Post by jptheprofessor on Aug 28, 2007 12:14:22 GMT -5
Hey! Does this thing work? (sound of finger tapping on a microphone...)
Yeah, I know, long time no blog. Again my apologies for the lack of blogs of late. Summer is the busiest time of the year for me, so quality time for blogging becomes few and far between.
Anyway, BIG THANKS to everybody who helped make the 17th annual "End of Summer Jam" benefit concert in Cresson this past Sunday one of the best yet! The weather was perfect, the bands all performed well, and an appreciative crowd of people enjoyed the music and the day! Look for a more detailed recap and photos from "End Of Summer Jam" to be posted in the next week or so.
All this week on the 4:15 PM "Classic Rock Clip" contest, the prize is a pair of tickets to see Jackyl (with special guests Wiskerbisket and Way Down East, bands you might have heard on the "Backyard Rocker") at Altoona's Jaffa Shrine on Friday, Sept. 21, sponsored by The Underground TV and Q94. Today's correct answer was "Let's Go" by The Cars. That was another of those clips where nearly everyone recognized the song, but it took a while before anyone came up with the correct song title; a number of people incorrectly guessed the title as "Night Life Baby!"
Today's 5:15 PM "Lost Classic" from the back of the rack was a Rush instrumental long one, "La Villa Strangiata," from the 1978 album Hemispheres. We picked that one to showcase the guitar-playing master work of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, who celebrates his 54th birthday today.
This is the first I've been able to blog about my recent Outer Banks vacation as well. An excellent vacation, but as always, TOO SHORT! I easily could have done the beach bum thing for another week or two. I logged lots of beach and ocean time, and learned this year that renting a beach house with a bunch of friends is the WAY TO GO! It was like moving into a new home across the street from the ocean! The house was nice and spacious, easily able to fit the six members of our entourage. It was equipped with beds, furniture, full kitchen, outdoor grill, indoor and outdoor showers, washer/dryer, three televisions (the living room TV with DVD player) and more. It cost $1,600 to rent for a full week when all was said and done; split evenly among six people, about $270 a person - that would cover about two nights in a hotel room at the Outer Banks during this time of year. So if you have the people and a week's time frame to do it in, a beach house is definitely the more economical way to do an Outer Banks vacation!
Also cool was that one member of our entourage, Kate, wanted to cook for us, so we did most of our meals at the house, and only ventured out to restaurants twice during the whole week. We ate well, too, as Kate fixed up lasagna, steak, shrimp (in lieu of wings, Monday became shrimp night instead of wing night), meat loaf and more. Then on Friday, the night before we headed back home, we did "leftover night" and finished off whatever was left over from the previous nights. This was a money saver as well, as buying in the food items and cooking them up in house was less expensive than doing the restaurant thing each night.
When we did hit a restaurant, we did two favorites we enjoyed in past years, Sam & Omie's in Nag's Head, and Jimmie's Seafood Buffet in Kitty Hawk.
As I said, I logged a lot of beach and ocean time; also a lot of reading time on the beach. I actually got through two books during the week I was there, a Star Trek novel and Howard Cosell's I Never Played the Game. That's the most reading I've been able to get in since last year's vacation!
The beach was great. Although it seems to get a little busier each year with development and more tourists learning about the area, The Outer Banks still offers up all the beach but half the crowd! Where we were staying, we had lots of room to stretch out on the beach, with only a few other scattered folks here and there. The ocean was fun as well, as we again jumped up and down in the waves like a bunch of little kids! Towards week's end, the ocean was very calm, too, almost as calm as an inland lake! And during this calm spell, I actually saw a school of small stingrays swim past me about four feet away.
Again, it was a great vacation; I didn't want to leave!
Here are a couple of pictures from my vacation:
Yours truly, getting caught up on some reading at the Outer Banks.
One of my favorite photos from the trip...I just happened to wake up shortly after 6 AM on Thursday morning, realized that the sun hadn't yet risen above the horizon, grabbed my camera and ran across the road to the beach to photograph an Outer Banks sunrise!
