Tuesday, September 23, 2014
#Famous
Yesterday evening Jillian and I were FINALLY recognized as the television royalty that we were clearly meant to be, when we were "featured" on Food Network's Great Food Truck Race. The camera person did a poor job of placing us in the center of the shot though. Weird. Anyway, it was our first time being on a nationally televised program... even if our faces were completely blurred.
Note: We're the couple on the left crossing the street. You can see that I'm wearing the clothing seen in older posts about going to see the food trucks when they were in downtown Mobile.
Other News
1. A couple of weeks ago I reached a financial landmark in my life. I paid off all of my credit cards. Granted, I still have a few thousand in student loans and a house note on the rental property. I'm still pretty proud of it. I've had a pretty hefty balance on there ever since I sent my parents to Ireland... something that proved to be financially irresponsible regardless of how happy I was to do it at the time.
2. Now that summer semester is over for South Alabama, the brass have decided that the time for business casual is over and business professional is back in full effect. This is an unfortunate turn of events as both my boss and I were hoping they would do away with that policy. I haven't worn ties to work in 7 years so it's an unpleasant adjustment.
Monday, September 22, 2014
The Blog That Refused to Die
Unfortunately, I've neglected to post any stories for a month. I
committed myself early on to make posts a regular occurrence, but I seem
to have little extra time with the new job and commute. It also doesn't
help that I can't write during lunch at work due to network security.
It really is unfortunate as there is plenty I'd like to record, just for
the sake of memory recall later in life, yet a lot slips through the
cracks. Hopefully, I can recall a good portion of the happenings of the
past two months that I've missed.
July 20th was Jillian's Birthday. It was a relatively low key event. We went to Fairhope for brunch at Old 27 Grill and listened to some mediocre, live country music in the outside seating area. After some mimosas, Jillian decided that we should take the party to local Goodwill store (which doesn't seem like anything special, but they occasionally have really nice stuff). I don't remember if we found any treasures. Afterward, we went home where I gave Jillian her single present... because I'm a subpar husband. She wanted a traction neck pillow, so that's what she got. Apparently it's doing it's job because I haven't heard any complaints. She also received a treat from my mom; a white chocolate mousse cake.
The following weekend, Jillian's brother made a visit to the area. He lives in Missoula, Montana and has little time away from work to travel so this was his first time in Daphne. It was a bit a mix of visits between Jillian's birthday, visiting his mom and going to the beach. Jillian had already taken some time off work for the birthday and his visit so she went to the beach as well. Still being pretty new to my new job, I didn't have the time to join them, but I was told they all had a great time.
It was around the end of July that I was informed I was going to have a tenant for my rental home. I was so sure of it that I had set up new insurance on my home and started sending them paperwork. One of the two tenants had even signed the lease. Unfortunately, the parent of the second decided his little princess was too precious to live in an old home that "had a messy fireplace", "no plug in a sink" and "uncut grass" in the front yard. From what my property manager told me, they were so opposed to moving in that they allowed both parties out of the lease and gave them their deposit back. I was pretty upset, but, to my surprise, Reeves Realty (my property manager) made a commitment to pay me the full price rent until a new tenant was found. They stuck to their word as well. I received a check within a few days.
August 4th rolled around so we were forced to acknowledge that I was turning 33. Jillian made it a lot less painful by surprising me at work around lunch with some balloons for my office. My friend Heather had also randomly showed up to say hi while she was in town. Both were very nice birthday surprises. I think we went out to dinner that night but I don't remember where. Magically, the next day I was still 32. Oh, and I got these sweet gifts from my lovely wife. Jackpot!
