Author: Randy

Well I like my new schedule for blogging. Monday mornings over coffee to share what I did over the weekend and such, and then a beer at 4:00 (Happy Hour) on fridays to retell my happenings over the week. Currently I am drinking a Warsteiner Dunkel, every friday a different brew or three 🙂 This happy hour the topic is Facebook.

Sharon created a Facebook profile and got sucked into memory lane as she reconnected with old friends through it. She also helped the bonds with current friends as well by being a little more involved in their lives. It is like an adult version of MySpace. She seemed to really like it so she talked me into creating one too. At first I was resistant. I barely have time to keep up with my current friends, let alone old ones. But once I got my profile together I was hooked. I could not believe how easy it was to track old friends and colleagues down. I saw people I had not even thought about in 20 years! It was so much fun, I lost hours of time in there searching. If you are reading this and do not have a Facebook profile, or do not even know what Facebook is, just go to http://www.facebook.com and create a profile. I promise you will have a blast!

I have also created a OneShoeDiaries page, so if you get onto Facebook you have to visit it and become a fan. Another thing we are asking is that everyone that reads our blog join the cause “Now I lay me down to sleep”, the organization that sent a volunteer professional photographer to take pictures of little Noah when he was born without a heartbeat 🙁 It costs nothing to join but helps bring awareness so maybe they can get donations or more volunteers. After what I went through with Noah, it would be too much emotionally for me to volunteer. And through Facebook I reunited with a friend from years back, Andrea. And upon looking at her profile I saw she is one of the volunteer photographers for “Now I lay me down to sleep”. It was really nice to find out, she has our admiration and gratitude.

Also watch out for Vampires on Facebook, and zombies, werewolves…. 🙂

October is recognized as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Month, and the 15th was the Wave of Light event. This was where people lit candles on their front porches at 7pm in memory and support for those infants lost during pregnancy. We lit a candle for Noah and we want to thank everyone else who lit one for him as well. We really appreciate the support. It has almost been 3 months since losing him, and while we are making it, we still have times when it is really difficult. Thank god for friends and family who help us through it. We fight against the bitterness and jealousy every day. We also would liek to apologize to those who would have loved to have been part of this event but we did a bad job of getting the word out as we found out about it the day before. Maybe next year we can make the event brighter!

It seems we keep meeting more people who this has also happened to. It is a club we never wanted to be in, and wish noone else had to become a part of.

Over the weekend we went to a small outdoor market. We saw two different Noah’s Ark items that would have been nice to have. It was so hard not to buy them, knowing we had no use for them anymore. But as I think about it, why can’t we still collect Noah’s Ark stuff. People collect things for no reason at all, and we have a good reason. Maybe if Noah ever gets a sibling they may like to have all of the stuff to memorialize their lost brother. Yes. I have decided in fact I will still collect Noah’s Ark stuff.

My Sunday ended with an email from a client…

“Are you available for the next few days to go to Hattiesburg for a mission?”

Of course I was. I was instructed to go to the idgroup office and Tina will have an envelope for me. Sure enough she did. It contained instructions, a jump drive and a credit card. The note told me i had a Budget rental car waiting at the airport for me, hotel reservations at Microtel, and I was to drive to the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg and go to the guard gate and tell them I am scheduled for a meeting at the office of the President. It was there I would get the rest of the details of my “mission” from Mary Dayne. Upon arriving I told the guard where I was headed and my name and I was directed to a parking lot where I had a reserved space. I met with Mary Dayne and she filled me in on the presentation I was to create for a very important meeting coming up. She set me up in an office and over the course of the next couple of hours the various speakers shuffled in and out after going over their portions of the presentation. I had my orders and went off to find the hotel so I could get cracking. There was a lot of work to get done before the 10:00 meeting in the morning. I went to bed late and got up very early. Any dreams of catching up on sleep were shattered.

I managed to get done what I needed. I met with President Saunders, whom I have known for some time and worked with before. Everything looked great, I had a few alterations and it was then I found out I was scheduled to stay until the 4:00 dry run 🙁 Bummer, I thought I was finished. The dry run came and went, all went smoothly. My job is over and now I am headed back to Pensacola. Mission Acomplished!

