Ageless Heros

This past Tuesday my 89 yr old Grandmother received an Agless Hero award. She was one of 5 award winners for the Central Region of Mississippi and one of approx. 20 for the state. There were over 300 nominees for the awards this year. She was able to meet and have her picture taken with Ed McMahon and Pat Fordice (spouse of a prior govenor of Mississippi). The category she received the award in was Creativity for her quilting projects, teaching, and membership in the Craftsman's guild. It was a great event held at the Hattisburg, MS Convention Center - only about 1 1/2 hours from some of the worst damaged areas from Hurricane Katrina. It was the first time in a long time that most of our extended family had seen each other. We have one great shot of Benjamin, me, my father, and my Grandmother all together.

We were all so excited that she had received the award and she has now had a clip show on TV a couple of days and been in the newspaper. It really meant the world to her.

Local News ... thoughts

The Anderson Journal had a great article last week (March 24, 2006) about Isaac Clary and everything he and his family is going through. I don't think the article is online anywhere but if you haven't read it and can still get a copy you really should check it out. Issac Clardy is the son of Sammy Clary was the youth minister at New Spring.

It other news - the Pendleton Spring Jubilee is the happening place to be this Saturday and Sunday at the Square in Pendleton. It was a good event last year and we're looking foward to this year.

Date Night

Sarah and I went on a big date night last night. First time in several months due to her work schedule and job interviews. It worked out well because I’ll basically be gone the next week and a half. A couple from church watched Benjamin for us – our repayment to them is will be a big dinner in a couple of weeks.

We started out with dinner at Sullivan's. Normally it’s out of our price range but a wonderful gift certificate from mom and a “buy 1 get 1 half off” coupon made it very reasonable. Sarah had the snapper and I had the grouper. If I had it to do over again I’d pick the snapper although I really like the grouper. The grouper was served on yellow rice while the snapper was served on grits – the grits really held their temperature during the meal. They were still scalding hot as we finished off the last couple of bites. We chose to pass on dessert and coffee this time but have always enjoyed their home-made desserts previously.

After dinner we headed to the Peace Center in Greenville to watch the Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa perform. It was pretty amazing and I would strongly recommend that you watch them in concert if you ever have a chance. The performance was great and audience participation was wonderful. It really put to shame the last performance we saw at the Peace Center. I think we'll look into getting their CDs before too long.

While we missed being with Benjamin it was really good to have some time together alone. Nice to dress up a little and share a nice evening together.

2 Down 10 to Go

Ran the Milliken Earth Run 5K this morning. Most other places were having St. Patrick’s day runs – but this was the closest one to our house. It was cross country – in and around the Roger Milliken Center off of business I-85 in Spartanburg – on the grassy areas that looked similar to a golf course. Apparently Milliken & Company is one of the largest land owners in South Carolina. They have enough property and are really putting a Green foot forward – that they have a full-time horticulturist at this site. The main prizes for the winners were small Bald Cypress trees. Pretty interesting. They had over 300 runners and it was a brisk chilly morning. I almost didn’t run because I’ve not been running as much the last several weeks as we’ve been traveling and I felt pretty bad the last couple of days due to cold/allergy symptoms. I was happy with my finish – somewhere around 23:13 – close to my last run. I’ll update this with the official results in a day or two. I’m still working getting ready for the Cooper River Bridge Run on April 1st. That’s my next big running endeavor.

Weavers and Potters

We spent all of last weekend in the Berea, KY area. Friday was mostly work related, Saturday morning was spent looking at homes in the area. We took a little time on Saturday afternoon to do the more of the tourist thing. We spent a little time a the shop at Churchill Weavers and then drove out to the middle of no-where to a pottery studio called Tater Knob Pottery & Farm. After that we headed over to Wilmore, KY to have dinner with some friends. I checked mapquest to see what the best routes to go to their home was... no direct route - mapquest naturally gave me the main highways/interstate ... so I clicked on "avoid highways" ... it had us cross a branch of the Kentucky River by river ferry. No charge just a little small boat - enough room for 3 cars. Mostly backroads - 2 lane - took us past some of the major horse farms outside of Lexington... Benjamin can now add this to his list of things he's already done.

On a side note I wonder what it pays to be a Ferry captain? Is the job really that stressful? Is it high demand?

Travels

The last couple of weekends our family has been doing a bit of traveling. Over all it has all gone smoothly… but there are always strange instances along the way. So I thought I’d share a couple of the more bizarre things we’ve encountered.

1. On a return flight – everyone had already boarded the plane – but it took forever before the captain finally announced that “Maintenance has discovered a dent in the side of the plane. This is not significant but they want to take pictures of it prior to take off.” That’s reassuring.
2. My wife and I were accused of both drinking Half-n-Half (or creamer) and/or putting it in our cereal (of which we did not have any). The canister had been out both mornings when we went down to get a cup of coffee and have a little breakfast…
3. Seeing the above ground portion of multiple coal mines after dark.
4. Seeing both forests fires and controlled burns at night along the side of the mountains in Tennessee and Kentucky. It looked like a long thin red-smokey snake slithering around the mountain.
5. Going through one of the longest man-made tunnels in the US between Tennessee and Kentucky at Cumberland Gap.