Weekend Thoughts for 2/7/10

The Super Bowl was a really good game last night, and congrats to the Saints for winning. Undoubtedly, the party down in the Big Easy will continue for a few days, running into Mardi Gras next week potentially.

Some thoughts from this weekend:

• Commercials during the Super Bowl weren't bad, but it seemed to me like every segment had a Bud commercial. Probably would have been better off for everyone if they would invest that money in improving the taste of their beer as opposed to advertising it. 
• The Volkswagen commercial with Stevie Wonder was pretty funny too.
• It's supposed to snow here in Murray again this week, and I'm a bit over it. It doesn't snow a lot, but it does seem to bring a large portion of the city to a stand-still in spite of this fact.
• Anytime there is going to be a fair amount of snow, everyone here in town (and apparently all over the South as well) stocks up on three things: Bread, milk, and eggs. I'm not entirely sure where these three items came from on this topic, as I am used to earthquake preparedness, which is water and canned goods.

We have locked in our next assignment: Savannah, GA. It's a really good size city (over 100K in population), and has quite a bit of history to it as well. Savannah is located right on the Atlantic coast of Georgia, with a lot of other destinations nearby:

• Atlanta - 4 hours
• Jacksonville, FL - 2 hours
• Charleston, SC - 4 hours
• Charlotte, NC - 4 hours
• Orlando, FL - 4 hours

The city really should be interesting, as we are both really big history buffs. And Paula Deen is there too! More excellent food :) We will be there from the first week of March until late June (hopefully anyway!)

Weekend Thoughts - 1/31/2010

Well, as many of you probably saw on the news, the Southeast was hit with a pretty good size snowstorm on Friday. Initially expected to hit overnight between Thursday and Friday, it didn't really start snowing until mid-day Friday. And then it just kept on snowing. When we woke up on Saturday morning, it had gotten to somewhere between 8-10" of snow.

We also had some friends visit over the weekend, getting into town before the snowstorm hit. All in all, a very fun weekend. You've got Brynn and Audrey feeding the giant cow outside of Sirloin Stockade here. (It wasn't quite as hungry as you would think a cow that size would be.)

The state of Kentucky and all the local groups did very well with clearing the roads of snow, so we actually took them around a bit of western Kentucky and southern Illinois. Right across the border from Paducah, KY is Metropolis, IL. The town of Metropolis is best known for being the home of Superman. So they have gone for it, with a Superman museum and a statue in one of the town's squares.

Strangely, this statue (which is about 25 feet tall), is not even the tallest statue in this town. There is a giant statue (probably about 50-55 feet tall) in front of a grocery store of a giant grocery clerk. It was a bit strange to see actually.

Metropolis is also home to a riverboat casino (Harrah's), which was fairly standard of a casino. (Also got $20 of our money as well, so definitely a standard casino).

We also made our way back to Paris, TN, in search of their Eiffel Tower that we had heard about. After a bit of searching (and following the signs), we did find the Tower in a park in the center of town. It was not nearly tall enough to be seen from anywhere else in town, which wasn't really a surprise. The town is hilly, and the park was in one of the small valleys of the town.

All in all, a very fun weekend for everybody, in spite of the snow.

Weekend Thoughts for 1/9/2010

I had hoped to go out and explore Murray and its surrounding areas this week, since we're back from the holidays and there was not going to be any rain or snow until Thursday. Well, cold is officially a weather condition in my book now. All week, the temperature has not gone above 25 degrees, dropping below 10 on numerous occasions.

When we read that the average weather for Murray was going to be similar to California's for winter, we were looking forward to the fact that we weren't going to be in an area that was super cold, or that would get a ton of snow. This nice Arctic front has decided otherwise. On to some thoughts...

• I am amazed at how much money I save at Walmart. I've written before how I know understand why people like it so much, but it is still a surprise to me when I go shopping.
• I just finished reading a really good book about the history of In-n-Out Burger. An excellent read, both for the topic and in general. You can find it here. 
• It snowed here on Thursday, as a part of that wonderful Arctic front. We got about 1-2", at most. In Kentucky, this causes the cancellation of schools everywhere. And the ice related to it on the following day does the same thing. It was an interesting process to watch. But they were definitely ready for it. 
• RC Cola is much more popular down here than anywhere else I have ever lived. Which is wonderful. And Walmart had another version: Cherry RC. Which is also wonderful.
• We had Kentucky Fried Chicken a few days ago. Which tastes pretty much the same here in Kentucky that it does anywhere else we have been. And no, the sign does not say "Fried Chicken" outside the place.
  

Part of the way I've been staying busy since arriving in Kentucky is to write. Since there hasn't really been a whole lot to write about here yet due to this lovely weather, I've actually been writing a second blog about baseball. You can find it here if you're interested.

