Fine Dining at Rhinehart's

A couple of weekends ago, I celebrated my birthday with a few friends by going to Augusta, GA, to see AVATAR 3D The IMAX Experience. It was great. Afterwards we went to eat seafood at Rhineharts. This place was a total shack. I was a couple classes below a roadside BBQ joint. Cinder block walls covered in graffiti, greasy wooden picnic tables, cement floor, old prostitutes at the bar, etc. It's ramshackled atmosphere was actually part of it's coolness. The seafood, however, was superb. I had the best fried oysters in years. Alan ate a snow crab plate served on a 5 gallon paint bucket lid. If you're ever passing thru Augusta at mealtime, I recommend eating at Rhineharts, just don't sit at the bar.

M.I.A. (Missing In Alcohol and pork fueled madness)

Many of us have been wondering where the heck Kyle has gone. A once frequent blogger and famed Internet funny-man, Kyle seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. Here are a couple of theories regarding his disappearance:

1- With a belated sense of enthusiasm, he has decided to hike the Appalachian Trail (meaning the actual AT, not go to South American for a tryst.)

2- He has holed himself up in a cabin to work on his novel, a humorous yet melancholy biographical work similar to those of Pat Conroy before his writing began to suck.

3- He got his dream job and is now busy as a roadie for KISS.

4- While reading a monster magazine on the toilet, his legs went to sleep. When he finally tried to stand up, he fell down and tried to grab the toilet for balance, but the toilet lid slammed down and broke all his fingers, rendering him unable to type blog entries.

5- He was so offended by the lack of comments on his last "Where in SC?" entry that he swore a vow of blog-silence that would last until Thanksgiving Day when he would post a hilariously staged photo that looked as if he was frying Ferdlings in a Turkey Fryer.

If the last one is true, we're all sorry for offending you and look forward to your next blog entry.



Updated: Here's what I imagine # 5 might look like.

Challenge Accepted

Alan issued a challange to post an honest (read "bad") photo of yourself. I normally delete the bad ones, but this one was taken on a recent backpacking trip, because I didn't have a mirror to look at. Enjoy!

Meditation

Here, Blythe (little miss tighty whitey) and Harper (little miss pacific grits) meditate prior to their dance lesson. Who knew HIP HOP required such disciplined mental preparation?

Through Hiker!

A week ago I completed the remaining 46+ miles of the Foothills Trail (from Table Rock State Park to Upper Whitewater Falls). Last Year, I did the western section (Upper Whitewater Falls to Oconee State Park) with Paul and Kyle, but this year I finished it up with my pal, Tom. It was a rough 5-day trip, with rain all day on Friday and into the night, but otherwise beautiful. We finished safely and on schedule.

I always learn some things that help me fine tune my technique. Here are some of the things I learned (or re-learned) this trip:

1. Beef Jerky is really just not that good.
2. Pack and dress in layers. Don't bring a 2lb Goretex pull-over, unless it's snowing. A rain shell and a fleece is better.
3. Mountain House dehydrated lasagna is awesome.
4. You can't pack too many M&M's.
5. 1 pair of gloves is enough.
6. 2 pairs of underwear are NOT enough.
7. Trekking poles are awesome after you've had a high ankle sprain.
8. Alcohol stoves are too slow when you're hungry.
9. Wet socks take forever to dry in the rain forests of NC/SC.
10. If backpacking during bear hunting season, DON'T wear black!
    

Catching Up

Well, I know I'm as much to blame as anyone, but I really miss the good old days of frequent blogging. Facebook doesn't cut it for me and Twitter makes it too had to be either clever or sincere in 140 characters or less. Therefore, I'm recommitting myself to this blog. Here's what's been going on for me over the past few months:

We sold our house and moved out in August. After only a couple of months of trying FSBO we were about to give up and get an agent when, Lo and Behold we got a contract. We're currently living with my parents and hope to start building on our lot, at Summer Lake, soon.

Cub Scouts has started back. Grant is a Webelos II and I'm back as a Webelos Den Leader. Grant and Jennifer got to go Scuba Diving with the Boy Scouts at the Lexington Country Club pool, a couple of weekends ago. We also went on a Pack mountain biking trip at Harbison State Park for IMBA's "Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day" last weekend. It's going to be a great year for scouting.

The kids and Jennifer are Home Schooling again. It's a little tougher to do without a home. All three are taking Tennis classes on Fridays.

Blythe is taking a Hip Hop class with her new friend, Harper.

Of course, we're still hyperactive in church, with Praise Band, children's ministries, concert committee, Upward Basketball , and Upward Cheer leading. We're also now leading a Wednesday night Small Group discussing the Nooma videos, by Rob Bell. We also had Steve Fee and band in concert last month and it ROCKED!

