May 2011

Well, I did it again. I went almost five months without posting anything. So here's a brief recap and some comments about my future plans for this blog.

The winter was long, cold, and hard. I got through tax season with minimal physical wear and tear, but with a profound sense of relief that I no longer have to do a lot of monthly work in addition to the tax work for those clients that have stuck with me.

I went to exercise class every morning (5 days a week) at 8:00 am before starting work, and I'm convinced that it was the reason I stayed healthy and reasonably happy during the long, cold winter months. If you hadn't noticed....I really, REALLY hate winter. Anyway, no SAD this year, which has plagued me for several years lately, and I finished up the winter months feeling strong and fit.

Sean, Jantaporn and Phoenix went to Thailand for a month in Jan-Feb, and Phoenix seemed to grow like a weed while he was gone. That little guy is solely responsible for a good bit of Hilda's well being.

Hilda and I had a nice, restful vacation at the "Minnow" cottage on Ocracoke the last week in April. Just a couple of days earlier, we had attended a Jimmy Buffet concert in Raleigh. That old guy is like the Energizer bunny, he just keeps going. Anyway, we had a very good, relaxing time on Ocracoke. Got to actually spend a few days on the beach, which is iffy in April, but it worked out for us.

Sarah graduates from high school in about a week and we are all (except Jantaporn, who has to keep her shop open) going to fly out there to be with them for that event. Looking forward to a Wooten/Klika reunion for the first time in about 20-something years.

I'm riding my bike when I can (still going to excercise class 3 times/week) and I have a lot of biking planned for the coming months... 4 week-long tours and 2 long weekends, more than likely.

OK, folks now that I'm no longer subject to being neutral among a lot of business clients, I've decided to take the gloves off. There is so much going on in our community and the country that I feel strongly about that it seems ridiculous to maintain a "blog" without saying what I really think about some stuff, so look out. If you don't agree with me, that's ok with me, if you don't like that I'm posting my true feelings, just don't read this blog.

Stay Tuned.

2010

2010 is almost gone, and I have yet to post anything to this diary. It's the Monday after Christmas and, like most of the east coast of the US, we've just had a major (for the Outer Banks) snowstorm. Today dawned beautiful, cold blue sky, a blanket of white covering everything.

Were did 2010 go? While it was a crazy, tumultuous year for the country, it was a pretty calm one for us. No major problems, business was pretty much normal after losing a couple of clients to the economy early in the year. We had a couple of fun but relaxing vacation trips to Ocracoke, nothing extravagant, though. Went to Murry over labor day weekend to visit David and his girls, and they came here in June for a visit. Sarah is a senior this year, and is busy trying to decide which college she wants to attend.

I did a couple of bike tours during the summer, one to the U.P. in Michigan that was a lot of fun, and in September, an off road tour of the C&O Canal towpath and the Great Allegheny Passage bicycle trail. The latter trip was marred by bad weather, but was an adventure none the less.

I decided this year that 25 years in the accounting business is just about right to call it a career, so I've notified most of my accounting clients that I'll be retiring after the December 2010 work is done. I plan to continue doing taxes, and probably a few monthly clients so that we can maintain the kind of lifestyle we enjoy, but mainly I plan to ride my bike, spend a lot more time on the beach and just enjoy life for a while. I've got a couple of projects in mind to keep me occupied, and we might travel some, so I'm not afraid of getting bored. Hilda thinks it's about time that I give up some of the stress of being responsible for lots of other peoples affairs. I think she's right.

Once again, I'm going to make a resolution to keep up with this blog, posting at least periodically to try to keep up. Now that I won't have business interests to be concerned about, I just might make some more pointed comments about things that are going on around us.

For now, I guess that's enough....

WOW, It's been a long time....

.....since I've posted anything to this blog, but I've decided to bring it back and try to keep up with it.

I've been reviewing several outer banks blogs lately and I think most of them are pretty lame. They seem to mostly be dedicated to carping about local politics or parroting some right-wing commentators world view, maybe tailoring it a little to the Outer Banks, maybe not. A couple of pretty good ones for keeping up with local news are www.outerbanksfreepress.com and www.islandfreepress.org . Uncle Jack used to have an interesting blog, he's a former local newspaper columnist and has a sense of humor that I appreciate, but he's moved to Baltimore now, and so his topics are not as interesting to me. You can find his new blog at www.unclejacksbaltimoreblog.blogspot.com .

I still want to try to use this space to sharing some of our adventures with whoever might be interested. I'll try to stay away from controversy. I realize that my views about life, politics, religion, etc might not be the same as some of my readers, so I'll try to stay away from them. If I decide to get on a soap box at some time in the future, I'll create another vehicle for doing that.

In the months since I've posted anything here, we've had a couple of pretty good adventures, Hilda and I made a kind of spur-of-the-moment trip to Key West in May and had a good, mostly laid-back time. You can see our photos from that trip at www.earlwooten.smugmug.com/Travel/2009/Key-West-April-2009 .

We also hosted a bicycle tour of the Outer Banks in September. The participants were all friends I made on my 2006 cross-country trip. Some of us have managed to get together on some ride or other each year since, and I volunteered to host a ride this year. It turned out well, and everybody said they had a great time. I'm currently working on editing the photos from the trip, and plan to produce a DVD with a slide show of them soon. I'll post a representative group on the Smugmug site when I get it done.