Weekend Thoughts for 12/20/09

We've been in Murray for about a week now, and we've just begun to explore.

• There is no Starbucks here. Which is excellent. Fidalgo Bay Coffee is better. The locals all swear by it, to the point where they actually have a setup in the hospital Brynn's working at.
• Hardee's IS NOT the same as Carl's Jr. It was truly disappointing when we went in and found no Western Bacon Cheeseburger to order. A Thickburger is not the same thing. Period.
• They are not kidding about Southern Hospitality. Everyone we have met has been extremely nice and welcoming. 
• The city, while highly intertwined with the university, almost has a feel like the college is hardly there. It remains to be seen if this is related to the fact that they are not in session right now.
• We are less than 20 minutes to Tennessee, we found. And we've even had wine in Tennessee as well already.
• If I haven't mentioned it before, Murray is situated in a dry county. That means only alcohol can be served at restaurants larger than 100 seating capacity, in this case.
• As a result of being a dry county, when you cross into Tennessee, and the non-dry county that is the first over the border, they know you can't get alcohol in Kentucky, and advertise that they are the first stop for alcohol on that side of the line.

We are both looking forward to being home next week for Christmas, and spending time with our family and friends back home.

Weekend Thoughts - 11/29/09

It is our last full weekend here in Michigan, and we were pleasantly surprised to get nice weather. Sunny, in the 50s. So we decided to do some more exploring in our surrounding area.

• Fenn Valley Winery makes some very good wine. Specifically, their Lakeshore Red, Capriccio, and 42 Ice Wine were all very good.
• The city of Saugatuck offers horse-drawn carriage rides on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• Within the city limits of Saugatuck is the ghost town of Singapore, Michigan. It is actually a pretty interesting story about it.
• Hercules' Hot Dogs in Saugatuck makes one of the best chili fries I have ever had. I was very pleasantly surprised.
• Hopcat Brewery in Grand Rapids has quite a selection of beers on tap, including one of the best I've ever had: Maudite, by Unibroue (Montreal)
• Founders Brewery in Grand Rapids also makes some very good beers as well.

I'm hoping to finish up a post reviewing our time here in South Haven later this week.

Weekend Thoughts for 11/1/09

So, among the number of things that I figured I would experience while here in Michigan, I did not include large dead animals in the road. While coming home on Friday night, we were driving on a 2 lane road. As we crossed over the top of a small hill, shortly on the other side was a full sized deer carcass in the middle of our lane. At this point, we have three choices, none of which were particularly good: Swerve to the right, and potentially go into a ditch. Swerve to the left, and possibly get into a head-on collision. Try to pass over the carcass straight on, and hope nothing too bad happens. We chose option #3. The car is fine (or so it seems anyway), we are fine. The car is going to be checked out later this week to be sure, but other than the fact that even after a wash (with a full undercarriage), it still smells like dead deer at times. Hopefully when we take it in, they will find nothing wrong or potentially to happen later either.

Some other observations from this week...

• We had our fair share of trick-or-treaters last night, and went through 7 bags of candy! At one point, we had gone through 5 bags in a little over an hour, so we had to get 2 more. I think it's possible we may have needed more, but since it was dark and we turned off the light.
• Best costumes from last night: A family dressed as Mario (Dad), The Princess (Mom), and Luigi (Son).
  
• It was refreshing to see only children trick-or-treating. As I've gotten older, I have come to have more of a problem with teenagers (or older) doing a lot of trick-or-treating. But that probably stems from the most common costumes I get from teenagers: "I'm a high school student", "I'm a teenager", etc. It's one thing to go around with your younger brother/sister/cousin, etc. But if you're 16 or 17, running around without even attempting a costume, and collecting candy because you want free candy, that doesn't fly with me.
• The other thing which I hadn't really seen before was this: Most of the parents were following their kids around in their cars. When the kids would reach the end of the street, they would get back in the car and drive to the next street. I'm not sure if this is because it was fairly cold here, or if it was because there were distinct possibilities that a majority of houses would not be passing out candy, but it was different for sure.
  
• When we gave candy to one group of kids, Brynn noticed that they had toothbrushes in their bags. Apparently one of the local dentists was giving out candy AND tootbrushes to all his trick-or-treaters. Awesome.
• We went to Kalamazoo on Friday night to try out a brewery with one of Brynn's co-worker. We went to the Olde Peninsula Brewpub, which unfortunately does not have a website of their own. So here's their group on Facebook, for those that are interested. The food was excellent, and their beers weren't bad, but it was hard to tell since the one we really wanted to try was not available at this time.
• It was surprising how enjoyable it is to just walk around and browse in a bookstore. We were in Barnes and Noble, and actually didn't buy anything. But it is a lot more fulfilling to browse in a bookstore than it is to look online. Although the prices are better online to be sure.
• We enjoyed half-price pizza night here at Maria's. We'd been there before, and the food had been good, so we couldn't pass up an $8 16" pizza with 2 toppings. And good quality pizza too. Seems somewhat unlikely to be found some of the other places we've lived before.
• We carved our pumpkins this week (and they'll disappear at the end of this week as well). It was actually the first time I had carved a pumpkin that I could remember. I'm told that I carved one before, but that I wasn't very appreciative of all the goop and mess that goes with it. I found that my opinion on that part of it hasn't changed, but that it was still a lot of fun.
• We were also told that we "did our pumpkins the old-fashioned way" by one of the trick-or-treaters. Apparently stencils are considered to be required to carve a pumpkin. At least according to 5th graders (my best guess).
  
