Dixie Land Weekend

I came back home to see my wonderful wife and dog this weekend. Upon my arrival Allison gave me my birthday present early. A 14 disk set of Grateful Dead DVD's I am wicked excited and can't wait to watch them all. I am actually listening to one now as I write and it is great. I feel like I'm there!!

I also was able to pick up my Drake Wood Duck mount from Pernell's Taxidermy. http://www.facebook.com/pernells.taxidermy
It looks great and their customer service was impeccable.

Allison and I had a good weekend together. We didn't do to much but we were able to get everything prepped for the big move in June. We are both anxious to get to Michigan and start our new adventure.

Lil Bits of the Coast Guard Yard

Hello all, I have been pretty bored the last few days here in the Yards. It has been rainy and cold so I couldn't accomplish any outside work. What I did accomplish however was pulling a prank on a buddy of mine who departs the OAK next week. I taped his hard hat to the front of his locker and drew a picture of him on it. We all had a good laugh. I also though the other pictures were pretty cool. That is a '110 foot cutter being craned off of the pier and into the water. It was pretty neat to see something that big sailing through the air.

The Little Things

                   Boring weekend, it was supposed to rain so I made plans with my old roommate Jeremy from Valdez AK to Watch the Bruins vs. Caps game at the local Buffalo Wild Wings. I love B.W.W. because its cheap and the games always on. I tried some new Thai Curry wings.....Not good. I won't make that mistake again. After the game I walked around Bass Pro Shop which is attached to the mall, as is B.W.W. I did some serious dreaming in that store as you can see in the pictures below. I entered a raffle to win a $25,000 Bass Pro shopping spree...Fingers crossed.
                    Today (Monday) after work my good friend Mike George and I decided to go for a walk. We went down to a local Civil War site, the Thomas Viaduct. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Viaduct It was pretty cool. It is very over grown now but it must have been a sight back in the day. The link I posted has some cool old pictures. On our walk back I showed him an area with a bunch of Beaver trees. All of a sudden Mr. Beaver himself popped up and started poking around. I was so excited to watch him it never crossed my mind to try to snap a picture. Now all I can think about is getting home to Charleston this weekend. I can't wait to laze around and be with my wife, my bean and my dog.

2012 Coast Guard Yard Softball Tournament

Today was a fun day. OAK put together a softball team and began practicing last week for today's tournament. I had the opportunity to play Short Stop and I think I did pretty well. I didn't let anything past me and even made a couple diving catches. We didn't have the best weather for today's games, it was 50 degrees and rainy. Our first game was a close one but our bats prevailed and we squeaked it out. Our second game we played a team that was horrible. They could barely hit or field. We won that game handily. Our third game we played the team that beat us in the Championship last year. These guys were ridiculously good. We didn't even have a chance to field the ball due to all the home runs they were hitting. We lost that one by about 12 runs.It was a sad sight but its comforting knowing that they won the whole thing again this year and no one beat them. Our last game in this double elimination tourney was another close one. We played well and had no mistakes it just wasn't our day. In the last inning they beat us by 2 runs. I think for a bunch of Cutter Bums from SC we did pretty well. I know I will sleep well tonight!

Tomfoolery In Charm City

Friday The 13th, I traveled to the Sidebar to attend a concert by the sinister sounding Koffin Kats. The concert was at the sidebar sidebartavern.com . The Koffin Kats were an awesome rockabilly band. The night was going good till the young punk kids started a mosh pit in the tiny bar. I know it sounds old but during my hay day I wouldn't have minded but I was just annoyed these days. Needless to say I made it back to the train at 10ish and was back in my bed at a reasonable hour.
I had duty on Saturday so it was pretty much a wash except I did watch the movie "My Week With Marilyn" about Marilyn Monroe. It was fantastic and I highly recommend it.
Sunday I got dropped off by the hotel shuttle at 930am at the MTA airport light rail station......I learnt that the light rail does not run until 11am on Sundays...Noted. I finally caught the train and made it to downtown Baltimore. My mission for the day was a visit to the Baltimore Tattoo Museum. I walked a long ways to find out it was not worth it. I ended up with the below picture and a tee shirt. I would not recommend. It did however lead me to a part of Baltimore called Fells Point. It reminded me of Portsmouth NH. In Fells Point I walked around enjoying the extremely nice day. I visited Saints and Sinners tattoo shop, I have been tattooed there before and I like that shop a lot. Right next door there is a great record/CD shop that I could have spent thousands in. It had every obscure musician that every major electronics store doesn't have. I was in heaven!! I walked past a sign that said 102 beers on tap, well who could pass that up so me being me I stopped in. Max's Tap House maxs.com lived up to the aforementioned sign and had an overwhelming beer selection. I was pretty hungry so I headed to Asahi Sushi www.asahisushifellspoint.com. It was the best sushi I have ever had. It was pretty inexpensive as well. It was so good in fact that the only picture I could get was after I had already eaten a good portion of it. I went to Goodwill afterwards and found myself another nice shirt for a bargain price.Goodwill is a fantastic place. Still I was not in the mood to go home so I stopped by a place some friends had told me about called Leadbetters www.leadbetterstavern.com . They had a special on Baltimore's home town beer "Natty Boh" nationalbohemian.com . That beer is pretty rough. But the bar was awesome. I was the only one in there. The bartender was very friendly and gave me some cool ghost stories about different places in Fells Point. At 4pm an old musician named Tim Fields came in to play some tunes. He was great!!! Like I said I was the only one there so I asked him to play some Waylon Jennings.....This dude knew every Waylon song and then some. I was very impressed. I practically ran back to the train station in order to make the last train of the day. 1st train in and last train out of Baltimore, this city is growing on me.
Also my better half searched Craigslist and found us a great new bedroom set at a steal of a price. Nice work beautiful. I can't wait to get home to see it. Only 12 more days!!!