On a lower note, the man Jillian has fondly called "Grandfather" (Ralph Tribble Jr) since I've known her passed away. Though of no relation, he and her had a very mutually-adopted grandparent relationship. The funeral was on a Saturday afternoon in Birmingham, AL so we drove up soon after I got off work on Friday. The funeral itself was very nice and there was a very impressive and emotional eulogy by one of his grandsons. I never knew the man, but apparently he was an incredibly giving and caring person; and highly intelligent. The most impressive things I took away from the service was that he helped NASA develop auto-pilot for planes, helped set up Alabama Power's first computer control systems and would leave money with the manager at a local grocery store for anyone who had trouble feeding their family. He was also at Pearl Harbor as a radar operator and swore that had he been on duty before the attack by the Japanese wouldn't have been successful. It seems like the world lost a good one.
The following weekend was much more upbeat. Jillian had recently become a big fan of a local folk band called The Mulligan Brothers and they were part of a small musical concert at Lap's Restaurant and Grocery; a semi-new establishment on the Mobile Bay causeway. We had called the place the day before and they had notified us that previous concerts had filled up quickly so we should probably show up really early to get good spots. Turns out, those previous concerts must have had much more popular acts... b/c we showed up about three hours early to an empty pavilion. We were actually there so early that we beat the crew to roping off the event and while they were telling others they would have to wait, we were allowed to just hang out and get drinks while everyone set up.
The concert turned out to be really good and the pre-drinking helped me forget about how long we sat by ourselves to save seats that we nearly immediately gave up for a place stand and watch the bands. Overall, a very enjoyable evening.
Aug 30: AUBURN FOOTBALL started. Our first game of the season was against Arkansas; our first opener against a conference opponent since some time in the 90s I think. It was a little rough at first but we ended up running away with it. As of the date of this posting, Auburn is 3-0 and #5 in the AP having also defeated San Jose State and #20 Kansas State (an ugly game for both teams). We also had the unexpected pleasure of having Jenny and Pat join us for the game. They don't currently have cable at their place. We tried to limit our celebrations as Pat is a Alabama fan for some unclear reason.
The first of September marked a few events. The most important one is that I had replacement tenants sign a lease AND move into my rental home. No nit-picking issues this time. The beginning of the month was also when Jillian had her dental conference through the University of Tennessee. They had their annual beach conference at the Hilton SanDestin resort. Still having zero vacation days, I didn't get to stay the whole week with her like I did last year, but I did have the extended labor day weekend to enjoy the beach on a Monday. It was pretty nice, but not as nice as the half week she enjoyed while I was watching it rain outside of my office all week.
Seeing as September is more current, I can just start throwing out the recent stuff willy-nilly. There have been a few traffic related "holy shite" moments. The first was around the 16th. I was driving to work and seemed to run over some unknown object about the size of a baseball. Whatever it was made a bang hitting the bottom of my tire and then undercarriage. I thought for sure my tire was on the verge of exploding so I moved to the closest off-ramp and parked in the lot of a Steak&Shake to check on everything. Not trusting what appeared to be a completely fine tire, I spent the next 45 minutes driving through west Mobile through morning school traffic instead of the easy interstate route. The second of these moments actually happened on my way home today. Just north of Pritchard I was switching lanes when I noticed debris flying around to my left. When I turned my head to look a blue sedan smashed into the median's concrete wall... thankfully on the other side. The window had just blown out and as it was sliding along the wall, I noticed a black woman at the wheel who appeared to have been knocked out by her deployed airbags. God, I hope she was just unconscious. Well, that kind of put the blog post back in the downer-zone.
Sept 13 - I bought tickets for South Alabama's first home game against an SEC opponent. I even thought USA might keep it close. I was very wrong. It was a blow-out on a very HOT HOT day. This day could have had "bust" written all over it but we narrowly avoided multiple terrible situations. The first was that we had originally decided to take the university sponsored transit from the local Mall to the stadium (which is not located on campus). After getting the mall and spending about 20 minutes trying to locate the end of the line to get on buses, we decided to scrap that idea and just drive into what is essentially Mobile's ghetto. Thankfully, we came across a little Catholic church with $5 parking signs out front. Disaster 1 avoided. I had also made the mistake of not contacting the guy we were going to tailgate with the day prior and I was unable to reach him by phone the day of, so we wandered around for a while in the sun before I gave up and we just made new acquaintances with some people who had a little extra room under their tents. It worked out pretty well considering the circumstances. The game was pretty rough, and the home crowd cleared out by half. I found it pretty sad so I decided to stay through the hole game; if nothing else, to see if USA could at least score a touchdown. With about a minute left, South got into the red zone and threw and interception. I lost hope and we decided to leave. On the way back to our car, we found that the line to get back to the mall via buses was just as bad as it was in the opposite direction so I decided to take a picture. Thank the good Lord that he was providing parking.
