Jeremy Herndon

I found out that yesterday was the first day of school for the neighborhood kids in this county. All the school buses are heading out bright and early to pick all the students up and the roads are getting jammed up again in the morning. I’m glad that most of the buses are done delivering when the evening rush hour heats up.

I hate bumper stickers. You would never catch me putting any bumper sticker on any of my vehicles. They just look tacky to me and they really take away from the looks of the vehicle. I’ve seen cars just plastered with these popular stickers and it just really grosses me out.

It seems that the big news last night is that we have successfully pulled out all of our American troops out of Iraq as of late last night. They are saying that the war is over, guess we will see how that all plays out. It was pretty cool watching the last convoy leaving Iraq, good news coverage.

Next spring will be my father’s 70th birthday.  My brothers and sisters have decided that we want to surprise him with a a special surprise party and give him a gift that he has always dreamt about – a trip to Myrthle Beach.  He’s been retired for five years now, and he’s dreamt about playing on the Myrtle Beach golf courses as one of the retirement fantasies that just haven’t come to pass yet.

My wife and I have been trying to review the many different Myrtle Beach golf packages on the http://www.myrtlebeachgolf.net web page to see which ones might be the best ones to get.  We all agreed to split the cost equally, but we still need to keep a close eye on the cost.  And we want to make sure that our mother has plenty to do while our father is out on the course.

We also need to figure out if any of us should accompany them, or if we should try to make it a romantic getaway for the two of them.  After all, maybe booking some spa time for our mother while our father is out on the golf course would be the perfect touch!

My brother and his wife have decided that they want to take their kids to the beach for school starts. Apparently school starts very early down where they live. The first day of school for them is in the beginning of August, while we have always had our schools start after Labor Day which of course is always in the first week of September. So time is running out and they are running into some snags in finding a good spot to travel to.

Since BP has destroyed most of the beaches on the east coast the choices have been narrowed down considerably and the word is that folks are flocking to resorts in Myrtle Beach, which I’m sure Myrtle Beach is just loving all the money that is heading their way this year. I’ve heard that Myrtle Beach has been trying hard to get more business their way so I guess they got what they were asking for, by default.

So it looks like they have been busy using the Internet to find the best Myrtle Beach hotel that they can find in such a short time frame. They have been using sites like http://avistaresort.com to find what they are looking for. Not only do they want the whole beach experience for the kids, but they want to be able to get in a game or two of golf as well. I wish them luck and hope that they have a blast before the time runs out and it’s back to school once again.

I never knew that there were so many types of insurance policies offered these days. When I think of insurance, I think of home, auto and life – that’s about it. When I stopped in at my agent’s office last week, to pay my monthly bill, I had to wait a few minutes for assistance and was reduced to sitting in the waiting room longer than normal. I didn’t have a book to read, nor did they have any magazines to keep me occupied while waiting, so I picked up a few of their brochures and was surprised to see the variety of policies that you can purchase as of late.

When I got home I took a few minutes to look online at some different insurance sites and found myself looking at an insurance company located in Australia. They have even more of a variety of policies than I found at my agent’s office. They have guardian income insurance, policies that you can buy for funeral cover costs, interesting, to say the least. I also read that accident cover policies seem to be popular in the “Land Down Under” as well, it seems that 14 males and 7 females every day in Australia due to accidental deaths, so having a good insurance agent with good insurance policies seems the way to go for those folks.

I guess insurance is a necessity all over the world these days.

I’ve loved downhill skiing ever since my very first experience on the bunny slope over thirty years ago. Over the many years since I have had several wonderful skiing holidays, and some not so wonderful.

One of my most memorable holdiays was when I signed up for a long weekend ski trip with a singles ski club to charter a bus to go to SugarBush in New England. I can’t even remember now if it was in Vermont or New Hampsire! I just remember it was a terribly long bus ride with a rowdy crowd of folks. We had rented out several condo townhouses. Shortly before we arrived we stopped at a small grocery store and were advised to buy “supplies.” No one knew exactly what that meant so although I stocked up on a lot of food items to get me by for the duration of the trip, most of the folks just bought beer and cigarettes. When we arrived at the condos, many of the people then realized that there was no grocery store or convenience store nearby and they were out of luck on getting much food!

Well, I shared much of what I had bought, and in return the group paid for a lot of my meals at the ski lodge (something I wasn’t exactly planning on eating, but oh well!)

Lesson learned? Make sure you really know where your food supplies are going to be coming from so you don’t get caught without anything to eat!