Yeah, I know, long time no blog. Again my apologies for the lack of blogs of late. Summer is the busiest time of the year for me, so quality time for blogging becomes few and far between.
Anyway, BIG THANKS to everybody who helped make the 17th annual "End of Summer Jam" benefit concert in Cresson this past Sunday one of the best yet! The weather was perfect, the bands all performed well, and an appreciative crowd of people enjoyed the music and the day! Look for a more detailed recap and photos from "End Of Summer Jam" to be posted in the next week or so.
All this week on the 4:15 PM "Classic Rock Clip" contest, the prize is a pair of tickets to see Jackyl (with special guests Wiskerbisket and Way Down East, bands you might have heard on the "Backyard Rocker") at Altoona's Jaffa Shrine on Friday, Sept. 21, sponsored by The Underground TV and Q94. Today's correct answer was "Let's Go" by The Cars. That was another of those clips where nearly everyone recognized the song, but it took a while before anyone came up with the correct song title; a number of people incorrectly guessed the title as "Night Life Baby!"
Today's 5:15 PM "Lost Classic" from the back of the rack was a Rush instrumental long one, "La Villa Strangiata," from the 1978 album Hemispheres. We picked that one to showcase the guitar-playing master work of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, who celebrates his 54th birthday today.
This is the first I've been able to blog about my recent Outer Banks vacation as well. An excellent vacation, but as always, TOO SHORT! I easily could have done the beach bum thing for another week or two. I logged lots of beach and ocean time, and learned this year that renting a beach house with a bunch of friends is the WAY TO GO! It was like moving into a new home across the street from the ocean! The house was nice and spacious, easily able to fit the six members of our entourage. It was equipped with beds, furniture, full kitchen, outdoor grill, indoor and outdoor showers, washer/dryer, three televisions (the living room TV with DVD player) and more. It cost $1,600 to rent for a full week when all was said and done; split evenly among six people, about $270 a person - that would cover about two nights in a hotel room at the Outer Banks during this time of year. So if you have the people and a week's time frame to do it in, a beach house is definitely the more economical way to do an Outer Banks vacation!
Also cool was that one member of our entourage, Kate, wanted to cook for us, so we did most of our meals at the house, and only ventured out to restaurants twice during the whole week. We ate well, too, as Kate fixed up lasagna, steak, shrimp (in lieu of wings, Monday became shrimp night instead of wing night), meat loaf and more. Then on Friday, the night before we headed back home, we did "leftover night" and finished off whatever was left over from the previous nights. This was a money saver as well, as buying in the food items and cooking them up in house was less expensive than doing the restaurant thing each night.
When we did hit a restaurant, we did two favorites we enjoyed in past years, Sam & Omie's in Nag's Head, and Jimmie's Seafood Buffet in Kitty Hawk.
As I said, I logged a lot of beach and ocean time; also a lot of reading time on the beach. I actually got through two books during the week I was there, a Star Trek novel and Howard Cosell's I Never Played the Game. That's the most reading I've been able to get in since last year's vacation!
The beach was great. Although it seems to get a little busier each year with development and more tourists learning about the area, The Outer Banks still offers up all the beach but half the crowd! Where we were staying, we had lots of room to stretch out on the beach, with only a few other scattered folks here and there. The ocean was fun as well, as we again jumped up and down in the waves like a bunch of little kids! Towards week's end, the ocean was very calm, too, almost as calm as an inland lake! And during this calm spell, I actually saw a school of small stingrays swim past me about four feet away.
Again, it was a great vacation; I didn't want to leave!
Here are a couple of pictures from my vacation:
Yours truly, getting caught up on some reading at the Outer Banks.
One of my favorite photos from the trip...I just happened to wake up shortly after 6 AM on Thursday morning, realized that the sun hadn't yet risen above the horizon, grabbed my camera and ran across the road to the beach to photograph an Outer Banks sunrise!