Sept 20 - Jillian and I took our last trip to the beach for the season. We know it about to get too chilly for summer activities so we had to go one more time. Seems like a lot of people knew that it might be the last good weekend for beach activities because there were SIX wedding set-ups at the public beach when we walked out to find spots. Other than that, not much to report. The water was too rough for swimming and there wasn't much people watching to do.
Three notes to round out this long post:
1. This past Sunday, Stella had an incident with another dog during her Pawsitive Therapy visit to a nursing home and accidentally big Jillian. Considering the seriousness of her actions, Jillian decided to retire her from the program.
2. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that Iche lerne Deutsch. I've got a 60 day streak going on my German lessons on Duolingo. It's something I've wanted to do for a while. German, though, is proving to be a difficult language to learn despite many similar looking words. So far I've worked on food, people, household items, numbers, etc. Shouldn't be long now until I'm fluent...
3. Jillian and I went to Toby Keith's I love this bar and grill in Orange Beach AL to get 2500 skymiles through Delta's Skymiles Dining program. It was not an impressive restaurant but we got the points.
Ok. I think that's more than enough for now. Until next quarter...
July 20th was Jillian's Birthday. It was a relatively low key event. We went to Fairhope for brunch at Old 27 Grill and listened to some mediocre, live country music in the outside seating area. After some mimosas, Jillian decided that we should take the party to local Goodwill store (which doesn't seem like anything special, but they occasionally have really nice stuff). I don't remember if we found any treasures. Afterward, we went home where I gave Jillian her single present... because I'm a subpar husband. She wanted a traction neck pillow, so that's what she got. Apparently it's doing it's job because I haven't heard any complaints. She also received a treat from my mom; a white chocolate mousse cake.
The following weekend, Jillian's brother made a visit to the area. He lives in Missoula, Montana and has little time away from work to travel so this was his first time in Daphne. It was a bit a mix of visits between Jillian's birthday, visiting his mom and going to the beach. Jillian had already taken some time off work for the birthday and his visit so she went to the beach as well. Still being pretty new to my new job, I didn't have the time to join them, but I was told they all had a great time.
It was around the end of July that I was informed I was going to have a tenant for my rental home. I was so sure of it that I had set up new insurance on my home and started sending them paperwork. One of the two tenants had even signed the lease. Unfortunately, the parent of the second decided his little princess was too precious to live in an old home that "had a messy fireplace", "no plug in a sink" and "uncut grass" in the front yard. From what my property manager told me, they were so opposed to moving in that they allowed both parties out of the lease and gave them their deposit back. I was pretty upset, but, to my surprise, Reeves Realty (my property manager) made a commitment to pay me the full price rent until a new tenant was found. They stuck to their word as well. I received a check within a few days.
August 4th rolled around so we were forced to acknowledge that I was turning 33. Jillian made it a lot less painful by surprising me at work around lunch with some balloons for my office. My friend Heather had also randomly showed up to say hi while she was in town. Both were very nice birthday surprises. I think we went out to dinner that night but I don't remember where. Magically, the next day I was still 32. Oh, and I got these sweet gifts from my lovely wife. Jackpot!