As I said at the beginning, I'm going to try to rememberr to make an occasional post here, so stay tuned.

May's over

Well, another month has come and gone. Fortunately for us, May was a much better month than some of the preceding ones.

Mothers Day was a big success. We had brunch at Stack 'Em High in Kitty Hawk with Jenni, Sean, Jantaporn and Phoenix, then went to church with Jenni at the Unitarian Church in Kitty Hawk. Sean had to work that day, so we dropped Jantaporn off and took Phoenix and with Jenni we went to Manteo to the NC Aquarium. Phoenix was impressed with the river otters, but generally underwhelmed with the fish. He mostly enjoyed running around and trying to go into non-public spaces. After taking Phoenix home to his mom, who had been catching up on shopping and housework, Hilda and I came home before the big storm hit.

Memorial day weekend was the big event for May. We went to Bobby and Kathy's on Thursday and were joined by David & Susan & the girls later that day. On Friday, we went to Brycen's kindergarten play and graduation ceremony and had pizzas at his other grandmother's house. Saturday was the big day of the weekend, with a pig-picking for 35-40 friends and family at Lake Wateree. Bobby Johnson cooked the barbecue pork and chicken, and was up to his usual standard. We boiled a bushel of peanuts, and a lot of them were eaten as appetizers before the main event. Most everybody who came brought a side dish or dessert, and everyone got thoroughly stuffed before heading down to the lake for relaxing, swimming, or boat riding. David and Susan had to leave early Sunday, so we just relaxed with Bobby and Kathy and Bobby's brother Tim and his wife Laurie. We headed home on Monday, with a stop in Dillon for a brief visit with Cecelia, Ronnie and Hilda's aunt Joyce. All in all a pretty satisfying weekend. You can view all our photos from the weekend at http://earlwooten.smugmug.com look in the family catagory for the Memorial Day 2008 album.

On Tuesday, we went to the annual Dare County Friends of Youth picnic. These events are always fun, watching the kids play all kinds of silly games to win prizes. As usual, John Bennett was the chef in charge of the burgers and hot dogs. Lots of fun, also.

I'm doing pretty well with my exercise routine since finishing up at the rehab place, I'm trying to either ride my bike or walk every day, and I'm being pretty successful. Today, I walked about two miles on the beach. The weather is perfect today, and the ocean looked like Lake Atlantic, as they say. Not very many people on the beach for a holiday week.

So went May.

On my own, now

I finished up my eight weeks at the Pulmonary Rehab center that Medicare is willing to pay for today. Now I'm on my own to stay disciplined and exercises every day. I don't think that will be a problem for the next couple of months because I'll be getting ready for the Iowa ride. After that, I'll really have to be conscientious about exercising to keep this lung problem from getting any worse.

Cycling group

I was asked a couple of weeks ago to make a little presentation to a group of young people about to leave on a cross-country bicycle trip. The reason they asked me, specifically, is that I'm a cycling instructor certified by the League of American Bicyclists and the group went to the league for a referral for an instructor close by their starting point. Anyway, I did that yesterday.

The group is cycling with an outfit called "Bike and Build" and is made up of college students and recent grads. To qualify for the trip, each participant must collect $4,000 for the group's cause of helping provide housing for those in need, and during the trip they have several days when they stop to work on homes, Habit for Humanity style. Their website is http://bikeandbuild.org . I looked them up when I was preparing for the presentation, and discovered that the organization sponsors seven trips each year, each with a different starting point and destination. The one I talked to was leaving today from Virginia Beach. On the website, I was able to view the profiles of each of the participants, and I was impressed with the quality of the group.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun going up to Va Beach and spending some time with the kids. I, along with another man from the Tidewater bike club rode with them on their short shakedown ride, and naturally I couldn't keep up with a bunch of twenty-somethings but I really enjoyed trying. There were about thirty in the group, including four leaders who were in the same age range as the participants, and they came from all over the country. They were very hospitable and seemed to take my words of advice very seriously.

I'll be following their trip on their website for the 2.5 months they're on the road. Oh, yeah, they gave me one of their t-shirts!

OBX WEATHER

is always interesting, if nothing else. After a cool, cloudy and breezy Mothers day, topped off with a violent thunderstorm, yesterday looked for all purposes like a hard northeaster except that the wind was out of the southwest. During the night the wind died down a little and shifted to the northwest and then to the north.

I had to deliver some work and call on a couple of clients on Hatteras Island today, and I went to bed thinking that was not going to happen because late yesterday afternoon the road was flooded at several places on the island. When I got up this morning, I called the sheriff's dispatcher and was told that the road was open and passable, so I quickly got ready and took off for Buxton. The wind was blowing hard out of the north, but it was low tide, so there was no water standing on the road to amount to anything. There had been a serious ocean wash-over at the place north of Rodanthe known as the S-curves, but since it was low tide, the water was just in some puddles beside the road. There had also been sound side flooding at Salvo, Avon and Frisco last night, but that was all dried up by this morning.

I finished my business as quickly as I could, and high-tailed it back up the beach to beat the 3:30 pm high tide. I got through OK, but I'll tell you that is one angry ocean out there.