We went to the beach this past weekend. It was very wet.

With rain! We heard on the news that we had eleven inches of rain overall and eight inches in just a 24-hour period.

With not much to do except stay in the house, I spent lots of time on the big couch. Once while I was dozing, M snapped this "ussie":

He and J spent lots of time looking out at the rain:

J also talked on the phone and looked up stuff on her iPad:

By Saturday afternoon, it cleared enough for M to get down onto the beach, where he took a picture of the house where we were staying:

On Sunday morning, the sunrise finally featured a rising sun:

All in all it was a nice trip. To see more of our pictures, follow this link to M's "Stormy Weather" Flickr album.

Fifty years ago today, Mike and Jeannie ran away . . .

. . . and got married! I've heard that when you run away to get married, it's called eloping. So I guess that's what they did, but with one small twist: they took Jeannie's family with them.

They were married in this church in the small town of Brewton, Alabama, which is a few dozen miles up the trail from Jeannie's hometown of Pensacola, Florida:

To be more precise, the church is in a suburb of Brewton called Burnt Corn. The minister who officiated was a man named Milton G. Williams.

I tried to find some pictures of the wedding ceremony, but there aren't very many, and most of them are showing their age. But these will give you an idea of what it was like. For starters, here's the one where the bride gets given away by her father. From left to right, the people in this first picture are Mike and Jeannie; Jeannie's dad, Mr. E. C. Jernigan; and Rev. Williams:

The ceremony proceeds with Jeannie's brother, John, serving as Mike's best man; then Mike and Jeannie; followed by John's fiancée, Carol, who was Jeannie's bridesmaid; and Rev. Williams:

Once the vows are exchanged, the groom gets to kiss the bride.

Then after M & J were officially hitched, the wedding party posed for this one:

The arm and head in the lower-right corner belong to Jeannie's sister, Suzie. M says there used to be more wedding pictures floating around, and if he can find them we might add some later. I did come up with another photo of the happy couple that was stuck in an album near the one of the church. I don't really think it was from the wedding, though, because for one thing Jeannie's hair looks shorter. But I'll throw it in for good measure. Who knows, maybe it was from the honeymoon.

Boy, I'll bet when they were newlyweds, M and J never dreamed that one day their faithful dog would be writing about it in a blog. I'm just darn glad I got the chance to.

Mike and Jeannie, let me close by wishing you all the best on what I've learned is your golden wedding anniversary. I love you guys a whole bunch!

Annabelle is all wrapped up in her music.

Mike says it's hard to believe his granddaughter used to play a flute and an oboe.

"Irish Heartbeat"

Regular readers of this blog know that I love being part of a family. That's probably a big reason that this song strikes a chord with me.

"Irish Heartbeat" was written by Van Morrison, who hails from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He recorded it with an Irish folk band called The Chieftains, and I have to say that their version is pretty darn good. You can find it here on YouTube.

But my favorite "cover" of the song is this one by a Scotsman named Billy Connolly. Technically, Connolly and Morrison are both "Scots-Irish": Van-the-Man's ancestors emigrated from Scotland to Ulster, while Billy's went the other way. Connolly (who was born in Glasgow on M's birthdate!) is mainly famous as a stand-up comic and a movie actor, but IMHO, his rendition of "Heartbeat" raises "pretty darn good"-ness to a whole new level. If skirling Scottish bagpipes and rattling snare drums make your hair stand up, this is the version for you:

Thursday--yes. Throwback--not this time!

Here's a pic of Mike in 1997, on one of his annual guided fishing trips out of the Homosassa River with his dad and his Aunt Madelyn, in search of the not-so-elusive redfish:

And several more from their 2006 expedition:

M says he really misses those trips. The company was great, the fishing usually fine, and the river always beautiful:

I'd love to have gone with them except for--you know--all that water.