurance does not write insurance in NC. I also am looking at a new bank or maybe a credit union. My current bank has just one branch in Greensboro and it is not open Saturday. This is a problem. Finding a decent bank or insurance company is a pain since so many of them suck.

And yes that is a woman.

Post 2 Black Lips Bad Kids

This is a pretty cool song. Check out the lyrics.

Review

So this weekend was close to being a washout. On Saturday I drove up to Mt. Airy on some backroads and got a couple shots and saw some things I will shoot in the future. It was sunny when I left however it got cloudy as I went north. Not the best for shooting. I also ended up with a massive sinus headache. I ended up leaving early and bought some aspirin on the way home to deal with the headache. I wanted to go to Mount Pilot State Park but was in no shape to do that.

Yesterday was just a crappy weather day. During the day it just misted lightly all day before the heavy rain came last night. I did manage to get out to my bank and make a deposit and drive through downtown and check out the "happening area" of Greensboro. Saw plenty to shoot there so I know where I will head some Saturday or Sunday morning soon and shoot downtown Greensboro.

Ken over at the "Loose Laces" blog mentioned a new style of camera that is a mix between a compact and dslr camera. They look perfect for what I like to do. I am going to start a little savings fund and get myself one of these. I always thought the standard dslr was to big and bulky to carry for the sake of convenience. This looks perfect from what I can tell. The models that have been released have received excellent reviews. It will be nice to have a small camera with the ability to change lenses. Woo Hoo...

March 16th is the date of the time change. It can't get here soon enough for me.

Happy Monday.

Picture was taken at an old abandoned property in Crescent City, California. The building had been many things over the years. It was a restaurant in its last life. This guy was practicing casting his fly rod.

Vanishing Point

So this is one of my favorite pictures I have taken. This was taken while I was driving to Crater Lake. While driving along I came along this area with all these pines and it looked so cool. This was taken through the windshield while zipping through the forest.

Thankfully it is Friday. I need to get out and shoot some pictures. Looks like tomorrow is going to be the only decent day this weekend. Might go to Mount Airy, NC and then explore from there. See if I can find some good streams and waterfalls in the area. Hopefully mother nature will give me some sun. Maybe I'll head downtown and see what is going on there this weekend.

Time to get out weather permitting. Need pictures..............

John Edwards please just go away.

Should be good playoff football this weekend. Go old man Favre.

Writers Block

Not sure what to write about today.

This picture was taken a Crater Lake on July 5th, 2006. There was still a fair amount of snow on the ground as we drove up to the lake. Paul and I went to go hiking but we did not make it far. The mosquitoes were so insanely thick and brutal if was not enjoyable to be walking on the trail.

The area around Crater Lake is quite lovely and is well worth a visit if you ever get the chance.

I see where local leaders here in Guilford County are talking about letting school resource officer carry stun guns. Come on now is that what we are coming to as a country. It seems like that is a bit much.

Ok, that is it for now.

Facebook and old connections

So I have been on Facebook for over a year now and for the most part it has been pretty fun.

I do not play the games and all that, however I have reconnected with people I have not seen or heard from in years.

Yesterday when I got home I had an email from Facebook. It was from the girl in this picture.

Michelle and I were great friends in high school. We worked together at Finast, a grocery store, and we went out on a few dates. We were great friends. However once I went to college we slowly lost contact. As time went on Michelle got married and the only connection we had after that was when she shopped at the A&P where my dad worked. She would always tell my dad to say hello.

This is not my picture. This is one that was taken when she was going to do some modeling.

In my mind she was the one who got away. I don't think she thinks that or anything. However it is interesting when you look back at your high school years and are able to analyze things from an adult point of view. She was sweet and I was a concert wearing, flannel shirt wearing, jeans and work boot wearing stoner. It is one of the things you always wonder what would have happened "if".

Anyhow it was cool that we were able to reconnect through Facebook.

Obervations

Why do so many people drive around their hometown using their GPS?

