This brought back fond memories when I found it in my files.
In June of 2009 I was working a disaster in Atlanta, GA, The Peach State. One weekend in June, Cindy flew up from Orlando to visit and we took a trip over to Stone Mountain. This is one of my favorite photos of her on top of the mountain that day.
Good times!
Here in Oklahoma City we’re about to be walloped by remnants of Tropical Storm Bill. Normally, this would not be a problem but OKC is still reeling from flooding and straight-line winds in May (which is why I’m here) and all of the rivers, lakes, ponds and creeks, not to mention the ground itself, are not going to be able to handle the predicted 5-10” of rain we’re expecting tonight and into mid-afternoon tomorrow.
Flash flood warnings are in effect and, lucky me, my hotel room is on the first floor. So I’ve moved all my personal belongings up as high as I’m able to in the room. The closet isn’t all that large, and I’ve had to put the rest of my stuff on top of the cabinets in the kitchen. And, as always, my Mini-Maglite will be on my nightstand if the power goes out. At least if I’m awakened in the middle of the night by water rushing into the door or window, I’ll only have to worry about getting ME to higher ground.
Most people know that, despite being “sister states” (a term used by officials from both states), there has been a long-time rivalry between The Sooner State and The Lone Star State. Yesterday I saw a little bit of that rivalry manifested on the men’s room wall.
Our office is located in a mall that, 35 years ago was THE place to shop in Oklahoma City but today is populated with a few small businesses and absolutely no anchor stores. Our office is in one of the former locations of a large anchor store. As I walk through the area during the course of my workday, talking to different program area specialists, it is easy to see that no one has been in this building in a long time.
All that to say that, when I stepped into the men’s restroom yesterday and saw this graffiti on the wall of the stall, I knew that it had been there for many years.
And yes, I laughed.
This is a second test. Please disregard.
This is a test post. Please disregard.
This week’s Throwback Thursday takes us back 14 years today to the birth of my first grandson, Mikey, on June 11, 2001. In this photo, I’m just looking at him as it took me several hours to even try and hold him. He was such a tiny little fellow that I was afraid I would crush him simply by holding him. Today he’s bigger than his mom, lol.
Richard Hollingshead Jr. was a sales manager at his dad’s auto parts store in Camden, New Jersey. In his spare time, he dreamed of creating something that would bring a little fun to the tough daily life of the Depression era. He was also thinking about his mother, who was a little bit overweight and wasn’t comfortable in movie theater seats.
Hollingshead applied for a patent in May of 1933. With an initial investment of $30,000, he opened his first theater just three weeks later, on Crescent Boulevard in Camden. Six hundred people turned out on opening night. The cost was 25 cents per car, and 25 cents per person after that, with a cap at one dollar. He called it a “Park-In” theater, and his early ad campaigns targeted families. He said, “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.”
Remember the drive-in theater car speakers? You would roll your window down, pull the heavy metal speaker into the car, then roll the window up partway and hang the speaker on the edge of the glass.
Drive-ins hit their peak in popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. At one point, there were almost 5,000 drive-in theaters in the United States. Now there are fewer than 500 today.
I remember, as a kid, my parents would take my younger brother and I to the drive-in with the back floorboard stuffed with pillows to make it even with the back seat, cover the entire area in a blanket, then add pillows for our heads and blankets to cover us so we could sleep as they watched movies at the drive-in.
The first movie I recall seeing at the drive-in was One Million Years B.C. with Raquel Welch in 1966. Though I know we went to earlier drive-in movies, that’s the first one I remember seeing and it’s probably because I wasn’t falling asleep as early as my younger brother did by that age. Plus, I mean, c’mon, it was Raquel Welch for cryin’ out loud.
The last time I went to a drive-in movie was 20-something years ago when I took a date to the drive-in on East Colonial Drive in Orlando and watched Ghost for the third or fourth time with as many dates. A few years later the drive-in closed and as far as I know there are none left in Orlando.
Did you ever go to a drive-in theater?
Thanks to The Writer’s Almanac for portions of the above.
Today’s Throwback Thursday takes us back to the year 1999 when Cindy won a Disney cruise and we sailed to the Bahamas and Disney’s own private island, Castaway Cay. Here I am on the deck of the ship doing the touristy thing.
