Sunset on the Albemarle Sound taken from Colington Island, New Years Eve 2007

Happy New Year to all !!

It has been a nice holiday season for myself and my family. Christmas eve was spent at my house with just me and my boys. We had a great dinner and exchanged gifts, we enjoyed some family time together. The boys spent Christmas day with their father so I went on up to Virginia Beach and had dinner with my niece and her kids (their dad is deployed overseas this year). Mom is down in New Orleans with my brother and his wife. She is havening a good time being spoiled and visiting the casinos.

This year the holidays have been kinda bitter sweet because if all goes according to plan next year I will be in the mountains. I debated weather or not to give the boys there Christmas stockings, the ones they have had their whole lives, and decided to hold on to them along with the ornaments they have made for me through the years. While I know that I want to move to the mountains, I feel so at peace there, I also know that come the holidays I will miss my family and friends here at the beach

Right now the dogs and I are just sitting around watching the rain, (the cat went outside, dumb cat) I guess that I need to start cleaning things up. I like to take my time taking down the holiday decoration and I hate taking the tree down its so pretty, but I need to pull the boxes back out from under the house eves and go ahead and store the wrapping paper and bows you know just get things started.

I hope all have had a good holiday season and are looking forward to the New Year, I know I have and am.

These photos do not do this gift to the folks of the Outer Banks justice.

I had a few of my niece’s kids down this week and we took a trip to the Poulos house to look at the Christmas lights. Mr. Poulos works hard on this every year and it is a real treat for the folks of the Outer Banks especially the small children.

I finally started wrapping Christmas presents. It has taken me a while to get into the spirit this year, I don’t know it just hasn’t felt like Christmas, but I have started watching my Christmas movies, you know the classics “Die Hard”, “Leathel Wepon”, “Christmas Vacation”, and “It’s a Wonderful Life” just to name a few, to get me in the mood and it seems to be working. I will be icing cakes tonight and delivering them tomorrow, that always make me feel good.

Well off to the wrapping paper and tape.

This is my dog Zeke lying on his blanket surrounded by his favorite toys at the foot of my chair near the computer. Now sad to say Zeke is not the sharpest tool in the shed and this morning while I was listening to a CPR video with the head phones on so as not to disturbed the #3 son Zeke started to emit a low growl. Well I looked up and peeked out the window just to make sure no one was coming up the steps and told him to be quiet, well not a minute latter he sat up and started to bark at me. It took a moment for me to figure it out but the dog had heard the instructor talking through the head phones and was freaking out. Trip the girl dog just looked up raised an eyebrow as to say “you dumb dog” and went back to sleep. Dogs ya gotta love em

photo of the boys and 1 girl paint ball Friday after Thanksgiving.

Its another nice day on the banks and I have been spending it just lazying around, surfing the net and catching up on some reading. The net is an interesting ride, I started out reading my e-mail then landed at the Delta airline web site, from there I went checking on some Jeep stuff, then to the writers strike and the price of oil, from there I cruised on over to info on the prime rate, then I found this interesting video while looking up Outer Banks real estate info. It has noting to do with real estate and I hope you smile and shake your head like I did.

YouTube - AppleIraq

Well as usual I have been keeping quite busy. The weather here on the Banks is just too good to stay in so between work and the great outdoors I just haven’t had time to blog.

The new house project is taking up a lot of time also and its amazing to me how much time getting nothing done can take. I’m chalking it up to the Holidays and am hoping that after the first of the year things will start moving again. Of course in all honesty my house building budget is very limited and I think builders look at it and laugh. I am looking into modular homes now and if that does not pan out I’m going to take my sons and a few of their friends up in June or July and just build the dam thing myself. All I want is a small cabin with 1 bedroom and a loft!!!! Cheese and crackers how hard can that be!!

Well I’m off I’ve caught the stomach flu. I seem to have peaks and valleys in the feeling good thing and right now and I seem to be heading to a valley. What a waste of a really nice day. :-)

It’s been a while since I have written in my blogg. It’s the 4^th of December, the end of the year and I can hardly believe it. November flew by. It’s hard to believe that just over a week ago was Thanksgiving and my family and I were together in Pennsylvania. In November I also took a short trip to Norfolk to visit my sister while she was visiting her daughter and grandchildren. In the beginning of November I took a quick trip to the mountains to get things started on the “build a mountain home” adventure. November was a travel month for me; I hope December becomes the stay at home month although on the 15th I do have to go to Norfolk, mom is flying to New Orleans to be with my brother and his wife and Christmas day will be spent in Norfolk with my niece and her kids.