I am going to paint one wall in the living room. I need some suggestions. I am think of a yellow or some type of light green. Maybe a hot pink so everything will stand out.

My gut is getting big again. Time to start eating more salads for lunch. Since there is no break room at work, I do not want to eat lunch at my desk, I either need to bring lunch and eat in the truck or find a place near work that had good salads.

One thing I have noticed here that is different than Tampa is the traffic. There is plenty here however the speed of traffic is much slower and the red lights are much longer.

The Uconn women's basketball team won its 57th straight game last night. They are so superior to any other team it is amazing. You would think that other schools would step up their recruiting program to attempt to match Uconn.

If the republicans win the Senate runoff today in Mass. it will be a big indication of how much trouble Obama really is. This is one to keep an eye on.

I found out that one of the other companies that is trying to control the seed market has a big facility in Greensboro. They are called Syngenta. I will have to check them out and see how evil they are.

Have a peaceful day my friends.

Mountains to climb

I took the weekend off from blogging. Did not do a whole bunch as we had crappy weather for most of the weekend. I did work on breaking my couch in. It has a ways too go. I'll work on it again tonight.

It seems odd to me that when a disaster strikes that the nations of the world rise up together to help the nation that has been stricken yet on a daily basis we ignore the daily human tragedy that those same people have to endure. It would seem to me that if we would put our collective hearts and minds together like this all the time the world would be a much better place.

We need to climb the mountain to achieve some greatness as a human race.

Today is MLK Day. Have we made the mountain that African Americans are trying to climb any easier.

I did go to the farmers market Saturday. I was rather small since it is the off season. I did buy some fresh bread. Some was baked right at the market. All natural and organic. It is very good. I went for a short ride after that to look for something to shoot. I did find a John 3:16 sign on a telephone pole. It is by a person who has many of those down in the Franklin, NC area. I have some of these on my Flickr stream. My buddy Jacob K has many on his Flickr stream. He has actually been able to find the person who puts these signs up.

I wanted to go downtown yesterday to the arts district. I was checking things out online and discovered that most of the gallery's and antique shops there are closed on Sunday. Give me a break. If you want to make that a destination for your city how do you close on a Sunday. Since everything else is open on Sunday these shops being closed makes no sense. This does not happen in Asheville. Maybe these people need to look in that direction.

Hopefully the weather will be better next weekend. I need to get out and do a photo road trip. I want to head north of here. Maybe I'll go to Mt. Airy, NC. It is also known as Mayberry from the Andy Griffith show. Sounds like a good plan.

I have some goods ideas for improving this at work. I am going to suggest those today. They are simple things but they will make a big difference for everyone.

I want to see the new Jeff Bridges movie Crazy Heart.

I am working on a blog about Monsanto.

Have a good Monday.

All is quiet

So RTG called me yesterday and my couch will be delivered between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. tomorrow. Nice way to screw up the afternoon. Will go to the market early in the morning then.

I loved handmade soap. Since I have some money in paypal I decided to look on Etsy and see what I could find. I ended up buying Chocolate-Mint soap. You get two bars, a basket and a little knitted towel for ten bucks. Seems like a good deal. There are a lot of neat things on Etsy. I should try and sell some pictures there.

Not much else going on and not much too say for now.

Have a good day.

Ummm

So I have made it halfway through week 1 at the new job and all is well except the crappy computer system they have for ordering. Otherwise the people as nice and all is good.

Once the sofa gets here Saturday I am going to head out the farmers market and see what that is all about. It is pretty big, around 21,000 square feet. After that I am not sure. It all depends when Rooms To Go get the sofa here. The apt. is coming all fine.

There are a couple odd things here. In the kitchen they have the hot and cold water reversed.
The also have the outlets that are the main outlets for the tv and so hooked up to a switch that is right next to the switch for the kitchen light. They are right inside the door. So on a few occasions I have hit that switch and turned the tv, cable and such off. It is a poor design. Need to come up with some kind of cover for the switch. I do not want to just put tape over the thing.

