Tuesday's Tidbits

* Well Monday is now behind us, and so is my lengthy vacation that we have enjoyed. Now it's time for me to get back to work, for that reason alone I can't think of a better reason to do a tidbits.

* It's been 1,649 days since Michelle and I had our first date.

* It's been 872 days since our engagement.

* 409th day of wedded bliss. I take a little time out each day to reflect how lucky I am.

* There are only 98 shopping days left until Christmas, it's starting to get a little closer.

* I finally got all my pictures from Vacation up on Facebook yesterday. I also got the ones that we took under the water up after we went yesterday and had them developed.

* We have been waiting all summer at Sam's Club to drop their price on their Cuisinart Blend and Cook Soup Maker. The price dropped a few weeks ago and we bought a new one yesterday. Michelle loves soup and has had her eye on this thing for a while.

* The new iPhone IOS 6 should be released tomorrow. The new iPhone I think also is released the same day, we're going to order a couple of new ones but Michelle's contract isn't due for an upgrade until next month. So we'll wait to all the hoopla dies down and go and get them.

* cardio day

* Oh no oh no

Happy Birthday Kaiden Dalton

My how the time flies by, today is Kaiden Dalton's fourth Birthday. It was just four short years ago today that Amy and Ralph were blessed with their first little bundle of joy Kaiden.

I'm still a little out of the loop due to our vacation, but I'm pretty sure that Kaiden's birthday party will be this Sunday afternoon at Amy and Ralph's home.

This just happens to be one of my favorite pictures of Kaiden, it was taken a couple of years ago at Calvin's birthday Party.

If you happen to see Kaiden today, make sure you wish him a very happy 4th birthday today.

Happy Birthday Calvin McClain

I would like to take this opportunity out to wish a very Happy Birthday to my nephew Calvin McClain. If my math is correct, and it's not always correct, he should be turning 17 years old today.

He is a tough one to get a picture of as he tends to be one who likes to avoid being in front of the camera. So I had to look around a little for a picture of him that I had not used previously.

I think Pam had his birthday party this past weekend while we were away, but I'm not 100% positive on that.

If you happen to see or speak to calvin today, make sure that you take a little bit of time out to wish him the happiest of birthdays today.

We're Back

We are back in Morgantown, we got back yesterday afternoon after a day of traveling. I see that all of my pre-written blogs posted when they were supposed to, so that is a good thing.

The vacation? Beyond expectations. It was absolutely beautiful out on the Atlantic, especially the further south you went. The waters were crystal clear and blue and were clearer than a swimming pool.

I think our favorite stop was Half Moon Cay. This is a private island owned by Carnival and was absolute paradise. I could retire there and be happy for the rest of my life. Only problem is only 12 people live there and they work for Carnival.

The one thing we like to do was snorkel. We had a blast snorkeling in both Grand Turk and Half Moon Cay, we saw a number of fish and was something that helps you bring your own life into perspective. I did see one fish that appeared like and angel fish that was probably bigger than me, we did get some underwater photography but Michelle's camera busted on the first day.

I would strongly advise anyone if they ever get the chance to at least do this one in your lifetime. You can book it almost up to three years in advance and take all that time to pay it off. Everyone should experience this in their lifetime.

We did take a number of pictures with my camera, I have to extract them and will be uploading them sometime today.

Now the question needs to be asked, would I do it again? Already put a deposit down on a future cruise. We're going to do it again next year.

The Return Home

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

Today we will once again arrive at the point of our departure. We weeks worth of a marvelous vacation is now in our memories and that starts to close out at about 9:00 this morning when we are getting off of the Carnival Pride for the last time on this trip.

Today it's going to be repacking and exiting the ship, it's going to be a day of going back to the hotel and getting out car and starting our drive back to Morgantown. A morning that I woke up in the middle of the Atlantic and will go to bed this evening in my own bed.

It has been the memory of a lifetime for both Michelle and I. It will be the ending of the longest and most fun filled vacation of my life, let's see if we can match or top it in 2013.

Thank you for reading along this past week. We will be home this afternoon, and off of work once again tomorrow, but I imagine there are a number of chores we'll have to do.