A few years back I got hold of some Houston Rodeo tickets from work. The tickets were being handed out pretty freely so many of us in the office ended us with tickets and so we decided to made a day of it. We generally don’t do much together outside of work so it a big to do and we all had a good time. For not having to pay for the tickets, we ended up with some pretty descent seats and had a clear view the whole time, which really is a big deal considering that you are sitting there for several hours at a time. There is nothing worse than having bad seats at an event like this. The only thing worse than having bad seats is being stuck close by a little kid that will not shut up and parents that won’t do anything about them!

I really enjoyed that rodeo and I would really enjoy attending another one, maybe this spring or summer. Think I’ll start looking around online and seeing if anything is supposed to be going on rodeo wise some where in the surrounding towns and counties. I like going to outside events. I don’t like being stuck indoors in a big crowd. I like being able to walk around and see everything that is going on everywhere during the whole event. I’ll bet I can find a few people who would like to attend a rodeo with me, something to look forward to!

My wife has been looking at different Wildwood new jersey motels to try to find one to fit within our budget so we can go to Morey’s Piers this weekend.   She wants to try to go see their annual Rubber Ducky Regatta on Sunday and then go see the free concert of Ashlee Keating that is put on by the Radio Disney Concert Series.  While she was looking online at Morey’s Piers website for the motels she left the computer for a couple of minutes to answer the phone and I saw that she had left the computer on the Morey’s Piers Interactive website.  I found some amusing arcade games to play on their site and I sat there and played with them until she came back and tossed me off of the machine.

I’ve always heard that Utah is a beautiful state.  I’ve had several friends go there to attend college and they never came back!  I’ve had other friends go there on skiing vacations and send me postcards telling me how great the snow skiing is!  I remember learning about Salt Lake in Utah, and thought it was very odd to have an inland Lake that was salt water.  And I’ve heard that the Mormon Tabernacle temple is a beautiful sight to behold!  I’d love to go to a Utah Resort and check out the Homestead Crater too!  I love natural phenomenons like that!

Walt Disney has always been a huge influence in our lives.  Both my wife and I can remember as really young children watching the Wonderful World of Disney on television, and of course watching the Mouseketeers on the Mickey Mouse Club!  We grew up with them!  And our parents took us to so many of the wonderful Disney Movies as kids.  I blame the Bambi movie for my wife’s refusal to eat venison!

My wife had the good fortune to go to DisneyWorld many more times than I have been able to go.  When she was younger she lived close enough to Orlando to be able to drive there in a one day drive, and spend a week with her grandmother that lived only a half hour away from Kissimmee!  She went there every year for many years!  Lucky lucky lucky!

But now her grandmother isn’t there anymore, and my wife moved too far away to go there frequently.  Many changes have happened; she’s never been to the Animal Kingdom part of DisneyWorld.  As much as she loves animals, I’m sure that is one place she would love to go the next time we can arrange to go.  We’ll probably be trying to rent a condo through the Orlando Vacation Rentals service when we figure out a good time to go.  We like having all the comforts of home when we go away and not just be confined to a small two-bed one-bath room at a typical motel.

My wife was cleaning out our bedroom earlier today and found some partially used Disney World Tickets in her memory box.  She showed them to me and said that she was pretty sure that there was still a day or two left on them that we could use the next time we go to DisneyWorld.  DisneyWorld is our favorite vacation destination.  We never get tired of going there!  Our favorite park is Epcot Center; I love driving the race cars and going through The Land rides.  The shows are fantastic too.

We went to DisneyWorld for our honeymoon, and we’ve gone there once since then.  Our favorite memory is when we went to the Epcot Center and they had a “living statue” there.  We were watching a crowd gather around the statue and saw that people were posing for pictures with the statue.  The statue looked so real – it was all white like a marble statue, but every now and then it would move just a little bit.  There was an attendant there picking out people to come out and pose with the statue and the attendant took their cameras an snapped their pictures with their own camera and then hand it back.

The attendant picked my wife and I out of the crowd to come and pose with the statue.  So we stood in front of the statue, smiling for the camera.  Then before you knew it the statue was grabbing our heads and mushing our faces together so we were kissing for the picture!  What a riot!  Everyone in the crowd was laughing!  And the picture came out great too!

You know, thinking about that vacation is definitely making me want to go there again soon! I guess I’ll be getting in touch with orlandofuntickets.com to see about getting more tickets to go there soon!

