Eagles vs. Cowboys

Heading in to the game.

Tailgating prep

Before the Eagles and Cowboys play.

Opening gifts

Christmas at Mama and Daddy's.

Merry Christmas

Way Back When-sday

My youngest brother Brandon had this thing for the ornaments that looked like Santa Claus. This photo is from December 1973. Brandon was about 1 1/2 years old here. In the photo he is clearly reaching out for and then pulling the one Santa ornament closer so he can give it a kiss.

In an unrelated note, Brandon looks like he's carrying a load of "presents" in his long underwear thingy.

Blue, blue, blue Christmas

I sang with Elvis...

You can record your own short duet with Elvis thanks to this Web site to promote an Elvis duets album. Go to singwiththeking.com and follow the instructions ... and don't forget to send me a copy of you singing when it gives you an option to e-mail it to people. I could use the entertainment. Send it to jeffrey-was-here@hotmail.com

Gum surgery this morning

Lower right quadrant is all stitched up.

Thursday Thing-along

The pants kill me ...



WARNING... The link below has sexual related content.. Words only. No nudity...

One of Rod Stewart's claims to fame is as a member of this rumor club.

UPDATE: Joe's comment to this post is a must read. After you've read it, watching this will prove what he's saying.

Way Back When-sday

The photo above is of Pops in his baby carriage in 1944 in Florida. This was when Papa was stationed there while he was in the Navy. Grandma wrote a note on the back of it as if it were Pops writing it. I don't have time right now to go through and type it in. If you click on the picture, it will be big enough you can attempt to read it. I'll post more about this after I get home from work.

UPDATE: I got an e-mail from Mama transcribing the words on the back of the picture. She fixed some of the spelling. Grandma did what a lot of people, especially women, did in those days and stopped going to school after the elementary grades. Still a very smart woman, though.
Here's the e-mail Mama sent me Wednesday night:

Hey Son, Just thought I would decipher what Mrs. Gentry wrote on the back of the picture for you. You probably could read it but I thought I would help you.

I'm some boy Grandma. You should see me in my get up, my long pants. I'm about 28 inches tall. Guess that's enough for now. I have pretty black eyes and long black eyelashes, just as pretty as Uncle Clayton's. The girls will like me just as much. Well that's enough for now. Wait to you see me. Love, Michael

He was a cutie back then. Wonder what happened? Ha. Just kidding.

I love you, Mama

Thursday Thing-along

This version of The Sound of Music classic is growing on me...



Check out their YouTube channel...

Way Back When-sday

This is a picture of my brother Stephen from Feb. 17, 1969. He's about 17-18 months old here. I love the way he's got a grip on that bottle. It's like he's in prison and he wants to make sure none of the other baby prisoners are going to take his food.

But the reason I chose this picture is because of the great tiger print slippers Stephen is wearing. Those babies are the bomb diggity.

That time of year

It's turning colder and the field mice are looking for winter quarters.
This house is protected by two mouse-hunting kitties. This is victim
No. 1 of the winter.

In related news ...

Thursday Thing-along

Crank it up and jump... this is a dancing song ...



John ... this Santogold song -- Lights out -- has a running beat for your chilly morning runs if I've ever heard one... Download it here NOW before it's gone. It's a good workout song, too, Bugz.

Yeah baby

$1.59 --- shell 5 cents off on Thursdays

Way Back When-sday

This is my senior photo from Concord High School near Wilmington, Del.
At first I didn't think I could call it 'Way Back' until I realized it was taken
24 freaking years ago.

This picture was included in a package of goodies my Uncle Tony sent me a little over a month ago. I'm just now getting the chance to go through it and read some of the writings and look through the books. I'll share some of those later.

Hanging on....

It's tough to be a journalist these days, especially in newspapers.

Thursday Thing-along

Way Back When-sday

It's getting to be that time of the year again. Walmart and Kmart have had their decorations up here since before Halloween. I swear it used to be Thanksgiving before this would start ... maybe I just have kid memories wherein I focused on one holiday at a time and didn't notice all the encroaching trappings of the other holidays.

• Halloween meant costumes and pillowcases full of candy.

• Thanksgiving meant being out of school, going squirrel hunting with Granddaddy, eating turkey, dressing, green beans, mashed potatoes and Mammy's gravy with sliced boiled eggs.

• Christmas meant every happy thing you could think of -- including no school -- rolled into one old big ball and bounced from one set of grandparents' house to the next set's house. It meant trying to fall asleep so Santa would come. It meant hearing Pops ring his jingle bells and pretend he was Santa leaving the house. It meant Mama in her housecoat smiling as she watched us all tear through our things to find the next surprise.

There was no need to rush to get from one holiday to the other since each had its special things that went with it.

