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Bonaventure Cemetery

Pete — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:33:00 +0000

For the last stop on our vacation we got in the car and headed to the outskirts of town to see Bonaventure Cemetery. But before we got there, we stopped at the Catholic Cemetery which was stunning in its own right. I took pictures of some fantastic statues. They were beautiful and weathered. I could have spent hours in there, but Bonaventure was right down the road and time was short.

Bonaventure is absolutely beautiful. The statues, the palm trees, the Spanish Moss all come together to make a an eerie yet beautiful landscape. It’s a massive place that you could spend hours if not days touring, but we only had time for a quick visit. We did what you might expect and went to visit the grave of Johnny Mercer. I’m embarrassed to say that I know nothing of Mercer, but obviously know his songs. I was unaware of his catalog until recently and I recognize so many titles.

So that’s it then. Time has run out. We’ve reached the end. It’s time to head home. What a wild four days it’s been. I feel like we’ve done a huge amount of things, but at the same time we’ve barely done anything. There is so much left to do. Who knows when we’ll be back, but I’m looking forward to it.

The Savannah Riverboat Tour

Pete — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:20:00 +0000

Our Riverboat tour was ridiculous, the food was really good and the entertainment was completely unexpected. The food was served buffet style and the selection was plenty of shrimp, vegetable casseroles, fruit, roasted chicken, pork tenderloin and roast beef. All of it was excellent and there was plenty to go around. No reason to be shy about going back for seconds.

I was a little hesitant about the live entertainment of a DJ with microphone and keyboard setup. This usually instills fear, and the Captain and Tennille vibe didn’t help matters either. But, he was excellent. His song selection was great and he got up and got involved with the crowd. He called people out for their birthdays and anniversaries and did plenty to get people dancing. His version of the "Electric Slide" is probably the stuff of legend on the high seas.

We saw a marriage proposal and witnessed the booty swinging stylings of Kiki who surely missed her calling as a solid gold dancer. You better stand clear or those hips will knock you clean overboard!

The chance of rain was supposed to be slight, but there was a massive rainstorm with plenty of lightning about 30 minutes after we left the dock. The entire coastline would light up and this especially exciting when we passed the freightliner in the dark. The opportunity presented itself to collect another souvenir glass if I ordered the right drink, so I did, a Riverboat Rita decked in red, white and blue. I will take every opportunity to get a cheesy cup full of booze. I will now add the hurricane glass to my skull glass from the night before.

That was a great tour and yes we bought the cheesy souvenir photograph and yes I plan to do it again. If you get a chance, it really is fun.

Since the rain had stopped, we ducked into Huey’s for a beer and pasty. Friend dough covered in powdered sugar is always a good time. I swear if I have to go through the tunnel, down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the catacombs one more bloody time to go to the bathroom, someone is getting cut. This is total madness. Why is going to the restroom so damn forbidden in this city?

I think the boat tour has been the highlight. I thought it was going to be a little lame but the entertainment was great. The food was really good too. Maybe it was because of the other people, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. The murder mystery tour they offer would be kick ass and if we came back we’re definitely doing it.

Bird Girl as featured in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Pete — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:39:00 +0000

We finally saw the Bird Girl as featured in the movie and on the book cover. I’m a little disappointed actually. She has nothing to do with Savannah, or a Savannah artist, or a little girl of some prominence or even Bonaventure. Its just a statue made in 1936 that everyone ignored until it’s picture was taken at the last minute for the book cover. The guy got lucky and photographed a creepy little statue for a murder mystery. I thought the statue would be steeped in history and lore. Absolutely not. It’s just a statue of a girl holding two bowls. It used to be in the cemetery, nowhere near Johnny Mercer or John Williams, but when people went down there to see it, it was yanked out of there. Now it sits in an art gallery where you can’t take pictures of it, this way you’re forced to buy little statues that cost an absolute fortune! They are trying to milk out every dime from tourists. It’s an interesting statue, but after learning the real story behind it, it’s commercialization, and it’s complete lack of a tie in to anything related to the movie or Savannah, I’m sort of put off.

The Savannah Haunted Tour

Pete — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:48:33 +0000

The haunted tour was pretty interesting. We toured the city by bus and heard background about many of the houses in the area. However, according to the yardstick used by Savannah, every house is haunted. If there was a death or tragedy in the house, which, considering the yellow fever, poverty, war, construction, slavery, battles, duels and piracy, then every place down here is haunted. That would also mean every other Civil War battle town is haunted too. But let’s not nitpick.

It was a lot of fun to drive around at night with the lights off and heard some of the tales. The details are a little sketchy though. But I was just as amused at the other tours going on, like the hearse tour, the Ghosts and Gravestones and the haunted walking tours. There is no end of ghost mania that’s for sure. I think the walking tour would have been neat since they walk right past the old cemetery. Might have to look into that one for next time.

We also made a stop at an old hospital where they discovered an old tunnel, which for a lack of a better description is an old “body chute”. During the yellow fever epidemic it was a way to get bodies out of the city without causing a panic. But it’s original use was for some odd experiments on patients who died in the hospital. They built a small tunnel and a small examination room and then did as they pleased to patients when no one was looking. If that’s true, that’s some pretty creepy business.

Bonaventure Cemetery is still on the list to get to. It seems to be just outside walking distance and tour bus boundaries. Looks like we’ll need to drive other there ourselves or arrange a tour. I’m sort of inclined to get the tour so we can hear all the sordid details.

Mercer House and other Savannah oddities

Pete — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:59:04 +0000

We went to go see the Mercer House, which was sadly closed. We toured the city by trolley and saw some fantastic homes, iron works, architecture, churches, parks and cemeteries. We haven’t ventured out to Bonaventure yet, but I think that will be on Sunday.