Our neighbors love to play golf.  That seems to be all they ever talk about!  When the weather is good, and they have a few hours to spare, they are off to the golf course!  Lucky for them the nearest course is only five miles away!  During the winter they like to take a golf vacation at a Myrtle Beach Resort. They spend a couple of weeks there every year.

I understand that there are a hundreds of golf courses down there! Sounds like a true golfer’s paradise! My neighbors say that they like to change around between the different Myrtle Beach Hotels for a little bit of a variety. They say there are so many Myrtle Beach Resorts down there that they could spend each vacation at a different one the rest of their lives and never stay in the same one twice! I imagine the same could be said of all of the golf courses down there too!

I think that the exploration of Mars is so cool, it would really be something if the scientists discovered that there is/was/could be life on Mars. I love science fiction books/movies/television shows, and anything that has to do with exploring other planets, looking for signs of some kind of life really excite me! I read that the space explorer Phoenix has landed on ice; the scientists concluded that photos taken of the “white stuff” show that the “white stuff” is shrinking, which means that it is ice. That is supporting evidence that there really COULD be some kind of “life on Mars.” Very cool!

Paula has a girlfriend named Sue who recently moved to New Jersey.  She moved there because her employer transferred her.  She didn’t really want to leave the area, but with the employment situation the way it is, she felt that if she didn’t take the transfer that she wouldn’t have any job at all. Sue calls Paula every day since she left here, and is trying to convince us to move to New Jersey too.  She says that New Jersey Jobs are plentiful and high paying. 

So, Paula and I have been talking about the possibility of going up there and checking it out.  Sue says that we can stay with her while we are looking around, so we just might do that.

Well, the winter weather we have been having recently certainly makes for dangerous driving conditions!  This area does not get this kind of weather frequently enough for the government(s) to invest a lot of money in snow plows and sanding machines, and the employment of the driver/operators needed to run them.

What’s sad is that so many businesses still expect their employees to come to work, even in extreme weather!  I don’t think that speaks well of those businesses.  I think that if the local schools are closed, it is because their experts have determinedthat it is not safe driving for the school buses to get the children safely to school.  And I feel that if the roads are not safe enough for the school buses to be out there, then all businesses (except the essential hospitals and emergency services) should be closed, too.  Simply out of concern for the safety of the workers.

My cousin Ted sent me an email that he is planning to take a vacation holiday to Brittany.  He has a lady friend who is from the Finistere region of Brittany and she has talked him into going with her to meet the family and experience some of the great festivals that they have there.  She told him it is in the northwest corner of France, and has beautiful seashores and picturesque villages.  She says that Finistere Holidays are the most enjoyable when you have a native there to show you around the place, and to get a real feel of the local culture.

He spent some time researching the area on the Internet, and said that it sounds like a great place for a vacation, so they are going to take a couple of weeks and take a holiday villa in Brittany and spend some time with her friends and family, soaking up the sun, and taking in some festivals.  Sounds like a great time!

I have always had a love/hate relationship with air travel.  On the one hand, I like to be in control, and being a passenger on an airplane I just don’t have that kind of control that I like to have!  So I rather feel helpless, and that is a feeling I really don’t like very much!

On the other hand, sometimes being able to get fast direct flights to my destination is very important when time is of the essence.  And with the price of gasoline and tolls constantly increasing, sometimes getting cheap flights (when possible) actually saves me time AND money, too!

With so many airlines out “there” competing for our business, sometimes it is possible to get good international flights from a variety of airlines, such as qantas, jetstar, singapore airlines and united airlines. It’s really important to shop around for the best international airfares.  For our friends in Australia, the travel.com.au website is a great place to go for that comparison shopping!

I’ve always been a little bit nervous about flying, this recent incident of the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River has added to my apprehension!  Although I have to say that it is very impressive that the pilot managed a successful landing and that everyone survived, I understand that this is the first time that has ever occurred – a successful water landing of a jet.  Yes, this is a miracle indeed, and kudos to all of those who were involved!  But I think I’ll stick to driving!

Well my friends and I have agreed to get together and see the Dark Knight movie today. We’re going to get together to eat lunch at Wendy’s first and then go see the movie. We had discussed going to eat at the Golden Corral because it is an all you can eat buffet, but we all wanted to leave room for movie theater popcorn! Both of those restaurants are in the same shopping center as the movie theater, which is why we narrowed our choices down to those two restaurants. We all like both of those restaurants, the deciding factor was the popcorn. I’m sure we will all enjoy ourselves tremendously; we always have a good time when we get together!