Happy Birthday

I write this from a hotel in Conyers GA. I had an opportunity this week to travel to one of our retread facilities and decided to learn a little more about this side of the business. The plant is about 3 hours away from home and the drive took us through some lovely countryside. Tomorrow we hit the plant. I'll be here for two days before going back to the office on Friday. Then it's the long weekend.

First, I need to tell you about a problem we seem to have in our backyard. It seems we have what is known around here as a "varmit". In reality I think it's a mole. Now moles seem harmless enough but they sure do make a mess of the lawn-especially when a sixty pound german short haired pointer decides to dig to find one! Now we have multiple trenches in the backyard and lots of soft spots where the moles have dug tunnels.

Well, Jane and I don't care too much for chemicals and poisons so we went the green way (if you can call it that). We got a couple of sonic blasters that emit a pulse every fifteen seconds. They're supposed to drive the little guys away. Well I think they work because we haven't seen any in a while and Maggie hasn't been digging.

I need to add another item to my list of firsts here in South Carolina. Last week I played my first round of golf. It was after work in honor of the fellow I'm replacing. We played on Bonnie Brae golf course, and in my limited experience it certainly doesn't compare to equivalent courses in Nova Scotia. I think I understand why my father-in-law likes to play down here. In the end the course was good but the play was a little rough (pardon the pun). I still need to work on my game.

I think I'm going to go looking for a cheap set of left handed clubs (hopefully on sale) so I can at least be respectable when I play with company. I'll start on the driving range and work my way up from there. (I did get a list of good, inexpensive, and relatively close courses to play for when company does come.)

Last but not least is the birthday party. This year, because we were away from family and friends, we decided to treat Isabelle to a weekend away instead of a birthday party. So on Saturday morning, instead of heading off for the market like we usually do, we dropped Maggie off at the kennel and headed east to Columbia-the state capitol. It's just over an hour away and has some nice family attractions. The first order of business was to check into a hotel and get our complimentary tickets to the South Carolina Children's Museum, also known as EdVenture. Tante Rhea should be able to relate because it was much like the Science Center in Vancouver. Isabelle got to play, touch, ride, splash, bubble, and do all sorts of things. The place even has a giant kid named Ed that you can walk through to see his stomach, bones, and even his brain. Isabelle liked the air displays where you can play with tubes and fans to make things happen and learn about science. My favorite was the stainless steel water display where you can put in dams and gates to make the water flow differently. They also had a neat bubble exhibit that let the kids (and adults) make all sorts of neat bubbles. The hotel we had was very nice. We had a suit on the top floor overlooking the atrium on the inside, and the river (sort of) on the outside. The room included a pizza from the hotel which turned out to be very good, and of course there was a pool. We managed to talk Isabelle into a morning swim rather than the evening (the pool was too busy) and it turned out perfectly. We slept in until 8:00 and then went down for a swim (the pool was empty). A quick soak in the hot tub for the parents and then off to the biggest breakfast I've had in years. There was cereal, toast, bacon, sausage, omelets to order, eggs made the way you want them, grits, hash browned potatoes, biscuits and gravy, milk, juices, coffee, fruit, yogurt, and on, and on, and on. We ate like royalty! In fact we ate so much we didn't really stop for lunch until after 1:00. After breakfast we went off to Riverbanks Zoo. The zoo is nicely located on the banks of a river (hence the name!) and is very nice. They have an African Safari theme to it that isn't too tacky. The two neatest things we saw (I think) were the giraffes and the sea lion. The sea lion show was very cool and at the giraffe exhibit you could feed the animals. Isabelle even got very close to one. We did see lots of other things including lions, tigers, bears, monkeys, and penguins. The penguins feeding was also pretty cool as they have a glass wall where you can see underwater. Isabelle sat on my knees for almost fifteen minutes watching them fly through the water. In the end it was a lovely weekend. We finished it off with drive through some of lowland South Carolina while Isabelle had a much needed nap. For the rest of her birthday I'll wait for another post.