The Terrible Catsafterme

As our nation’s nineteenth President from 1877-81, Rutherford B. Hayes had the good fortune to serve his single term during a quiet part of American history. He effectively ended reconstruction of the South following the tumultuous Civil War…and the Spanish-American War was still seven years away following his term. This means that although he did a good job in office, today he is relegated to the bin of ‘forgotten Presidents’ In fact, most grade school students will likely only remember Hayes for his seemingly out-of-control chin whiskers. Read the rest of this entry »

Although I was now officially at the Amsterdam pre-convention of the Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society, the Sons of the Desert, nothing we had planned for the day had anything to do with Laurel and Hardy, and we had yet to step foot into Amsterdam. Our Avifauna Hotel was actually in Alphen aan den Rijn, located in South Holland in the Netherlands. On Monday, July 7, 2008, we would begin our bus trip at our hotel and venture into Northern Holland for the day. Read the rest of this entry »

It was all Bob’s fault that I spent over $100 at CD Connection in Huber Heights on Friday, July 25, 2008. Had his flight arrived on time, I would never have ended up there while waiting, and I never would have purchased the entire run of Scrubs on DVD. But that’s all water under the bridge now. As it was, his American Airlines flight that was scheduled to arrive at 5:23pm that afternoon, didn’t actually get in until around 7:30. The reason for his arrival: he and I were about to embark on the granddaddy of all “website-driven re-visits of places I’ve already been but have to see again because I was too stupid to take photos of myself by the landmarks when I was there the first time” tours. Read the rest of this entry »

The first thing that I thought about when I popped out of bed at 6am was that I wasn’t at home. The second thing was that…if I were at home, it would have been midnight. So I scraped myself out of bed, grabbed a shower, and prepared for the busy day ahead. The Mercure Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany did not have breakfast waiting for us, but it would be the last place in which we stayed that didn’t have a huge European-style buffet breakfast until our final two days in Europe. I stopped off at the lobby computer briefly on the way out and then headed to our car. Read the rest of this entry »

Although he’d never being accused of being our greatest Commander-in-Chief, our nation’s 38th President entered the arena at a time when it seemed like the government was falling apart. Appointed the 40th Vice-President by Richard Nixon after the resignation of Spiro Agnew, it was a mere nine months later that he ascended to the Presidency as the only President to never have been elected to a National office. During his abridged single term of office from 1974-77, he became noted for the pardon of President Nixon, the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, his attack on inflation (W.I.N. – Whip Inflation Now), the occasional embarassing pratfall, but most importantly as a good and decent man who capably filled the vacancy in the White House after the Watergate scandal had rocked the nation and our President resigned his office. Read the rest of this entry »