• The Bears won today, which is good, because they needed to beat Cleveland, and beat them severely. They can't lose to bad teams if they want to do anything in January.
• Getting ready to watch the Packers/Vikings game, and Brynn's take pretty much summed up my opinion of it: "Brett Favre blah blah, Brett Favre blah blah blah..." Looks like he may win though, which is also not great. This would be a game where we would both love to have both teams get a loss, but alas, not possible...

Weekend Thoughts for 10/24/09

I am still adjusting to the concept of "weather". On Friday we had a blistering rain storm, with 20-30 mph winds. At least in the morning. Until it got sunny around 11 or so. At which point it stayed sunny for about 1-2 hours, before the rain returned (without the wind). Then around 3 or 4 the wind kicked back up too. Until about 5:30 when we went out and it had gone back to a sprinkle at most. I've lived in areas with storms before, but obviously nothing quite like these.

• It is amazing how much you take it for granted that you have access to services when you live in a city. Something as simple as getting a passport photo. When you're in a small town, it becomes much more clear that there are not necessarily a lot of places to get things done like this.
• Watching TV earlier, there was a commercial for a "breakthrough deodorant replacement". Never need to buy deodorant again, it claimed. And while it may or may not work, I find it a little unusual that the doctor who was speaking on behalf of it was Dr. Dave E. David. Can't make this stuff up.
• We went out exploring this morning, and decided to stop for breakfast in a restaurant in Douglas (about 20 minutes north). Our main reason for this choice at the time was that the parking lot seemed full. Well worth the stop. They had a breakfast buffet on weekends for $10 a person, with some of the best bacon we've ever had.
• From the placement advertising (a surprisingly good idea it seems), we found that there was an indoor flea market in Saugatuck, not far away. It was actually very interesting to go through. They had a large building (I think in this case it was a barn), in which they rented out small areas on a permanent basis to local people with stuff to sell. While it was interesting to see what some people valued things at (a lot of them a little too much), there wasn't a whole lot we thought would be worth buying.
• Also back in Douglas was the Saugatuck Brewing Company. They had some excellent beers and one of the best environments inside their bar that I've ever seen. Very cool place it seemed.
• Next door was an antique mall, and a rather large one at that. It is a bit unnerving to see things from your own childhood for sale in an antique mall. But some of the other cool things we saw included a Rand McNally map book with maps (or the book itself) from 1890, quite a few copies of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books, and a surprisingly large amount of stained glass. It was interesting, but it seems that some people had literally called old crap from their house as "antique". But if someone buys the stuff, then it doesn't really matter.
• The Bears play the Bengals tomorrow, and hopefully they're going to not suck like they did last week. I can handle them losing to teams that are better than them. What I can't handle is when they do stupid stuff that costs them during the game (like penalties and red-zone interceptions)

Related Posts:
Weekend Thoughts for 10/18/09
Weekend Thoughts for 10/5/09
Weekend Thoughts for 9/28/09

Weekend Thoughts for 10/10/09

We're still adjusting to the weather here, as the weatherman was nice enough to inform us that it was going to be unseasonably cold this weekend. He wasn't kidding. Sunday's high will be 45 degrees. 45! Geez!

• We went wine tasting here on Saturday, and I'll have a post up about that in the next few days.
• As we were driving on Friday night, we listened to the local radio station. They were broadcasting the local high school football game. It is Homecoming here, and since South Haven only has one high school, there are areas of the town that are very decorated. Unfortunately, they lost.
  
• Scanning their website, I found this little bit of interesting. I know I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention at the time, but even still that they can do this seems a bit shocking to me.
  
• I've come to the conclusion that I'll pay to have just this package of TV channels: The local channels, MLB, NFL, ESPN, HGTV, DIY, and the Fine Living Network (FLN). I can pretty much find something to watch on these channels at all times.
  
