Master Josiah E. Fortner

“So, how’s that youngest grandson of ours doing?”  You may ask.  Well, see for yourself.

“I’m cute, I’m lovable, and I’m spoiled rotten!!’

Here he is with Belle the Wonder Dawg.  “Nice pillow, Josiah.”

And this is what happens when Belle the Wonder Dawg gets up and leaves.

“What just happened?  Ermagherd, I’m naked!!!  Avert your eyes.”

Kiss me, mama.  Kiss me.

“Whatda mean the Patroits lost?”

Halloween cookies with momma.

“I wanna cookie, I wanna cookie!  It’s just not fair.”

Well thar ya have it folks.  Good Day!!!

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (I Thessalonians 5:28)

Catching Up

We’ve been back for a month now and are pretty much living the daily routine.  Things are beginning to ramp up “in these here parts” at the Plantation.  The “Stitch and Chat” group has already started meeting on Tuesdays and the Quilters are getting together on Thursdays.  Bagels and Coffee has been taking place on Saturday mornings with the Ice Cream Social on Sunday evenings.  Gary and Millie will be returning this coming weekend so the four o’clock social should be getting underway soon.  Larry and Babs will be returning shortly after Election Day so the Tuesday and Thursday evening meals will taking place real soon.

We’ve continued to work on The Old Ta Do List; it’s unbelievable how many items are on that list and the list just keeps growing.  The temperatures have dropped a little bit here in the southland over the past few days so we’ve been concentrating on our “indoor” chores.  The refrigerator needs to be defrosted and we want to vacuum on top of all the cabinets throughout the house.  Once the old temps climb back to normal, by the end of the week, we will get outside and wash the exterior of all the windows (the interiors have already been done).

Sunday afternoon our church held the annual Tail Gate event.  Tail Gate takes place in the area behind the church where the home groups set up booths with various themes along with lots of food, fun, and fellowship.  There are big bouncy houses set up for the kids, drawings for door prizes, and an award for the most popular booth.  It was estimated that 2,000 people attended this year’s event and everyone seemed to have had a good time.  Our group’s booth was an old fashioned Barn Wedding; here’s  a couple of photos.

 

Tomorrow will be the first of November; unbelievable, ten months of 2012 is already gone leaving Thanksgiving on the horizon.  Also, this coming Sunday marks the end of Daylight Savings Time – Oh, Yuck.  That means it will be dark before five thirty each evening.  I just hate getting up at two in the morning to tinker with the clocks twice a year.  Changing time has got to be one of the stupidest thing that we Americans do.  Just pick a time and leave the clocks alone.  Besides, the farmers hate Daylight Savings Time because the extra hour of sunlight burns up their crops.

For Trick or Treat, I’m taking taking my bride to Big Daddy’s for lunch.  Big D’s has a nice Philly Cheese sandwich lunch plate served with fries and coleslaw; it’s one of our favorites.  Also, their Big Daddy Burger is among the best.  Being that we’re not big into the Halloween things, we’ll just call it a nice day for a nice lunch and that will be our nice Treat.

I guess that brings you pretty much up to date.  Hope your all doing well and keeping dry.  Hurricane Sandy has certainly made a mess of New Jersey and New York City.  So, in the meantime . . . .

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (I Thessalonians 5:28)

La Cucarachas, La Cucarachas

My dear wife has a phrase that she uses to describe the “yucky” in life; it’s “Gross and Disgusting”.  Well, I’ve been battling the “Gross and Disgusting” this past week.  I started out on my crusade to do battle with a colony of ants that decided they liked our home better than theirs.  It began in the basement and moved to the interior of our “little house on the highway”.  In battling the ant population, I had almost drawn as many battle lines as in the Civil War and, I was winning more battles than I was losing. 

Then the “Gross and Disgusting” occurred.  We discovered that we had an infestation of German Cockroaches.  “Ewwww, Big Time Gross and Disgusting” indeed.  Well, I mean to tell you that the battle immediately turned into a full-fledged war and, unfortunately, it was not on enemy soil; it was on our very own turf.  Now, you think that ants are a bitch (excuse the euphemism) to get rid of, try convincing a family of cockroaches that your not going to sublet your quarters to them.  They cry out ethnic discrimination and I can assure you that it is. 

They were attempting to implement squatter’s rights and were quite well entrenched, however, we entered into full combat; Combat Source Kill, that is.  With the strategic placement of six “bait stations” and the utilization of some Boric Acid powder in our basement, cabinets, and cupboards, the victory was ours.  Also, I crawled under the coach and sprayed the entire undersides with Ortho’s Home Defense.  Hopefully, we’ll not see the whites of their eyes ever again.  Ugly little buggers they are.

We have no idea where we picked these little vagabonds up, but before we depart Alabama again next spring, we’ll be sure to crawl back under the coach and spray the undersides with Home Defense once again in an attempt to discourage ants, bugs, and roaches from thinking they have found the high rent district.  We hates them creepy crawly things to pieces and have no plans to share our humble abode with any of them.  Victory is sweet indeed.

Now onto the more pleasant things in life.  Randy and Terry arrived right on schedule Monday afternoon.  Once they set up house keeping they came over to our house for an enjoyable evening of catching up and of sharing a meal together.  Judy had whipped up one of her famous homemade lasagnas.  We served a garden salad and some Cuban bread with a dipping sauce.  We always enjoy our times with the Guilers; you can follow their travels on their blog - Guiler Travels.

