Help!!! I've Turned Into My Mother!!

Now if you have ever bothered to tune into The Dirt Road Girl's blog you would know she claims to have a sister who lives a "charmed" life. I am not so sure about this because after all she is married to a guy from Ohio. Ohio, come on give me a break it is the armpit of the world. How could anybody live a charmed life married to somebody from Ohio. Ohio should be flushed down the toilet with the rest of life's undesirables. But we will leave that for another day because today we need to talk about another topic.

This all started innocently enough this morning when my sister, let's just call her C1 as The Dirt Road Girl suggests, sent me her daily e-mails of her pictures she recently took on her trip to Hawaii. As I was perusing through them this morning I came across this picture of her and her daughter, Miss Notre Lame (just in case you can't figure who is who Miss NL is she is the one on the right.) As soon as I saw this picture I thought I was looking at our mother. Now I thought I would send her a little note back that innocently said "You've turned into your mother." Believe me no malice or disrespect was intended. It didn't take long and C1 (oh have I mentioned this particular sister is over a half a century old) shot me an email back that said "WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?" Ohh, I think I hit a nerve and I have tonight's Random Thought. Well, look at the pictures that is what I mean by that.

As near as I can figure the pic in the upper right was taken during a Christmas get together about the year 1986. Miss NL would have been what? Two years old? Now tell me couldn't they pass for sisters? The only way I can tell them apart is our mother is the one holding the beer can.

By the way Miss NL see what you got to look forward to. Maybe in my next post I will pull out an old picture of your mother and compare it to you. Now wouldn't that be fun?

I can hear C1 already "I don't think I look like her." Hey sis get over it. You have turned into your mother.

The Best of D.C.

The one thing about living in D.C. is you never lack for things to do or places to go. If you want history and culture it is here. We lived there for about 9 months and we didn't even come close to seeing or doing everything there is in D.C. Now I know we didn't actually live in D.C. but we were in Arlington and so close to D.C. we could actually see it from our apartment. The part of Arlington we lived in was at one time part of D.C. Somewhere back in the 1800's, I think, D.C. gave the west side of the Potomac to Virginia so you can see I can easily say I lived in D.C. We could actually walk to D.C. and be at the Washington Mall in about 1 hour. Now if you don't believe me you can ask one of the J's about this because he did it. I don't think he intended on doing it but he did. (This is a story for another day and best told by him. I am hoping we can get him to tell it at sometime because it is hilarious.)

I bring this up because out of all the places I have been to and seen in the D.C. area I think my favorite may have been the Maine Avenue Fish Market.

If you love seafood or fish this is the place for you. This is a place most tourist never see and it is only located 5 blocks south of the Washington Mall and all of the Smithsonian's.

The markets actually sit on floating barges and you can walk by all the displays and buy whatever you want. The vendors will yell at you trying to persuade you to buy from them but for the most part I ignore them. One reason I ignore them is very few of them speak English and I can't understand them.

Some people don't really care for this place but they are normally the ones who think the best fish sandwich comes from Mickey D's (Sorry Mickey but there are other fish sandwiches out there.) The other people who don't like it, well, they probably just don't like seafood and that is just a damn shame. More for me.

The best fish sandwich I ever had came from here (Once again I must apologize to Mickey.) It was a grouper sandwich on plain white bread and just a little bit of tarter sauce. Perfect. It had to be fresh, I thought I was in heaven when I was eating it. The thing I regret most was not going back while we lived there and getting the scallop sandwich. One of the J's had the scallop sandwich once and said they were the best scallops he had ever had. Now granted he is young and has not seen much of the world but this time, somehow, I believed him.

Myself and the J went back to the Maine Avenue Fish Market for lunch one Friday afternoon while we were waiting for our tour of the Capital building (By the way don't go on this tour, it takes hours to get inside and once you are inside you don't get to see very much of it at all. The best part was actually on the outside where you could stand on the steps of the Capital and overlook the Washington Mall) and decided it was a good day to try some shrimp. The only problem is from which vendor do you want to buy it from. It all looks so good. Well we finally decided on the vendor that had the spicy steamed shrimp. We bought a couple of pounds of the medium sized ones with their spicy seasoning mixture on them. Now be forewarned, they will dump the spicy seasoning on until you tell them to stop so don't turn your back. This was probably the first and quite possibly the only time I have had truly fresh shrimp.

But wait we weren't done there, oh no. This place isn't just known for their seafood it just so happens they sell desserts there too. Again the hardest part is deciding which dessert you actually want to try. We settled on a Blueberry Crunch Cobbler. Hey, do I need to say anything else. Incredible.

I went there with the wife one day, by the way she is not a seafood lover so she isn't overly impressed by this place, and she bought a strawberry roll up cake thing-a-ma-jig. Just picture strawberry cake with whipped cream all rolled up like a tortilla wrapped sandwich. I must say excellent.

If I ever go back to the D.C. area, and this may actually happen, you can bet one of the first places I will visit will be the Maine Avenue Fish Market.

By the way I am not sure you can tell in the first picture but the Pentagon is in the background. And if you really look or know what you are looking for the Air Force Memorial is back there too. The Air Force Memorial is three swooping arcs that symbolize the Blue Angles.

A Few of My Favorite Things...............