I’ve also noticed several odd thing again:
There is no such thing as level ground around here.
Spanish moss is pretty, but apparently flesh eating.
Public restrooms are none existent and bathroom use of any kind requires a great deal of planning.
Everyone seems to need a dollar from me.
Omelets with seafood are odd, but quite tasty.
Everyone thinks their restaurant, bar, t-shirt shop is haunted.

And speaking of haunted, the haunted tour is coming up. Let’s see what this town has to offer.

Welcome to Savannah

Pete — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:47:18 +0000

Things to note about Savannah thus far:
Why in the hell would you come all the way down here to go to a Five Guys? Or an Outback?
Why is there a tattoo parlor over Tony Roma’s?
Why would you go to a tattoo parlor called, “Butcher’s”? That seems to send the wrong message to me. “The Butcher gave me this wicked tattoo!” That’s the type of thing you say in prison… whether you want to or not.
There simply aren’t enough t-shirt shops selling pirate related paraphernalia. I think there’s a market for that sort of thing. Some entrepreneurial types should get on that.
Paula Deen is some sort of High Priestess around these parts.

We’re off to Savannah!

Pete — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:04:25 +0000

We’re finally going. We’ve said we’d take a vacation for several years now and each time it’s fallen to the wayside. But now we’re packing up and heading to Savannah. An actual vacation complete with ghost tour, riverboat cruise and a visit to the Mercer house.

So what does on pack for such a trip? Just the usual – camera, laptop, backup camera, iPad, camera kit, Kindle, multiple ebooks about Savannah and some Mt. Dew. I would take my bike, but it just won’t fit.

A couple of random thoughts for the afternoon

Pete — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:27:40 +0000

Coolest piece of technology for 2011:
Without a doubt it’s the iPad. I’m not just a lemming or Apple Fanboy, I tried other tablets and even have the Kindle Fire, but the versatility of the iPad, the volume of apps, the external keyboard, its portability and ease of use just make it fantastic.

Coolest piece of software for 2011:
I don’t know that I could name just one program so here are the apps I simply can’t do without anymore:
Index Your Files – Without it I’d never know where anything was.
TeraCopy – So much easier and more accurate than the standard Windows copy.
XYPlorer – The built-in Windows Explorer is a Ford Pinto compared to this. Tabbed file viewing? Indeed!
FocusWriter – As far as Word goes, the magic is gone…
Live Writer 2011 – It’s shocking to think Microsoft could make an Internet tool that worked this well.
Firefox – Regardless of version, it’s awesome.
Roboform – Without it I’d never be able to log into a website again.

Windows 8 or Mac for 2012?
Any bets on this one? It’s sad to think I’d rather have 7 than 8, but if forced to 8 I’m jumping ship completely to the Mac.

Best movie for 2011?
They were all so awful I can’t think of one. Change Up is the first one that comes to mind.

Best beer for 2011:
Irish Red and American Hefeweizen

Best TV show:
Downton Abbey
James May’s Man Lab
Sherlock

Best computer game:
Swords and Poker (iPad)
Minecraft (PC)

Best software utility:
Notebooks for iPad
Roboform

Best Vodka:
Crystal Head

New Year’s Kickoff

Pete — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 15:03:53 +0000

Here’s something funny, the first song I hear for the New Year is "Follow You, Follow Me" by Genesis, the song Donna and I have adopted as "our song". I find that an amusing coincidence and have to wonder about all the unusual timing of events that would have to have happened in order for that song to play at 5:30am on New Year’s Day. All the different places I’ve driven, the times I’ve turned off the radio, the number of songs on that thumbdrive and all of it comes together to play that song at that particular minute. This was right after Donna woke up and wished me a Happy New Year this morning. I find the coincidence amusing.

I was also surprised by the number of cars on the road at 5:30 this morning. Where are these people going? First of all, it’s 5:30am. Second, it’s Sunday. Third, it’s New Year’s. What could they possibly be doing at this hour?

So how did that writing project go?

Pete — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Well, since I had the time at work, I’m probably one of the few people sober at 5am on New Year’s Day, I put together all my writing journals for the year. The results are beyond anything I anticipated. I took all the individual text files and combined them into a single month. Each month was then loaded into Microsoft Word. At the end I had over 700 pages worth of text and over 507,000 words.

I’m stunned.

Not only did I not expect to stick with this project, I never anticipated it would be so large. While it’s not a story or anything publishable, I still think of it as a massive effort and I’m actually quite proud of it. I believe this constitutes the longest running project I’ve ever had. As I was loading all the entries into Liquid Story Binder I read some of my early entries. My writing style was pretty Spartan at best. I struggled to write a paragraph, and even when I did, it wasn’t always coherent. But I can see the progression. I can see the development. I can myself getting more and more comfortable as I wrote about all sorts of different topics. That is neat to see. Those first few jerky entries and now full pages of descriptive text about people, places, events, feelings and everything in between.

And I never thought I would enjoy the process so much. It was such a struggle to get started and now I feel guilty if I don’t write something down. Let’s not be foolish, I’m not going to claim I’m ready to write some novel, but I am a lot more confident in the things I do write. This has been a whole lot of fun. It’s also been interesting to look back over the year and have my memory jogged over something I’d forgotten. Or to look back and re-live something like the Rush shows. I even used my notes to confirm it was snowing on Christmas Eve of last year. None this year, just in case you were wondering.

I’m not sure what I’ll do this year. I have no doubt I’ll keep writing in my little book, but where do I take it from here?

Anyone else got a writing project that turned out far better than they expected?