Rocks on the bank of Little River
May 5, 2009
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
(photo gallery)

While we were on our trip in May, we watched almost no television.

While we’ve watched a bit more television since we got home, for me it’s been primarily limited to a half hour of local news and a half hour of national news in the evening. Karen watches a little bit more, but she’s not even watching her one soap on a daily basis.

We’ve had satellite television forever, it seems.  We bought one of those big systems back in the 80s back when everything could be snatched out of the air for free.

Whenever it’s been available, we’ve always had premium movie networks, starting the first time we had cable TV.

The reason we went with satellite way-back-when was that cable was not available where we live and wouldn’t be “for a long time, if ever.”

The movie package we had for a long time was HBO/Cinemax.  Then, a couple of years ago, we went with “all” available premium movie channels, and, then later dropped HBO/Cinemax.  But we still had all of the rest — and we had the maximum package of other channels, over 250, most of which don’t have anything on that we’d be interested in, if we were interested in watching TV.

With our current viewing habits, that just doesn’t make sense, does it?

During the period of time that we had all of the movie channels, I recorded quite a few movies and most of them have yet to be watched. If we want to watch a movie, we have plenty to watch — or we can just rent one.

Time that we used to spend watching television is now used for other things.

It only made sense to stop wasting money on something we don’t use.  We don’t get network TV here without the satellite receiver, so we needed to maintain at least minimum service.

Earlier in the week, I canceled all of our premium movie channels and dropped the number of channels we get from over 250 to just over 100.

It cut the monthly bill in half.

I guess it’s something we should have done long ago.  Maybe we need to check to see if they “ever” brought cable out our way.

Do you have cable or satellite TV?  If so, do you use all of the services that you are paying for?

Day 7

Started November 1, 2008:  285.6 lbs

Last week = 277 lbs.

This week = 275 lbs.

4 lbs over the 2 weeks of the holidays!

See other participants’ results at Blog to Fit – Wednesday Weigh-In.

Safety moment:

While exercise is an important component of health and fitness, doing it safely is also important.  Unusual exertion when the body is not used to it can be dangerous. If you’re not used to exercise, it may be prudent to start slowly and, possibly, consult with a physician or exercise specialist.

Proper exercise and use of exercise/weight equipment is also important.

Unfortunately, on New Year’s Day, one of my former students and, later, department manager, had a tragic accident in his home when he was benchpressing alone.  He was 49 years old and was alway fit and in shape.

Be safe while you get fit.

photo by Seth W.

I had to take it under my tongue — and boy does it taste crappy!

I’ve got a dentist appointment in less than an hour — to have a tooth “surgically extracted” plus some other work.

I’m not very good about going to the dentist.   It used to be a lot worse. I really hated going and I would put it off until I really had to.

However, the guy I’m going to now is pretty good.  You see, he caters to “dental cowards.”

I have a prescription for xanax for appointments — one tablet the night before and another (under the tongue) an hour before the appointments to reduce my dental anxiety.

Then at the office I get gas before the novacaine.  I usually don’t feel much until it’s all over.

When I was a kid, I think I only went to the dentist once or twice and never had any cavities.  The water in the town we lived in in western Nebraska was fluoridated.  At 15, I moved to the Houston Texas area and the water there was not fluoridated.  I never went to the dentist there.  When I was 20, I had the opportunity for dental work in San Diego — at Navy boot camp.  That was brutal and probably why I have such an aversion to dentists. And 5 years away from fluoridated water had left me with a mouth full of cavities.

Boy, does that xanax taste crappy!

Okay — so it’s for a catalog.

And she’s only five — and our granddaughter.

We think it’s very cool.

It’s a school and library supply company and she’s on the cover of the 2008 catalog. The website description of the catalog says, “…. thousands of quality products in one place. Library supplies, AV supplies, and equipment, signage & display, furniture, Library Promotions™, learning materials, and more. A huge variety to choose from!”

Coincidentally with this, her mother found a picture of her in a Land’s End ad that she hadn’t seen yet. We’ve seen the picture in catalogs, just not in this location online. I think they’ve had this picture in at least two catalogs, except it had been photo-shopped with a different color for the coat.

The top Democratic party candidates were all on the same stage.

Three guys — a white, a black, and a Hispanic — and a woman.

