Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Bones, burls, swirls and above all… wood.

15 Comments

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Yes, it’s another photo filled post of Boneyard Beach at Botany Bay preserve.

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I’d say I can’t help myself, but I could. I just don’t want to.

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We loved this place and I want you to love it too.

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It was truly one the weirdest natural wonders we’ve ever explored.

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The husband insisted I take this next picture.

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Clearly size is important to men.

Some of the wood was gnarly, some dried out and some twisted.

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But this piece was marvelously swirled.

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As we walked farther down the beach the trees were really piled up.

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Each weirder than the last.

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As we rounded a bend we found areas where shells had been strategically placed.

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It’s illegal to collect and remove things from this beach so people get creative.

It’s a wonderful way to conserve the beauty but this treeless stretch had some amazing shells that were hard to leave behind.

My husband, not caring about shells… found something else photo worthy.

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I can’t imagine why.

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🤣

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Uncategorized

The blog in which His Lordship is inconvenienced but learns to make the best of it.

18 Comments

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Lord Dudley Mountcatten likes the noise plastic makes when he jumps on it..

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And God knows we’ve got plenty of plastic right now.

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What he doesn’t like is plastic rooms he has no access to….

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And in true cat fashion he’s always on the wrong side of the wall.

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The newly added zippered door helps, though he still has a propensity to sit and stare.

His Lordship doesn’t understand why his house is torn apart, noisy and covered in plastic…

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But he’s trying to make the best of it.

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😉

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Uncategorized

More of Boneyard Beach

6 Comments

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I wouldn’t be lying if I told you I took hundreds of pictures of this beach during our trip.

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And while I promise I won’t share them all…

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I am going to post quite a few.

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It was just that good.

The trees.

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The sky.

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The shapes.

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The weird and wonderful sculptures of nature.

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I see a person running here, anyone else?

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💕

❤️

💕

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Uncategorized

Home renovations are not for the faint hearted.

7 Comments

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Due to uncontrolled rampant dust covering every square inch and nook and cranny of our house…

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Another plastic walled room was erected.

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This time carefully avoiding the furnace’s air intake…

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Which had been sucking in dust and evenly distributing it between rooms.

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The contractor also added a zippered door so His Royal Highness could access the room at night without tearing giant holes in the plastic like he did last time.

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I have to be honest…

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I’m beginning to forget what a clean house looks like.

🥴

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Uncategorized

A boneyard with no bones.

17 Comments

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Day 7, the last full day of our southern anniversary vacation started like the previous 6… with a card.

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This trip was our gift to each other so I opted for a card a day instead.

I’m thoughtful that way. 😉

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It also started with the malfunction of my very last can of (the now reformulated and totally awful Aussie instant freeze… may a pox fall upon their houses and render every last one of the executives bald) hairspray.

Oh, the horror!

With my drastically unsecured hairdo, we headed out that morning to buy a thank you gift for our neighbor who was caring for Lord Dudley Mountcatten in our absence. On the way out of the store I chuckled at the appropriate license plate of the elderly owner.

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And speaking of moss…

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We decided to make the most of our last day and return to the Botany Bay preserve to fully explore Boneyard Beach at low tide.

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Passing under that gorgeous canopy of trees again on the way in.

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It never got old.

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Our previous two trips to the beach were shortened first by loss of daylight and then by rising tide.

We hoped for better viewing this time.

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I know the pictures don’t do it justice…

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But you have to trust me, this place was amazing in person.

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Even with bad hair and high winds.

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The skeletal remains of all those trees made it feel like another planet.

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Or maybe this one after some kind of Planet of the Apes scenario.

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Look…

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My husband smiled, so you know it was special.

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I swear if I lived in this area I’d be here everyday…

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❤️

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Uncategorized

White Mountain shopping trip.

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On a beautiful sunny day last week we drove west to the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

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They still had a little snow and ice.

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Though it must not have been very thick if the fishermen were using tents instead of shacks on the lake.

The purpose of our excursion was a visit to the often advertised Green Mountain furniture store. It looked huge, so we figured… why not? We’ve been everywhere else.

After our first step inside I knew it was a wasted trip.

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Furniture?

Yes, they had some…

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But 80% of it was log cabin themed. And while I expected a little of that considering the location, the plethora of bear, moose and fake deer antlers was overwhelming.

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It honestly felt more like a jacked up Cracker Barrel gift store.

