OUR LIFE IN 3D

12 Oct 2014

Retiring

I warned you I had a few more beach photo’s from Ocean City with the new camera. So I wanted to unload some for my family and friends and be able to retire this beach vacation theme here in the middle of October.

So bear with me here. If I haven’t scared you off with the pics from our kids on the first two episodes, this won’t hurt much either.

Again, we took a trip to Ocean City, New Jersey, which calls itself America’s Greatest Family Resort. And if you have a young family this is a great place to escape to when the time is right.Well we visited on the shoulders of the off season and so the main attraction of Ocean City, its 2.5 mile boardwalk looked something like this:

The boardwalk is a great family destination for a number of reasons, not least of all is fun, great tasting, and completely unhealthy food. That’s why, literally, the first place we stopped every morning was:

For a breakfast that resembled something like this:

That’s right, there are two warm fresh made, partially eaten donuts for my oldest one, along with some Bavarian Waffles all topped with strawberries. A good father might have suggested she try something a little less ambitious for breakfast. But I was looking forward to finishing it!

And I did!

Then every day, after we finished breakfast, we would peddle on down the boards for some shopping; or probably more food.

Go Dylan Go!

Let me introduce Johnson’s Homemade Popcorn!

Anybody who has ever had fresh, warm, sweet smelling caramel popcorn knows what a treat that is. And Johnson’s makes it ways with about 4 different stands on the boardwalk, each making their own in-house, much like these Popcorn elves, hard at work one beautiful morning.

Not sold yet, here is the link to their online store, try some! Charge it to my account. ..http://www.johnsonspopcorn.com/

Manko and Manko Pizza is another Ocean City establishment with a huge reputation on on the boards.

One particular chilly afternoon, I rode my bike down the boardwalk. It was empty. But as I rode past Manko and Manko’s there was maybe three empty seats in the whole place. Its that good!

The other must try, and we did, boardwalk treat is Kohr Brothers Frozen custard. Dylan tried to con me into taking her there every day as she knew it was my favorite spot on the boards.

Our girls HAD TO HAVE the sprinkles EVERY TIME!

Friends if you go to OCNJ and try just these four places then leave it would not have been in vein.

FROZEN custard’s my favorite

The other big reason for the great family fun on their boardwalk are the two big amusement piers.

There are great, carnival style rides here for all ages. I think I have documented them enough so here are just a few more pics

The Casio camera was not so good with fast moving shots. That didn't stop the guy in the second car didn't know that though.. I never met him before!

The Casio camera was not so good with fast moving shots. That didn’t stop the guy in the second car from posing though.. I never met him before!

And, of course, the required Pirate, "Arrrgh matey" pose

And the customary Pirate, “Arrrgh matey” pose

Of course I am a beach bum. Any vacation of mine has to include some sand and some waves.

I showed a few pics over the weekend of the poetic surf to be found there. I would be misleading if I left you with the idea it was always like that.

One day the ocean was just plain flat

And two days we had rain and storm type winds creating a different look for the beach and the ocean.

But half of our stay the weather did cooperate with us and the girls didn’t mind the chilly ocean temperatures ( as much as I did) to let them get in the way of their fun….

my little surfers..

the camera lens must have been about as cloudy as I was that morning

It must have been a sea monster or Queen Ursula

And as I sat their one afternoon, not worrying about blogs to write, or to-do lists, or finances, or health my eyes kept coming back to these two.

yes, RETIRING like this some day…

I sat there watching them thinking, ‘yea that is the life in retirement for me. I could get use to this life I think; come out on the beach every day and read whatever suits my fancy, while warming in the sun and the crash of the waves for my backdrop. I hear it calling me….’

“A most mysterious calling ocean.

So far but yet so near.

I can see the day when my hair’s so gray

and I finally disappear.”

But not yet!

Have a great week knuckleheads!

I’ll try to do better next time…

Posted in Ocean City America's Best Family Resort and tagged BROWNS DONUTS, Jimmy Buffett, Johnson's Popcorn, kohrs frozen custard, Manko and Manko pizza, Ocean City America's Greatest Family resort, One Particular Harbour, Thank you!

09 Oct 2014

10 Comments

I sea you!

OK, by now you have probably noticed I have not been posting as much as I have last year or so. The truth is, I have been in between cameras. Our girls trashed my last one a few years ago. My cell phone can only handle so many tasks. And unless Aunt Sue was in town, I have been hurting for decent, blog quality photos.