• That said, I'm wondering how long it will be until we can get more programming online than we can through the TV cables themselves. With Hulu, Fancast, and many of the TV channels' own websites, I can almost always find a program I want to see when I want to see it.
• We picked up pumpkins today! I'm told I am going to carve at least one of them, which is something I cannot remember ever doing. Should be interesting. Photos to follow hopefully (unless it really looks bad, at which point I'll deny it forever).
• The Bears are on a bye this week, and having looked at the rest of the schedule, I am glad there is playoff baseball on tomorrow. I can't find more than one or maybe two games that I remotely want to watch for the actual games, and not their impact on my fantasy football teams.

Weekend Thoughts

We spent the weekend in California for Dave and Audrey's wedding. It was a whirlwind weekend, and congrats to both of them on their marriage.

• Having lived in the Bay Area my whole life, it is a bit annoying having to drive 2+ hours to go to the airport. Yes, there are closer ones than Chicago-Midway, but if I have to fly from that airport to Chicago-Midway, why bother?
• We received our wedding photos over the weekend. It's going to take a while to get through all of them, since there is over 1500 of them. But Brynn posted some to Facebook, and I'm hoping to post a few in a future post here as well.
• I can't decide whether the toll roads in Illinois and Indiana are nice or annoying. They are very empty, very little traffic because of the tolls. But the majority of them have speed limits of either 45 or 55 mph, as opposed to freeways which may have up to 70 mph. Then the fact that the tolls are $.50, $1, and $.60 in some places, just seems really strange.
• I have only been gone from California driving for 2 weeks, and I can tell you I don't miss it. The drivers in general are unbelievably bad. I don't know how I put up with it for that long.
• While waiting in the airport in Oakland, this guy was hanging out waiting for his flight. Talk about a flashback. If you're not sure, this is why he's famous.
• It was a bit strange being in the office at work, especially since I'm fairly certain that will most likely be the last trip into the office as an employee. It was definitely good to see everyone though.
  

Sunday Thoughts

Thoughts while waiting for more football to come on...

• My Bears are 2-1. It has definitely not been pretty, and at points has been worth not watching simply because I could have a stroke watching them. But they are still 2-1, which is one more win than the reigning champs the Steelers. So I'll take it.
• I do enjoy playing fantasy football. That said, apparently I'm not very good at it. I spent the last 10 minutes before my lineup locked looking at 2 different sets of players, and decided to go with conventional wisdom with who I left in my lineup. Guess which ones did better. Someday I'll get these right.
• As we have watched a fair amount of television since we have gotten here, we have found a couple of shows we are really enjoying: Property Virgins, House Hunters, and generally just a lot more of this channel. Guess we are really enjoying the thought of owning a home someday. I know I look forward to that someday.
  
• I've found that tv channels with similar programming will have similar commercials. That said, if I needed hair coloring anytime soon, Just for Men will NOT be getting my business. They have two fairly new commercials, both of which are just creepy. And apparently all sports are their best demographic, since they are on almost every channel I watch.

I'm hoping to put up a pair of posts about my adjustment to working from home this week.

Saturday Thoughts

It is amazing to me how fast a person can adapt to their new surroundings. We have been in South Haven for slightly more than a week now, and there are little things that I am already taking for granted.

• When we came back in from running errands today, I forgot to lock the car. My hands were full of bags from the errands, and it must have slipped my mind. About 2 hours later, I was walking by the door to the car, and wondered if I had locked it. I checked, and then locked the car. In our last apartment, I would have been concerned about 2 minutes after I got out of the car, if not sooner. Apparently I feel safer in this house than I did in the last one. (Not a huge surprise there).
• I am watching a San Francisco Giants home game on tv today, which started at 1 PM local. Which is 4 PM here. Yet in my brain I am convinced that it is still early afternoon, and that I should be hungry for lunch, and not dinner. I assume this has more to do with the outside light level than anything.
  
• We ventured down to the mall in Benton Harbor earlier today. This was a tad bit depressing. About every 3rd store front was either closed, or vacated entirely. I think we are getting a better idea of how the downturned economy is affecting people. We were in a bit of a bubble living in the Bay Area, as I cannot honestly remember seeing very many empty stores at our nearby malls there.
• As we drove through other parts of Benton Harbor, we came to the conclusion that the town had been hit very hard by the economy. I haven't really ever seen houses boarded up and abandoned. But here they were, every few blocks or so. As we continued through town, we determined it was time to leave. Just did not feel very safe in the part of town we were in.
• I am very interested to see what South Haven is going to be like come November. Nearly every sign we have passed for a tourist-type attraction has stated that it closes on October 30th, and will reopen on April 15th.
• I had this theory when we arrived that if we had a few of the premium movie channels on our satellite TV, that we wouldn't need or want Netflix because the movie channels would offer us so many recent movies. They appear to have been offering them, but the thing I forgot is that there's no accounting for taste necessarily. While it appears to be an interesting movie, I am not really in the mood to see Wanted, but that's my option tonight.