Technical Difficulties

My last post didn't exactly come out visually the way I had intended. I am still getting the hang of this blogging thing. Stick with me.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Thursday I hopped into a sweet 2012 Nissan Versa rental car en route from Baltimore to Summerville. Nine excruciatingly long hours later and I was able to hold the love of my life in my arms. Allison was also there so that was nice hehe. Allison had been at the OBGYN Thursday afternoon, it was amazing to see the first images of our baby. I am so proud of how well Allison has been handling everything that is going on while I am away.

So anyways on Friday I went to Moncks Corner to have lunch with Allison at Miz Scarlets Table http://www.facebook.com/pages/Miz-Scarletts-Table/359950835659 It was a very nice lunch. I had a delicious bowl of She Crab soup and some Sweet Potato Tots. The diner has a very nice southern atmosphere and some of the best sweet tea I have ever had. After that I went to Artistic Ink http://www.facebook.com/artisticinksummerville and made a permanent statement of my love for my wife by getting our wedding date in roman numerals tattooed on my left hand ring finger. I like it because at work when I can't wear my wedding band I'll show that tattoo but when I want to hide it I can do so by just putting on my ring. I love it.

Saturday found Allison and I headed to local attraction the H.L. Hunley www.hunley.org

We had been putting off seeing the famous submarine for way too long. It was very interesting to see. Allison nor I had ever seen a full sized Civil War era sub in real life. We were unable to get any picture of it due to it being prohibited. We saw a bunch of neat artifacts found inside the sub which acted like a time capsule on the Charleston Harbor sea floor for 100 years. It was an all around fun day.

Easter Sunday I spent all day washing and waxing our vehicles in the wonderful South Carolina heat. When I say I spent all day waxing I am not exaggerating, we bought a new wax kit called Turtle Wax Black Box. It is a 4 part waxing system specifically designed for black vehicles. Although it was very time consuming, I have never seen a car shine so much. Allison was inside making us her special spaghetti sauce for our Easter Sunday dinner. She sure knows the way to this guys heart. Once she was done slaving over a hot stove all morning she came outside to enjoy the day and supervise my washing and waxing. All and all it was a great weekend and I hated to end it knowing I was leaving soon.

Monday was a full day of travel to get back to a place I don't want to be in the first place. I sure do miss my wonderful little family back in South Carolina. As I sit here in my hotel listening to some tunes on my Ipod and reading the whole mess I just wrote it dawned on me how lucky of a man I am.

A Life Aquatic

Saturday was a great day due to a random act of kindness from a friend on www.Phishhook.com. I met her outside of the Baltimore National Aquarium www.aqua.org/ and she gave me a free ticket to get in. $25.50 savings. I brought my friend from the OAK Christian "Legs" Glenn along with me and we had a great time. There was so much to see that we ended up spending about 3 hours walking around. Their tank was huge and had all sorts of colorful fish as well as some monster Sharks. My favorite part was the Terrarium, it was supposed to be just like the Amazon. All the animals were free roaming and flying around. I saw a pretty sweet little Ocelot. I was unable to get a photo of him though. After we had seen all there was to see at the aquarium we walked across the street to a nice little brewery/ale house called the Pratt St Ale House http://www.prattstreetalehouse.com/ . I had a delicious burger (The Raven) topped with pit beef, bbq sauce, horseradish sauce, chopped dill pickles and aged chedder. All topped off with a real nice IPA "Draft Punk". I am having a good time so far here in Baltimore but I sure do miss my beautiful wife at home in Charleston. Only 4 more days till I get to go home for the weekend. I can't wait. Till next time...Cheers