Well I have tried not to involve politics in my life too much as I actually hate it. I am not a political person by nature. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and never calculate my moves. i do not live life strategically, but rather I live day to day pretty much. Which by no means is a good thing for the most part.

But with this upcoming election I have gotten sucked in. Things have gotten so nasty over this thing it is fascinating to watch. I am not going to tell you who I am voting for, but I will not be able to hide it either as I comment on things.

First off. The Palin craze is scary. Arent cults usually about blind following, and lots of chanting 🙂 She is a virtual unknown from a far off state, a state in which she and her husband believe should secede from the union and become its own oil-producing nation. She is pro-life, as long as you are not an animal, whereas you better run because it she believes it is her right to hunt you down and kill you just for your skin and fur, all from the comfort and ease of a helicopter, just because she can. And I love her chant, “Drill, baby Drill” Now why do you think she is for that? Could it be she wants Alaska to get wealthy off the oil they will produce? There can’t be any way she could profit from that, such as a kickback from oil companies. No they could not be huh? Ever wonder why she did not back the 33,000 fisherman who lost out big to Exxon over the Valdez spill? Could it be the oil companies who she is tied to would freak out? She preaches energy independence, but listen, she really just wants oil independence, she ALWAYS says drilling in Alaska is the part of the solution. OIL IS THE PROBLEM!! We should not even have oil on the table, we want OFF oil!! And the references to Joe Six Pack and Hockey Moms, are those the only ones she is reaching. I hate to tell her but there is a LARGE part of America that is not Joe Six Pack and even more that are not hockey moms, she just alienated 75% of the population or more! And the theory that if you let the rich get wealthier they will spend their money giving us little people jobs and income into our communities is crap! The trickle down economics is a farse, it has never worked. The rich just get richer and the poor get poorer, it eliminates the middle class because they actually want to get paid fairly for their work, where as the rich always go to the lowest bidder, its business right? The work then trickles down to the migrant workers because they will work for pennies, the very people they want to kick out of the country. Makes no sense.

Did anyone notice that the largest political rally in Alaska’s HISTORY was the Women Against Palin rally! There were more there than the entire crowd during her homecoming visit! And touting the fact she taxed oil companies and passed out the mony to alaskan residents to the tune of $1200.00 per person. Ever heard of “pay-off” money. That money was peanuts compared to what oil companies stand to make if they can drill in Alaska.

And then there is Obama. Until this election I had no idea a senator could just choose not to vote on an issue! Obama has done that around 100 times while he has just served 4 years so far. I would like to know how many he did vote for, it better be in the thousands!! That just does not seem right, the people voted him in as a voice for them, so dammit speak up! You talk about how you do not hurt for money like many americans do, well then earn your money and vote. Sometimes it does worry me, not sure why, that he seems to have been groomed by the democrats from early on to be president. He appears too perfect, like a marketing icon. As if the democrats got together and figured out the perfect person to represent all the races in America and pooped out Obama. He could be hispanic, white, asian, african, european, south pacific, he is a mutt. The perfect american blend. I am always leery of professional politicians, and he is a career politician to the core.

Now McCain, I have a “Weekend at Bernie’s” theory about him. I think he died sometime early in the campaign and the republicans are just manipulating him like a puppet. Poor guy barely can move, he cant even raise his arms. And he just seems so stiff in his expressions too. It is probably because he was beaten and tortured so bad in Vietnam that it left him feeble, which in that case I am going to hell for making fun of him 🙂
And the whole thing of a him being a Maverick, come on, he has voted along party lines almost his whole career. Ill believe he is a maverick when I see him come galavanting in on a horse with guns blazing, until then. Shut up with the maverick stuff!!

Finally Biden, anyone else notice the eyebrows. Arent they creepy. Almost like he has Uncle Leo eyebrows permanently on him. Make him look angry. But all in all, not much else to say about him. I like his passion, he seems to have quick lengthy answers for anything anyone asks him. Whether they are factual or not, that is debatable. However they sure do sound impressive 🙂

I don’t know, for me I have always thought the president is more of a figure head than anything, and as long as they sound intelligent and are likable to the rest of the world nothing else matters. As there are nothing more than a figurehead. So which one would the rest of the world like to deal with? The same old grumpy white guy with a gunslinger attitude? Or a pleasant speaking, open-minded, ethnic looking salesman? I think the rest of the world is tired of the crotchity old white establishment leader and are ready for a change. But remember I am a marketing guy, and Obama is an easily marketable brand that has been polished for a while..