Day at Sea the Return

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

We are once again going to be spending the entire day at seas heading back towards the port of Baltimore. We have spent the last three days visiting places that we have only dreamed of seeing. Now we are on our way back, but we can still have a whole lot of fun on our way back.

The image that you see is actually right above our stateroom. It's the water slides in the rear of the boat in that pool. Yes our room is located under all of this believe it or not.

We'll be spending our final full day on the boat today and just enjoying the scenery and reflecting upon the memorable week that we just spent in a tropical paradise. I will have probably taken a great number of pictures, hopefully have captured some nice video and have created a lot of memories.

Freeport Bahamas

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

Today we will be making our third and final port of call when we arrive in Freeport at 7:00 AM. We will once again spend most of the day here, but we will be scheduled to re-board the ship by 1:30 this afternoon.

Just take a look at this picture, and tell me you would not want to spend the day looking at this beautiful scenery. White sandy beaches and crystal clear water is always some thing that I have seen on TV and only imagined, today Michelle and I get to stick our toes inn this sand one more time.

This has always been one of the locations I have wanted to visit in my lifetime. I guess you can call this part of that dream accomplished.

Have a great day.

Half Moon Cay Bahamas

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

Today we will be spending in Half Moon Cay, Bahamas. It's actually a private island owned by the company that owns the cruise line we are on.

People have always said that they would like to have their own private island, well half Moon Cay is one you can rent believe it or not. I just thought that little tidbit of information was kind of comical.

We will be arriving here at 9:00 AM and are set to depart at 5:00 this evening. This is going to give us a good solid eight hours of a beautiful sandy beach and time in some crystal clear ocean waters. This will be a day I have always dreamed of.

I can't wait and I assure you Michelle is probably more excited about this than I am.

Grand Turk Island

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

Today we are landing on our first port Grand Turk Island. This will actually be the first time either Michelle or I ever set foot on land of a foreign country, or even outside of the United States.

One thing that we want to do today is make our first ever trip and visit to the Margaritaville Caribbean which is just outside of the port. Something tells me these two parrot heads actually will be having two cheeseburgers in paradise today. It's only appropriate since we manage to make the trip to Pittsburgh every year to go see Jimmy and the Coral Reefer Band. It was the one thing I mentioned about any of the ports that made Michelle's eyes light up.

We'll dock at 8:00 AM and are scheduled to be back on the boat at 2:00 PM. Obviously this is going to be a short day, but anytime white sandy beaches and blue oceans are involved I'm, all for it.

Another Day at Sea

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

We are once again spending another day at seas today and will be once again enjoying all the amenities of the boat. The picture that I have posted is of the Atrium of the boat, this is the center of the boat where the glass elevators are located. We're on the 8th floor and just under the top entertainment deck. Just above us is the adults only pool, but at this time of the year I'm not too worried about any kids being around.

There is a beautiful theater that has Las Vegas style shows that I know we want to take advantage of, there is on demand room service at any time of the day, there are fitness rooms, casinos, pools and all kinds of entertainment.

I found another video of the staterooms, this is also like our room but not our room. It is however on our floor.

We Are at Sea

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

It's a day at sea for us today. We've left the Port of Baltimore and we are heading way down south to the Eastern Carribean. We'll be spending both today and tomorrow out at sea, but don't fret. Remember I have an extended balcony on the top deck, so as this posts I'll be looking at a beautiful sunrise out over the ocean as everyone else enjoys getting up and going to work today.

If you are curious what our room looks like, I found this video. It's not our room, our balcony is twice the size of this one plus we are in the rear of the boat with an unobstructed view.

Enjoy, we are.

ALL ABOARD!!!!!!

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

It's here. After all of the countdowns, all of the planning and preparation the day is finally here. THIS is the day our dreams become reality and all our planning finally pays off, this is the day we actually GET ON THE BOAT!!!!!!

I have to say there were times that I thought this day would never arrive, but it's here. Our week long cruise to the Bahamas and we are doing it in comfort, we're doing it in style and it was all paid for months ago.

We are scheduled to board early this afternoon and we will be departing from the Port of Baltimore at around 4:30 this afternoon. One of the highlights that I am looking forward to day (one of many should I say) is actually going under the bay bridge for once instead of driving over top of it. I've crossed it numerous times, this will be my first time going under it.

