Mary Ann

banner made by sarahrae!!

So I'm sitting at work, BORED out of my mind! Our boss blocked MySpace, which sucks! I can still go on it with schoolunblocker.com, but that's just a pain! haha! And she's probably have a stroke if she found out we did that! So regardless of the sites that I go to, I delete ALL files and cookies and everything. I'm sure she's love to know I was blogging at work!! hahaha!

So not much has been happening lately. I'm looking for a place to rent that won't take ALL of my money because I'll still have to pay for utilities! lol! A friend of mine is very good friends with a girl who works for the state's Habitat for Humanity. So she's going to talk to her about what I might be able to get. I'm waiting!! That would be awesome. Low interest (low payment) mortgage...and I'd OWN the house one day!!

ummm...I still talk to Adam...almost everyday. Wade registers for MIDDLE SCHOOL (6th grade) tomorrow. It only depresses me because I remember starting middle school like it was yesterday...so I feel a little OLD! lol! I can remember many events from 6th grade!! So he's gonna give band a try. We'll see how that goes. And I've let him know that if he gets bad grades or gets in trouble then NO SPORTS. And in later grades the school won't let him play sports if he has bad grades or whatever. So I'm hoping that this can be the REBIRTH of behavior that he so desperately needs!! Hopefully middle school will be the difference he needs. I DON'T KNOW! I remember quite a few kids who were kinda bad in elementary school who either didn't act so bad in middle school or the school wasn't as "strict" as PTH! lol!

Speaking of PTH...I felt for them DEEPLY when I read the newspaper Friday (I think it was). Lee Walker (old CESCA principal) was named the interim principal at PTH. Poor poor PTH folks!!! I could go on and on about Lee Walker, but alas, I won't speak TOO ill of the battle-axe!!

Anyways, I know I've been a little slack at commenting, but I swear that I have been reading posts, but sometimes I just don't have the time to comment...especially at work!

1. What is your local lake/river/sea?
Lake Wateree...then a small one which is Kendall Lake

2. Do you believe in dragons and unicorns?
no

3. What is your favorite fruit?
Granny Smith apples...and Grapples!!

4. Do you smoke?
yes

5. Friday fill-in:
Together they would BE HAPPY! - lmao!

Kurt Vonnegut

The author of Slaughterhouse-Five and one of America's greatest humanists dies at 84.

I found this video made at the Pavilion in Myrtle Beach 2 weeks before it closed forever. Man, Myrtle Beach is not gonna be the same to me without the Pavilion. If you're from SC or been to Myrtle Beach, you probably know what a landmark the Pavilion was. I loved that place!!

Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America’s history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.

“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age,” Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.”

The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

Ford was an accidental president, Nixon’s hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared “our long national nightmare is over.” But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: “Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to “look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal.

He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.

Even after two women tried separately to kill him, the presidency of Jerry Ford remained open and plain.

Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.

Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Richard Nixon, the transition to Ford’s leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election.

After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.

They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy — in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.

And she remained one of the country’s most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and admitted to having become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.

Ford slowed down in recent years. He had been hospitalized in August 2000 when he suffered one or more small strokes while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

The following year, he joined former presidents Carter, Bush and Clinton at a memorial service in Washington three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In June 2004, the four men and their wives joined again at a funeral service in Washington for former President Reagan. But in November 2004, Ford was unable to join the other former presidents at the dedication of the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.

In January, Ford was hospitalized with pneumonia for 12 days. He wasn’t seen in public until April 23, when President Bush was in town and paid a visit to the Ford home. Bush, Ford and Betty posed for photographers outside the residence before going inside for a private get-together.

The intensely private couple declined reporter interview requests and were rarely seen outside their home in Rancho Mirage’s gated Thunderbird Estates, other than to attend worship services at the nearby St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Palm Desert.

In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he “built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own.”

When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York’s Nelson Rockefeller and California’s Ronald Reagan.

“Personal factors enter into such a decision,” Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of then, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.

“We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district,” Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn’t, he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.

So Ford it was. He became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off to exile, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he still made his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper.

Said a ranking Democratic congressman: “Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous.”

It was rare that Ford was ever as eloquent as he was for those dramatic moments of his swearing-in at the White House.

“My fellow Americans,” he said, “our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”

And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: “I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers.”

For Ford, a full term was not to be. He survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter’s record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president.

Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects.