But now, I am going on record as not supporting either candidate so I cannot be blamed for the stupid stuff they will do. I might use the Obama tactic and not vote at all. What if all of his supporters did like their leader, and just didn’t vote. Then where would he be, maybe he should have thought about the example he was setting.

Sharon has a group of friends like I do that she hung out with all through high school, they still keep in touch, but not as much as they would like. Well while we were in Baltimore Sharon wanted to see everyone. She does see one of her best friends Vicky whenever we come into town and they keep in touch quite a bit via phone and email. So she got with her and organized a reunion of sorts.

We met with Vicky and Scott, Padge and Martha. Sharon and I made our first trip ever in the Cruisemaster to go to Padge’s wedding a few years back and had a great time. So I was already familiar with everyone which was nice. The venue for dinner was a sports bar type place so that we could converse better without feeling as if we were bothering tables around us since it was already loud in there. The place had these enormous, delicious crab cakes. Some of the best I have ever had. And that is saying a lot since Sharon and her family make great cakes. Eventually the rest of her friends, Frank and Amanda, Brian and Christine showed up after we ate to share a few drinks and catch up. But right as dinner ended, the most annoying and atrocious karaoke began. Time to get the hell out.

Frank found us a smaller, more quiet pub across the street where we hung out for the rest of the night. It was a perfect spot. Everyone told stories and just laughed together. I do apologize if I monopolized Brian’s and Christine’s time as they got me started on Noah stories, and like a proud papa I go on and on.

Thanks for a great time everyone and making me feel welcome into your group, I hope we get to do it again over Christmas.

We went to The Brewer’s Art brewpub with Nanny in Baltimore. I read about on the internet and had to go. And to call it a brewpub is to call Mount Everest just a hill (or something like that). Anyway this place was incredible, the best brewpub yet. Starting with the food, which was gourmet, yet made for everyday people. We had; sauteed calamari with bamboo shoots, eggplant, water chestnuts and red curry broth; Tuscan tomato soup with parmesan gougeres; Pork Barbeque Sandwich with chipolte-resurrection beer BBQ sauce on homemade cornbread with coleslaw and out house fries; and the best of all, the roasted garlic and rosemary mac-n-cheese. Now is that a gourmet feast or what!?!

And now for the beer. They are known for their high-end belgian brews. We tried;

Resurrection
During the fermentation of the first batch of this 
Abbey-style ale, the yeast «died» and was 
«resurrected» by brewer Chris Cashell. Made 
with five types of barley malt and lots of 
sugar, this beer is quite flavorful, 
without being too sweet.
7%abv

Proletary Ale
After much demand for a seriously dark beer, we 
came up with this delicacy. Black, smooth and 
easy to drink, this is our beer for the people!
5%abv

We also tried their white belgian wheat, all of which were incredible. Nanny even was adventerous and got an Amstel Light.

And the amazing thing about it all was the prices, we got all of that for around $50!! We spend that at regular restaurants sometimes.

The following day Sharon’s little sister Elise drove a couple of hours just to have lunch with us, and can you believe she bought US lunch. Thanks Frank 🙂

We ate at the Mount Washington Tavern, which is a great historic treasure. The food was good, but it was a nice time spent with Elise. The only problems were that Frank (Motts) was not with her and she had to take off right after. Hopefully (Hint-Hint) they will be coming down to see us soon in their RV. I love it, we got them hooked on RVing 🙂

On the road from Deal Island to Baltimore is the small maritime village of St. Michaels. Known for its history and upscale residents it is full of small quant shops and restaurants. It is truly a neat place to go and walk around, kinda like Williamsburg but on a smaller and more intimate scale. We planned on hitting the St. Michael’s Winery first, which should come as no surprise.

The tasting room had a rustic feel to it, very authentic. The wines we tried were the reds, they had a couple of nice wines they were made from Maryland grapes that are transported down the Chesapeake via the skipjack Martha Lewis. Our favorite was the chocolate zin. It takes just like it sounds, somewhat sweet and dry, it is a PERFECT after diner wine. Next stop, the Eastern Shore Brewing Company!

