We miss you, Gramps!

I've been home for whole week with family and we had a beautiful memorial- you will be missed Gramps! Read the Erie Daily Times guest book here.

Gerald S. Beck Gerald S. Beck, age 91, of Waterford, Pa. passed away peacefully at the home of his daughter and son-in-law in Erie, Pa. on Monday, March 24, 2008. He was born December 17, 1916 in Lander, Pa. to Sophronia Jones Beck and W. Warner Beck. His loving wife, Jean Ludwick Beck preceded him in death on February 10, 2001 as did an infant son in December 1943, and an infant brother, Russell Beck. Married in Lakeland, Fla. on February 17, 1943, Mr. Beck and his wife were blessed with two daughters, Barbara J. Trisket and husband Ron of Erie and Kathleen J. Falkowski and husband Richard of Waterford; three granddaughters, Kimberlee Barnett and husband Dan of Myrtle Beach, S.C., Kelly Case and husband David of Erie, and Sarah Falkowski of Naples, Fla.; four great-granddaughters, Meghan and Mollie Barnett, Myrtle Beach and Rachael and Karinne Case, Erie; two sisters, Margaret Jansen and Rose Wolfe and husband Mark of Warren; and several nieces and nephews. Mr. Beck served three years and four months in the Army/Air Force during World War II and was stationed Stanstead, England, Pontoise, France and Florennes, Belgium as an armorer with the 344th Bomb Group, the 495th squadron. In 1944 he loaded bombs on the “Mary Jo”, the first plane to take off on D-Day, and worked 36 hours straight that memorable day. Mr. Beck retired in January 1978 from Conrail after thirty-seven years of railroad employment. He was an avid logger in his younger years. He enjoyed training bird dogs, hunting and fishing, raising beef cows, and attending horse pulls. There will be no visiting hours. A celebration of his life will be conducted at Lander United Methodist Church, Russell, Pa. on Friday, March 28, 2008 at 11:00. Burial will be in Foster Cemetery, Lander, Pa. Memorials may be made to Great Lakes Hospice, 1700 Peach Street, Suite 244, Erie, PA 16501, or the American Cancer Society, or a charity of choice. Arrangements by the Van Matre Funeral Home of Waterford.

North Carolina Bound!

Its true... we're moving to North Carolina! Yes, WE... Ben AND Sarah, in the same state, after a year of being seven-long-hours apart!!! So many things to share, yay :)

OUTER BANKS CENTER FOR WILDLIFE EDUCATION: Click here to see the website where I'm going to be working- its soooo much like Rookery Bay, but its a promotion to "Natural Science Curator" and a salary increase! This place is beautiful, with Currituck Light (house) right next to it. More details to come!

COROLLA: This is the name of our new city- its basically as far north in the Outer Banks and you can get. It looks close to Virginia, but its like 2 hours to drive there because you have to go all the way south to the bridge over to the mainland and then north. Look at the black square on this map- that's Corolla, pronounced with an "a-l-l-a" instead of like the Toyota. The wintertime population is just 500, but the summertime is a booming place for vacationers (much like Naples, but the opposite time of year!)

OUR NEW APARTMENT: Check out how close we are to the beach! Its exactly .24 miles to the beach and .28 miles to my new job, I can hardly believe it. Think of the gas (and $$) that Ben and I will save walking/riding bikes instead of driving 450 miles each way to see each other! The place is actually located on the second story in a cute little shopping center, with a pizza shop, ice cream shop, book store, surf board rentals, sandal hut, and so many other neat places below. Its two bedrooms, so you are all welcome to come visit!

The countdown begins on starting the new chapter in my life: four more weeks!

Langerado

I haven't blogged in weeks- sorry to all of my faithful readers! I've been working a lot of extra shifts at the Country Club since season is about to end and I won't be able to make good money after a few more weeks. I need to give an update on my 3-day concert in the Everglades experience, nonetheless...

Six of us caravaned across Alligator Alley on Friday morning to camp out in a cow field on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation an hour east of Naples. We set up the camp site and began the weekend festivities! The music was awesome because although there were 27,000 people there, there were 5 stages going at the same time, so each band only had a few hundred people in the crowd! They were trying to sell aerial photos of the weekend but I just took a picture of the poster instead of paying $10!

Seeing REM was a major highlight of the concert! Since they were a headliner band, no one else played at the same time and so everyone was at the same stage, which was really crazy. Ben worked his way through the crowd to get us so close it was amazing! That is Michael Stipe in the white suit, wow! My narrow-minded choice in music was awakened by seeing some really incredible bands. Here's a list of who we saw:
Sam Bush - The Wailers (as in Bob Marley and the Wailers) - G. Love and Special Sauce - 311 - Beastie Boys - Arrested Development - Citizen Cope - Ben Folds - Thievery Corporation - Matisyahu - REM - Martin Sexton - Keller Williams

There were so many other bands there that would have been awesome to see (Ani Difranco, Blind Melon, Will Hoge, The Disco Biscuits, Dark Star Orchestra, Phil Lesh, Gov't Mule, Avett Brothers (who got stuck in traffic and couldn't make it to perform!)) but we had to sleep, eat, pee, and refill beers, so we had to sacrifice a few.

The Naples Daily News actually published a pretty cool article on the festival here. It will make you laugh, but it really was like this, haha.

View a slide show of all of our crazy photos here!

Echo... echooo... ecchhhoooo

Susan and I went to this really neat place on Saturday in Fort Myers. Its called ECHO, which stands for Education Concerns for Hunger Organization. Basically its like a big farm which is divided up into different environments to mimic the conditions of third-world countries in Africa, Caribbean, and the far east. We got to tour through tropical highlands, urban rooftops, tropical monsoon and rainforest biomes, semi-arid tropics, and hot humid lowlands, and see all the different crops that are able to grow in these climates. Then they hire interns to literally farm in these different areas and create seed banks so that they can later go to the countries where this type of farming is used and share the seeds with the locals and also their technical experience on how to farm efficiently under said conditions. We saw all kinds of neat things, like a solar oven, which was actually heating a pot of stew inside (at 350-degrees, I saw the thermometer!) We learned about water filtration devices and plants that are packed with nutrition.

One plant is called the Moringa tree, which offers all of the essential amino acids, unlike any other plant. There was a story they told us there about an African woman whose baby was very sick (malnourished) and she asked the doctor for medicine. He did not have any to give to her but gave her the leaves of the moringa tree instead, and her baby was healed in a matter of weeks. It is reported that, in addition to intense nurtients, this plant can be used for water filtration and detoxification, antibiotic uses, treatment of skin ailments, and lowering blood sugar. I figured that I should get on the bandwagon and grow one myself, so I bought a packet of seeds and will soon be on my way to bionic health! Haha, we'll see, but I am going to feed some leaves to Otis so he can start doing some shell push-ups. He might double in size over night!