Mike

Where there's a buck to be made...

I doubt that it helps the British schoolteacher who was arrested in Sudan for letting her students name a teddy bear "Muhammad" but you can buy your own Muhammad bear on eBay.

The greatest flow chart ever

It's Bacon!

A future Darwin Award winner?

Surely you all have seen the Allstate commercial where Dennis Haysbert talks about the number of people who burned their houses down while deep-frying a turkey.  Well, add one to the list.  Some idiot in North Charleston did just that Thanksgiving Day.

Update:  Evidently Pennsylvania, Michigan, Idaho, North Carolina, Tennessee and South Dakota have their idiots, too.

College football's silly season has begun

Georgia Tech fired Chan Gailey.

Duke fired Ted Roof.

Nebraska fired Bill Callahan.

Washington State's Bill Doba resigned/was fired.  Pick one.

Southern Mississippi's Jeff Bower resigned/was fired.  Pick again.

Northern Illinois didn't fire Joe Novak.  He really did resign.

Terrance Brooks resigned as Kalamazoo College football coach before he could be fired.

Colorado State has offered Sonny Lubick a desk job in the athletic department.  His pink slip as head coach should arrive later this week. *Update*  Sonny got the pink slip this evening.

Texas A&M fired Dennis Franchione and hired Mike Sherman.

Mississippi fired Ed Orgeron and hired Houston Nutt less than 24 hours after he did a Tubby Smith and resigned/was forced out at Arkansas.

Whew!  I'm getting dizzy.

No doubt there will be more announcements as the coaching carousel keeps spinning.

LittleMike: "Hey Y'all" - Paula Deen

Hey Y'all.... LovelyWife and I just spent a couple of days in Savannah, Georgia with Mom.  Being Courtneys, we too are foodies.  Each city we visit, we try to hit at least one well known, or Celebrity Chef owned restaurant.  Savannah is no different.

Our target in Savannah... The Lady & Sons, owned by FoodTV Star Paula Deen.  There are a couple of things to remember when trying to dine there: 1) You will only get in with a reservation; 2) You will only get a reservation by standing in line the day of.   Lunch is from 11-3, dinner from 5 til.  Reservations are taken at the front door from 9:30 AM.  They won't take dinner reservations until all lunch slots are filled.

Here we are, 8:30 AM Saturday, Savannah, 45 degrees, standing in line (about 45 people ahead of us).

By 9:30, there were several hundred in line.  We got our requested 1PM reservation time.  If you wanted dinner reservations, you got into a second line formed from the first to wait an unspecified amount of time.

The wait was worth it, though.  I was surprised.  I expected most celebrity chef restaurants to be small and overpriced.  The Lady & Sons isn't.  3 floors, nearly a hundred tables, family friendly and very reasonable prices.  You can either go with the standard Fried Chicken Lunch Buffet for $12.99 (which includes dessert) or eat off the menu.  We chose the menu.

Every guest is greeted immediately at the table with Cheddar Biscuits and Hoecakes.

I ordered the Chicken Pot Pie (That is fried Collards on the side).

LovelyWife ordered the Tilapia Sandwich which is served blackened with a peach glaze topping it and served with Jelly Roll Fries (There is over 8oz of fish on that bun.)

Mom had the Pulled Pork BBQ and Fried Green Tomatoes.

Even holding back, we couldn't save room for dessert, but the Key Lime Pie looked great.

If you are willing to get up early and stand in line for about an hour, I really recommend trying to get a reservation at The Lady & Sons when in Savannah.  The food was great, the sweet tea was incredible, and the atmosphere was laid back and unpretentious.

Have a great day Y'all!

-- LittleMike and LovelyWife

A Thanksgiving Recap

The drive to Lexington Thursday morning was easy.  Traffic was light.  The only problem was that every FM station between Charleston and Lexington that wasn’t a country music station was holding a “Music from the 80s Weekend”.  Ack!

Alison and Allan cooked a huge dinner - two ducks, dressing, gravy, country ham and buttered biscuits, a green bean and goat cheese side dish, rice pilaf, salad, cranberry relish and apple pie.  All made from scratch.  It’s a good thing they love to cook.  If they’d come to Charleston we’d have probably gone to Cracker Barrel.

I woke up early Friday morning to snow flurries.  They didn’t last long and didn’t stick but  they filled my snow quota for the year.  (Did you hear that, Brian?)

Saturday afternoon Justine and I walked to Commonwealth Stadium for the Kentucky-Tennessee football game.  Justine has been to only two Kentucky games in her life - the game against South Carolina in Columbia this October and Saturday’s game against Tennessee.  Because Kentucky lost both games Justine is now banned for life from ever going to a UK football game.  It didn’t help that she doesn’t like peanuts.  Peanuts at halftime are a tradition superstition.