I'll be sure to grab a few pics today and share them with everyone when we get back.

Leaving for Baltimore

Disclaimer: This week I will be on a week long vacation with my beautiful wife. These blogs were pre-written to keep a flow of my blog going and to let people know where we are that today and what we plan to be doing.

Well the day has finally arrived. We booked this vacation all the way back in February and I counted them down from around 200 days from when we actually booked it, now today is that magical day. Today we will be heading out early and heading to Baltimore, Maryland. This is where our cruise departs from and we are going to go down a day early to make sure that there are no problems getting to the cruise ship tomorrow morning.

We're staying a couple of blocks from the harbor and the hotel will be housing our car for the next week until we return from our trip.

We will be spending part opf the day traveling and part of the day just learning about the city of Baltimore. The sites and sounds of the city, neither Michelle or I have ever been to the heart of downtown Baltimore, but we plan on spending the day having some fun there and getting to know the city a little better.

Big Ole Hairy Friday

Yes it is once again that time of the week that we all look foreword to, when we can take time to cease the labors for the week and take a little bit of needed time out to enjoy the fruits of those labors. It is once again the dawn of another weekend, and a Big Ole Hairy Friday and the start of my long overdue extended vacation and cruise!!!!

Are you looking for a little bit of that High School Football action? The Undefeated and 2-0 University High Hawks will be at home this evening entertaining Brooke. The 1-0 and undefeated Morgantown High Mohigans will be playing host to another undefeated team tonight as Parkersburg South comes to Pony Lewis. Undefeated Clay Battelle will be playing host to Allegheny Valley (PA) in Blacksville.

As for me and the wife, we'll be finishing up our packing tonight as we will be heading out real early tomorrow morning for our vacation. We're going to be heading to the National Aquarium tomorrow morning in Baltimore and spend the day there. We have a hotel that will be watching our car for the week and transporting us to and from the terminal on Sunday. Sunday morning we're setting sail on our cruise and I have written a series of blog already that will post every day until we get back.

With that being said, this may be my last blog I write before the series of automated blogs kicks in. I know we're both looking forward to this as we have been for a number of months now.

One last time for a while...

Hi ho hi ho

Photo Flashback Thursday

About once a week I like to take a little bit of time out and look through all of my thousands of pictures that I have saved on my computer. I like to select just one image to tell a little story about and write a blog about for that week. Sometimes it's pretty easy to find that image and sometimes it's pretty challenging to find it. However, it is always a lot of fun.

This weeks pic was one that I already knew I wanted to use. It was from Christmas 2005 when we had it at Jeans house. We all gathered there like we had many times before in our youth and were all treated to an absolute fest.

As the evening's activities were winding down I wanted to get a picture of everyone, or at least everyone who was willing to pose. We actually did three takes and believe it or not the one with me looking away was the clearest and best picture of the three so I chose it.

Speaking of Christmas, maybe we should start getting ready to do a little bit of planning. It's just three short months away and our pic nic for this summer kind of was put together at the last minute before being rained out. Maybe we can all get together here after I get back from my cruise and start talking about Christmas.

Hi ho hi ho

Hump Day Sports

Well we now have two days behind us, even though one of them was quite easy to get through. Now if you look over the noontime hump, just on the other side of a photo flashback, you can see the dawn of another weekend or a weeks vacation for me.

Well the College football polls for the second week are out and West Virginia has moved up to the #9 position in the AP Poll and we are #8 in the USAToday Coached Poll for this week. The second week of the Heisman Trophy voting is out, this is a poll among sportswriters on who they think will win the Heisman Trophy and has nothing to do with the actual Heisman voting, but Geno Smith is #2 in that poll. We have also moved to 31 in the Big XII Power ratings.

The Pittsburgh Pirates who were once as many as 18 games above .500 and looking like a playoff team, are now only 6 games above .500 and are 2 1/2 games behind in the wild card race. There are 28 games left in the season, if they win 13 of them they will break the 18 year drought of not being able to play .500 baseball. It's the longest futility streak in major sports. I'm still a Pirates fan this year, Josh did not get called up and his season in AAA is over.

