Ethan’s school pictures came home, and we’ll be doing the retakes. But his expression was the least of my concerns today. I got quite a bombshell dropped on me today regarding someone from my distant past. At first I laughed, and then I got all sweaty and weird feeling, and now I just feel like a Mack truck has run me over.

I will further discuss this issue in the future. Right now, I don’t even know how to address it.

Tomorrow night we have plans with The Scanlons to go do the Walk Thru the Lights at the Holiday Lights at the Beach on the boardwalk.

Well, this totally sucks. I just checked the website to get a little copy and paste info and found this:

THE OPENING OF MCDONALD’S HOLIDAY LIGHTS AT THE BEACH HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FOR WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH.
ALL CARS $10.
The Walk Thru the Lights for Ronald McDonald House Charities will NOT be held this Thursday, and will be rescheduled on another date.

I am sooooo pissed!

Late yesterday afternoon we joined the masses to see the HUGE barge that ended up on the sand at Sandbridge during the Nor’easter. It was carrying hazardous materials, and snapped loose from the tugboat that was towing it during the storm. It was quite a distance offshore, but the Nor’easter blew it onto the beach. In an effort to save it from hitting the pier in the background, engineers found a way to slow it down by pumping it full of water. It now sits on the beach, attached by lines to three tugboats in the ocean.

The thing that most amazed me was not the size of the barge (almost 6 stories tall), but the fact that everyone was staring at it as though it was an alien being that came to earth to guide us on our next cosmic adventure. They were literally staring at it in a trance-like fashion. It was a little bizarre, to say the least.

I have not thought of this show in years, even though it was a favorite MTV show of mine in the late 1980′s.  Sadly, the reason for the memory today was because I read that Ken Ober, the host of the show, passed away.  Now I can’t stay away from watching episodes on youtube.

Ethan and I visited the Lynnhaven House today, one of many historic homes in our area. This one dates back to 1725.

Sadly, when we arrived at 3:30, we were told my the two docents in the facility center informed us that they had to lock the house up at 4:00, and they didn’t feel 30 minutes was long enough to devote to a tour. They did promise that they would devote an entire hour to us the next time we came to visit.  We ended up chatting with them about other historical homes in the area, ghost stories and how I used to roam this property late at night when I was a teenager.

We did walk around the property, and will definitely return soon. Ethan seemed very interested in all they had to share, and I feel confident that he and I will share the same love of local history. I cannot wait to start visiting some more of these area sites now that Ethan is old enough to take a real interest in this type of tour.

Ethan and I headed down to the oceanfront this afternoon to check out the waves, wind and rain that are blowing in from the Nor’easter that hit today. Tomorrow’s supposed to be even worse, with very high tidal surges.

During the fall of 2002, I was petrified of the entire Beltway Sniper thing. Tonight, John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. beltway sniper, was executed at 9:11 p.m. in Jarratt, Va. Muhammad, 48, was sentenced to die by lethal injection for his role in a three-week killing spree that left 10 dead in 2002. He did not offer a final statement.

His reign of terror scared the heck out of me, to the point of running to pump gas and never going out alone after dark. Stephen was in his second year of college, and the snipers were making their mark in the Richmond area, Cristin was of the age where she ventured out at night alone, and Ethan was just a baby. I was scare for my kids.

As much as I hate them, they sure do make the little ones happy!

And I am still recovering…

If you want to see the pics, go here.

Since the Christmas decorations are already out in the local mall, and I had a camera ready, we decided to take adavantage of the scenery.