My work has been crazy busy, with new business proposals, security audits, a HUGE project underway, and other insanity. We're starting to get serious about using Social Networking as a communications media, which is really exciting.

Last week I was in Baltimore for work and ate approximately 20 pounds of crab in 3 days.

Last night we went to see "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Colonial Life Arena. It was excellent and the dinos were very realistic.

So life is good. Still busy, but I'm really blessed. I'm hoping to reconnect with some old blogger pals (and some non-bloggers) and spend more time with my family.

Band Reunion at the Lake 2009

Last weekend my old Children at Heart band mates and our families got together at the Mynatt' Lake house just outside of Atlanta. Greg was there with his new bride and their now-expanding family, so we had a little belated wedding shower for them. Mike and his family couldn't make it because he's been on two back to back youth mission trips lately with his new job. We missed them. However, the weather was beautiful and it was a great chance to catch up with everyone and just chill out. A good time was had by all. Here's some pics.

The Lonely Toe

Last week, Greenbeans asked for an update on the Lonely Toe. So, Mr. Toe agreed to share this short documentary of a day in his sad, lonely life. Enjoy!

Welcome to SC!

New Belgium Brewing's Fat Tire Amber Ale is now available in South Carolina! Oh, and Alan moved back here too. Double Horray!

Netflix Friends

I'm a bit slow sometimes and just stumbled on the Friends feature in Netflix. This is where you can share movie recommendations and warnings with each other. Click here if you want to be my friend:

http://www.netflix.com/BeMyFriend/P643hKrde5CJbtuK7MyJ

Happy 41st Birthday, Ferdlings!

Today was the 41st Birthday of Ferdlings (aka Paul). As a special treat, I offer this spoof of one of his classic YouTube films. The original Shaving of the Beard can be seen here. If you've not seen it, you must for my video to even be remotely humorous. In fact, I'm not certain mine is funny at all, but nevertheless, here it is...

Birthday Wishes Online-Style

Yesterday was my birthday. 41. Not a big deal like last year. No band reunions or anything. However, throughout the day I received emails, mostly from Facebook, with birthday wishes from various people. In fact, I had 35 different people leave birthday comments on my "Wall" plus several nice personal emails, text messages, and calls from blogger friends.

Returning to Nashville

Last weekend we traveled up to Nashville to attend Monica and Gabe's wedding. They were high schoolers back when we helped with the church's youth group and Sonshine choir. It was great to see so many former youth all grown up and married and all. The wedding was at our old church. Blythe caught the bouquet.

On the way up we stopped at Chickamauga Battlefield and made our way to the marker where our ancestor, George Schumpert, most likely fell in battle. This was the same spot where we took my grandfather in August 2007.

Our pal, Greg, and his daughter, Noel, were gracious hosts and competitive Wii players. We also got to have dinner with the Linney family and catch up just like old times. Sadly we didn't get to see all our old friends, but it was a busy weekend and perhaps too close to Christmas to see everyone.

Our old house looked terrible, which was sad, but Nashville has grown and changed alot. Nevertheless, within less than a day I was ready to be home, back in good old SC. Not sure when THAT happened, but it was a comforting realization.

A Busy Bee!

Admittedly, I've been slack in my blogging lately. I've been reading everyone elses' posts, and y'all ain't necessarily rocking the blogs either.

Here's some of the stuff I've been up to:

Last weekend I went mountain biking at the Tsali Recreational Area near Bryson City, NC, with my buddy Alan and some of his work homies. (Here's Alan's recap.) It was very cold, but we had a fun rustic cabin and really enjoyed ourselves. The AMC channel was showing the Godfather trilogy so we watched the Godfather the first night and Part II the second night. None of us had ever actually seen either once in it's entirety so we felt like this was an accomplishment or right of passage. Good times.

Work has been very busy. After over a year of searching and interviewing I finally hired a new Web Development Manager. Additionally, I got an excellent contractor to finally agree to convert to Full-Time. So things at work are looking up. We're aggressively pitching a new web project to the government and that's looking very promising. Also, we're awaiting the results of several contract awards that would make life very busy but also very secure for the next few years.

I did not have to play in the praise band this weekend, since it was Youth Sunday. Instead I spent my Saturday in the woods on the very back of my lot cutting down trees and such in an effort to fend off encroaching Kudzu. I learned why you should always wear jeans while using a chain saw. No injuries, but I do have some new cut-off shorts now.

I finished a book I was reading, but I'll save the details for another blog post.

