How about a Clay project while we wait? Come on in, kids - it's Arts and Crafts time. As background, I used to have a space in an antique mall - just 8X14, it was a hobby store, I never made any money but it allowed me to go to garage sales and purchase items without guilt....cuz they were for the "store". LOL. I picked up some vintage sheet music from time to time and using old frames I found, framed the sheet music AND actually sold them! I did quite of few of these with old frames I had picked up.


A year or so ago I discovered there was such a thing as sheet music for Clay's music....with great pictures, so I bought a couple and framed them in a more contemporary fashion - it's easy to do and not expensive.

First of all, get your sheet music online. You may find it locally in a music store, as well. If you google sheet music Clay Aiken you will get a lot of hits. I have used - www.sheetmusicplus.com with good results, but there are lots of others out there. The music will cost $3-$6 based on where you get it.

Now, to frame it yourself, you can just plop it into a ready made 9X12 frame...if you can find one. This is the hard part. When I was doing the vintage ones, my frames were all different sizes and the sheet music is usually 9X12, so I mounted the music on top of various mats I then cut to fit the frame. I discovered Michael's has a pre-cut mat to go over the music(only in black)that has an opening of 9X12 which fits a frame 12X16 - again, a frame size hard to find...but Michaels has one that works well. It's black metal with clips to hold the picture in. The great thing about Michael's is that if you wait.....it will eventually be on sale for 50% off. I bought a couple of extras for when the next album comes out I am sure there will be sheet music for the songs. And my frames will match.

Here's a couple of (bad) pics of the two I currently have hanging. The pic's are bad because the room is dark and I had to use flash. LOL. Anyway, should give you an idea. Each of these, with the frames and mat being on sale and including the sheet music cost about $15.00 to put together. Of course, you can always clip the Michael's coupon for 50% off framing and have them do it for you, with unique matting and frames, but it will cost a whole lot more. And, this is arts and crafts 101, LOL.



Michael's, for those of you who don't have one is an arts and crafts store that has lots and lots of frames for DIY as well as professional framing available.

Enjoy.

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Some Clay memories and other musings.....I've taken a few days away from posting on the boards and doing blogs but today I am feeling an anticipation that news will finally be forthcoming. I think this is the week we will hear something about the new album and possibly some appearance dates or tour information. I can't wait to see this guy on my TV again....


and in concert, where he absolutely glows.


Perhaps after the news hits I can go back to my home board where some members, with no new hairdos to discuss, have been picking on other musical artists. Oh, they couch the rhetoric in line with the rules of the board, ie, "It is my opinion that Taylor Hicks is full of himself." Well, he may very well be, but I found him entertaining on the show and he did win, so I cut him a lot of slack. The proof will be in the pudding...err, the sales. You know, it's fine not to like other artists, but I'm confused why it seems to be so common to repeat over and over how irratated other artists make you feel - as in, "OMG, I just saw that Taylor Hicks Ford commercial for the third time tonight". Then 10 minutes later, "OMG, I just saw that Taylor Hicks Ford commercial for the fourth time tonight, when will this ever end????"


LOL, good for Taylor. By the time I saw the commercial I was predisposed to dislike it intensely, but I thought it was cute and found my self totally baffled by the dislike. Well, whatever. Taylor will be successful, or not...it depends on how hard he works, how much his fans and record label support him and in the end it has nothing to do with Clay's career, so I'm not bothering to angst over every little Taylor appearance.

Sure, we are all fans of Clay Aiken, but I think we are allowed to like other musical artists. And, I would prefer to talk about those I like, not those I don't particularly care for. For example, I'm a huge Keith Urban fan - didn't he look yummy at his wedding?


I discovered Keith because of Clay, I've written about this before. I was doing Rate the Music and they sent me a special poll on this guy I had never heard of. I listened to "You'll Think of Me", googled Keith Urban and that was that. I've been to a couple of Keith's concerts here in Phoenix, one in Indianapolis last summer in conjunction with The Jukebox Tour and then I saw him in Boise and Missoula, Mt last fall. Here is a picture I took in Boise.

Keith's concerts are extremely energetic, not country at all, in my opinion. Keith is now working on his next album.....well, I expect to hear some great love songs, don't ya think???

Another one of my favorite artists for years and years is Harry Connick, Jr.


Gee, that hairdo looks familiar, doesn't it??