How many jokes have you heard that started out something like that?

This, however, was not a joke. It’s amazing — and it’s America!

What I am referring to, of course, is the Democratic debate in New Hampshire sponsored by Facebook. They were randomly arranged in the order I described earlier, John Edwards, Barrack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Hilary Clinton.

What was really neat for me is that the diversity of the field didn’t strike me until late in the debate when I noticed how much Bill Richardson’s Hispanic heritage showed. Then it was, “Oh, wow!”

I watched both debates. They were strikingly different in tone and in substance.

I don’t generally watch debates until after the conventions when the parties’ presidential and vice-presidential candidates face off. These debates, though, were an opportunity to see the major candidates for both parties in a very short period of time.

The Republicans fielded five white guys.

The Democrats sent three guys — a white, a black, and a Hispanic — and a woman.

How amazing is that?

Can you remember having fun like these boys? I can!

Wishing all of you Happy Holidays! and many merry, happy memories!

I had stopped at Darren Rowse’s Digital Photography School and, after I left a comment, I saw an ad that interested me so I clicked on it.

The ad opened up and I read a few words.

My audio happened to be turned on and was set rather loud.

Normally I leave my computer turned on at night with the audio off so that incoming mail doesn’t wake us. This morning I had listened to something where the audio was rather quiet and I had to turn it up to hear it.

So when a guy started talking about whatever the heck it was that the ad was about, I jumped — it startled me, you see — and closed that browser window.

If I could go back and take back that click, I would!

No… I’ve reconsidered. I like it the way that it is.

Darren got whatever Google will pay him for that click and the advertiser will have to pay for it, even though I left and didn’t even have time to get a good look at his site.

I do NOT like audio that comes on automatically when I open a website, unless I know it in advance or reasonably expect it, as I would if I were going to a music site. If my sound is on and an audio clip starts, I’m gone!

And I might even blog about it, too!

But, I’m not going to mention the site I left, because, even if I remembered it, they’re not getting free traffic from me.

Related post: If your blog has music automatically start playing…

Actually, the head-line is intentionally misleading. We “fed up” pretty good with an early Christmas dinner, but we found it prudent to leave half a day early.

Our daughter actually was the one that suggested that we leave early.

The weather was a bit disappointing the entire time we were visiting. It was very foggy the entire time we were there, so much so that we were not able to see any of the countryside when we went anywhere except just what was right next to the road. With the amount of snow that was on the ground, it would have been really pretty — if we could have seen it.

We’ve been watching the forecast for this weekend since we got there on Wednesday and making contingency plans just in case. Saturday morning, our plans were to leave the hotel Sunday morning and go over to our daughter’s for a few hours, giving the road crews a chance to do whatever clearing they needed to do. At that time, the forecast was for two to four inches of snow. As the day progressed, the forecast changed to three to eight inches of snow overnight with widespread blowing snow and a chance of additional snow during the day on Sunday.

After our daughter suggested that we leave early, we decided that it would probably be prudent to cut the trip short and avoid potentially snowy roads combined with holiday traffic. We left the hotel at 3:40 P.M. and spent the night in Springfield, Illinois. We’ll be home some time late today (Sunday).

A year is a long time in the on-line world. A large percentage of the blogs out there today will shrivel up and disappear by the end of 2008. Many others will still be there, but posting on them will have slowed down to a trickle… or will have stopped all together.

Most blogs don’t have the staying power to last a year. Look at the archives of the blogs you visit. What percentage only have a few months in them?

Exit78 has been around for a little over a year now. It has gone through several transformations and the URL had to be altered slightly. For some reason, Technorati wasn’t recognizing posts to the original URL.

While posts on the blog go back to December 2005, those before December 2006 were transfered from an earlier blog… one that shriveled up and disappeared. Before that there was a blog on Blogger; that one didn’t last long.

Will I be here posting to Exit78 at the end of 2008?

I’m making this one of my 2008 goals, so, yes, I will be posting here this time next year!

How about you? Will your blog still be here at the end of 2008?

Saturday was day two of our trip home from Virginia. Normally, when we have a long travel day, we try to take breaks where we can get out and walk around a bit to loosen up. Often, we’ll stop at big box stores like Walmart or Lowes, a home improvement store. Sometimes, if we’re lucky or know where they are, we’ll stop at a shopping mall.

