Monday, January 11, 2010

Dinner and other things bike.

So, my family and I headed out for a bite tonight at a local burger and ice cream joint called "Georgie Porgies". The reason we're heading out on a Monday night, when Maddie had piano, Beck and I both worked all day, and we had a mess of stuff to do? Well, there was a good reason for the bad food and bid old dish of hot fudge and carmel sundae- I mean this place should be on the Food Network show, "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives", you seen this? Anyways, a percentage of the proceeds from the sales tonight went to the St Rita School 8th graders field trip to Washington D.C. Yeah, this is where we send our kids, and in a few more years, it will be my oldest daughter's turn to make the pilgrimage to our nation's capital. And she asked me tonight if I'd volunteer to go on the trip with her class-of course I said YES! I love DC, and I'd love to chaperon the class trip. What a blast, but man, are the kids growing up fast!

On the DC note, my buddy Dennis called me tonight (after he stopped at Porgie's during work and we chatted) and asked about DC. He wanted to know if I wanted to head back out to ride the short fundraiser three day bike ride from Chesapeake Virginia to DC. Well, first he texted me, then he said to call him, which I did. 2009 was his first year going to DC for the bike ride, and we had a blast. So I think he wants to really go back out again. This would be my forth year in a row, it is a blast and I've made many good friends out East. I simply cannot do the long ride from (this year) Georgia to DC-my oldest has her first holy communion the first week of May, and I cannot miss this! But the three day ride, I could probably swing it, if I wanted to. I've got the Vac time to go, as a matter of fact, I just figured my vacation time we have scheduled, and I still have six days left after taking time off for three vacs for 2010. The training does not concern me, it's only 240 miles or so, but I've done no fundraising or prep for the ride this year. Hmmm...maybe Goal #4 for the year??

So, I told my buddy I'd think about it, and I will talk more about it with him this weekend. As a matter of fact, this weekend is our (???th) annual holiday gathering of friends from days of old; seriously, it is probably the 9th or 10th year straight we've done a "holiday" gathering of friends, most of whom date back with me to at least middle school-and some of these guys I've know since 3rd grade whne I moved into the old neighborhood! And no, we are not trying to avoid offending anyone by calling it a "holiday" party, it's just usually held after Christmas and the first of the year, so holiday sounds better. And yeah, this party usually gets pretty much off the hook crazy (last year's was WILD), so I will post on it after I recover.

AND, speaking of vacations, looky looky...

Milwaukee (MKE) to Chicago (ORD) 02/04/10 11:20 AM - 12:10 PM American Airlines 4166 Operated By: AMERICAN EAGLE COMMUTER SERVICE/AMERICAN EAGLE
Chicago (ORD) to New Orleans (Louis Armstrong New Orleans Intl.) 02/04/10 2:15 PM - 4:35 PM American Airlines 1584


Yeah, in just over three weeks, Beck and I are heading to New Orleans for vacation #1 of 2010 (no kids this trip, sorry girls!). We just need to catch a cab from NO Int'l to Jackson Square, where we'll spend four nights in Beck's Aunt Lisa and Uncle Ron's condo (thanks guys!), they will drive down after work to hook up and we'll hit the town for eats and drinks! It is awesome-we're staying within walking distance of most everything we need to see, drink or eat. With the exception of the WWII museum and possibly a tour of St Louis I and II cemetaries. The last time down, we had a local "guide" give us a walking tour of Lafayette Cemetary, which is famous for having been used in, "Interview with a Vampire", with Tom Cruise some years back. Let me check one of my external HDs for some of the pics, (it was awesome, as if I don't sound excited enough!) the hardest part of finding some of my older pics is locating them on my HDs (last count I had well over 10,000 images, now probably closer to 15k or more).
Oh, and some of the really good pics were converted to Tiff files, which BTW, are HUGE and take forever to load...so I had to go dig for some simple jpeg formated ones, but here:



Check this out, an actual tomb where they stack the, well, you get it...

Street performers:

Lisa and Beck, circa 2004 in NOLA:



Ahh, got to love NO. I'm hoping to be able to squeeze my good camera kit in on my carry-on, I want to snap a few thousand pics from this trip. And I hope to find a decent enough image to blow up to poster size, like 20 X 30 for our wall. This will be our first post-Katrina trip; I'm looking forward to seeing the differences down there now, and how the recovery is going (or lacking). It will be nice to get back to the Big Easy, and to hang with Big Ron and Lisa, for sure. We've been away far too long!

2 comments:

  1. ya gotta love new orleans. kelley thinks the devil lives there. ya gonna have a blast! who dat tinks dey gonna beat dem saints?

    the 3 day bike trip will be fun too. i say go for it.

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  2. Thanks for stopping by my blog!! I'll spend some time catching up on some of your posts! :)

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