Time for breakfast.

Young at Heart Chorus

So I was going to write a post tonight bitching about Monsanto and their evil ways of controlling agriculture through seed patents and such but I decided to post these videos instead.

While flipping around the channels i came across a show on PBS called "Independent Lens". They show some very interesting and compelling documentaires and this one was very touching and heart felt.

The Young at Heart Chorus is made up of senior citizens. The ages are currently 73 to 89. They go out and perform all over the world. I think these videos may bring a tear to your eye and a smile to your face.

The first one here is them singing the Bob Dylan song "Forever Young". The second song is Coldplay's "I Will Trey to Fix You". For the Coldplay song it was supposed to be a duet however the gentleman who was to be the other singer is one of the gentleman that had passed away.

Enjoy these. You will need to copy and paste these. Take the time at your heart will be filled with sadness and joy. They are beautiful.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4kqfYsOe4M&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gosIuO1HqEg&feature=related

Obervations

Well I have been here for a few days now and yesterday I started work.
The apartment complex I live in seems pretty nice. Quiet for the most part. I do not not the neighbors at all. The place is new so it is very clean, except for the frozen dog shit that seems to be all little excessive. We did have the fire department here Sunday night. I saw the cute girl who works in the office when I was getting gas t last night and asked here what happened. She said some woman was cooking and had a small grease fire that she tried to put out with water. That made matters worse, of course. Thankfully she only did minor damage to her kitchen.
I also asked her about a decent grocery close to here. Since where I live is somewhat close to the hood the closest grocery has a rather "iffy" customer base. I went into that store my first night here and the people in the store where looking at me like I was in the wrong store. I most likely will be going there when the sun is shining and only if I have too.

Yesterday I started work and it went well. I assumed the hours for work were 8 to 5 so I left at about 7:20 so I could gauge traffic. It took me 20 minutes. When I arrived there was one person there. It seems for the most part they work 9 to 6 which seems odd since most of the customers we work with work 8 yo 5. So I had nothing to do for a little while. Anyhow when Wanda, my boss and one of the bosses in the company, came in we talked for a bit, My hours will be 8:30 to 5:30. I think down the road I came get them back to 8 to 5. I did all the paperwork and usual crap you do the first day. Then back to real work. Pretty much jumped right in where I left off. Need to get used to their computer system for ordering and all that. It seems like an old program for the most part. Not all that user friendly. But getting used to that will come quickly.
The one thing I do not like it that they use Mozilla Thunderbird for their email and I find it to be annoying.

However they are happy to have me and I have have a job. Now I just need to get me a southern belle and I might be all set for a while.

Off to the shower..........

My nippless are hard...........

Damm it all to hell. I move out of Florida and some places near where I live get snow flurries.
What is that all about? The weather is just plain odd. I live in Florida for 20 years and nothing. The day I leave, flurries. Now that sucks. I hope the garden Jim and I worked on is ok.
It was 13 here on Saturday morning. Thank you Mike for the jacket and gloves.

I have been in Greensboro since 5:15 p.m. on Friday night and I am in the process of getting settled in. My cable and internet are hooked up. The movers delivered my goods this morning.
I bought a couch from Rooms To Go yesterday, to be delivered on Saturday. I been to the store and bought some food, printer paper, coffee maker, tea pot and a few other things for the apt.

I built the coffee table I bought from Ikea and have my chair parked in front of it for the football game. I can not wait for the sofa. I need a sofa to nap on.

Will slowly begin to unpack my boxes. No real hurry there to be honest.

Depending on the weather next weekend, and it looks iffy for Saturday, I will start to get out and roam around a bit.

I am exhausted right now. Way too much for me to process in such a short period of time.

Work at 8 tomorrow. Back to the real world. Damm, I was hoping for a big lottery win.

Goodbye Florida

I was go to get all philosophical about moving and all that but have decided to save it for a future date. For now all I am going to say is "Goodbye" Florida.

The computer is now going to be turned off. The next time I turn you on I will be in the state of North Carolina.