With the progress we were making on Saturday, I figured we’d be able to take a break east of Memphis at Wolfchase Galleria mall around lunch time.

What I didn’t fully take into consideration was the time of year and that it was a weekend.

It wasn’t bad getting off I40 and getting into the parking lot. We found a parking spot fairly easily, though we had to walk a ways, but getting in a walk was part of why we were stopping, even if it was in the rain.

Naturally the mall was packed. The food court was totally overrun and I didn’t see an empty table anywhere. All of the food vendors had lines in front of their spaces, most of them pretty small.

I suggested that we just walk the mall and then go find somewhere else to eat, but Karen felt that it would take just as long to go somewhere else.

I wasn’t worried about the time it would take. I just didn’t want the hassle of standing in line and then trying to find a place to sit.

We finally settled on the shortest line — a place that sold pizza and other “Italian” foods. The line moved pretty quickly and soon we were almost at the registers, when…

It was obvious they were trying very hard to keep things moving. There were two guys on the registers. Another fellow was passing food and drinks to the customers. As he was handing over a full drink between the two registers, the cup started gushing soda out of the bottom!

Apparently the cup was defective and wasn’t sealed properly. There was liquid all over the place.

Fortunately, none of our stuff got wet, but it ended up slowing things down.

Once we got our meal paid for, there was the challenge of finding a place to sit. All of the tables appeared to be filled and we made our way around twice through the table area before finding a place where a nice lady made room for us to sit by moving her bags out of the way.

The pizza was still warm… barely, but I can eat pizza at just about any temperature except cold out of the fridge.

Once we were done eating, we made our way around the rest of the mall — one level only as we had a bit of a walk out to the truck in the rain and four more hours drive to home.

We don’t normally go to malls on the weekends during the holidays — it’s a good thing we weren’t shopping.

I’ve been busy since we got home “loading” one of my blogs with articles from a book from the time of the American Civil War. The blog is Anecdotes & Images – Storys, Articles, Poetry, and Images @ Chronicles of the American Civil War and it generally has at least one post a day.

Today, I posted an interesting article that gives the view of one Union soldier, largely on his view of the war, but more importantly, slavery since he’s gone south into Virginia. The following is from the article, titled One of the Army of Martyrs.

“Before I came here, I was often told that I should not think so badly of slavery, if I had been in the Slave States. But I must say I have not yet seen any beauty in the system. When I do, I will inform you. While on picket duty, I often meet with slaves, and have opportunities of conversing with them. I said to one, who came into camp the other day, ‘How have you been treated, Robert?’ ‘Pretty well, sar.’ ‘Have you been well fed and clothed?’ ‘Pretty well, till dis year. Massa hab no money to spare dis year.’ ‘Were you contented?’ ‘No, sar.’ ‘You say you were pretty well treated, and pretty well supplied with food and clothes; why wasn’t you contented then?’ ‘Cause I wanted to be free, sar.’ ‘But what could you do to support yourself and your wife and children, if you were all free?’ His face brightened, and you could see his eyes sparkle, as he replied, ‘I’d hire a little hut, and hab a little garden, and keep a pig and a cow, and I’d work out by the day, and save money. I could save money. I’ve laid up eight dollars this summer; but if I couldn’t lay up a cent, I should like to be free. I should feel better.’ ‘Can you read and write?’ ‘No, sar. But massa’s mighty fraid to have us touch a paper; they say Massa Lincoln is going to free all the slaves.’ ‘Where did you hear that?’ ‘We used to hear massa say so, last fall, before Massa Lincoln was President.’ ‘Did you ever hear of John Brown?’ ‘Yes, indeed, sar. There was great times down here when he come to Harper’s Ferry. The folks was all akeered to death. They went from all round here to see him hung.’ ‘Do you think he was a good man?’ ‘Yes, sar, a mighty fine man.’

A couple of times over the last few years we’ve stopped for a meal at a Boston Market Franchise. Yesterday we stopped in one in Norfolk, Virginia, for lunch.

The last couple of times that we stopped in one the meal was pretty good. This time mine was alright, but Karen didn’t finish hers, but it was because of what happened while we there, not because of the quality of the food.