Enter American Express! I finally squirreled up enough reward points with American Express to earn a new camera. After doing some research, I settled on a Casio EX-Z2000. It is a small, pocket sized digital that earned some good ratings in its category.

So I packed my new camera away and decided to learn and experiment with it on our vacation last week.

My main goal was picture clarity; picture quality of that of a much larger camera. The Casio EX has that capability but what it makes up for in quality it desperately lacks in picture speed. That’s why you WON‘T see pics of our girls riding the rides in Ocean City. But if you want to judge how well the Casio does in capturing pictures of nature stick around. I have a picture or two of the beach in Ocean City to show you.

Now I am not claiming to be much of a photographer, maybe an amateur amateur photographer. My sister is much better. But I do enjoy trying to capture some scenes, details, textures, and colors. But in prepping this post I realize you will have to click on these picture themselves to get the most appreciation for the photo I took.

Like this pic of the beach at dusk. To me the camera captured some of the texture of the sand through the depth as well as shadows up front. The clouds are in such a pattern that it looks like they are being sucked out to sea or rolling in like invading aliens (yea, I watch too much TV).

Ominous clouds at dusk

Do you have an eye for detail? What can you pick out in another photo at dusk? What do you see? .

Yes, there are two surfers approaching the beach on the left side. Some picturesque yellow umbrellas against the ocean blue sea in the middle. that is too much like a post card. There are the manicured rows of sea grass for dunes, planted similar to the biggest fields of corn, as well as a few couples soaking up the last bit of sun and sea for the day along the waters edge.

What about here? Can you pick out the two surfers slicing up waves amongst the rolling ocean spray? How about the surfer advisory flag?

Yes the flag tells you you better be prepared and an excellent swimmer if you want to go out in these fall waters. In fact, if the life guard was there these two would probably get whistled!

See?

But I will be quiet now and just offer a few more of my favorite pics of nature on our recent trip.

Tell me what you see?

Sunrise… sadly on the best day, weather wise, on our getaway, the LAST day ~ I was told I better get a sunrise pic!

And later that same morning…

Kinda ideal for a jogger, huh?

If you can’t tell I just love the ocean spray blowing off the top of the waves. It is my ideal day on the beach and in the water.

…if the water was 80 degrees… and free of shells….and seaweed… and..

Doing some curls

She is completely unaware of the power behind her. She only knows her sand castle is going right there!

The waves are sneaking up on her, getting closer

Thanks for indulging my new part-time, if-I-only-had-time, amateur hobby photos! I will try to dig up some fun pics from our trip tomorrow.

Have the best day everyone!

SMILE for the camera!

I have one now…

Posted in Ocean City America's Best Family Resort and tagged camera, Casio EX2000, Home, Ocean City, overdue, photo

02 Oct 2014

15 Comments

Chaos

Have you ever seen the face of Chaos?

I mean really, really taken a good look and stared down Chaos?

Sometimes its not easy to stomach. SOMETIMES it can be downright intimidating!

Well now that you have been warned, here is what Chaos really looks like, the good, the bad, the ugly:

The FACE of Chaos

Yes, my girls’ soccer team is named Chaos, and rightfully so! That pic above of the fearsome looking, WTF looking soccer team is their squad. They are currently undefeated!

OK, well they only played 3 games, and tied one of them…

but it was the BEST team (!)… besides my girls’ team.

Wanna know their secret weapon?

Imitation!

Team Chaos actually has an ‘enforcer’ type person on the team that inflicts paybacks, runs fearlessly into opposing players, and trash talks with the best of them.

Wanna see?

(caution PG rated pic below)

You smell like poody-doody pants!

Here is Skylar-the-Punisher trash talking right at the beginning of last night’s soccer match.

Skylar is easily the smallest / youngest player on the field; by two years. But that doesn’t stop her from talking some smack! (she’s so cute)

She will walk up to anyone and tell them what’s what.

So opposing teams better watch out!

The truth is my girl’s know very little about soccer at this stage, other than go up and kick the ball.

It doesn’t matter.

Although Dylan was a goalie for one half last night and held the invading soccer team scoreless….in-between cartwheels and jumping jacks.

Skylar just came home with a black eye and a busted lip.

We are pretty proud of them for always trying their best.

So you better watch out…

..for team CHAOS!