I signed up with Tomson.com a couple of months ago. Tomson links businesses who want to get word of mouth out about their products to bloggers and target audiences. Last month I accepted an offer to receive a free 180 count bottle of Omega-3 Supreme 1400 mg Fish Oil Concentrate in exchange for a review. Since I take fish oil anyway as part of my health program, it seemed like a good opportunity.
I should note before I begin that I had not visited a doctor before or after taking the Omega-3 Supreme 1400 mg Fish Oil Concentrate for the past month, so I have no medical test results to compare the before or after results, only my own anecdotal experience.
The Pros:
The bottle arrived quickly, was well-packaged and well-labeled. Directions were clear. One misunderstanding on my part was cleared up right away; I assumed the 1400 mgs were contained in one capsule, which would make my bottle of 180 last 6 months but the 1400 mg dose is if you take the 700 mg capsules twice each day, knocking the duration down to 3 months.
The manufacturer promised “No Fish Burps” on the label and thankfully I found that claim to be true. There’s nothing more distasteful, especially if you are not a fan of the taste of fish, than to burp and taste fish.
Also promised is that the fish oil “…is sustainably sourced from Wild Alaskan Pollock under MSC regulations.” which makes me happy. However the sentence above is immediately followed by a disclaimer that “This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.” So, not sure if I should be happy or not.
The label also states that the capsules do not contain, “GMOs, gluten, egg, additives, fillers, binders, artificial ingredients, soy, milk, peanuts, shellfish, Stearates, Sulfates, Dioxides, or Laurates.” My take from that is that the capsules are pure fish oil, though of course the capsule container is most likely some kind of gelatin product. But for the most part I’m left with the feeling that these are pretty much just fish oil.
I took 2 capsules a day following breakfast and dinner. I never experienced any kind of discomfort, but I never experienced any with fish oil capsules off the shelf of my local grocery or drug store either.
Without medical test results, I can’t address the claim of “Healthy Heart, Brain and Joint Support” followed again by that disclaimer that “This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.” with any kind of documentation. I can, however offer my anecdotal experience which leads to…
The Cons:
Before I began taking the Omega-3 Supreme 1400 mg Fish Oil Concentrate I was experiencing joint pain in both my wrists and my left elbow. I don’t know what caused the joint pain, other than possibly advancing age, but I do know that after a month those joint pains remain. That caused me to feel a disappointment with the product as I was, based on that statement on the label, looking forward to some joint pain relief since I cannot take anti-inflammatory medicine.
The only other problem was that the shape of the softgel capsules made swallowing them difficult for me. There was not a single time during the 30 days I was taking them twice a day that I did not have trouble swallowing the capsules, which are more rounded than oval or capsule shaped. It was not a big deal, but a small discomfort each time I swallowed one.
It was 40 years ago today, on a Sunday evening, when Ann Marie Wetherington entered the world. So much has changed during the intervening 4 decades, but one thing that has remained the same is my love for my little girl, my Princess.
Here’s a look back in photos at 40 wondrous years of Ann Marie.
The doctor had to use forceps to help drag Ann into the light of day, and then the brain-dead photographer took a photo right away instead of waiting a bit for the marks to disappear.
I refused to buy their little package of this photo on bracelets, necklaces, coffee cups, pens, pencils, refrigerator magnets and whatever other tchotchke they could think of to slap it on because they did not take a flattering photo of my newborn little girl, so my mother-in-law at the time did. I’m sure she thought less of me for the decision, but I wasn’t about to reward incompetence.
Here’s Ann at 2-3 months of age. That’s me, portraying Leisure Suit Larry on the left, my maternal grandmother (Nana) holding Ann in her lap and my mom on the right. At this point I had just turned 20 in July and Ann already had her dear old dad wrapped around her finger. Nothing has changed in the 40 years since. Both her grandmother and Nana have passed on, Nana in 1999 and Grandma in 2010, but they loved her very much while they were on this earth.
A little collage of Ann between the ages of 3 to 9 months. She doesn’t look it, but she was a handful. Very inquisitive and when she started crawling…look out!