Our first night here, we had another interesting meal (see Adventure in Denny’s — 2007), but that was humorous.

This was not.

It started with a man yelling, “TALK TO ME!” several times. Immediately, I thought of the earlier experience at Denny’s but this guy wasn’t crazy. His wife was having some sort of respiratory problems. They were an elderly couple that I had noticed as we went to our table, but there was a large planter between us and I couldn’t see what was going, but Karen could.

A lady from the table behind us went over to help and called 911. Another lady, dressed in scrubs, from across the room started over and just before she got there, the old woman slumped forward, with her face going into her salad.

I think that the lady in scrubs and a man did CPR for a short while but by the time the ambulance got there, the old woman was breathing. A fire engine arrived with the ambulance. Once they got her into the ambulance, it seemed to take a long time before they drove off. In fact, during that time, we went out to the truck and set the GPS on my laptop to take us to my nieces house. Just as we were getting ready to leave, the ambulance was pulling out, but then it stopped and a couple of guys from the fire truck came running up and got inside. I guess the woman was still having problems. Of course, we have no idea if she survived.

We’re hitting the road this morning headed for home.

We don’t eat at Denny’s. Karen doesn’t care for their food, so we don’t stop there. The last time I remember stopping in one was in West Vancouver in 1993.

We had a long day on Monday, 10 hours on the road and a couple hours visiting in the hospital. We don’t know the area around our hotel, but we did see a Denny’s just down the road from us.

We should have looked a little harder.

The first thing that was different for us was that the waitress asked, “Smoking or non-smoking?”

That always sounds odd to us lately. Since the middle of 2006, all workplaces in Arkansas are required to be smoke free. Since a restaurant is a work place, all the restaurants in the state are smoke free.

Of course, we asked for non-smoking. I think that all there was dividing the two areas was a low wall next to the booth we were seated in.

In the booth next to us was a young couple with a several months old squalling baby. That doesn’t usually bother me too much, until the screeching hits the level where I start wincing in pain — like I did yesterday.

Over at the lunch counter, an elderly gentleman was very loudly putting down soldiers, sailors and marines. This is a military town. Down the aisle from us was a young soldier seated with a somewhat trashy looking lady who looked a bit older than him. Maybe it was his sister… or mom.

Across from them were two gentlemen in ties… and shoulder holsters for their hand weapons — police officers, I’m sure.

The old gentleman at the counter started hollering, “Young lady! Young lady!” I didn’t understand the rest of what he was saying. I started to think he was drunk… or crazy. He quieted down for a while when one of the waitresses asked him if he wanted her to call his sister.

Karen had an omelet and hash browns. It’s 8:30 in the evening. She says that Denny’s breakfasts are usually okay.

I had a burger and fries. They weren’t bad. I’ve had better.

The kid started squalling and screeching again and the old man began hollering “Young Lady! Young Lady!” again. He wasn’t hollering for — or at — the baby.

The baby’s mother was eating her t-bone steak like ribs or fried chicken — finger-licking good.

I could tell Karen was about ready to crack up.

We didn’t eat at Denny’s tonight. I think it’ll be a few years before we stop at another one.

We’re on the east side of Knoxville, Tennessee. In the morning, we should be heading pretty much the opposite direction of rush hour traffic.

Today… Long day, Long drive, two extended periods of fog and terrible traffic for a Sunday. Since 2001, I don’t care much for flying. Probably should have made this an exception. Too late now.

One bright spot is not having to stop for fuel. While we did stop at gas stations and truck stops, it was to use the facilities and fill up my coffee cup.

We’ve got about 500 more miles to go tomorrow and will be able to make it all of the way without refueling.

There’s no trick. We’re in the truck and it has a 45 gallon auxiliary fuel tank. We’re getting right around 20 miles per gallon of diesel fuel, so we have a range of about 1300 miles when we’re not pulling the trailer.

I used Priceline.com and got us a 3 star hotel in the Norfolk area for $65 a night, so we should have wireless capability.

My Mom is in the hospital in Norfolk and will probably be having surgery on Tuesday or Wednesday.

We’re heading out first thing in the morning. It’s about a 20 hour trip.