Well it is promising to be a typical winter day here on the Outer Banks, I spent yesterday afternoon bringing the plants in preparation for the front that came through with strong winds and cool temperatures. This morning there is a stiff wind with temperatures in the 40’s. The skies are overcast but that promises to change. It should be a nice cool, windy day, a day perfect for curling up with a hot cup of coffee or tea and a long neglected magazine or two.

It started as a dreary day here on the Outer Banks. We woke up to a warm foggy morning. The humidity was high, the ground wet with dew. The warm weather is forecasted to last through thanksgiving. Many would be happy with the warm temps but to be quite honest I prefer it to be cooler this time of year. I want to stuff myself on a big thanksgiving meal and when its warm out side I just can’t do that (comfortably).

The boys, my mom, and I are going to Pennsylvania this year for Thanksgiving. We will be visiting family there. We will be traveling in two vehicles because this is where having a Wrangler gets to be a bit tight. You see there is no way 5 people are fitting in that Jeep! This trip will also be interesting in that I will be hauling a trailer, my mom uses an electric scooter and that’s coming with us. I cant seem to get the hang of backing the thing up so I always pull into where ever I’m going, unhitch the trailer and manually push the thing to wherever it needs to go. The boys don’t know I cant back a trailer so it will be one more piece of fuel for the laugh at mom fire. Oh well that’s what moms are for.

We will be packing a lot into 2 days. Thursday is Thanks giving dinner and Friday is a trip to the Pocono’s for some and paintball for others and then dinner with family and friends. We will be returning to the Banks on Saturday tired and stuffed. Oh the holidays!!

I hope all who read this have a happy November 22, no matter what country you are from!!!

I already posted a fall lovers leap photo but I think this composite is nice so here it is.

Lovers Leap on hwy 58 in Virginia

early morning last week in the mountains

and now the beach

It is hard to believe that it has been two weeks since my last post. I have been to the mountains and back and am getting ready to head on up to PA for a nice Family Thanksgiving (think national lampoon) the trip home is always an adventure I love it!!!). It seems that the slower I hope my life will become the busier I get.

The trip to the mountains was very productive. I still do not have a builder, I want two estimates thats that, but I have a septic system plan and someone to put it in!!!!!

Well I'm off to Virginia Beach to see my sister. She is up from Pensacola to visit her daughter and grand kids. like I said the slower I want things to be the busier I get.

I woke up this morning to the whine of the dogs; you see they don’t know that there has been a change in time. I looked at red glowing numbers on my clock (6:27) and then at the stream of light filtering through my heavy duty drapes and thought thank god I did not have to work last night because those folks have another hour to go. The time change is hard enough for those of us that were able to sleep through it but imagine going to work at 7pm you putt along doing your job and before you know it 1 am comes along and you think to yourself “half the shift is over” but wait it's time change time so when 2 am comes along it’s 1am again. To actually work through the time change is not fun. When morning comes along you just want to go home, unfortunately anything can happen and you might just have to stay a little longer. Night shift is hard and the time change doesn’t make it any easier.

We had been feeling the effects of hurricane Noel here on the Outer Banks for the past few days with dreary gray sky's and a stiff wind, but today the sky's are bright the wind calm. It will be a good day to take the boys and girls (dogs) out for a run, but first at least two cups of coffee!

I sent copies of my mountain home plans to some builders the beginning of last week and I am anxiously awaiting their reply. I have to go up for some business this next week (weather permitting) it would be nice to chat with one of them while I’m up there. Building a house is like having a baby. You find out you are going to do it and then go around getting everything in place and then wait for the mile stones and sometimes that takes a while.

We have had a change in the weather here on the Banks. This weekend we got some much needed rain followed by some not so needed wind. I'm tempted to bring in the plants but its calling for temps in the 70's by weeks end and the night time temps are still in the upper 50's to 60's. I just can’t cut those mandevillas yet, they are so happy right now.

I have been spending a lot of time getting mountain home "packages" together for the builders. I’m hoping to get at least two bids to choose from. I have found three builders that come highly recommended but no matter who I choose most likely no one will be able to start until the spring so its going to be a hurry up and wait kinda thing which is fine with me. Once the house is closed in I need to be up there to get the inside work done. There is going to be a lot of sweat equity in this house.