Peace my friends.

Mr. Mover I am waiting

So I am pretty much set with packing. I need to pack my clothing, the few hundred cd's, the silverware and sheets and that should be it. Oh yeah, the tv, stereo and computer will be the very last things to be packed. The computer is going with me, along with some clothing, the air mattress, the cds with all my pictures on them and a couple other things I would rather trust to myself.

I am listening Steely Dan right now and I made me think of when I went camping at Rocky Neck State Park with my parents and "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" was playing in the car one day while we were out on a family drive. For some reason there are a few Steely Dan songs from that time that remind me of camping with my parents. Kinds of odd. At the time 66 WNBC was most likely the most powerful radio station in the United States. They were of course an am station.

They played most what would now be considered "AOR" or adult oriented rock and pop tunes and disco tunes. Until I truly discovered rock n roll this was the station I grew up on. At one time they had both Dom Imus and Howard Stern as disc jockeys. That gives you an idea of the kind of influence they had on the radio world. Anyhow 66 WNBC and Steely Dan bring back memories of being a kid.

So yesterday I decided I would put my couch, with the broken spring in the center section, some odd ball housewares out to the curb. I also put out a microwave that I got from Tammy and Mike in exchange for a gas grill. The grill is many many years old and the touch pad finally started having issues the other day. Well everything but the couch was gone in about 20 minutes. I left to go the the bar and watch the Bucs and when I arrived home the couch was gone. Thank you Mr. Scavenger.

Picture is from Daytona Beach, Florida. This is a real double rainbow. This is next to the track looking out at the Daytona Airport.

Where is my remote?

What the hell? I think I packed the remote for my tv somehow or maybe it is in the trash. What a fool. The house was such a darn mess I am not sure. I really do not want to dig in the trash since there is glass in there along with something that smells really darn awful. Oh well at least it is not the remote that gets used the most.

I think for the most part that the packing will be done today. There are a couple things I want to do today so I may stay up late tonight to get it all done. There are a few things I will need to do this week before I move so packing needs to be done ASAP.

I started a Shelfari bookshelf on the blog today. I always look at Kens and decided that I needed to have one since I read all the time. The first book I put on was "The World According to Garp" by John Irving. I had already been a pretty good reader by high school but this was the book that did it for me. I had to read a book for an english class as a freshman in high school and for some reason I picked this one. It was the first book that I had ever read that really had an impact on me as a reader. The characters that John Irving creates are some amazing, fantastical and filled with thoughts and emotions that strike a chord with me. My favorite books by him are of course "Garp", "Cider House Rules, and " A Widow for One Year". Read those books and you will see what I mean.

I'll go over the other books as time goes along.

Moving on up

Well I have an apartment. I rented a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment with a dishwasher, brand new washer, brand new dryer and brand new microwave and a what they call they call a deck. The massive deck is about 3 feet wide and 7 1/2 feet long. I rented it for 15 months at the bargain price of $735.00 a month. The normal price for this is $810.00 a month. So right off the bat I am saving $140.00 a month on rent. It is at a place called the Gardens at Anthony House.
It is on the south eastern part of the city. When I head out of the complex I can be in downtown Greensboro in 10 minutes or so or I can head the the other way and am in the country in two minutes. It really is on the outside of the city. The place is only about two years old or so and they are actually still building. It will do until I get some cash saved and get the area figured out then I will rent a house. You can get some great deals outside of town by just driving 20 or 30 minutes from the city.

I need to find a mover in a hurry. They want me to start on the 11th. They are shorthanded due to some people being sick and business has been good. Looks like I will jumping right into the fire. Hopefully I can get a mover on such quick notice.

Will need to get an oil change in the truck, have the small tire leak patched, and have it given the once over before I move. Not sure how it will like the cold weather.

Should be done with most packing today or tomorrow. Will leave the computer and tv till the end. The computer is one of the things going with me along with my camera and all the cd's with my picture.

More to follow soon.

Happy New Year.