I have quite a few of his albums and need to go pick up his latest, which is a double album including the cast album for The Pajama Game, which is Harry's first broadway musical role and a second disc with songs from Thou Shalt Not - Harry's first attempt at writing for the stage. Since I am a fan of both Harry and Broadway musicals, I'm sure I will enjoy the album.

Nor do I want to leave out someone I found on Promosquad, again...all the fault of one Mr. Aiken. Jared Lee has no album out to date, but I think his music is wonderful, he is wonderful on the eyes and I think and hope we will hear this young man someday soon. Check him out here:


Jared also has a my space account where you can hear several of his songs:
http://www.myspace.com/jaredlee


So, those are my thoughts today as I, along with thousands of other Clay fans, await news.

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I'm my own sixth cousin. Yes, it's true. I have to come clean and admit it. And, I guess while I am fessing up......the ancestors who caused this relationship ..... me to myself, that is.......came from West Virginia. As today is West Virginia Day, I thought I would share my WV roots.

Now, most of us know that cousins are children of siblings. Second cousins would then be the offspring of the 1st set of cousins. And third cousins the offspring of second cousins, etc. So, in order to be my OWN cousin, somewhere up the line cousins (of some degree) would have had to have gotten married.

Yes, my great great grandfather, Ebenezer Martin married his second cousin. Now, it was a long time ago and there weren't too many people in West Virginia and Ohio in 1832 when they were married....well, heck, Minerva Zane was actually Ebenezer's 2nd wife....he married his 1st wife in 1811 and she was his 1st cousin (and Minerva's aunt), once removed....a sorta cousin and a half, LOL. I know, I know, the removed muddies the water a bit, what the heck is removed. The "removed" just means how many generations removed from the cousinship. So, if Joe and Pete are second cousins, Joe's children are second cousins once removed to Pete. Got it?

Come to think of it, Ebenezer Martin's mother was a Zane....oh, grief...I think I am my own grandpa, or something.

It was a long time ago and hopefully the gene pool has been diluted by Ebenezer's children marrying people from Wales and England and Germany....I think I'm ok, really. Honestly, I am.

I have been collecting family history information for years and the Zane/Martin connection is the most interesting as it is part of the history of West Virginia and Ohio. To keep all my information for posterity I have started a website and while it is under construction and I don't want to share it all yet, I can offer up a link to my page on the family of Zanes where two of the brothers (Ebenezer & Jonathan)were my direct ancestors. I am proud to be descended from these West Virginian's as well as old Ebenezer Martin across the river in Martins Ferry Ohio, whose mother was Ebenezer Zane's eldest daughter. I'm sure you have it all straight now. Good.

There are lots of internet links in the web page to take you to source documents and/or articles if you are so inclined.
Martin Family History - the Zanes

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Happy Father's Day!!! My dad passed away in 1983 and I miss him very much. He was a quiet man and all my brothers seem to have acquired that trait, as well as some of the grandsons. We women are all chatterboxes. Dad was an only child (of an only child) and as a result, probably spoiled a little, well probably a lot! He had a great childhood, went to Culver Military Academy as a teenager and was headed off to Annapolis (I still have his appointment letter) when his grandfather died, his father died and then his grandmother. One after another. Annapolis never happened and dad became a "gentleman" farmer. The house I was born in, in Lancaster, Ohio actually had a name - "Concord Hall". My great-grandparents purchased the house in 1903 and my folks sold it for a pittance in 1949 as they had decided to relocate to California. One day I will blog about the house as it has an interesting history.

Once we finally settled in Crescent City, California (See an earlier blog about my parents first trip before I was born) my dad bought the Western Auto Store and while my elder three siblings were raised to dress for dinner and speak when spoken to, my life was a lot easier. Dad had been married to what my mom called a "society girl" before he married my mom. However, mom was one of 12 farm kids born in a real working farm. Living at Concord Hall with my grandmother, who had some rigid "rules" on behavior must have been difficult for her.

My folks bought a nice house on 20 acres in the country and when not running the store dad could be found riding his John Deere tractor around, cutting grass, plowing, etc. Still, and always, the gentleman farmer.

I've been scanning old pictures for posterity and added a couple of scrapbooking pages to my collection. In Dad's memory:


Click (twice) to increase to full size



I'll be doing more pages as I go along with the scanning and improve my scrapbooking and photoshop skills.

Hope everyone has a nice Fathers Day.