As I sit here tonight sharing one of the funniest videos I have seen in a long time with my daughter, that would be the J daughter and probably a video a father and daughter shouldn't be sharing, it got me wondering; What are some of my favorite things? Now I could list all my favorite things in a list but I thought I would break them down into categories. (In fact if you look to the right of my blogs you will see one of my all time favorite songs.) Besides by breaking them down into categories I can use them for future blogs. I thought I would start with TV shows tonight because my sister, the one that is almost a half a century old, posted some of her favorite shows in her blog. So here we go.

1. Sports Center - I get up every morning at 5:30am just to watch an hour of Sports Center before I go to work. I am not sure why I do this other than when I moved from the eastern time zone to the central I never adjusted my internal clock.

2. Emeril Live - Watch it just about every night like a women glued to Oprah. I probably get more recipes and ideas watching his show than anywhere else. I love the Louisiana and Cajun influence he has in his recipes.

3. Throwdown with Bobby Flay - I like the way he goes out and challenges people and try to make a better recipe than they can, even though it is their specialty. He may win, he might even lose but he always makes the people he challenges look good.

4. Family Guy - Yeah I know what everybody is saying "How can he watch that crap!" I like all the flashbacks to old TV shows to see if I recognize any of them. Plus it is a show that is there just to make you laugh. They poke fun at everyone and anything. It is not politically correct, maybe that is why I like it so much, and it can offend anybody at anytime. No lessons to be learned from this one just good, funny stuff.

5. Dirty Jobs - This guy cracks me up. The faces, the expressions, and all the pooh he gets himself into. This guy is my hero, he found something so simple and exploited it to make millions. I am sure he was a unemployment junkie before he struck gold with this show.



Believe it or not this guy is an opera singer. Check out at about the 3:20 mark, he upchucks over the boat, reminds me of both of my brother-in-laws.

6. Biography - I like to watch biography's to see how people got to where they are at today. (As long it is not Britteny Spears or one of the other twits that can't seem to get along in life.)

7. Tyler Ultimate - I get up every Saturday and Sunday morning just to watch this show. I think he does some the the best food on The Food Network. I have saved several of his recipes.

8. Good Eats - Do you think I watch a lot of The Food Network yet?

9. Nip/Tuck - Can't explain it but every Tuesday night at 9:00pm (that is Central time folks) I have to watch this show. It pisses me off that I do it because I don't like to get hooked into any type of soap opera show and that is all this is. Rosie O'Donnell even guest stars on it occasionally (who by the way I can't stand and would normally turn the channel off when she comes on) and I still can't turn it off. She normally has some great parts on it and does a pretty darn good job of acting on it.

10. Beverly Hillbilly's - An oldie but a goodie, I am not sure there wasn't a better character on TV than Jethro Bodine and his 6th grade education. When you watch that show every character was perfectly cast. I can't hardly stand to watch the movie because I can't imagine anybody else playing the roles of Jed, Granny, Elie May and Jethro.



Well that is my top ten list for tonight. I am curious to see what everybody else's list looks like.

What's in a Name

I should probably explain where the name Jock comes from. Obviously it is not my real name. Contrary to what the name implies I was not a great athlete in high school, intermediate school, elementary school or any other school for that matter. The name is the brain child of a cousin of mine that thought I needed a nickname when we were freshman in high school. He would sit in algebra class trying to come up with one. Now since our last name rhymes with supporter he started to call me supporter for a while. Great nicknames are normally only one syllable, two at the most so he knew he had to shorten it up. It didn't take him long to figure out that a type of supporter was a jock and that is what he started to call me. I am still greatful to this day he didn't think of bra or brazier because he would have used it if he did. It didn't take to long for it to catch on and from that point on I don't think I ever heard my first name used for the rest of high school. Most of the guys I went to school with still use the nickname and when I hear it I still answer to it.

When he first started using the nickname I really didn't like it but I knew if I said anything matters would only get worse. As time went on I realized it really wasn't all that bad and it turned out to be one the the "coolest" nicknames in the school at the time. I would have to say it ranked right up there with another great nickname in the school of Mingo.

I Plead Ignorance

I thought since the rest of the family has started a blog maybe I should give it a shot. I am not a great writer, unlike my nieces, nephews, sons and daughters, but I will give it a shot. My younger sister (boy that is funny since she is almost a half of century old) started the first blog in the family and while I may not be able to come up with the same interesting blogs she does (Survivor, American Idol or the Partridge Family) I will never the less try.

I think the title of the blog will fit since this will be my random thoughts about various subjects. I will at times blog about sports, family, politics, hunting, fishing, well you get the idea. I will from time to time jump up on my soapbox but I will try to keep it to a minimum, besides if you don't like it there is always the little red "x" in the upper right corner of your screen that will close out the screen.

I have thought about doing a blog for a while now but I didn't have a clue how to get started until my younger sister ( yeah the one that is almost a half of century old) started one. That gave me some hope, I thought if she could do it just maybe, maybe I could figure it out. I am not sure I have it figured out yet but this blog, like all blogs I suppose, will be a work in progress. I guess you can say she inspired me along with a niece and nephew. I will try not to rehash items that have shown up on their blogs (unless they give me an idea that I can expand on.). As long as The Dirt Road Girl continues to talk about Survivor and American Idol I really don't think that will be a problem anyway. I have never watched either one of these American classics. With the Dirt Road Kid talking about university life and teaching and the Dirt Road Middle Child discussing Mickey D's and hair plugs I really don't see a problem here either.

I have talked to two of my kids about writing a blog and it sounds as though they may start one of their own too. I am hoping so because it will be one way for me to keep track of them. Maybe. And maybe, just maybe, they will keep me informed about what they are doing. Nah, who am I kidding.