Anyway, enough daydreaming .... the picture this Wednesday is of my very first Christmas tree. How do I know that? Because Mama and Daddy did a great job of writing on the backs of the many photos they took of us growing up. That's something many of us in this digital age are going to miss out on. I can go back through all these photos and see their handwriting, their little marks, etc. It's a special treasure our family is lucky to have. I hope some of you have the same treasure from your parents or are creating a photo treasure for your own children.

Nice

Never thought the price of gas would be this low again.

It's Friday .... Casual Friday, that is

Thursday Thing-along

And what comes next, hey bust a move ...

Way Back When-sday

This photo of Stephen (from left), me and Pops was taken in February 1970, about three and a half weeks before Russell was born. Stephen and I are each in our footy pajamas -- mine have musical instruments on them and Stephen's have little cowboys, I think. .... Anyway, I loved these PJs because you could slide around on the wood floors in the hallway. I may have to get me another pair soon.

By the way, that couch we are sitting on didn't finally bite the dust until a couple of years ago. It made it through countless incarnations, moves and parties before finally begging for mercy.

It was good to see the guys ...

A few video clips from our 2008 annual backpacking trip ....




A few more to come later....

200-plus camping photos ....

Click on the arrow to start the slideshow...



You can make the slideshow bigger by holding your mouse over it and clicking on the four-arrow thingy in the lower right corner.

If you don't like seeing things in a slideshow or just want to look at specific photos, the 2008 camping photos can now be found in a set on my flicker account here. I will add more details in the captions as I have time.

Movies still to come....

We survived another one

We survived another of our annual backpacking trips. There were 10 of us this year, including a mix of veterans of the trip, a couple of people who have been a few times and two rookies. It rained on us for part of Friday night into Saturday early afternoon. Just enough to wash some of the stink off us.

More photos -- about 150-200 of them -- and some videos will be coming later today and over the next few days. Stay tuned.

Thursday Thing-along

I've delayed posting it -- but Jeezuz -- this song is just so darn catchy....

Way Back When-sday

This photo is from 1968 and is of me (almost naked boy to the right) and my best friend at the time, David Isner. David lived down the street from me in Grifton, N.C. His parents and my parents were good friends. Our fathers worked together at DuPont and our families were members of the neighborhood golf course and swimming pool. David and his family moved north to Pennsylvania a few years before our family moved north to Delaware. We ended up within 25 miles of each other but rarely saw each other. The last I heard, David was back in North Carolina working as a commercial fisherman on the Outer Banks.

From backpacking to tailgating

We hiked off the mountain early this morning to make it to the Eagles
game against the Giants. Full weekend of mandom.

Boys will be boys

The annual backpacking trip has started.

Thursday Thing-along

Love Chevy Chase in this one ...

Way Back When-sday

After our day hike the other day we stopped by our parents' house and had dinner while watching the Eagles game. Looking around the den at us all with plates in our laps, it reminded me of the holidays. Why? Because holiday meals were often spent eating wherever you could find room to sit in the grandparents' houses.

The photo above is of Pops' brother Uncle Tim with his plate during Christmas 1972 at Grandma and Papa's house. It was typical of Uncle Tim and Uncle David to go hunting before the gathering so the hunting pants and boots were just as much of the holiday scenery as the big plates of food.

I voted....

.... Did you?

Always prepared

The annual guys backpacking trip on part of the Appalachian trail is coming up this weekend. I thought it would be a good idea this year to take a trip up a few days ahead of time and hide some beer and water near where we will set up camp. Every year our backpacks seem to get a bit heavier. So on Sunday, we took a day trip up to the trail section. I'm only posting a little bit of the video here. I didn't want to show the hiding spots .... just in case you were thinking about searching for the beer.




Here are some camping photos from 2007.

These are photos from our 2006 trip.

Dance little doggy, dance

My brother Stephen and his family have an older dog named Chelsea. She is almost completely blind and deaf .... but she loves to dance.




I guess she's just scratching her back but it's fun to watch.

Thursday Thing-along

Nothing wrong with a little old Journey now and then.

Way Back When-sday

It's starting to get cold here now. Anyone who's been tuning in to the World Series has been able to see the weather change in this area. It's made me think about snow a bit.
The picture at top is of Pops holding me beside a snowman he and Mama made was taken in 1968 at our house in Grifton, N.C. The smaller picture at right is one I posted a couple of years ago on a different blog of Mama with me beside the same snowman. I think it's neat they took turns posing with me.

Thursday Thing-along

I feel like I'm back in high school after listening to that ...

Way Back When-sday

This is me in my stroller in 1966 when I was just a few months old. This stroller looks like it was a pretty stiff ride. I see no suspension to speak of on it, all metal frame, hard rubber wheels, no springs nor any give in it all ..... I hope I was at least sitting on an inflatable donut to protect my coccyx.