Even as president, Ford often talked with reporters several times a day. He averaged 200 outside speeches a year as House Republican leader, a pace he kept up as vice president and diminished, seemingly, only slightly as chief executive. He kept speaking after leaving the White House, generally for fees of $15,000 to $20,000.


© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured "Godfather of Soul," whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a giant of R&B and an inspiration for rap, funk and disco, died early Christmas morning. He was 73. Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music.

I started a group on MySpace called Piggly Wiggly. For those who work at (or used to work at) Piggly Wiggly...anywhere. Hopefully it'll catch on. I hope that a lot of people from Piggly Wiggly Carolina stores join. I'm trying! lol!!! If you ever worked at the Pig then JOIN!!!!! http://groups.myspace.com/pigglywiggly78

And all you ever wanted to know about Piggly Wiggly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly

This sends one heck of a message!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmLhyPjHVes

TO MY REBEL FRIENDS, THIS WILL PUT A LUMP IN YOUR THROAT.... ALL THEY LEFT OUT WAS ABOUT OUR PIG PICKENS, OYSTER ROASTS, SWEETGRASS BASKETS, CRABBIN ... AND THE SMELL OF PLUFF MUD TELLIN YOU YOU'RE HOME...... AND WE DO GO BARE-FOOTED AN AWFUL LOT.

My South

This was written by Robert St. John, executive chef and owner of the
Purple-Parrot Cafe, Crescent City Grill and Mahogany Bar of Hattiesburg,
MS.

Thirty years ago I visited my first cousin in Virginia. While hanging out
with his friend, the discussion turned to popular movies of the day. When
I offered my two-cents on the authenticity and social relevance of the
movie
Billy Jack, one of the boys asked, in all seriousness; "Do you guys have
movie theaters down there?" To which I replied, "Yep. We wear shoes too."

Just three years ago, my wife and I were attending a food and wine seminar
in Aspen, Co lo. We were seated with two couples from Las Vegas. One of
the Glitter Gulch gals was amused and downright rude when I described our
restaurant as a fine-dining restaurant. "Mississippi doesn't have
fine-dining
restaurants!" she insisted and nudged her companion. I fought back the
strong desire to mention that she lived in the land that invented the
99-cent
breakfast buffet. I wanted badly to defend my state, my region, and my
restaurant
with a 15-minute soliloquy and public relations rant that would surely
change her mind.
It was at that precise moment that I was hit with a blinding jolt of
enlightenment, and
in a moment of complete and absolute clarity it dawned on me ... my South
is the
best-kept secret in the country. Why would I try to win this woman over?
She might move down here. I am always amused by Hollywood's
interpretation
of the South. We are still, on occasion, depicted as a collective group of
sweaty, stupid,
backwards-minded, racist rednecks. The South of movies and TV, the
Hollywood South, is not my South.

THIS IS MY SOUTH...

My South is full of honest, hardworking people.
My South is the birthplace of blues and jazz, and rock n' roll.
It has banjo pickers and fiddle players, but it also has BB King,
Muddy Waters, the Allman brothers, Emmylou Harris and Elvis.
My South is hot.
My South smells of newly mowed grass.
My South has kick the can, creek swimming, cane-pole fishing and bird
hunting.
In my South, football is king, and the Southeastern
Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference is the kingdom.
My South is home to the most beautiful women on the planet.
In my South, soul food and country cooking is the same thing.
My South is full of cornbread, butter beans, fried chicken, grits and
catfish.
In my South, our transistor radios introduced us to the
Beatles and the Rolling Stones at the same time they were introduced to
the rest of the country. The Beatles' performance on the Ed Sullivan Show
was
even on our TV's !
In my South, grandmothers cook a big lunch every Sunday,
so big that we call it dinner ... (supper comes later).
In my South, family matters.... deeply.
My South is blackberry cobbler, peach ice cream, banana pudding
and oatmeal cream pies.
In my South people put peanuts in bottles of Coca-Cola
and hot sauce on almost everything.
In my South the tea is iced
and almost as sweet as the women.
My South has air-conditioning.
My South is camellias, azaleas, wisteria and hydrangeas.
In my South, the only person that has to sit on the back of the bus
is the last person that got on the bus.
In my South, people still say ...
"Yes, ma'am," "No ma'am,"
"Please" and Thank you"
In my South, we all wear shoes.... most of the time.
My South is the best-kept secret in the country.
Please continue to keep the secret....
it keeps the idiots away.