On a lower note, the man Jillian has fondly called "Grandfather" (Ralph Tribble Jr) since I've known her passed away. Though of no relation, he and her had a very mutually-adopted grandparent relationship. The funeral was on a Saturday afternoon in Birmingham, AL so we drove up soon after I got off work on Friday. The funeral itself was very nice and there was a very impressive and emotional eulogy by one of his grandsons. I never knew the man, but apparently he was an incredibly giving and caring person; and highly intelligent. The most impressive things I took away from the service was that he helped NASA develop auto-pilot for planes, helped set up Alabama Power's first computer control systems and would leave money with the manager at a local grocery store for anyone who had trouble feeding their family. He was also at Pearl Harbor as a radar operator and swore that had he been on duty before the attack by the Japanese wouldn't have been successful. It seems like the world lost a good one.
The following weekend was much more upbeat. Jillian had recently become a big fan of a local folk band called The Mulligan Brothers and they were part of a small musical concert at Lap's Restaurant and Grocery; a semi-new establishment on the Mobile Bay causeway. We had called the place the day before and they had notified us that previous concerts had filled up quickly so we should probably show up really early to get good spots. Turns out, those previous concerts must have had much more popular acts... b/c we showed up about three hours early to an empty pavilion. We were actually there so early that we beat the crew to roping off the event and while they were telling others they would have to wait, we were allowed to just hang out and get drinks while everyone set up.
The first of September marked a few events. The most important one is that I had replacement tenants sign a lease AND move into my rental home. No nit-picking issues this time. The beginning of the month was also when Jillian had her dental conference through the University of Tennessee. They had their annual beach conference at the Hilton SanDestin resort. Still having zero vacation days, I didn't get to stay the whole week with her like I did last year, but I did have the extended labor day weekend to enjoy the beach on a Monday. It was pretty nice, but not as nice as the half week she enjoyed while I was watching it rain outside of my office all week.
Sept 13 - I bought tickets for South Alabama's first home game against an SEC opponent. I even thought USA might keep it close. I was very wrong. It was a blow-out on a very HOT HOT day. This day could have had "bust" written all over it but we narrowly avoided multiple terrible situations. The first was that we had originally decided to take the university sponsored transit from the local Mall to the stadium (which is not located on campus). After getting the mall and spending about 20 minutes trying to locate the end of the line to get on buses, we decided to scrap that idea and just drive into what is essentially Mobile's ghetto. Thankfully, we came across a little Catholic church with $5 parking signs out front. Disaster 1 avoided. I had also made the mistake of not contacting the guy we were going to tailgate with the day prior and I was unable to reach him by phone the day of, so we wandered around for a while in the sun before I gave up and we just made new acquaintances with some people who had a little extra room under their tents. It worked out pretty well considering the circumstances. The game was pretty rough, and the home crowd cleared out by half. I found it pretty sad so I decided to stay through the hole game; if nothing else, to see if USA could at least score a touchdown. With about a minute left, South got into the red zone and threw and interception. I lost hope and we decided to leave. On the way back to our car, we found that the line to get back to the mall via buses was just as bad as it was in the opposite direction so I decided to take a picture. Thank the good Lord that he was providing parking.
Sept 20 - Jillian and I took our last trip to the beach for the season. We know it about to get too chilly for summer activities so we had to go one more time. Seems like a lot of people knew that it might be the last good weekend for beach activities because there were SIX wedding set-ups at the public beach when we walked out to find spots. Other than that, not much to report. The water was too rough for swimming and there wasn't much people watching to do.
Three notes to round out this long post:
1. This past Sunday, Stella had an incident with another dog during her Pawsitive Therapy visit to a nursing home and accidentally big Jillian. Considering the seriousness of her actions, Jillian decided to retire her from the program.
2. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that Iche lerne Deutsch. I've got a 60 day streak going on my German lessons on Duolingo. It's something I've wanted to do for a while. German, though, is proving to be a difficult language to learn despite many similar looking words. So far I've worked on food, people, household items, numbers, etc. Shouldn't be long now until I'm fluent...
3. Jillian and I went to Toby Keith's I love this bar and grill in Orange Beach AL to get 2500 skymiles through Delta's Skymiles Dining program. It was not an impressive restaurant but we got the points.
Ok. I think that's more than enough for now. Until next quarter...
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