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Quiana Parler met Clay Aiken while they were auditioning for American Idol. If you rewatch AI2 video you will see Quiana several times on the tapes, unfortunately she did not make the cut but ended up becoming one of Clay's backup singers on his tours.

Yesterday Quiana gave birth to a baby boy, named him Chamberlain Malik Moore. A very LARGE name for such a tiny tyke, but he will grow into it. Clay blogged the news on his official fan board. See link in the sidebar to visit the fan board.
From what I understand Quiana will be on the next tour, probably starting in the fall....the question is, will she be able to leave that precious new baby with it's grandma while she goes off to tour (as she has said she will)? OR, will the tour bus now have a nursery? New babies do sleep better while driving. How many of us have actually taken a colicky baby out in the car for a ride....raises hand.

I hope Quiana continues to work with Clay on many future tours. She is a special person.

Found a video of Quiana singing "Proud Mary". Thanks to shineinnc for this video which was taken when she and cotton went to see Quiana's That 70's Soul Show. It's a very pregnant Quiana belting out and dancing away....Chamberlain has had a very musical start in life. I also am including "Chain of Fools" from the Charlotte NAT.

Click here for video: Marhaven Videos

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Clay Aiken worked at the YMCA before he started college in Charlotte. My scrapbook challenge for the day was to take a quote "Real Friends Don't Care if you are a Little Different" and make a layout. For some reason, the picture of Clay allowing the kids to duct tape him to the wall at the YMCA came to mind....let's face it, it takes a real friend and someone a little different (thank goodness) to allow a bunch of kids to do this. What a hoot.


Click (twice) to increase size of picture

From Clay's book "Learning to Sing" about his YMCA days.

"The other counselors nicknamed me Gonzo because I was weird and I just did my thing. I wasn't afraid to make a fool out of myself. I might dress up as a gorilla - anything in order to do my job well."

"I didn't mind if the other teenagers who worked for me occasionally laughed at me. I believed that if the other counselors thought temselves too cool to play the game or be ridiculous in the skit, then they were missing out. Kids don't need lessons in cool. They need to have fun."

Kids know the "real deal" when they see it.

You can check out Clay's NY Times bestselling book at Amazon.com - Learning to Sing

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Pic's can be Clicked (twice) to make larger


Today's scrapbooking challenge was to do a double page travel layout. A double page layout is two pages that blend and are meant to be displayed as, for example, page2 and 3 in a book. While I have tons of travel pics of my own, I had just scanned a bunch of old pictures and I decided to do a heritage page.

My dad's grandfather died in 1923 and his father in 1925. In 1925 or early 1926 my Dad, who would have been 21, took his grandmother and mother on a Mediterranean vacation. My great grandmother was devastated at the loss of her husband and son so close together. I have her diaries and on the day her son died she wrote her last entry saying "My life is over, my beloved Philip is gone". She followed them in death late in 1926, leaving my father & his mother without three of the most important people in their lives.


My dad talked a little bit about this trip, the highlight seemed to be attempting to swim in the Dead Sea....it is so salty you bob around like a cork, can't sink if you wanted to. While it was obviously perfectly safe to go to the Dead Sea in the 20's I'm not so sure I would want to go today.

With father's day coming up in a week I may do a couple more pages about my dad.....heaven knows I have cartons of pictures to do it with.

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Clay Aiken's Jukebox Tour was the subject in my scrapbook project this morning. I wanted to learn more about shape templates and how to use them. My first search was to find more templates to use, but I came up pretty empty handed. I then went to Digital Scrapbook Place and found a kit to download that had a couple of templates and instructions. The instructions were a little different than I had the other day, but I think I finally understand the concept. You have a template, which is a shape painted black. Open that as a new document, duplicate the layer and delete the first layer. Open the paper you want for the cutout and here is the trick, hold down the shift key and drag your paper (the one in the large screen) onto your template and drop it. You should get a new layer. At this point, hit Ctrl G and the paper will be cut to match the template underneath. It's magic. And, what I discovered was that templates are merely shapes, there is nothing difficult about making them. I could, for example, open a new transparent document, draw a circle, color it black, save it and I have a template. Or, let's try this -
This was the silhouette I made of Clay awhile back. It was black. So I used it as the background, put some paper on top, hit Ctrl G and bing. Woo Hoo.

So, this morning's exercise was to use a curvy template from the little kit I downloaded. I deceided to try to use a picture as my "paper". Thanks to clack gatherers and photographers Karen Eh and Tasapio for these pictures.