Posted in Archives and tagged bruiser!, chaos, forever, GOAL KEEPER, Master, no choice, on their knees, soccer dad, stare them down, submission, the Punisher!, wishes, you better run!

23 Sep 2014

8 Comments

Life’s a Beach; that’s for Shore…

Well the summer is over. School is in full swing. Football is kicking in on the weekends.

Good Bye Ocean! Good bye coastal weekends! As the King of Somewhere Hot I thrive in the summer. As the temps start to cool I become more of a normal guy I am afraid. Life can be a beach some times.

I went to bed with this dilemma on my mind and the summer solstice creating odd moods and weird dreams.

Like last night, I had this dream where I woke up to a spectacular sunrise…

My family and I rode bikes down to our favorite breakfast joint, Brown’s Donuts, home of the fresh, homemade, warm donuts. It was wonderful! So many choices! So little time…

‘Brown’s Donuts are good but don’t finger them all Skylar

After breakfast we peddled our bikes down to a miniature golf course. Our daughters tried to figure out the difference between putt-putt and hockey while I got to strut my stuff and the King of Somewhere Putt!

‘how hard did you hit that Daddy?’

Later on our ride down the boardwalk we ran across these lowly pirates, begging for more money for the likes of hot caramel popcorn, frozen custard, or yummy fudge.

My favorite letter is 'Arrrrgh', matey...

My favorite letter is ‘Rrrrr’, matey…

We rode our bikes back to the perfect beach! ….just as I thought my summer was over.

The water was nice. The waves were perfect! There was a coastal breeze coming off the mainland making the waves stand up and casting picturesque spray off as they crashed towards the beach; ahhh…shore.

The only thing keeping me from slipping into Margarittaville was a horse fly caught me off guard early in the afternoon, keeping me from completely relaxing with my Jimmy Buffett Ipod. Other than that odd twerk in my dream the beach afternoon was truly classic; a beautiful day on the edge of the continent.

What do you think it means in my dream?

My girls loved it too. The day was so clear we could see all the way to Atlantic City it seems. My girls only noticed this surfer dude, asking me what he was carrying and what’s it for. I told them to stay away girls! Stay, far, far away! In order to take their mind off this peculiar dressed surfer boy I took them to the local amusement pier on the boardwalk. Here they could find rides galore!

They got to ride some of their favorite spinny, thrilling rides….

Plus, some old favorites like engineering Thomas the Train…

Cheer up, the ride will be over soon…

My girls really love trains!

The setting sun cast a spectacular view of the ocean at dusk.

We took a moment in awe of the beauty that this world has to offer.

A well manicured beach…a gift

We thanked God for allowing me to have this special time with my family, in contrast to how I was feeling a year ago. And we decided time was short so we needed to celebrate with one of the greatest gifts known to man…

FROZEN custard’s my favorite

Kohr’s Frozen Custard!

What a dream! If only…

If only it were real. If only I could relive it tomorrow. If only these stupid dreams weren’t dictated by some odd lunar effects.

If only this was not a dream and we could relive all this fun tomorrow!

THAT would be a dream for shore!

Have you had any weird dreams lately?

Posted in Archives and tagged BROWNS DONUTS, Jimmy Buffett, just a dream over my head, kohrs frozen custard, Margarittaville, Trains are the best, vacation

16 Sep 2014

6 Comments

My Anniversary. Year one…

This Wednesday marks a very special anniversary. It marks the second half of my life. A year ago I had that famous / infamous surgery to remove the prostate cancer from my body. It was life changing in many many ways, as you would imagine.

But first, a word for you, my sponsor:

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers during this time of my life. YOU rock!

I wanted to take you through an exercise where you have to imagine where you have to leave everyone you love behind; as well as all your goals, all the time invested already in the formation of who you are, ending. You think about things like that when the doctor tells you there is cancer in your body.

But I was a lucky one as my cancer was one of the comparatively easy cancers to deal with when caught early. But it still changed my life.

I tried to frame the whole experience in humor. I mean ya gotta laugh, right? Feeling sorry for yourself or trying to blame someone is so hard on the soul. No one wants to be around those types of people. Luckily my prostate experience was packed full if hilarious stories and images!

Like this one, where the morning before the procedure, where they shot 99 radiated seeds in my arse, I had to do number 2 while I was waiting? And so after I debated on the ‘the should ‘I or ‘shouldn’t I’s’ and how it would affect my operation down there. I found my way to a private privy. Did the business. Tried to clean up using only one arm as the other had an IV stuck in it. I tried to save the procedure by trying to sanitize my butt by sticking a glob of germ killing hand sanitizer gel up my crack in an effort to prevent infection? Don’t ever do this! It burns in that little cubby-hole! It really does.

