Spring Break at Tybee

Kathy, Kelly, and Claire headed down to Tybee Island for Spring Break. I caught up with them on Wednesday after helping Mom out with some financial and household things. The back half was much better weather than the front half, so that worked out well for me.

We enjoyed staying “downtown” in one of the condos on 17th street. We had a view of the water from our porch. We could walk to all the happenings, including a wedding on the pier. There were lots of people, but Kathy and I enjoy all that comes with that, including our new friend the Coor’s pirate who set up a pirate flag, waved it at passing helicopters, played reggae music on a giant boombox, made fun of our sand castle critter, and just could not believe that Coor’s made Killian’s Red.

The water was too chilly, but that never stops Claire. Unfortunately she cut her foot on some barnacle shells climbing on the jetty. Now she knows why it says “DANGER KEEP OFF JETTY.” But it didn’t slow her down too much.

Kelly felt ill one day but snapped back the next. Photos in the Stonegate gallery.

The Waves and Ripples of Dan Cashin

[Jeb’s Witness at DJC Sr Funeral the day after Easter 3-24-2008.]

Thank you all for coming today. Your presence here, at the Rosary, and over the past Easter weekend have meant so much to my Mom and our family.

My father always enjoyed a Richard Lopez sermon—short and to the point. In that spirit, I cut this in half.

My Dad did not raise me to correct a priest, so Father Paul, this isn’t a correction so much as a question. Father Paul told us all that we do not have to worry about my father making it to heaven. My brothers and sister were talking about that earlier, and I’m not saying we’re worried. There’s just a question.

It’s now 12:08. Exactly seventy-two hours ago, my brother and I were on the golf course with my Dad. He was handily out-driving, out-chipping, and out-putting both of us on a beautiful Good Friday. I tell you that because my brothers and sister are not sure that 72 hours is enough time for Dad to finish comparing notes with St. Peter at the pearly gates. If not, he’ll be in heaven soon enough.

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Sunday Morning Bird Talk

Conversation at the kitchen table. Kathy reading the paper. Jeb working on the church website. Bright red Cardinal visits birdfeeder outside kitchen window.

K: He’s a short one.

J: Cardinals are just finches with long tails. We should catch a boy one and a girl one and keep them as pets.

K: They would make a mess.

J: Did you ever go to Laura B—–‘s house and see her mom’s finches?

K: Yeh, I remember that.

J: It was enclosed, so that helped solve some of the mess.

K: I still bet it was a mess to clean up.

(Pause.)

J: But she was used to cleaning up after birds.

K: Yeh. (Grin.)

Homecoming Weekend

It felt a little like homecoming weekend with Gramalie and Grandad returning to Tucker, Danny up for the weekend, and Nicole in for the day Saturday. And in a complex exchange, a hitch-hiking frog will travel from Florida to Georgia to Alabama.

Nicole, Kathy, and I went to watch Claire play soccer Saturday morning while Danny and Kelly slept in. Unfortunately Claire’s asthma kicked in early after several sprints up and down the field, so it was a short game for her.

Kathy and Nicole dressed up and headed out to cousin Andrew’s wedding shower. Danny and I converged over at Gramalie and Grandad’s with Ted to welcome them home and get their computing equipment updated. I brought the Flower Power iMac that Fionna passed down to Grandad. I had performed a brain transplant (hard disk) from the Blue iMac with a bad power supply. Ted brought over a memory upgrade for Mom’s laptop. And we all took a look at the HP desktop that Patsy sold them. It will be good to get Dad’s documents all migrated over to a “this century” computer. For example, he’ll go from a full 10 Gig hard disk to a spacious 250 Gig drive. He likes the “TV” on the HP, which is what he calls the flat panel monitor.

Ted copied all of the original FOPAB editions that he had scanned into PDFs onto Mom’s laptop. Dad spent some time opening those and reading them, which he thought was amazing.

I showed him the “history” files that I was loading into MediaWiki (like Wikipedia), and he read a few of those.

Saturday night, the six Stonegaters had a nice dinner together, and then played a round of Apples-To-Apples. Danny reported this was one of the more even rounds we had ever played, everyone getting a good share of wins. Once again I won overall (not sure why), so the group focused on who could come in second. Kelly took second place with much delight.

Nicole headed back home Saturday night, so she was unable to join us for a big breakfast at Killian Hall put on by the Knights of Columbus Sunday morning. We then headed over for church. We were asked to bring up the gifts… probably because we were all dressed up pretty nice, although I was out parking the car when we were selected. Beautiful sunny day and a fine homecoming weekend.

About the frog… Gramalie discovered a white tree frog hiding in a potted plant she brought up from Florida. Danny and I took the plant and frog home to figure out what to do with it. The frog had stayed crouched in the dirt all the way up from Florida to Tucker. But as soon as Danny stepped into our garage, he jumped out, through the VW’s open wheels, and climbed up to hide on the rear axle. Stout was very excited about all of this. Danny finally caught the frog. We put him in a plastic container, and Danny will take him down to Mobile where the weather is more Florida like. Gramalie has a picture of the frog. Perhaps she will post.

Miss America 2008 Video – A Hit

Kelly and Claire have about 20 different videos in various stages of production. They finished one up a couple of weekends ago and named it Miss America 2008. They asked me to upload it to YouTube. I do not necessarily recommend this video for adults… or future employers… but something funny happened.

I uploaded the video on Saturday night. I had to travel and left midday Sunday. I got an e-mail from Claire that their video had already been viewed 200 times and the count was climbing fast. (Many of their videos have only been viewed 30 or 40 times.) I just checked and, they have passed 2,500 views. It turns out that same Saturday night (none of us realized it) the Miss America 2008 pageant was broadcast. Guess what phrase has been getting searches on YouTube?

If you are a kid, tolerant adult, and not a future employer of my daughters, take a look: Miss America 2008. I do recommend Backwards Girl and the Cow Puzzle.

Send Out The Clowns

Clown PosterI don’t know where this poster came from. Maybe a garage sale. But this giant clown face hung in Nicole and Danny’s room at Hancock Circle (as I recall) and terrified Nicole. Not sure if he terrified Danny.

Over the holidays we put out a lot of stuff for some charity that called and arranged for a pick up. We normally do this for the Kidney Foundation. This was someone else. They called the night before to confirm the pick up, and I did not like the way the guy sounded.

After the pick up, Kathy went out and found the clown poster folded up and thrown into the storm drain. If you recall the movie version of Steven King’s IT (the evil clown would peek out of a storm drain) it makes this guy all the more scarier.

Santa Spotted in Athens

DC as UPS Santa

This photo just came in over the wire. Santa was spotted in Athens trying to steer people into a nearby UPS. (Santa’s older sister got him a job over the holidays. She is even letting him stay in her house. Santa has a nice sister.)