The Gilliam's of Johnston County have been pretty busy over the past month, thus the lack of new blogs. As the previous blog tells, Cecilia and I took our annual vacation to Holden Beach 4 weeks ago. The week after our return a trip to New Orleans was planned. We made these plans at least 6 months ago with the main intention being a big concert called the Voodoo Fest that had three bands, which have been among our favorite older bands from the 80's and early 90's. These bands were REM, Stone Temple Pilots and Nine Inch Nails. The concerts were good, especially REM who we saw a few years back in Raleigh. Our hotel was down near the water front area close to the famous Bourbon Street. The food and sites were great. Personally my favorite part was just seeing the old building, streets and to a lesser extent weird people. Unfortunately we did not take any tours, but if there is a next time the tours will be a main part of day. I was somewhat amazed that the part of town we stayed showed no damage from Katrina.
This time of year premium bottom fish like grouper and red snapper move from the deeper parts of the ocean along the continental shelf closer to shore, so I always take a bottom fishing trip to stock up on fish for winter. The chance presented itself last weekend as the weather was perfect. Since the big boat was sold a year ago, I rely now on my brother-in-law who has the 31 ft Bertram, however, that boat had a little damage and Steve had plans out of town. So, I contacted his fishing buddy who has a much smaller boat. We went out 30 miles offshore in 120 ft of water. We had absolutely the best fishing trip ever. Doug had fished this area for 30 years and said the fishing was the best he's seen. Everyone had a great time. The best bite was around noon and over the next two hours we hooked up with nice sized snappers, black sea bass and trigger fish as soon as our bait hit the bottom and in several instances two fish at a time. The cooler, a big cooler was so full by 2 pm we had to quit. When I returned it took 3.5 hours to clean the fish even though I took a whole small cooler full to a friend at work. I took a few pictures to remember the trip, but almost every minute have been seared into my memory.
President Barack Hussain Obama
What a long campaign. It's nice that the election is finally over. Too much time was spent over the last year in our household keeping track of the election, so I'm looking forward to getting back to other important things around the house. I realize many in the family were strongly against Obama. If it ends up after 4 years that I was wrong in my instinct of who he is and what he'll do as President, I expect a "I told you so", but right now there is good bit of confidence that he'll be a good if not great leader of America. One of the most positives that came from this election in my opinion is the end of Karl Rove-type politics of character assassination rather that issue-based dialoge. Obama, as many of my blogs have argued, faced the largest number of character attacks via email smears, books and directly from the opponent. When you say a potential leader of the country is an empty suite, Muslim terrorist sympothiser, socialist or traitor rather than challaging policy using factual information it does not benifit the country as a whole. Obama kept a cool, benevolent demenor throughout the negative campaign, and this in the end won out. Personally I was skeptical after 10 or more negative mailers were sent to our address over the last week, but substance won over smear this time around.
I get a sense that a major part of his plan, which is backed by many of leading economist will be a major investment in the nations infrastructure which includes bridges, roads, a new energy infrastructure. The key word is investment as projects like these will benifit the country for decades to centuries. Some think the governement does all this stuff, but the reality is small buisness are at the core of these efforts and the created jobs are ones that stay in America.
love you all!
Robbie
