Monday, Nov. 5th: Cathy and Foster joined in the charity Paul Shaver Memorial Golf Tournament, held at Seascape Golf Course, which was hosted by The Black Pelican.

Foster, Cathy (eyes closed of course), Forbes and George.

• Surfs up! I headed down the coast road the other day espying locations to take in remnants of Noel and settled for the Avalon Pier. 15-20 footers were caressing the bottom of the planking and brought out the looky-loos. This was probably the closest many will ever get to surf their version of the 'pipeline' so a few donned their wetsuits and took the plunge.

Sometime b&w is the way to go.

Sunday, Nov. 11th: The main item on today's agenda was the OBX Marathon. A precursor to the big one in Boston just happened to run right by Foster's childhood home (about three miles out) which was an ideal location for us to take in the action.

Shannon and Ashley cheer on the contestants with a homemade banner.

My favorite twosome.

Part of the Outer Banks rarely seen.

• 'Upstate' update: Our most widely traveled  LPGA cadero (even though it's part time), 'Upstate Jay', is on another adventure. This time it's looping the second stage European Q-School, which is being held in the Spanish province of Catalonia, for the Austrian born Clemens Prada. Unfortunately, they didn't make the cut but that will not deter Jay from pursuing a job at the final stage next week in the Southern area of the country at San Roque. An English speaking caddie is a valued asset according to the European players, so finding work should not be much of a chore.

  Jay's last visit to Spain was nearly forty years ago back in 1969 and the cost of travel 'sticker shock' along with the low American dollar has hit home. Breaking even will probably be the outcome.

  Jay's homeward bound leg will be in a few weeks. He'll arrive in Casablanca, after a short sail from Gibraltar, then fly to New York. This will be his first gander of Morocco and has been warned by the Euro-caddies not to mention that he's from "los Estades Unidos". Could get a little dicey.

  By the way, he has recently turned sixty so Happy Birthday Jay!

• Wow, this s--t stinks! Don't know if you've seen this recently but it has to be one of the most hard up ways of getting a buzz ever devised. It's called 'Jankem' and is now one of the more poplar drugs in American schools according to the story. What ever happened to sneaking a cold one now and then?

Monday, Nov. 12th: Warmer weather and calm winds have arrived so a couple mile walk along the beach was in order. The flat ocean waves brought out a cadre of fishermen with hopes of catching their share of its copious offerings but a stark lack of bowing rods seemed to be the norm instead.

• Vanquished vermin: Two stick-um mouse traps have been deployed for awhile in an attempt to attract my unwelcome furry friend without any luck. Upon closer scrutiny, I deduced my problem was the minute morsels of bait residing in the middle of the trap that wouldn't even attract a starving Ethiopian during a seven year drought! It was time to improvise so, after rummaging among the possible temptations inhabiting the kitchen, I concocted a tantalizing entrée of shredded mini-wheat squares donned with a generous dollop of rondelé Pub Cheese and placed it along the wall. My ingenious ambuscade paid off this morning as the rambunctious rodent found himself mired in a sticky entrapment from which extrication was all but impossible. It looks as if his front paws stuck first and then pushed the trap along, propelled by the two free appendages, finishing a good five feet from its original position. I acknowledged his frustration after errantly stepping on the other trap yesterday and trying to dislodge its vice-like grip! A bath in cooking oil and a fair amount of scraping eventually cleaned up the goo adhering to the underside of my favorite New Balance footwear but such remedies were not available to monsieur Mus musculus.

Ironically, 'Mickey' was perishing of starvation, microns away from the nutrients he contrived to digest, at the hands of an overbearing mortal who was now feeling pangs of regret. To ease my guilt and end his misery, I pummeled him into unconsciousness with a stick and dispatched the carcass into the trash.

If he only knew who he was dealing with.

Tuesday, Nov. 13th: One thing, along with the steady breezes, the Wright Brothers favored in this area were the sand dunes and a prime example resides in the confines of Jockey's Ridge State Park. I took advantage of today's exceptional weather to walk the park and take in the view from the tallest natural sand dune system in the Eastern United States.

A great ocean panorama.

Left my mark.

Wednesday, Nov. 14th: My gracious hosts, Jim and Rhet Wilkinson, are down for a few days and after lazing around in the morn, dousing our palates with a copious supply of java from freshly ground beans, we were off to the Pelican for lunch. Rhet and I supped on the Blue Plate Special (meatloaf and plenty of it) while the Rock Fish gratified Jim's cravings. Now it was time to get to work. Jim tackled the fallen anemometer at the cottage while I dove into their desktop computer installing a DVD burner. Successful in both undertakings, it would have earned each of us a blue ribbon but we settled for the satisfaction all 'men using tools' have while admiring their work.

• Zoom or no zoom? Upon exiting the Pelican, we couldn't help noticing the shiny new Dodge Hemi occupying the first space in the lot. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary till I noticed the placard dangling from the mirror. Think a mid-life crisis prompted this purchase?

 

Ah, to be twenty again.

Wonder if its been over 40 mph yet?

Saturday, November 17th: Rhet and Jim went back home to Scotland Neck and Cathy is off to Houston for a pro-am. Made one last trip to the Pelican yesterday where we all got together for some steamed oysters and a few brews.

• Into the 21st century: That's where Rhet's desktop has finally set foot. I installed another gigabyte of ram (from  Crucial.com) adding to the original configuration of a paltry 256 MB, a four port USB hub and card reader. The rest of the tune-up consisted of uninstalling unwanted programs, backing up her data files using the new CD-RW, upgrading to IE7, installing current versions of used programs, running virus and spyware sweeps and a defrag. What a transformation! From a tortoise to a cheetah with just a few bucks and a little time. A quick tutorial showing Rhet how to find a file, that seemed to have lost its way, via the Windows search utility, installing the Quick Launch tool bar and dragging a shortcut to the LPGA website into it put the icing on the cake to my 'geek week'.