And so, in an effort to wipe the gel out of my butt I had to do a quick quarter turn to get the open back half of my surgical gown out of the way (remember, cause my left hand was holding an IV bag) so my hand with the wash cloth could wipe but as I did my quick quarter turn the gown would jerk back and cover it up and so I kept trying, doing my quarter turn thing, and the gown kept on covering it up and my wife was laughing hysterically as it looked like a dog trying to catch his tail? Do you remember that? You can find that and a few other humorous stories from the day of my procedure here.

Or remember the post of the Saturday morning when I was to go in and donate a ‘sample’ of my prostate to be analyzed (biopsy) only to realize the good doctor meant sample as in plural. I found there were 12 shot glasses in this little torture chamber that Saturday morning each awaiting a different section of my prostate to dissect and analyze to the exact location and extent of the cancer? And not only was he going to stick this intrusive needle in the front of my rear, but also a little light, a camera, a finger, a nurse or two to hold his stethoscope…

YES…Life changing!

And who could forget these images from the inserting-99-radioactive-seeds-in-my-prostate procedure?

Green with radiation!

Stylin’ and Profilin’

It was Plum scarey!

Yea, kinda like that….

Why I found out my little cancer even has its own page of jokes on the Internet! Like this one:

A man elects to have a prostatectomy (removal of the prostate) and asks the surgeon to try to spare and save the nerves that produce an erection. Well, he goes into surgery and wakes up in the recovery room and sees his doctor.
Man: So how did it go?
Doctor: I’ve got good news and bad news.
Man: Give me the good news first.
Doctor: We were able to save the nerves.
Man: That’s great news! What’s the bad news?
Doctor: They’re under your pillow.

There were also a multitude of masturbation jokes that suggest that practice is actually healthy for a prostate. But I won’t touch them here. Although some of them can’t be beat!

So, yes, humor to lighten life’s load. …Oh I hope you think these things are funny. I can’t afford to lose any more readers! 🙂

Now, a year later, I feel better than ever after all this too, although I never ever felt sick to begin with. I may feel a little older, but for an 85 year old man I feel pretty good!

And so occasionally I think about, “Why me?” “Why did I have to go through this?”

Do you ever do that? Try to find reasoning behind the good or bad in your life? Why me? I have no clue. But in trying to find the answer I started reading the Bible; for the first time in my life. It wasn’t to get all religious or born again or anything. That’s not who I am. It was simply an attempt to get to know God a little bit better, and maybe help me figure out ‘why me?’

And also say, “Thank You God!” Cause my outcome could always been a lot worse.

And through this God gave me a new theme song on the day of my cancer analysis, that it was Not My Time, by Three Doors Down, That song serves as a constant reminder of what my life is and what could have been.

‘Cause all this time I’ve just been too blind to understand
What should matter to me
My friend, this life we live, it’s not what we have
It’s what we believe in

And I believe we all have a purpose in this short life of ours. Mine may be to serve, lead and / or spread hope. What is yours? Carpi Diem!

Yes, I also believe the time is now. My friends, don’t wait! You don’t know what lies ahead. Live YOUR life now! You can’t take it with you.

I now believe I should try not to take the normal blessings in our lives for granted. What would you miss the most lying in a hospital? Think about it. Stop and smell the roses. Take a moment right now and fill your lungs full of oxygen…go ahead, I’ll wait. do it just because you can. Someday it may not be so easy.

I believe some friends and family in my life have really stepped up this last year for me and really made a huge difference to me. One or more have changed my life for the better. Thank you!

And, while reading the Bible and trying to get to know God this year was not what I expected it to be, I did discover that God does things; simple things and big things. God is love and He does things. I can’t really say that reading the Bible has made me a better person (as evident by my twisted humor). After all, hypocrisy in some religion is what kept me, and many others, away from it I imagine. But I have become more aware and not so alone. There is always someone I can talk to now I’ve found.

So these are just some of the new discoveries since my eventful September 17 last year. I have tried to document several other things last year via this here blog. I hope you can find some of the things amusing.

Because ya gotta laugh, right? It is the best medicine!

And, I know that every day, me and you, have so much to live for, to be thankful for; more than we can ever imagine or appreciate.