I love you XXX

Click here to view the embedded video.

and that many days to our 1st wedding anniversary! :)

Even though it was very cool and very windy this morning, Alison and I braved the weather and set out for the nearby park this morning to have our first Easter together. The park, Maple Park,  is about a 10 minute drive from home, right next to the Currituck Airport. Maple Park Its built on what used to be the county landfill I think. Well I know its built on the site where the landfill used to be, but I am assuming they did what a lot of similar landfills across the country have done and that is to cover them up and create parks where once was an eyesore. This particular one has a nice size man made water area, supporting fish and several species of wildfowl. There are about a dozen or so geese generally there on the water as well as several varieties of songbirds and usually a pair of wood ducks that we usually see every time we go to the park. We didnt see them today which was rather strange realy. Not sure if they have taken off for the season or they were just in the bushes trying to make a family! ;)
We’ve got some pictures and vidseos of the these two ducks one of us will post sooner or later, either here or Alison will put it on her blog. I cant say the ducks and geese are completely tame although you can get very close to some of them and the ducks have several times come up and taken bread right out of Alison’s hands. This particular park in the county has several areas around the park where you can grill. There is a good size pavillion where large groups can be accommodated and 3 or 4 gazebos

around the park near the water side that each have a grill and table. Being as cold and windy as it was but still very sunny we looked first to see if any of the spots were having even the slightest bit of sun hitting even one seat.  Unfortunately it wasnt to be today and we had to brave the cool breeze and  deal with it. Being familiar with the sort of grilling that goes on around holidays in Cyprus and which Alison has posted about recently on her blog, I thought it would be nice to try and recreate the atmosphere a bit, even if it was on a smaller scale than what they do there by making up a few lamb kebabs. It was also my first time trying lamb actually and I have to admit I liked it! :) Its got a unique taste and I suppose to some its not appealing but I found the taste very nice and flavourful and very tender too.Well maybe that part had somethign to do with the preparation by having a skilled meatcutter remove all the gristle and cutting the lamb leg up into nice lean pieces. ;) I coated the meat with olive oil and a little oregano and salt and pepper and then threaded them on the skewers, alternating with pieces of onion.

It was really just a bit too cool to be out doing this sort of thing but we had our minds made up and plodded on through. In the midst of trying to get the grill going and trying to get things going quick we forgot to put the potatoes and onions on the grill first as we had planned, but only remembered them about the time the kebabs were nearly done. Well we put some more coals on the grill and had a flame going that would fuel a nice nice furnace and a few minutes of having those packets of aluminum foil wrapped potatoes and onions atop that heat had the contents nearly steamed in minutes! ok not as good as they would have been if slow cooked but edible none the less and by this time anything warm was great eating!

this post or any on this blog wouldnt be complete without me mentioning how wonderful and amazing life and love can be. Another in a  long list of signs we have seen over these last few years is this heart shape that formed at the bottom of one of the Easter eggs Alison made yesterdaywhen she set it in the tray to dry. I guess some could say its just coincidence, but irregardless it made me smile and know that everything is meant to be in this world. We may never understand the whys and hows, but love never fails

Happy Easter to all!

We had a lovely dinner at BJ’s restaurant in Jarvisburg. Mom bought us dinner and had made arrnagements to have the table decorsted with flowers and gifts and we were joined for dinner by Tracey, Megan and Grace and Phil and his wife Kathy. afterwards it was a stop by tracey’s house where she and the kids had made a cake and more flowers and presents. Just a wonderful evening we had. Happy Birthday Mrs G! I love you! xxx

Alison’s Birthday

I’ve not taken the time to post anything since Alison arrived,  we’ve been doing a lot of ‘catching up’ :) I will post a better update on things soon, but for now we are settling in just wonderfully and so very happy being together. Her flight over was good and was actually a little early arriving. She made it through immigration very quickly too. The time difference so far hasnt been too bad a problem and shes adjusting well to that , maybe wakign a bit early in the morings but usually managing to get back to sleep. the weather has been rainy but warm the first couple of days. It cleared up nice today but getting a little colder today. Just made it feel more like the Christmas season.

Ok time for some more catching up.. :) speak to you all soon and thanks for all the congratulations and comments and mails!

I really am just so full of anticipation of our reunion, knowings its forever is just beyond words.

Well Alison is still n Sunderland as I write this, spending her last evening out having dinner with some very close dear friends. she’ll catch the bus in the morning (Friday) to go back to Birmingham. She seems to have had a nice visit back to her hometown, staying at her folks home and even in the bedroom she had growing up. I wonder what memories that brought back! Without a pc I don’t have any pictures yet, but soon as I do I will post some. I wanted so much to go and meet up with Alison there in the UK and then us fly back home together, but events turning out the way they did it put a kink in those plans :( Well one day very soon we will take a holiday back there and I will get to see where she lived and meet all these people I have only spoke to by web or mail or second hand!