What is better than a winery? A Brewery! But not a closed one! What kind of respectful brewery runs out of beer!! I guess Labor Day drained them and they would not have more beer for a few more days yet. Bummer 🙁

So the next thing I wanted was some cream of crab soup. We stopped in the C-Street Saloon for a beer and soup. They did have beer but they had stopped serving lunch and dinner did not start for over an hour. Screwed again. So we just resided ourselves to just enjoy a beer in this small pub and chat with the bartender and the two patrons in there with us. They were all characters to say the least. One reminded me of Cliff Claven from “Cheers”, the other was a rather big guy with a hawaiian print shirt and a little “flamboyant”. The real character however was the co-owner. She was around 60 or so, quite large, bright straggly blonde wig, and huge square-rimmed glasses with a purple tint to them. She was a riot, she and her husband met at Ohio State, he is a dentist and she told us how wild dentists are. In her words “When I first met him, he looked and acted more like a trucker.When he told me he was in dental school, I thought he was full of shit!”

We then asked where we could go get a good bowl of cream of crab soup since they were not serving food at the time. “We have the best right here.” She then proceeded to go back to the kitchen and fixed us each a bowl. It was a little darker than usual cream of crab, and right when Sharon just took her first spoonful, we found out why “It is kinda brown because we use bacon grease in it.” Now for those of you that do not know, Sharon is a vegetarian (although she does eat seafood). So the look on her face was priceless. But not deterred by a little pig juice, she proceeded to eat it all. It was fantastic, it really hit the spot. It really made my day. After hearing about the car show coming to town, and the life size Rolls Royce hood ornament they made out of tin foil, we headed out to get on with the rest of the trip up to Baltimore. Good times.

Ashes to Ashes, and dust to dust rang through my head today as I dug the hole in which we buried little Noah’s Ashes today
🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁

I write this entry with a very sad heart. The spot we chose to bury him is in a prominent flower bed in the yard of Sharon’s parents farm house on Deal Island, Maryland. We felt this was the best spot, somewhere that we will always be around, and his ashes will always have family around. We are a nice marker engraved with his poem, and name. That will be something we do we the family over Christmas. For now a cross that belonged to my father marks his ashes resting spot.

I miss him so much. And that may seem weird since I never really had him. But I did, he lived in my heart and always will. I always imagined of the things we would do together, I lived them in my head as if they really happened. I dreamed of when we would go fishing for his first time out on grandpa’s boat, the time when I taught him to ride a bike without training wheels. His first homerun, his first day of school, going hiking together, taking him to Hawaii to snorkel, so many things…that will never happen, so many dreams that just fizzled the day we lost him. I do know he will always be with me in spirit, but somehow that just is not the same. I really miss my buddy.

One of the craziest dreams I had, but in reality is something I would probably do. I always thought it would be so cool to climb Mt. Ararat, the legendary resting place of Noah’s Ark, with him as an adult. I figured it would have been a mid-life crisis adventure for me that I would share with him, because I am just sure he was going to have my adventurous free spirit.

Amazing how I have him all in my head as if he were really here. I guess that is due in part from having named him at an early age and we always felt his soul, and what a great soul it was. I feel he let us know somehow who he was, and we ran with it. I have a friend who let it be known she thinks it is better not to know the sex until they are born because it is one of the only true surprises in life. Not true actually but a good theory, life itself is a surprise every minute, there is NO way to truly predict anything, NOTHING is absolute.

Plus if we had not named him, we would not have Noah in our lives like we do. By naming him, we made him real, a little person complete with a personality and a life force. Just anyone that knows us and they will even tell you they knew Noah through us. And some even from his spirit, I would like to think we had something to do with making him such a bright light in the world that will always live on through us and the many people he touched, we gave him a voice in essence through our imagination. And I thank god we did. Yes, it may have made things harder, but it also makes it so much easier that we did know him. It helped my recognize when he reveals himself to me, without his name he never could have revealed himself through music at MacGuire’s.

We just miss him so much and hope that someday we can be with him, I can only hope he knows how loved and missed he is. All I have is hope and I am clinging to it, it keeps me getting up everday, smiling through the loss, it literally is my oxygen that keeps me alive.