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In 1943 "Lassie Come Home" debuted starring Elizabeth Taylor and a love affair with collies and the "Lassie Come Home" story was launched. The TV series, began in 1954, continued through 1964 and included several Timmy's and descendents of the original Lassie. The original Lassie's real name was "Pal" and descendents of Pal appeared in all shows/movies/etc. since the original "Lassie Come Home"

That is, until now. In 2005 a remake of "Lassie Come Home" was filmed on the Isle of Mann in the UK. And, guess what, they couldn't get clearance to fly the appropriate Lassie to England. - From the Lassie.net website:

"Ireland, the U.K. and most of Europe have very restrictive animal/pet import laws – that were strengthened further after 9/11 and outbreaks of mad cow disease in recent years. Any animal or pet is subject to a rigorous testing, mandatory quarantine and an extensive paperwork process before they can obtain the proper permission for entry into the country. This can take more than six months. The brief pre-production schedule of this film did not allow sufficient time to obtain pet passports for "Lassie" bloodline dogs. Despite appeals to the U.K. and Irish regulatory authorities, the producers were unable to obtain an expedited quarantine."

Just to keep a little authenticity in the movie, a couple of scenes were shot in the US with a direct descendant of Pal. But there was a huge uproar from the "Lassie" purists over not using a "real" Lassie dog for the movie. It was the tradition. The current "Lassie" descendant is 9th generation and is being bred to insure there will continue to be direct bloodline dogs for movies and/or TV.

My mom, in 1964, bought her first collie. She needed a name to register the new dog and came up with using the first three letters of our last name and added haven ("A place of refuge or rest; a sanctuary") and so, Marhaven Kennels got it's start. It was strictly a small endeavor, there was never more than a couple litters of puppies running around, but she kept it up for about 12-15 years.....at which time she built tanks in the basement and started raising tropical fish.....but that is another blog.


That first puppy was Marhaven Miss Polly (above). She is a tri-color collie. Interesting sidebar - In the original "Lassie Come Home" book, Lassie was a tri-color collie, not the sable and white color we have come to associate with the Lassie character. Here is the scoop why Lassie will always be sable.

"No, the collies will be the same as the Lassie trademark, sable and white, full white collar, four white feet and a white blaze going up the nose. When Eric Knight wrote the original story he did not copyright/trademark the character of "Lassie". When he sold the rights to MGM for the first movie, they cast the dog as a sable and white collie. Later, when Rudd purchased the rights after Lassie had a long line of successful movies as a sable collie, the trademark of "Lassie" was established to always be the sable and white collie"

Mom had some sables, too.

I had left home in 1962 for college and didn't see much of the kennel action, but I do remember one particular dog. His name was Czar and he had a fantastic lineage, was show quality, etc etc....mom actually paid $600 for this dog in the mid 1960's. If you knew mom you would understand the humor of what I am about to tell you about Czar, because my mom never spent a penny on anything she didn't have to.



Czar ended up being the house dog. So much for breeding.....apparently he was somehow related to the same bloodline that Miss Polly was and they made puppies with "bent tails" - which means the last bone in the puppies tail was askew and the tail had a little zag....now, she used Czar with another female with no problem but she felt like she was perpetuating a breeding problem and she stopped using him for stud. All his puppies were sold as pets, unregistered. Czar's second problem was.....she couldn't keep him in the kennel. Our house was under a jet stream and everytime one would fly over Czar would fly over the kennel fence, she was so afraid he'd get hurt she finally gave up and the $600 dog became a pet.

I believe these pretty puppies were Czar and Miss Polly's. Mom actually took the first litter to the vet and had their tails fixed. LOL.






Well, so that's my little tale about how the name Marhaven came about. When I joined my first Clay Aiken fan board I needed a name and it didn't occur to me to be Aiken'sBacon or something cutsie (thank goodness), I remembered my Mom and the Marhaven Kennels and deceided to use that name. I even answer to marhaven now.