I was a bit worried this morning as when I spoke upon waking Alison told me it was snowing and then the next time we speke a few hours later it was still snowing! I was fighting this thought of her getting stranded there and missing her flight! Well i know its not that severe a snow storm, but things like that are always in the back of my mind. we are so close now to our dream I I’m wanting desperately for it to come quick! Well when we spoke tonight she said it had warmed up a bit and there was a little rain so the roads were clear. The last few mornings though have been very cold around the freezing mark so we’ll see how they are then. Well the highways will be clear I’m sure, just these smaller roads may have a bit of ice early on. I cant wait to see the pics though, I love seeing the snow, just dont care so much to be driving in it. But its fine when you are having someone to snuggle up to and keep each other warm! ;)

It really does feel strange to not be writing her a mail for this long stretch of time. We have faithfully wrote at least a morning and evening mail, if not more ,  for the last 970 days. Well i have written a couple of short ones just to have something there when she does get back online, but it been so much of our routine to write a mail for the other to read on waking and then one to say nite nite as well, although lately it had got to the point we were on the skype more of the evenings than not. So this has been a real change for us to not have that bit of communication and being able to share photos and such. We have had our times to speak on the cell though and those were the highlights of my day! well she’ll be back to Mandy’s tomorrow and we will be back on schedule :) Well i guess its all given me time to add a few things to the sight and play with that. but I still miss her madly. Until I hold her in my arms next Tuesday evening, I will miss her every minute.

Enjoy

Alice’s Restaurant from http://bookmole.vox.com/
This song is called Alice’s Restaurant, and it’s about Alice, and the
restaurant, but Alice’s Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,
that’s just the name of the song, and that’s why I called the song Alice’s
Restaurant.

You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on – two years ago on
Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the
restaurant, but Alice doesn’t live in the restaurant, she lives in the
church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and
Fasha the dog. And livin’ in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of
room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin’ all that room,
seein’ as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn’t
have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it’d be
a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So
we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW
microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed
on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the
dump saying, “Closed on Thanksgiving.” And we had never heard of a dump
closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off
into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

We didn’t find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the
side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the
cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile
is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we
decided to throw our’s down.

That’s what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving
dinner that couldn’t be beat, went to sleep and didn’t get up until the
next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, “Kid,
we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of
garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it.” And
I said, “Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope
under that garbage.”

After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we
finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down
and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the
police officer’s station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the
shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the
police officer’s station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at
the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for
being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn’t very likely, and
we didn’t expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out
and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again,
which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer’s station
there was a third possibility that we hadn’t even counted upon, and we was
both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said “Obie, I don’t think I
can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on.” He said, “Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car.”

And that’s what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the
quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of
Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop
signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the
Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars,
being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to
get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of
cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer’s station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and
they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each
one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that’s not to
mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put
us in the cell. Said, “Kid, I’m going to put you in the cell, I want your
wallet and your belt.” And I said, “Obie, I can understand you wanting my
wallet so I don’t have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you
want my belt for?” And he said, “Kid, we don’t want any hangings.” I
said, “Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?”
Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the
toilet seat so I couldn’t hit myself over the head and drown, and he took
out the toilet paper so I couldn’t bend the bars roll out the – roll the
toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie
was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice
(remember Alice? It’s a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few
nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back
to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat,
and didn’t get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.

We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back
of each one, sat down. Man came in said, “All rise.” We all stood up,
and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he
sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the
twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows
and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.
And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry,
’cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American
blind justice, and there wasn’t nothing he could do about it, and the
judge wasn’t going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each
one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And
we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not
what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.

They got a building down New York City, it’s called Whitehall Street,
where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one
day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so
I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to
look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted
to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York,
and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all
kinds o’ mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave
me a piece of paper, said, “Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604.”

And I went up there, I said, “Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL.” And I started jumpin up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL,” and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
yelling, “KILL, KILL.” And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,
sent me down the hall, said, “You’re our boy.”

Didn’t feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections,
detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin’ to me
at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four
hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty
ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was
inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no
part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the
last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there,
and I walked up and said, “What do you want?” He said, “Kid, we only got
one question. Have you ever been arrested?”

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice’s Restaurant Massacre,
with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all
the phenome… – and he stopped me right there and said, “Kid, did you ever
go to court?”

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on
the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, “Kid, I want
you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W …. NOW kid!!”

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W’s
where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly
‘n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said, “Kid, whad’ya get?” I said, “I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay
$50 and pick up the garbage.” He said, “What were you arrested for, kid?”
And I said, “Littering.” And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, “And creating a nuisance.” And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of
things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it
up and said.

“Kids, this-piece-of-paper’s-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-
know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-
officer’s-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say”, and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
following words:

(“KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?”)

I went over to the sargent, said, “Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I’m
sittin’ here on the bench, I mean I’m sittin here on the Group W bench
’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.” He looked at me and
said, “Kid, we don’t like your kind, and we’re gonna send you fingerprints
off to Washington.”

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I’m
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say “Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.”. And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and
they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.

And that’s what it is , the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and
all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come’s around on the
guitar.

With feeling. So we’ll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and
sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant

That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.
I’ve been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it
for another twenty five minutes. I’m not proud… or tired.

So we’ll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part
harmony and feeling.

We’re just waitin’ for it to come around is what we’re doing.

All right now.

You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant

Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice’s Restaurant
©1966,1967 (Renewed) by Appleseed Music Inc. All Rights Reserved.