Me holding/hugging Ann when she was about 2 years old. I know I look very serious and maybe even a little uncaring in this photo (it was a look I cultivated over the years because I look goofy when I smile), but the truth was my heart melted inside me every time my little girl wanted to hug daddy. At the time I was going to college in the morning and working a night job. I remember coming home late at night, walking into her room to look at her sweet face as she slept and feeling such a sense of responsibility, but also a feeling of happiness. It made going back into the living room to study into the wee hours of the morning a little bit easier.
Ann at about 3 years of age. Her laugh and smile were infectious!
Ann is about 4 1/2 and looking so adorable in this dress and hairstyle.
It’s September 1985 and Ann is a little over 10 years old in this photo of her dressed to be in the wedding of her Uncle Mark (my brother) and the woman who would become her aunt (and a saint in my eyes for marrying and staying married to my brother, lol). I remember Ann was so excited to be in the wedding and how happy she was to meet her new cousins.
Ann at 14 or 15 I believe. She is growing from a beautiful little girl into an equally beautiful young woman.
This photo proves what I said earlier about how goofy I look when I smile.
It’s 1991 and Ann is 16 years old. I was working as a bouncer in a bar that required its “security staff” to wear tuxedo shirts and blue bow ties in order to throw drunks and troublemakers out of the bar and beat them up.
The apartment complex where Ann was living with her mother was offering one free photo to all the residents and, in whatever mystical way it happened because dads just are clueless about these things, it was decided that the photo would be Ann and me, with her dressed and made-up to the nines and me in that silly tux shirt and bow tie.
We went down to the clubhouse where the photographer was and we were the only ones there at the time. I don’t know if the photographer thought Ann was older than she was or if he thought that I was some sort of perverted cradle-robber, but he had us sit as you see us here and he starts positioning us. He’s looking through his camera and he says, “Ann, back up closer to Jeff. No closer, make him enjoy it.” I start laughing and Ann says, loudly and indignantly, “That’s my DAD!” The photographer starts apologizing, I’m still chuckling and Ann is still fuming. We finally get past that and this is the photo; Ann looking beautiful and me looking goofy with that smile on my face.
This is me getting another degree in 1997 or 1998, so Ann is 22 or 23. I’m holding the degree in front of her because she had just gotten some kind of tattoo above one of her breasts and the dress showed it, so I’m trying to be funny and keep it from appearing in the photo.
Looks like it worked!
Ann at age 24 with Nana just a couple of months before Nana passed away in 1999.
Christmas 1999 and Ann is 24 1/2. Here she and I are in front of the Christmas tree at the family party.
Ann and Cindy sometime in 2000.
Ann “meets” Stone Cold Steve Austin, and that’s the bottom line, ’cause Stone Cold said so!
Ann with Cindy and my mom, sometime in 2000 or 2001, I believe, so Ann will be 25 or 26
June 11th, 2001, my little girl gives birth to her little boy. It hardly seems possible, but now my daughter is a parent. I remember thinking that at 26 she is probably a little better prepared for her first child than I was at 20. As I’ve watched her parent over the past 14 years, I know she has done a much better job than I ever did. I am always so proud of her.
Walking Ann down the aisle at her wedding.
Ann at the age of 29 in 2004 with her Uncle Mark. Or as she called him, “Marky Mark and the Hairclub For Men. Remember, I’m not only the Hair Club President, but I’m also a client.” I don’t know if he’s forgiven her yet for that little bit of humor.
In 2005, at the age of 30, Ann gave birth to her second child and my first granddaughter, Heather Noel.
Ann and I in 2008.
Ann in 2010 at the age of 35 with 9-year old Mikey and 5-year old Heather.
Ann earlier this year and almost 40 at a Parkinson’s Foundation fundraising walk with Mikey and Heather.
Forty years ago tonight I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my daughter, with no clue what the next 40 years of her life would look like. I mean, I THOUGHT I knew, but at 20 you think you know everything. One day you wake up and realize you knew nothing.
I look at her, even though today she is an adult woman with children of her own, and love her so much because she’s still my little girl. She always will be. I’m grateful for that and for her. I think sometimes that I could have been a better father when I was younger (they don’t give you a manual, though they should) and I’ve tried to be a better dad the past 20 years, but I’m grateful that despite all my shortcomings she still loves me.
I have no idea what the future holds, but I do know that she will always be my little girl, my Princess.
Happy Birthday, Princess!
