I’ve been wanting to try to include YouTube in my posts! This is it!

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Now playing: Styx - Lady
via FoxyTunes

That’s right. It was time to switch to an autumn theme. Here’s one from the past!

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Now playing: Dada - Dizz Knee Land
via FoxyTunes

So how many of us have watched “Stranger than Fiction” starring Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal? (And really liked the movie?!) And how many of us really liked the song that Will played on the guitar, “Whole Wide World”? OK, so I thought I’d try to listen to the song again so I headed out to YouTube. It really is amazing what you can find out there. So I found the song “Whole Wide World”… quite a few versions. And after checking them out it seems that a punk rocker called Wreckless Eric is who everyone was crediting with the song. I was pretty sure I’d heard the song before and NOT from a punk rocker like Wreckless Eric. So I did a Google on the title and I was RIGHT! While it was done first by Wreckless Eric, it seems it was covered by this group! And THAT’S the version I had heard before; it’s also the one that’s played in the move when Will stops singing.

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Now playing: Silvertide - Heartstrong
via FoxyTunes

Happy Anniversary, Geoff and Roberta!

Now I’m as religious as the next guy. Maybe more so. I currently serve on the diaconate of our church and have served on committees and also have served as a church elder. While I’m not an every-Sunday-in-church kind of guy, I am religious. I do believe in God. I believe that God created all we perceive and it has been changing since the day he created it.

All that being said, I find it extraordinarily funny that one of the local churches has a logo that more than passingly resembles the Direct TV logo. Here’s the full logo at the top of their web site:

What they have on the sign outside their church does NOT have the gray area and the orange is replaced by white. So logo on the sign outside their church looks similar to this:

It kind of bothers me when I look at it as I’m reminded of this logo:

Don’t recognize this logo? How about now:

So just when will a dyslexic person go in to the church offices and ask “Can I order Direct TV?”

Happy Birthday, Howie!!

This just in… at last we have irrefutable truth that a bear DOES shit in the woods! Don’t forget, you saw it here first!

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Now playing: Social Distortion - Ball And Chain
via FoxyTunes

Well, I can’t think of a better way to do this, so I’m back-dating the posts from our vacation. I didn’t have an internet connection to use while on vacation so I couldn’t post the entries as they happened. I’ll make a total of seven entries, so I’ll probably increase the viewable entries just to make sure all seven appear on this front page. Here are the links for each day:
"Smoky Mountains - Sunday"
"Smoky Mountains - Monday"
"Smoky Mountains - Tuesday"
"Smoky Mountains - Wednesday"
"Smoky Mountains - Thursday"
"Smoky Mountains - Friday"
"Smoky Mountains - Saturday"

Happy Birthday, Goyf!

Happy Birthday, Jessie!

Driving, driving, driving! We checked out of our cabin at about 8:30 and left for home. With stops at Louisville for lunch (Chick-Fil-A) and gas, Bloomington for dinner (Subway) and Buffalo (Iowa, not New York!) for gas. We drove straight through, stopping and changing drivers every so often, so it wasn’t all that bad. We were tired but happy to be home at 9:45pm. It truly was a great vacation… but NOW I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation!!

Our last day here. The visibility seemed to be a lot better today, so we decided to try to get to Clingman’s Dome again. It’s something I wanted to do and I know the others wanted it as well. When we got to Newfound Gap (about 3/4 of the way there) things seemed better. The visibility was still good and we were starting to get stoked for a great view from atop “the Dome”. Unfortunately, as we got closer the visibility went down. When we got there, we could see farther than the day before but we still couldn’t see any nearby mountains or even more than about 100 yards around the tower on the top of Clingman’s Dome. Oh well, we can’t control the weather!

KC, Bob and Norma then took off on a hike down to Indian Gap - 6.1 miles away. I got the honor and privilege of driving the car down to Indian Gap so they wouldn’t have to hike back up to Clingman’s Dome. While waiting for them to come down, I read more of the book and also hiked 100-200 yards up the trail to Clingman’s Dome and back - my knee was still bothering me. When they arrived at Indian Gap, they all thought that they had a nice hike.

I did learn why they call them the Smoky Mountains. When visibility is low, it’s because of low clouds - fog. However, the fog didn’t just settle in; it drifted and you could actually see it drift. It looked just like smoke from a fire wafting around. In fact, there were times when I was looking for a campfire or even a grass fire or forest fire because of the way the fog was moving. It even moved across the paths and through the trees as smoke would. Amazing!

After the hike, we went to Gatlinburg to do some “touristy” things. KC and I went on the Sky Lift while Bob and Norma walked around to a few of the shops. When KC and I got back down from the Sky Lift, we went into a few of the shops with our friends but we never did find a shirt we liked. Yeah, they had about a bazillion t-shirts but none of them had The Great Smoky Mountain National Park logo on them - they all had Gatlinburg or Dollywood or Pigeon Forge or some other tourist stuff on them. Bah! And none of us wanted to spend a lot of time looking for shirts so we just left. Besides, we were all hungry! We settled on The Alamo restaurant after asking a few people; and we weren’t disappointed. It was excellent — a bit pricey, but nothing like prices in the restaurants on the main drag of Gatlinburg.

When we got back to the cabin, we finished the jigsaw puzzle before heading off to bed. Big travel day tomorrow!