Black Friday brings rain to Lowcountry SC

Have you recovered from gorging yourself full of Turkey and all the trimmings yet? Maybe you are still slumbering and have not awakened yet after collapsing into your recliner or favorite couch yesterday afternoon.

Our family went to the Meritage Restaurant in downtown Charleston SC yesterday and were blessed by the owner and his staff who volunteered their time, talents, food and facility so that our group from Happy Days and Special Times could enjoy a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner and fellowship. There were approximately 45 people who attended and the family that traveled the farthest was from Pensacola Florida.

We came home after filling ourselves with some wonderful food and settled down in front of the television to watch the Miami Dolphins feed the Dallas Cowgirls to the sharks. Can you say OH MY GOSH. What about those Cowgirls? The Dallas defense who is ranked number one (not any more) in the NFC East acted as if they could not stop the run or the pass. The score (cough) was 40 to 21 in the Dolphins favor. Now the Cowboys are 8 wins and 4 losses which I believe takes them out of first place in the NFC East (2nd place perhaps) and Miami is now 8 wins and 3 losses which puts them in a good standing for a wildcard position in the AFC.

This weekend will find us at the Happy Days and Special Times reunion that is held the weekend after Thanksgiving every year in Charleston. This year, since we moved back we wont need to stay in the hotel so we can show up for the festivities and then come home and sleep in our own beds which will be nice.

If you were like most Americans you were out shopping at Wallyworld or one of the malls in your location at the wonderful hour of 5 or 6 am as you went toe to toe with all of the other shoppers trying to cash in on the early bird deals. As for me and my house we were fast asleep with the visions of James finding a job some day soon. Our Christmas will be so wonderful if we can just manage to pay the bills and not have anything cut off or canceled due to non payment. As a matter of fact I just got off the phone with a recruiter who is searching for a Network Administrator in the SC area. They want a 4 year degree and certifications but perhaps if I pass their online screening and telephone interviews they might waive the educational prerequisite and trade out for years of experience and knowledge. We shall see how I do on the online screen test first.

In lieu of fighting with holiday shoppers for this or that we stayed home and managed to get our Christmas tree up along with most of the other holiday trappings. I have SEVERAL pictures to show you but for the complete list of pictures you can go to Thanksgiving Pictures for your enjoyment and there you will see the entire list of 30 + pictures that I took in the last day or two. If you click on each picture from that web page you will view the picture in your web browser of choice.



Christmas Tree View 1


Christmas Tree with Lights


Justin & Kristina putting together the tree


Moonbright stood still enough for me to get this picture. Stray cat that has adopted us!


Sammy on right (light brown) Angel on left (black) romping in living room


Sammy trying to sleep on living room floor!


Sammy is wondering if I am close enough to his nose for this picture!


The annual Christmas village goes up along with the tree!


Close Up of Christmas Village


Another shot of the Christmas Village

Score: Brick Stairs 1, James ZERO

I fought the law and the law won.... No, that does not match. I ran out to my car and lost my footing and tumbled down three brick stairs at church. The bricks did not even give for a second. I now can honestly say that I have invested, blood , sweat, tears and money into our local church. I could have skipped the blood portion of this experience but atleast I can say I have a well rounded experience. :)

The Dallas Cowboys are still number ONE in the NFC East division with a record of 8 wins and 3 losses. They lost to the Patriots last week and won against the Carolina Panthers this week. Wahooooo ! Go Cowboys!

My part time assignment through RHI in Charleston lasted all of 14 hours this last week. They needed for me to set up a new computer system in their office and get the data transferred from the old computer to the new one. Once all of that was done they had someone who could step in and do the photography and auctions online.

Katy is now registered to work as a substitute teacher in both Charleston and Berkeley Counties. Katy has worked now for almost two weeks substituting for Charleston County. Atleast that means one of us will start bringing in some sort of income in the very near future. Katy also has an interview in the morning at a local school in Goose Creek for a teachers assistant position which would be full time employment with benefits. That would be very nice if she gets it.

Out of desperation I went to a security company and filled out their paperwork to see if I can get a security commission in SC to do security work. That is the LAST thing I want to do at the moment but since I can not seem to find any type of employment I suppose that I might be able to fall back on my 10 years of experience in Security. Now I get to wait on the criminal background check from SLED to see if they will authorize me. I already got clearance to be registered as an alarm installer so I dont see why I cant get authorized to get my Security Officer commission as well. We shall see.

That means working nights and weekends and probably holidays. I figure I can work nights , come home and sleep six hours in the morning and then hopefully find some part time computer gigs to do in the afternoon hours while looking for employment. Hopefully it wont last for too long since I have not worked night shift in almost 15 years.

The lady in the boot. Do you remember her? She is married to Mr. Bunyon. The REAL man who lives next door with his family. The family in the new boot. :) They had their house warming party this weekend and 60+ people showed up. My son Justin was running around looking for a flashlight so he could help park cars. It was funny to watch him all excited about doing that. I think he thought he was going to get dad's nice flashlight to do this with. NOT....

My son Jeremy just had his senior picture taken but thanks to our FTP site being down I can not show it to you here. As soon as it is up again I will upload it and show it to you. I am so proud of him and I can not believe he is almost 18 years old. April of 2004 he will be a young adult ready to wander out into this world to make his mark.