If you are interested in collies and/or Lassie I highly recommend the Lassie.net site - You can find it here. Lassie.net

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I used some Clay AI5 screen caps in todays scrapbooking exercise. I have a challenge to do, but while I was browsing the digital website I found some tutorials, including one on shape templates. Well, as I haven't played too much with cutting out shapes I decided I needed to learn out how to do this. First instruction said to open a shape template. Well, these guys who write this stuff must think I have a brain. Maybe because I haven't had enough tea this morning I had a bit of a struggle figuring out what that meant....so I googled and discovered they are just as described - a shape template. LOL! The key was, I didn't have any and once I downloaded some samples I was off and running....some merging and linking and I had the shape in the center of the page cut out of one pattern ready to plop down on my background. Woo Hoo. I am not overly excited about the page design, but I'm happy with my new tool. Oh, and actually I do have some little shape templates in Photoshop Elements - the musical notes are made with a cookie cutter tool.

Hope you like the new song I loaded in today.

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The scrapbooking challenge for the Day was to do a page about yourself. Most of us do tend to create scrapbooks of our kids and/or events around us. I dislike pictures of myself, so I have always been the one with the camera in hand. But, the theme of this challenge was "Back in the Days". Hee. Ok, I can deal with pictures of me when I was six years old.

Back in the Days, when I was in first grade it was safe to walk around our small town and it was ok to have Roy Rogers six shooters around your waist and play cowboys and Indians. Back in the Days, during the mid-fifties we used to go to the movies on a Saturday afternoon for a quarter and ten cents for the popcorn. And we walked to the movies by ourselves....no one drove us.





The cowboy movies were my favorites. I never warmed up to the Lone Ranger and some of the others, but Roy Rogers was pretty darn impressive. And cute. And he could sing, too. And, let's not forget Trigger. Oh, I had all the gear....the guns and the bandana and the hat. I think someone got me a Gene Autry sweatshirt, but oh well, I wore that, too. I had the lunchpail and thermos - went to find a picture and this one just sold for $750
Gotta love e-bay. Roy Rogers memorabilia brings in big bucks these days. I found a 4 ft high plastic store display that sold at auction for $9900.

Back in the Days, I should have left everything in its box and stored it for my college education!!

Anyway, back to my scrapbook challenge....the website provided a little kit with some papers (backgrounds) and hearts and misc stuff I didn't use. The barbed wire I found when I was looking for a picture of a western belt and gave up on finding one that wasn't coiled ... I like the barbed wire better anyway. Here is the result of my afternoon playtime.






Click on Scrapbook Page to View Larger Size

A couple of years ago the kids gave me a Roy Roger's birthday. I got this:






and a book and a pinball game and DVD's, etc. It was a blast. By the way, that ceramic piece shown above is increasing in value....heee!!!

Oh, and I added a new Clay song from one of his demo's. I always call it "Saddle up your Horses" but I believe the correct title is "The Great Adventure". At any rate, it is the closest song I could find for our cowboy theme today. Enjoy.

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Clay Scrapbook Page. I have been visiting a digital scrapbook site that does monthly challenges. This months color challenge was for these colors and, as they kind of reminded me of 70's colors, the Jukebox Tour came to mind so I decided to go with that theme.

One of the things I learned in Photoshop Elements 4 that really makes me excited is the ability to use an eyedropper to click on something to grab the exact color. So, if I want to use a certain color for text, for example, I can click on one of the colors in the above pallet and instantly I'm color coordinated. Woo Hoo.

Here is my final effort on this challenge.




You can find the digital website at

Gotta Pixel

A visit to the Gallery section of the site will give you an idea as to what you can accomplish with digital scrapbooking. There are some beautiful examples and you will see clearly that I am just a beginner. A rank amateur. LOL, unfortunately I was not blessed with an artistic bone in my body, but I try and that's all any of us can do, I guess.

There is another link in the sidebar at the right for a group of links to various digital scrapbooking sites. Look for "freebies" to get started. Have fun.

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Blog - Strange word. The dictionary says:

Main Entry: blog
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called Weblog, Web log
Example: Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.
Etymology: shortened form of Weblog
Usage: blog, blogged, blogging v, blogger n

So, a blog is just a diary. I've tried to keep diaries over the years. It usually stops about January 15th of each year, along with any New Years Resolutions I might have made. Interesting that "diaries" are back in fashion.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1660-69)is one of the most well known. And, of course, there is the Diary of Anne Frank. Oscar Wilde said: "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train." I think my favorite quote about diaries comes from Tallulah Bankhead who said "It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time"


To read more great quotes from diaries, try this Link.
Diary Quotes





My great grandmother, Mary was a diarist extraordinaire. I have her diaries dating from 1900 through 1926. She wrote every day. Every single day. I can tell you the temperature every day for 26 years. Not kidding. Mary was not one to bare her soul, however, the diaries are about events, not feelings. When Mary's son, my grandfather, was about to marry a woman 9 years older than he, Mary only worried about Miss Allen's health. Well, Miss Allen's health was fine - she outlived them all, living to a nice 88 years of age.