Today, after church, I took the family to see Bolt in Disney 3D. It was excellent. I am still amazed at how good 3D has gotten. That technology is so much better than the old red and blue stuff. Good story and excellent voices too. There is some excellent glass reflection rendering that I have never seen (or been impressed by) in animations before. Very impressive. I recommend you see it in 3D while you can.

Well, that about sums it up for now. The holidays will be busy... and sad for many of us. I'll try to post more frequently.

Ferdlings for President!

With the election approaching, I've decided to use my blog as a soap box to promote my "candidate of choice". Write in Paul "Ferdlings" Reaves for President.

Click Here for a Video about the Write-In campaign.

UPDATE" This seems to be working again. Enjoy!

Followers?

If you haven't noticed, there's a little Blogger Widget on the side of my blog that says "Follow this Blog". So far only may pal, Paul, is following me. If you're like me, and follow everyone's blogs via Google Reader, you hardly ever look at the actual blogs to notice things like this or poles/surveys, or other little gizmo's. Anyway, come to my blog and click on that little thing, so your profile photo will show up on my blog. I want to see all of your tiny faces there.

Thanks,
The Management

Backpackin' the Foothills Trail

Last weekend I went backpacking with my pals Paul and Kyle on a little over 30 miles of the Foothills Trail. The Foothills Trail is the only long distance trail in SC (even though it goes into NC) and is like 80 miles in total. We opted for a subset and set out from Upper Whitewater Falls, in NC, and hiked down to Oconee State Park. In retrospect, it was an overly ambitious schedule and we were racing the sun each day.
Day One: We got off a bit later than we had hoped and had to camp about 3 miles short of where we had planned to be. Also, when we stopped to filter water, I dropped my filter and broke an important part. We could make it work with a LOT of effort, but it turned a 10 minute chore into a 45 minute nightmare. However, we eventually found a great camp site along a ridge. We ate freezer bag spaghetti for dinner and enjoyed some libations.
Day Two: We ate hot oatmeal for breakfast and then packed up and hiked the previously missed 3 miles to Burell's Ford where we would then started our official hike for the day. We we're hoping to make up some ground with an additional 8ish miles, but the terrain proved to be more strenuous that the guide book indicated and we cut it back to 5.1 miles for a total of 8.1 miles for the day. We had an even better campsite on a sandy beach at a bend in the river. We had salami, cheese, and crackers for lunch, and tuna wraps for dinner. And, of course, more libations and then early to bed.
Day Three: We broke camp and hit the trail about 9:15am. Trudging along until we finally hit a parking lot, just not OUR parking lot. Paul had been struggling with his feet (due to inadequate footwear) so we thought that we might try to get to the highway crossing, about 5.5 miles from the car) where we'd drop our packs and I'd go alone to get the car and come back for the guys and our gear. However, Paul agreed to press on. Eventually I gave him my boots and I hiked in my hiking sandals that I had brought along as camp shoes. It was tough, but we all made it to the finish line by 3:30pm. That day was over 11 miles long and it was really difficult, but we finished.. After driving back to the start to get Paul's truck, we drove to Clemson and ordered the Family Meal special which feeds six people.

Here's a slide show of the trip:

More products at the Tighty Whitey Store

Ferds! Mug
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Shameless Capitalism

I liked the "Mug Shot" on Kyle's blog so much that I decided to capitalize on the idea. Below is a place where you can buy mugs related to some of my favorite blogs. A portion of the proceeds will go to the "Save the Polar Bear Fund"... maybe.

Alcohol and Pork Fueled Madness by gnicholson
novelty mug On zazzle.com
Browse more Jokes Mugs

Weekend in NC

Last weekend we went up to Cary, NC to visit with the Greens and to attend Malana's and Eric's wedding. Below are the highlights (or "low lights"):

Above: Alan and Leslie hang out by their fire pit on a brisk August evening.

Above: Grant and Jenna create toy water crafts at Marbles science museum, in Raleigh.

Above: Blythe and Meredith make floating junk of their own.

Above: Alan in front of a section of the Berlin Wall (West Berlin side).

Above: George on the other side of the section of the Berlin Wall (East Berlin side).

Above (clockwise): Meredith, Grant, Blythe, and Jenna at Marbles (or inside the Death Star. It's hard to tell.

Above: Jennifer and Blythe broiling at the outdoor wedding. It was beautiful though.

Above: Grant enjoys one of many non-alcoholic Mojitos at the wedding reception.

Above: The happy couple and their posse.

Above: Michael in the middle, with Grant and Blythe. We stopped in Fayetteville to visit our former neighbors and let the kids reunite with their old pal.

Above: George reunited with his old friend, Pedro.