I haven't had much time to write lately you see I have decided to go on a head and build my mountain home and that has been keeping me kinda busy. I have a very strict budget so I doubt I will be able to have my "Dream" home but it HAS to be paid for free and clear and that requires a LOT of "home" work. I also want my home to be passive solar so I have decided to place it against and into the hill side, a modified burm home. the drawings above are my renderings of the homes elevations. I know they will require modification after all I'm not an architect or engineer but this does let me relate to others how I want it to look. I will be starting a new blog that will document this adventure. My my my what have I got myself into... cant wait to get that first stake in the ground marking the foot print!!

I just got back from a trip to the mountains. It was more of a business trip than anything else.
This is a photo of where the new house will be. I'm looking for a builder now. I hope to break ground by the first of the year. aye ....

I discovered a nice little restaurant outside of Willis Va on 221 called Dino's Greek Hillbilly restaurant. They had some of the best peta bread I have had outside of Philly, I believe it was home made. The gyro was great and Rosa one of the owners and Tina the waitress were both very nice. Along with great Greek food they also serve traditional US and Mexican foods. Check it out if you are over that way.

Nice composite shot of "Lovers Leap" off hwy 58

These two shots are of a lake out side of Clarksville Va I have been going this way for a long time and I have never seen the bottom of this lake before. Not good.

Nice morning for a walk on the beach. Nuff said!

It was an exhausting weekend at work. Columbus day weekend is one of the weekends that a lot of owners come down and check out their properties so while staff is down to winter levels it feels a busy as summer. I guess at 48 I just don’t have the stamina I once had and 12 hours running 2 days in a row just wore me out.

Today is a bit warm for my tastes. 82 degrees on October 8^th is just not “natural”, tomorrow it’s predicted to be around 88. I have been spending the day inside just doing little things and watching Modern Marvels on the history channel. They had a very interesting program on sugar that dealt with among other things ethanol in hybrid cars. It seems that back in the 70’s Brazil after feeling the pinch of the oil embargo mandated the use of bio-fuel. Brazil is now only 10% dependent on foreign fuel. Imagine where we the United States could be now if we had learned from the experiences of the 70’s and really did something about our use of fossil fuels instead of returning to our wasteful ways when the oil “crisis” was over.

Fishing on the Outer Banks

All the plants on my deck are happy, my Bougainvillea is finally flowering. It is unusual for it to start flowering so late normally it flowers all season long

Its nice on the Outer Banks and it has been nice for the last few weeks, very mild temperatures and only the occasional rain shower and while we could use more of the rain visitors to the Banks have to be liking life.

I’ve been taking things slow, enjoying some down time and piddling around in the yard. Next week I’m off to the mountains. I’m hoping to see some color but NOW I’m hearing that the color may be later than usual. Go figure. I hope weather up there is good I would love to ride on the parkway with the Jeep top down.

Presbyopia (old mans eyes)

Today I was working in the basement just cleaning things up when it occurred to me that I could not see worth a damn. Yesterday while doing yard work in the bright sun I had no difficulty seeing; of course I wasn’t doing any detailed work just cleaning out the shed and yard. Today’s work is being done inside on a rainy day and involves the use of tools such as screwdrivers, saws and hammers and the plain truth is I can not see what I am doing clearly. I noticed this indoor seeing discrepancy way back in June while at work, I had picked up a medication bottle and while I could easily read the name of the med (with my arms fully extended) I could not read the fine print even with my over-the-counter reading glasses. The time had come to get an eye exam. I went to the doctor took the exam and informed him that I had no problem with my far distance sight but that I was having difficulty with reading close up and the computer screen. He told me that I did have problems with my far distance sight and that I needed trifocal glasses. Humph…..

So ever since I got those stupid glasses I have come to realize more and more that weather I like it or not I “may” need to wear my glasses just about all the time, unless of course it is a bright sunny day and I’m out side doing something that is not all that detailed or important.

mountain top mining

I was tooling around the blogs tonight, haven’t been able to do that much lately and wound up spending quite a bit of time at Fred Firsts blog “Nameless Creek” well you see Fred goes on these tangents, bird flu, water conservation and now he’s up in arms about folks blowing the tops off mountains for coal, give these two entries a few minutes of your time I think you will find them enlightening http://namelesscreek.blogspot.com/2007/08/no-more-high-places-forever.html

http://namelesscreek.blogspot.com/2007/08/stop-banking-on-coal.html

then check out this you tube site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziuFW-7h1LM

then for a better understanding of what exactly is being done to these mountains check out this site http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/steps.php