The drive home yesterday was slow but uneventful.  No wrecks eastbound, just too many freaking cars on the road.  We took our time.  We stopped in Richmond, KY before noon for pancakes, eggs, and bacon, and later in Spartanburg, SC for a steak dinner.  We finally made it home at 9.  Given that we stopped twice for sit-down meals, we made pretty good time on the drive back.

Crap

Tennessee 52 - Kentucky 50   4OT

At least Kentucky has a month to rest and regroup before the bowl game.

Justine and I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving

A safe one, too, if you are traveling this weekend.

We are leaving for Kentucky early tomorrow morning to visit Allan and Alison.  I'm hoping that driving will be less stressful on Thanksgiving Day than it would be if we'd left today.  Saturday we'll walk to Billy's for the traditional pre-game BBQ lunch and then walk to Commonwealth Stadium for the Kentucky-Tennessee football game.  Since Delta and USAir have seen fit to almost double the airfare between Charleston and Lexington since last autumn I've been to only two games this year.  Kentucky won both in upsets.  Given the way the Cats have played in the last month it's not likely but I'm hoping to finish the regular season a perfect 3-for-3.

Unfortunately we have to drive back on Sunday.  The last time I made the Sunday-after-Thanksgiving drive, many years ago, I-40 between Knoxville and Asheville was basically a 100-mile long parking lot thanks to road construction and wrecks in the mountains.  I don't know whether to leave extra early Sunday morning or go to Buddy's for brunch and get back to Charleston whenever.  Hell, I'm a Courtney.  I love brunch!

An update email from Allan:  "We will have a nice T-Day feast ready for tomorrow night, including 2 roast ducks, dressing, green beans, and some homemade pies."

The Fire

In a comment to my last post Carla asked about the house fire in Shadowmoss yesterday afternoon.  The house is just down the street from me and belongs to Chuck and Jackie Troiani.  (Jackie is one of my Great People.)  They weren't home at the time but according to neighbors the firefighters managed to rescue their dog and cat.  The back of the house, where the fire evidently started, is toast.  From the front and sides you'd never know that there'd been a fire except for a shattered second-floor window and smoke stains along the roof ridge vents.  I haven't seen either Chuck or Jackie so I don't know the full extent of the damage.

Even with home owner's insurance, the deductible can be an added kick in the teeth when you don't need it, particularly this close to the holidays.  The neighborhood is collecting money, gift cards, clothing etc for the Troianis.

Making the Nordic Swing

Joan and I put the top down on the Miata Saturday and took a day-trip to Scandinavia.  Yep.  Denmark, Finland, Norway and, we think, Sweden.  Fortunately all are within a 90 minute drive from Charleston.  Unfortunately there wasn’t a whiff of Norwegian Jarlsberg, Swedish meatballs, or Danish pastries in the air.  A lady at the Jim Harrison Gallery in Denmark explained that the town was named for a person, not a place, and evidently nearby communities ran with the Nordic theme.  Since we couldn’t find a smörgåsbord anywhere we had a South Carolina traditional meat-and-three lunch at Miller’s Bread-Basket in nearby Blackville instead.

Denmark and Norway are just shadows of the bustling farm towns on the railroad that they used to be.  Denmark is still an Amtrak stop.  You can head north toward Washington DC every day at noon and south toward Miami every morning at 2:30.  Finland now consists of a general store at a crossroads.  The store is for sale if you are interested in a very quiet country life.  Sweden is clearly shown on the map as being at the intersection of US 321 and the Charleston-Augusta road.  We looked, twice, but never found it.

Joan has more details and photos.  She also has three pages of photos at SmugMug.  Enjoy!  We did.

An honest politician. He lost.

More evidence that mainstream media doesn't get it

John Scott, an anchor for Fox News, on Blog World:

"Blog World?  It sounds like a horror movie."

Yes, John, and it should scare the shit out of MSM journalists like you.

Instapundit is there and covering it, along with linking to other bloggers who are there.

Bend over and get out the KY jelly

Has there been a better example about how things work in Washington and how you, as a tax payer, gets screwed?  The House passed a $15 billion water projects appropriation bill.  The Senate passed a $14 billion companion bill.  When the House and the Senate disagree the bill goes to a reconciliation committee.  The result?  A $23 billion bill loaded down with $8 to $9 billion worth of earmarks.  (Earmark is the new PC term for Pork.)  Bush rightly vetoed the bill because of the pork.  The House overrode his veto yesterday.  The Senate overrode it today.