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And though we did find some traditional pieces upstairs… the only things that made us smile were the framed photos on the walls.

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🤣

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Uncategorized

The blog where I eat tilefish and am completely underwhelmed.

9 Comments

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After an interesting but not nearly long enough tour of Fort Sumter, we disembarked the ferry and spotted a resort with a highly recommended restaurant called the Fish House.

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Arriving at 4:00pm since we’d skipped lunch…

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We had the place to ourselves for a short while and moseyed up to the bar.

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One Harborview with Cathead Honeysuckle Vodka, Lemon Simple Syrup, Prosecco, and fresh basil in… things were looking good.

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The view on one side was the USS Yorktown… which I wanted to tour but with only an hour before it closed and $100 for two tickets the husband said no. He’s lived on those ships and had no desire to pay to see another.

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Low country shrimp appetizer? Yummy.

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A Siren’s Mule with Mount Gay Rum, Ginger Beer, Lemon Simple Syrup, Mint Leaf, Lime and Blue Curacao?

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Even better.

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We had to laugh at the menu typo and passed on the She Carb soup.

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Husband had the lobster ravioli which he said was wonderful and silly me… who thought since I was down south I should try local seafood… ordered the tilefish.

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Word of advice – do not order the tilefish.

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The sauce? Flavorful. The risotto? Creamy. The charred lemon broccoli? Perfect.

The tilefish?

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I think this fish made out of actual tile in the rest room would have tasted better.

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This one as well.

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Yup. Those too.

Lesson learned? If you don’t know what it is, don’t order it.

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Bad fish aside, it was a nice place.

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It must have been because we stayed until after dark and the beast of a Lincoln was lighting our way when we left.

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At least we had good timing for some beautiful Charleston skies on the way back.

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😊

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Uncategorized

It’s the gift that keeps on giving…

17 Comments

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As you know we started the home renovation projects last summer…. and by now? I fully intended to be done, feet up and comfortably seated on our new furniture.

Meanwhile back at Casa River –

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Lord Dudley Mountcatten explores the changes…

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And while our contractor is prepping the floor…

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My husband was roped into cutting in the ceiling paint along the edges of the wall.

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Taking up the damaged sub floor sections, the contractor discovered tar paper …

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And one seriously, not even close to level, major hump in the middle of the room.

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Of course he did.

It’s our God forsaken cursed house after all.

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At this point? If he dug up a blackened corpse in a coffin covered in satanic symbols…

I’d just see it as explanation.

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That hutch is heavy, it’s easier to paint around than move.

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The new flooring?

It’s currently clogging up my kitchen.

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Easy to install?

Clearly it doesn’t know who it’s dealing with…

🥴

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Uncategorized

I needed a day, but only got an hour.

14 Comments

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Time was ticking away and before we knew it we had less than ten minutes left on the measly hour allotted us to tour Fort Sumter.

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The views from the top of the old battery were the best.

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So I raced around snapping pictures.

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The famed 200 pounder.

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Dashing down the stairs as they gave the five minute warning for ferry departure….

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We didn’t have time to do anything but a quick run through.

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I’m smiling, but I wasn’t happy.

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Too much to see, too little time.

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Didn’t have time to read any of these so I took pictures for later.

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I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I was to be rushed through a historic site I’ve read so much about.

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And as much as I’d like to recommend the trip to other visitors, I can’t.

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We didn’t walk the outside the Fort, or the parapet, or the rocks and the beach. We didn’t check out any of the interior spaces at all.

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I didn’t mind paying the $37 per person ticket price.

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But I did mind spending almost as much time on the boat as we did at the Fort.

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Boo to that.

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Uncategorized

You know the drill.

25 Comments

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As work started on our next living room projects, (new flooring and ceiling repairs) it was time for the familiar refrain to begin chiming in my head.

More work.

More time.

More money.

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Because when carpet and padding was removed in the bump out addition section of the room…

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Damaged floor was discovered. At this point in the continuing saga our renovation nightmare? I expected no less.

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One section was particularly troubling.

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It’s a complete mystery to how or even when this damage occurred.

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The door we just replaced on the right leaked at one time so that would explain water damage on that end…

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But we found bad spots here and there under the windows as well… which could have been caused by the old windows we replaced years ago because though it was damaged, it was completely dry.

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But while the bad spots to the right were dry, that nasty black spot on the left was damp.

And that’s not good.

😩

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