Guess where I am right now?

Getting my truck washed...

Crab Picking

The annual Tilghman Island Day was Saturday. As always, it was a blast. Below is some video clips from the crab picking contest. More pictures and video to come soon.




I also just upgraded my account on Vimeo to the paid membership and have changed my settings for uploading. That should make these videos look better than ever -- and I thought Vimeo did pretty good anyway.

A little Sunday silliness

Found this while looking around YouTube.



The Onion has always been a fave of us in the newspaper business.
Check it out here.

New friend

One of the many friendly people enjoying the crabs and oysters during Tilghman Island Day.

Thursday Thing-along

Sing it ....

I was made for loving you baby
you were made for loving me
and I can't get enough of you baby
can you get enough of me?

Way Back When-sday

This is a picture of Pops (older one on the left) and David, one of his younger brothers. It was taken in 1949 in Ca-Vel, a Collins & Aikman company village in Roxboro, N.C. The neighborhood of homes was built next to the textile plant for workers to live in. These mill villages were pretty common.

It looks like Pops is trying to point out the camera to the diaper-wearing David who seems none to sure about what he's supposed to be looking at. Uncle David died in April 2004. He was just 56.

He died of Lou Gehrig's Disease. I wish I had taken up shooting video before he passed so I could have more to share of his North Carolina drawl. I can still hear it in my head, many times barely understandable because of the thick accent and quiet tone.

Keep going down

Please

Thursday Thing-along

A little live H & O ...

Way Back When-sday

This is a picture of Pops from the early to mid 1980s doing some paperwork while sitting at the couch in the den. Pops mostly did his paperwork there or at the dining room table -- which was otherwise known as Pops' desk because we never 'dined' at that table and it was always covered in his stuff. Tax forms, warranty books, DuPont work, planners, etc. He had a desk upstairs in their bedroom but that was just to hang his pants over when he took them off at night and a place to keep return address stickers and postage stamps top drawer on the right).

Now that he's retired, he has a home office. Go figure. I guess they needed to get us four boys out of there so they could use the rooms the way they wanted.

Anyway, the reason for using this picture for Way Back When-sday is to share some advice with you that Pops -- a workaholic if there ever was one -- recently gave me. He said: Remember son, it's just a job. No one on their deathbed ever said they wished they'd spent more time at work. He said it took him forever to start figuring that out.

He went on to say -- as if I didn't already know -- that he placed so much importance on his work, his job became a big part of his self-worth. He climbed the corporate ladder, traveling three or four days a week for management meetings at other DuPont sites. He was proud of his work and he was damn good at it. He spent as much time as he could with us, don't get me wrong, but he worked an awful lot. Work was almost everything to him.

But he recently told me that putting that much importance on his work -- letting it be a measure of his self-worth -- was one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. He said that once DuPont started going through cutbacks, layoffs and buyouts and the company stock started sinking, so did his feelings of self-worth. Even though he was still there, still employed, he felt like he could never do enough to feel his job was safe. It ate at him for many of his final years with DuPont, up until the day he took one of the buyouts.

There's a reason Pops shared this with me. The newspaper company I work for -- like most other print media companies -- is having a tough go of it right now. We've laid off more than a 1,000 people company wide and it's doubtful that round of layoffs will be the end of it. It's put a real hurting on a lot of people, not just the ones let go. Most of us wonder if we will be next. No one feels safe. For those of us still standing, there is now much more work to be done and less time to do it. More and more time is being sucked into taking care of work tasks and less and less is being gained from it. And just like happened with Pops -- I am my father's son -- I've found that my feelings of self-worth have also taken a hit.

It sounds selfish, I know. After all, I still have my job. What would I be feeling if I was staring at a table piled with bills and I didn't have a job?

Perhaps it's time to start reassessing things a bit.

"The work you do is not important. It is what the work does to you that’s important."

Dear John,

I am not your friend so please stop saying "my friends" when answering questions during tonight's town hall debate.

Thank you

UPDATE: He said it 22 times, my friends.

E-A-G-L-E-S

I'm leaving the house in 10 minutes to go tailgate before doing this.....

Thursday Thing-along

Sssssslither

Happened across this just now while mowing the grass.

UPDATE: To answer Mama's question in the comments, this is a common Eastern garter snake. They are found all over Maryland and are pretty much harmless to humans.

Way Back When-sday

This is me from 1967. I had to retouch the photo just a bit to blur out the package :-)
I don't want any accusations of kiddie porn headed my way -- or my parents' way. This was taken in an inflatable pool in our back yard in Grifton, N.C. I'm not sure what my hand was doing but I think I had a scratch that needed itching.