Lifting and cardio day, and this may be my only day to lift this week as I'll use friday to get everything in order before we travel.

Hi ho hi ho

Tuesday's Tidbits

* Well Monday is now behind us, for some of us it was a holiday Monday at that, now we are staring Straight down the barrel of a Tuesday. I can't think of a better reason than that to do a tidbits.

* It's been 1,635 days since mine and Michelle's first date a few years ago. I have been absolutely blessed every day since.

* It was 858 days ago that I got down on one knee and proposed marriage to the most wonderful person in the world.

* 395 days ago at the Marilla Center in front of our closest friends and family, we tied the bounds of matrimony and feasted like kings.

* There are only 112 more shopping days left until Christmas.

* There are only 5 more days left until Michelle and I take our cruise. This is one countdown I am very excited to see come to an end after today. It started with around 200 days and we are almost there now.

* Speaking of our cruise, despite having little or no internet accessibility in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, this blog will go on while we are away.

* Speaking of this blog continuing while I'm on vacation, I have written the 9 blogs for my vacation early yesterday morning (had to take advantage of the day off somehow). I'll take you day by day where we are and what we will be doing on that day.

* There will not be a tidbits next week nor any other of my regularly scheduled blogs next week. they will all be vacation blogs.

* I did learn this weekend that one of my credit cards was used for a number of purchases in China. This is the second time this has happened to me, the first was with my bank card, and now this one with one of my credit cards. Don't fret, I just happen to catch it Sunday evening and will have arranged to have it all taken care of this week with my credit card company. At least a bunch of kids has a lot of fun at an amusement park, but not on my dime though.

* Three day weekend over.

* Hi ho hi ho

Labor Day

Today will be the first of three straight Monday;s that I will be off of work. Today is Labor Day which traditionally signals the unofficial end of summer (and no wearing white) for most people. I guess you could call it the last hurrah of summer.

We tried to have a picnic yesterday, but the weather just was not very cooperative with us at all. That and the fact that it's a holiday weekend and all shelters were most likely taken were the reason we had to cancel it. Pam has to go back to work today, we're going to do a test run of packing for our vacation next week so it's an improbability that we will have any chance of doing one before we head south.

One thing I do want to do today is write a series of blogs for next week. We can get internet in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but it is slow and quite costly, so we will most likely not be on the net. Because I'm committed to writing every day, and I do take advantage of having a post post at a certain time, I'll be writing a number of them today to post next week.

Have a great day.

Sunday Morning Ramblings

Here I sit in a quiet household collecting my thoughts for the day. Some movie is playing in the background and I have no idea what it even is as I'm not paying much attention to it. Everyone in the household is fighting a losing battle with the sandman and sleeping.

Did anyone see the football game yesterday? We MANHANDLED Marshall 69-34 yesterday in the last game of that interstate matchup. The Friends of Coal Bowl Trophy stays in Morgantown, heck we should give it to Marshall to hold on to for us, just to show them how much we don't care about that game.

We're having a picnic today one way or another. We've been wanting to have some kind of a get together for a while now, so as the summer winds down this is out last chance to get together this summer and we are finally going to do it.

We'll be at Marilla Park today, a site of so many picnics in the past. It's also the site of many water battles and food battles through the years as well.

Have a great day.

It's Gameday

The long wait since the game clock hit 0:00 in the Orange Bowl is now over, the 2012 Mountaineer Football Season is here. Today at Noon the Marshall Thundering Herd will arrive in Morgantown for the final butt kicking of this series.

Marshall is lead by former Mountaineer and long time former WVU assistant coach Doc Holiday. They are lead by a good young Quarterback named Cato and could be a formidable opponent this afternoon.

However the Mountaineers have Geno Smith, Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey plus a slew of a supporting cast and that may be a little too much for the Thundering Herd.

Michelle was heading to work yesterday morning at 5:30 AM and noticed that there were already cars parked on the 705 bypass for the game. People leaving their cars there early to get a good parking spot to get out once the game starts.

I wonder if there is anyone walking around Morgantown with the "I Need Tickets" sign? LOL

Have a great day and Let's Go Mountaineers!