My mom and dad used to read the diaries in bed at night but I have to admit to only reading the first 9 years so far. I have transcribed several of them but the fountain pen ink is fading rapidly so I finally decided to start scanning them. That way I can "photoshop" them for posterity and if I never get them all transcribed, at least they won't be lost They are hard to read.
This particular entry is from 1919. It says:
_______________
The 1st day of January
Temp 54 degrees above am - Wednesday
Cloudy this New Year's morning & raining at intervals. Council decided at meeting last night to continue "Central time" - too bad! As we are entitled to "Eastern time". Lucien to office as usual on New Year's morning - will come home to Lunch. Nellie & Jack came out 11 a.m., soon after Phil called up having just ret'd from Pitts. Jack took their car down for Philip passing his grand-father on Pike (coming home to lunch & to spend remainder of day) Lucien has bad head-ache & at night developed into sick headache. So nice to have the children with us this New Year's day. Letter from Rebecca. Children went home before dark as the roads are bad. Log-fire all day in Library. Retired early but not to sleep on a/c of poor Lucien's sick head-ache. Getting colder this evening.
_______________

Mary died in 1927, I wonder what she would make of a page of her diary being included on a blog on the internet for all the world to read. Just a random page, to be sure not the most interesting page....one observation on this entry - The Jack who drove the car into town to get his father Philip was my father and on January 1, 1919 he was a few months into his 14th year. Guess kids didn't have to wait until their 16th birthdays to drive in 1919. Busted, dad!!!

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Charleston, SC. WOW. Never in a million years did I consider I might be moving - not only to the South, but to the BEACH !!!! Born in the midwest, raised in Northern California, college in San Francisco then off to Chicago for five winters, back to San Francisco, transferred to New Jersey, transferred to Los Angeles and then, back to San Francisco (full circle) where I snapped up an early retirement package and moved to Arizona where my son had just gotten transferred. I hope no English teacher reads that last sentence!! Whew. I have never lived in the south. Oh, I vacationed in Florida once, but last years drive from Little Rock to Greenville was my first real exposure to the Southern lifestyle.

My first reaction to something new is to google. So, yesterday I got busy. Of first concern is How Hot Is It Going to BE?? (Remember, I'm coming from Arizona). First site I found says:


"Weathermen find it boring. The rest of us find it delightful.

The Charleston area has a semi-tropical climate with typically mild winters and warm summers."

I think Charleston just passed the weather test. I like to garden (one of the reasons I need to get the heck out of Arizona) and there is no doubt I can get back to growing veggies and roses in a semi-tropical climate. Woo Hoo.



Next test is overall ambiance....is the place attractive. From the map above, I would suspect the answer is yes. Note all the water. No matter where I choose to live, it looks like some water recreational area is nearby. In addition to gardening, I also am a birdwatcher.


I did some research on birds in South Carolina and I found this site with a lot of beautiful bird pictures.

Birds of South Carolina

Now, as so much of the area is beach, swamp, marsh, rivers, one has to learn to be on the lookout for these guys -



Could be hazardous to your health if you are walking around in the wetlands looking for a rare bird and run into an alligator. I did learn, via google, that there have been no alligator deaths in South Carolina recently, although they had a nasty critter down in Florida that did a couple of people in.

Link to a website discussing alligators in SC and Georgia.

Alligators of South Carolina and Georgia

To get back to the overall ambiance, Charleston is certainly a historic city. A colony arrived even before St. Augustine (credited as oldest city in America) but it failed and the next attempt came a year or so after St. Augustine. Here is a great site to read up on Charleston history.

Charleston Community History

I am looking forward to seeing Charleston, walking the cobblestone streets, visiting the gardens and historical houses. Here are a few pictures I found.















I think it is going to be just fine.

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Clay's new look is still the talk of the town. Some like it some don't. It doesn't really matter....what is important is....the buzz and the mystery surrounding Clay Aiken continues.

I did a little scrapbook page with the pics I did yesterday. Clay is timeless, don't ya think? The wrapping will change, but there is something exceptional about this man and he will be around for a very long time. I think the show has only just begun.



Click to enlarge a little. Enjoy.

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