Mary and her niece, Michelle, spent the weekend visiting Bryan and his supermodel wife, Nikki, and their son, Austin. Michelle, was nice enough to allow me to tag along at the last minute. They have tangerine trees in their backyard and I aggravated Nikki some and told her I expected fresh-squeezed orange juice for breakfast. Well, this sweet little thing got up the next morning and went out and picked a bunch and made me some. Nikki is now, unquestionably, my number one, favorite daughter-in-law!

Later we took a trip to the big mall, had a fabulous lunch and posed for pictures!

Okay, you've been to the oil change places, right? My good buddies over at East Ridge Fast Lube, in Chattanooga, has a place with two lanes that will hold two cars each. Well, today I stopped by and managed to get the spot just adjacent to the cashier's window - literally within arms reach out my driver's side window. So, the guys are working on my car and I'm sitting in the driver's seat reading a couple chapters of a good book while waiting. Someone dropped something and it made a loud noise and I turned to look out the window to see what it was and was promptly greeted by the image you see in the photo below. It was not pretty.

Meg's birthday is the day after mine. We partied hard!

Snow Day! 8-10" in some places.

I love books. I especially love hardcover books. Mary likes stuff. We needed a place for my books and Mary needed a place for her stuff (and a few books, too). I've always wanted a big, floor-to-ceiling bookcase with a rolling ladder so, after the recent re-model, I built one!

This thing is ten feet high and ten feet wide and 12" deep. It has adjustable shelves on old-fashioned library standards and no exposed fasteners. The vertical supports and top are made from 10' long 3/4" birch MDF plywood (thank you Chattanooga Hardwood). The shelves are 3/4" birch plywood with solid maple front and back stiffeners. The fluted front trim is from Lowe's with the exception of the carved pieces at the top which I ordered custom made.

Friday, May 21, 2010 - A day (around our household) that will live in infamy.

This is a picture of my nephew, Dusty, and me. Everyone says we look and act just alike. I guess I just don't see it....

Have you ever driven past something that you drive past every day and thought afterwards that something didn't seem right? The other morning I pulled out of our neighborhood on to the main road. I had gone about 1/4 mile when I had that feeling that something in the woods beside my house didn't seem normal. It was bad enough that I turned around and went back. Here is a photo of what was wrong.

We bought a golf cart! We bought a used (2004) Club Car with a utility bed. This will come in handy for all kinds of chores around the 'estate'. And the kids (young and old) love it, too! Everyone was home for Thanksgiving and it got a real workout.

Mary named it, Tiger.

Each Christmas season, Rock City, high atop Lookout Mountain, puts on a "Festival of Lights". Bryan and his lovely girlfriend, Nikki, came up and spent a few days with us and Bryan treated us all with tickets to the Festival. Here's the obligatory photo...

They claim to have over 1 millions twinkling lights although I could only find slightly over 943,223! False advertising? Who knows? And the lights aren't twinkling, Clark!