We headed out for Maryland to see Sharon’s family. But on the way we made a stop over in Charleston to see Kevin and Jason. It was only for a day but we did have fun. During the day Sharon and I headed downtown for lunch and just by pure happenstance, or luck depending how you look at it, we ended up in T-Bonz brewpub!

The beer I had of course was a Nut Brown Ale, pretty good. 3 out of 5 I would rate it. Fairly light, almost a little watered down perhaps. The same goes for the Winter Wheat Ale. The food was good and the atmosphere and location were excellent. And we found a really cool birthday gift for Alice next door, it was…nope Alice, you are just going to have wait until it arrives in the mail, if it fits in your mailbox 😉

That night we all went out to Gene’s Hofbrau for beer and food, again 🙂 I indulged with a Holzar Bier Dunkel and a Flensburger Dunkel. They both were awesome, but the Holzar was a 4.5, where the Flens was a 4.0 on my scale of 1 to 5. Sharon and I ended up losing to Jason and Kevin four straight games of shuffle puck which was not particularly fun, but it was fun just to hang out with them.

Overall the best beer I have had I a while was from Kevin’s home brewing kit. He made a Nut Brown ale that was the bomb, a 4 out of 5 in my book, but it gets the nod over the Dunkels since it was brewed in Kevin’s kitchen! Can’t wait to try his “Big Jack Stout”!

During the drive up to Maryland I started to think about Noah and all that has happened. I thought back to when we hung out with some people, who are friends of us, but one in particular we never really talked with, she never seemed to give us the time of day. But it seemed when she found out what happened she became very sweet to us, which was nice but why did it take a tragedy to have her be nice to us? Its like when a stranger would do something mean to us, and then if they found out we just lost our son they would suddenly be nice to us because of what we went through. Just makes you think that the next time you want to get upset at someone for doing something you deem as inconsiderate or stupid, step back from it, what if they are going through something awful, maybe you should be nice to them. And then why not just be nice to everyone because yo never know what is going on in their life, there is so much hardship in the world that most likely they are dealing with something tough and just need a break or an act of kindness to maybe help them out. So how hard is it, to just swallow anger and be nice, treat everyone as though they were a friend possibly going through a rough time and need someone to be a friend, even if you are a stranger to them. I hope that all made sense, because it really did in my head when I was thinking about it 🙂 🙂 🙂

This past weekend we went and visited with our friends Alice and Wayne. As usual it was a nice time hanging out, and going to dinner for Thai food, and just enjoying each other’s company, like going to see family. Sometimes I think though jack and jinjer may have the most fun, they love their aunt Alice and uncle Wayne and cousin Keith. They always get so happy when they see where we are and so sad on the ride home. But they do always come away with new toys We are humbled once again by their generosity, and the neighbor’s as well. Thank you guys!

And be on the lookout for the new blog site “Alice’s Ailments“, coming soon 🙂

So now to get to the title of this blog. I have been seeing so many images of Ike’s fury. Complete communities scoured from the earth from the storm surge. After seeing these images and listening to the victims the feelings from the days after ivan come flooding back. Anxiety, anger, sadness and most of all fear, fear of where life will go next. Watching the aerial footage of Galveston reminds me of searching through hundreds of aerial photos of Pensacola area trying to see if our house survived and what did not. Then analyzing the tiny ima.
ge, which windows are broken, what is that all piled up on the side? Is the roof gone? Where’s the house across the street gone? And was there a house in the middle of the road before?

It will be a while before the residents can even get back to their properties to assess what is left. By then alot of mold and mildew sets in ruining almost anything fabric. The same will never come out of the clothes, ewwww, that smell was horrific. Made your stomach hurt and gave you nausea instantly.
I remember listening to any bits of info on what it was like on the island, the rumors that were not true, the rumors where the truth was actually worse 🙁

Those poor lost souls of Ike, now wondering, trying to figure out how to go on, and for a few, dealing with the loss of a loved one as well. How will they find the strength to put the pieces back together of their lives. I suspect many will leave, never to return. But the as we hear and learn very early in life, time heals all wounds. There will be a tomorrow and every tomorrow represents a step closer to being healed.