If everything goes well, we’ll be back home by this time next week. If not…

Tonight, I had a potentially important communication come through my contact page. Unfortunately, since all that I had there was a comment form, the lady that send me the message followed it up very quickly with another message telling me that she didn’t realize that the it would be published in a public location and requesting that I delete her personal information.

Since I had moderation on for new commenters, the message didn’t get published, so there was no problem. However, it did reemphasize to me the need for having a way that people can get in touch with you, especially if you are open to making money from your blog.

So, this evening, I took the time to do another of those things on my to-do list. I added a contact form to the contact page of this blog.

I don’t anticipate it being used very often, but it’s there now.

An interesting post on 45n5 is titled “About Pages Are Not About You.” The point 45n5 makes is that “about pages” should provide visitors with information related to what can be found on the site. He also provides an interesting video that goes into the idea in more detail.

I decided to take a look at my about page here on Exit78 to see if I could improve on it.

Exit78 is a personal blog. As such, I think that it’s appropriate for some personal information to be included. The blog, as it says at the top of each page, includes “observations, reflections, and a few images from a life of early retirement by a part-time traveler.” But what are those observations, reflections and images about? When I went to my about page, I found, sure enough, that there was nothing there that would tell a visitor what they might expect to find other than that the blog was intended to be a vehicle for me to self-publish material related to some of the things that I am interested in — and that I hoped others might be interested in.

So I tweaked on the page a bit and added some info on some of what might be found on the blog.

Now, maybe some folks who check the page will have a better idea of what’s on the blog and want to stick around a bit or come back for a visit.

… or not.

I took a look at the about pages some of the more popular blogs as ranked at Technorati:

Darren Rowse’s Problogger About page is somewhat autobiographical, but appropriate as it describes his blogging progression from hobby blogger to professional.

The Dosh Dosh About page provides succinct segments on what the blog is “all about” and “who’s responsible.”

Merlin Mann’s 43Folders About page has 5 bulleted items on topics that “come up a lot” and a relatively long bio.

This is another one of those things that’s been keeping me busy in retirement. The shop is on the lower floor. The upper floor will mostly be used for storage. We used to have a storage shed on the spot that the shop now sits on.

The side in the picture is the only one with siding on it right now. Tomorrow the platforms come down, the bolt holes get filled with dowels and I start working on another side.

I just read the following disclaimer on a website that had screenplays for a fair number of movies:

DISCLAIMER:
All material published here was copied off the net, and therefore the curators are not liable to any copyright infringements or anything like that. Virtually all can be just links to somewhere off the internet.

It doesn’t matter where the material is obtained from. If you publish copyrighted material, it’s infringement unless you have permission from the copyright owner or it’s published under the fair use provisions of copyright law.

The idea that “I found it on the internet so it must be OK to use since someone else already put it there” is just plain wrong. It’s a myth that publishing something on the internet changes the copyright rules. All the internet does is make it easier to break the rules.

One of the exclusive rights of authors — or whoever else owns the copyright — is to distribute copies to the public… by whatever means. Publishing copyrighted material on line is an infringement of this exclusive right.

More copyright related information is available at Copy Right, Copy Sense.

I decided to go ahead and update WordPress to 2.3.1. I had been at 2.2.2 on this one and had switched the others over with no problems, so I decided to “do” this one , too.

I’m also trying to figure out how to post from flikr to the blog and be able to edit the post without losing all of the formating. Still isn’t working quite right.

Today was a long day. We left this morning at 8:30 for Little Rock, where Karen had a 10:00 doctors appointment. The doctor was delayed, so even though the consultation with him was short, we didn’t get out of there until 10 after 11.

From there we went to Corkys for lunch, Home Depot for some air filters for our heating and air conditioning system in the house, Barnes and Noble for some books — I’m actually back to reading and have read 7 largish novels in the last couple of weeks — Hancock Fabrics for some discontinued material that Karen is using to make a king size quilt, then over to North Little Rock.

In North Little Rock, we stopped at JoAnns Fabric for other stuff Karen wanted to get, McCain Mall for some misc. shopping, Bedford Camera and Video to look at some lenses, Sams Wholesale Club for some major stocking up, back to Bedford Camera and Video to buy a replacement lens for one I broke on our trip, and then headed home, stopping in Conway at Chilis for supper.

We had thought about going to a movie, but that would have got us home really late. We don’t do late very often.