Keep the KY jelly handy.  This was just the first of many pork-laden appropriation bills.

Hall of Shame (SC Representatives and Senators who voted for the override):

Rep. Clyburn - D
Rep. Spratt - D
Rep. Brown - R (Ack!  He's my Representative.  I voted for him in 2006.)
Sen. Graham - R (Ack!  I voted for him in 2002.)

Hall of Fame (Those who voted against the override):

Rep. Barrett - R
Rep. Inglis - R
Rep. Wilson - R
Sen. DeMint - R (I voted for him in 2004.)

Welcome to the Bluegrass, Billy

The honeymoon didn't last long for new coach Billy Gillispie as tiny Gardner-Webb embarrassed Kentucky 84-68 in just the team's second regular season start.  The crowd booed both the coach and the team.  Either get better, Billy, or get used to it.  It's a tough crowd in Rupp Arena.

Random Charleston

[From Bill Carter's Flickr photostream.]

A close call

The phone rang this morning just as I was about to climb in the shower after Champ and I got back from our walk.  It was Ms. Hilda asking if I could come over in about 10 minutes and help her put her cat in its carrier so that she could take it to the vet.  I silently cursed and wished that I had a true reason why I couldn't but I didn't and I'm too nice to lie to an 87-year old woman.  Hilda is a force to be reckoned with so I knew that if I told her, "I can't come.  I'm standing butt-naked in my bedroom and getting ready to get in the shower" she'd have just said, "Put on some clothes".  I wanted to be any place else but at home at that moment, naked or not, because Hilda's cat, incongruously named Poopy, is a brute.  She's the size of a bulldog and meaner than Mike Tyson when he's having a bad day.

Reluctantly I dressed, found and put on a long-sleeved sweat shirt, and went to the garage for a pair of heavy-duty gloves.  As you can see I've got experience with Poopy.  Then I made the short "dead man walking" trip across my driveway and her yard.  Fortunately the gods were smiling on me today.  By the time I got to the front door the cat was in the carrier and Hilda was smiling.  "I tricked her", she said.  Tricked me, too, I thought.  In the end all I had to do was carry Poopy to Hilda's car and set the carrier on the front passenger seat.

When they returned I carried Poopy back into the house, opened the carrier, and ran for my life.  That was one pissed, evil cat.

For those of you new to my blog, here's Hilda.

November 1st

Last Thursday would have been my sister’s 57th birthday.  That afternoon her four very best friends got together for lunch to celebrate her life.  Jo Ann had known Rosemary since both were kids, Susan for almost that long, and Molly and Sharon for at least 25 years.  That evening Rosemary wrote me:

“Just a note to say I am thinking of you today.  Molly, Susan, Sharon, and myself went to the China Buffet for Jo Ann's B-Day.  We all laughed at the good times we have shared.  It was sad but fun.  It felt as if she were there.  Thru Jo Ann talking about us all to each other, she made us all friends in a special way.  It was just so funny----Molly would say something about not being able to find something in her house and we would all look at her and say "yes Molly we know you are a pack rat and cannot throw things away," Susan was talking about something and forgot what she was going to say and we all looked at her and said, "yes we know, you talk and go off to other subjects before you ever finish your first train of thought."    It just went on and on and we laughed and laughed.  We celebrated her B-Day well and made her proud.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JO ANN.”

If the line “Thru Jo Ann talking about us all to each other...” sounds strange there’s a reason for that.  My sister was very good at compartmentalizing her life and her friends.  No matter whether it was to have lunch, or to go shopping, or just to hang out with someone, she preferred to do it one-on-one and not as a group.  Despite being Jo Ann’s friends for so many years, the first time these women ever met each other was 15 months ago when they accompanied Jo Ann to the hospital for her liver biopsy.  (Ironically, all four were at the funeral home when Paul died but they were either there at different times or they weren’t introduced to each other.)  I guess if anything good has come from Jo Ann’s death it’s that four women now each have three new friends and lots of good memories to share.

I wonder how they'd do if they took the rest of the season off

Bob Uecker once joked that when he played for the Milwaukee Braves if a game was rained out the team held a victory celebration in the locker room.  Kentucky should think about holding a party this week.  The Cats dropped from the AP Top 25 after back-to-back losses to Florida and Mississippi State.  They didn't play this weekend yet managed to re-enter the poll yesterday at #25.

As far as I can tell Kentucky's only slim hope of winning the SEC East is to beat Vandy, Georgia, and Tennessee over the next three weekends and for South Carolina to beat Florida this Saturday.  That means if the Cats beat Vandy Saturday afternoon (a big if this season) I'll actually have to cheer for a Steve Spurrier team Saturday night.  I can't believe I just said that.