Tuesday evening Randy, Terry, Judy, and I headed to Big Daddy’s for some nice Shrimp Baskets although Randy enjoys his Big Daddy Burger.  Again, another fine dining experience with lots of chatting, chewing, and chuckling taking place.

Yesterday Randy, Terry, Judy, and I met up with Jim, Ellie, and JoAnn at Panini Pete’s to sample some more of their fantastic muffaletta sandwiches.  They were just as good as ever.  This was Jim, Ellie, and JoAnn’s first visit to this little sandwich emporium and all left satisfied.  As always, the fellowship is the best and it was especially good to see JoAnn once again.

This morning we are going to pick up Randy and Terry to go to breakfast at the Foley Diner.  As you can well see, we are eating our way through our whole monthly “eat out” allotment in one fall swoop.  It’s a good thing that it’s the end of the month.  Well, thar ya have it, another day (or two) in the life.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. (2 Thessalonians 3:18)

Amazon.com Brings Smiles

You talk about living in the twenty-first century?  In order to do that, we need to have the right toys.  A computer is a must; it can be a desk model, a laptop, or an I-Pad, but you gotta have a computer.  Now a days your phone can be a computer as well.  Dang, phones are replacing everything.  You can watch TV, you can answer e-mail, you can surf the internet, you can take pictures, and you can turn on things around the house while you’re anywhere in the world.  You can text, you can tweet, you can twist, twitch, and turn over with your “smart” phone.  No matter what, you need to have at least one of these devices in order to survive in the twenty-first century.

Now, I said all that just to say this; my baby got a brand spanking new Toshiba 15” screen 8 gig laptop computer for seventy-eight bucks.  Well, it ain’t  ‘xactly brand new in that it’s my old Toshiba that the hard drive crashed in back in July of twenty-eleven.  We just went to our favorite retailer, Amazon.com, and ordered a new hard drive.  When it showed up on our door step with a smiling delivery gal, we were all over it like white on rice (the hard drive that is, not the delivery gal).  With a little help from our friends, we managed to load the original software which rendered the computer practically brand spanking new.  Now my baby sits in her recliner with a great big smile on her face looking kinda like the Cheshire Katt.  You see, her Dell computer, that we purchased back in the fall of ought six, is slowly giving up the ghost.  It’s always nice to have a replacement before your old computer goes belly up.  Yes, Amazon.com does bring smiles.

Randy and Terry are on their way to Rainbow Plantation and will arrive this afternoon.  We have a travel day meal planned for them; they’ll need it after three days on the road.  But, even as great as the meal will be (Judy’s world famous lasagna with a salad and “dipping” bread), the “spending time with family” will even be greater.  We always pick up right where we left off; it’s as if we just saw each other yesterday, but it has been a long time since we last dined together – waaaay toooo loooong.  Two of the best parts of living this lifestyle are the freedom you have and the friends you make along the journey.

Speaking of the journey, we need to get a life.  We’ve been here for three weeks and other than a trip to the Original Oyster House, Summerdale library, and Walmart we haven’t gotten out much.  Oh yes, there was the trip to Pensacola to JoAnn Fabrics, Joe Patti’s, and Walmart, however, we’ve not even been to Big Daddy’s or Panini Pete’s or even to the beach since we’ve returned back home.  Just chores, chores, and more chores.  We are slowly making progress and getting on top of things.  Hopefully we’ll “get out” a little more often in the near future.  Then we’ll have something with pictures to share with you.  Until then . . . .

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. (2 Thessalonians 3:18)

Rain, Chores, And Good News

Yay, a rainy day.  That meant that we could spend the entire day inside taking it easy, however, we continued on clearing some “inside” items off the “Ol’ Ta Do List”.  Here is a picture of the storm clouds gathering at sunrise on Thursday morning.  By the way, I had spread some fire ant “food” over our site on Wednesday in anticipation of some rain to soak it into the ground.

As you know, once one begins working on “Ta Do” lists, they have a tendency to grow.  You strike one item off and two more appear – it’s magic.  Somewhere in our travels this past summer we picked up a “family” of ants and have been trying to evict them ever since.  Being that they feel that they have squatter’s rights, we’ve had to employ the services of an eviction attorney – Home Defense.  We began with the basement; took everything out, vacuumed, and washed the compartment before spraying it with Home Defense.  Then, on our “stay inside because it’s raining” day, we cleaned out and sprayed the cabinet under the vanity, the furnace compartment under the refrigerator, and a couple of pantry cupboards.  Hopefully, the ant “family” will take the hint and move on over to Hank and Sandy’s house.

The other day I came inside while Judy was on the phone with Terry Guiler.  She was as giddy as a freshman girl being invited to the Senior Prom by the star football quarterback.  I told her I hadn’t seen that much giggling since our daughter’s news of a new grandbaby and asked if Terry was pregnant.  As it turns out she is not, or at least she’s not admitting to any such thing, but she and Randy are pointing their sights in our direction and will be stopping by Rainbow Plantation for a few days on their way to Bonifay, Florida.  Wahooo!!  That means I get to taste some more of Judy’s world famous lasagna once again; one of Randy’s favorites.  We look forward to seeing them and getting to spend some time with them once again.  It’s been waaaaay tooooo looooong!!!!   

Well, that pretty well wraps it up from Rainbow Plantation for now.  May God Bless  - - - - - - - -