Kids Night Out - Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008 version)

Four to Go plus five to go kids went for Kids Night Out. We saw Journey to the Center of the Earth -2008 3D version.

Hubby and I had both seen the old version, and hubby is a sci-fi fanatic. We had to buy the special 3D glasses in addition to the ticket price.

Now I've seen 3d and 4D movies before, but Journey's 3D was some of the best effects I've ever seen. Things drifted, flew, fell, and the glasses made them seem like you could reach out and touch them right at your fingertips. Trevor (the boy) at one point was jumping rock to rock, and went spinning out into air. The viewers saw not only the rock and Trevor falling, but got the 3D effect of him spinning up and over.

The littlest girl (age 5) could not wait for the dinosaurs to come out - and in 3D they were truly amazing, as were the piranha fish. Again with the 3D glasses they were right in front of our faces.

This movie did not get great reviews, and I actually tried talking the group into another movie. I'm so glad we saw it. It was one of the best movies I've seen recently, and all the kids 6-55 loved it. Don't miss this movie, and don't believe the "paid" critics. It's well worth the price of the ticket and the 3D glasses. How does the main girl endure all the perils in a movie and yet her hair never gets messed up. Me - one step into my peril of the day (like driving to work), and my hair gets all undone.

Four to Go + More than tired from a late night at the movies, too many birthday cupcakes and snacks, and way too much Rita's ices. Happy Birthday to our 10 year old. Hope you day was way special. M/D

Come See More of this Wonderful Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition

Earth, Water, Wind, Fire #2
Steel and paint
16' x 7' x 4' feet
$35,000

Hanna Jubran
Grimesland, NC

This sculpture is from a series of work that deals with the concept of the four elements, Earth, Water, Fire and Wind in our universe on the micro and the macro level. It expresses the cycle of life, growth and continuum. The interplay of shape, form, space and colors. These four elements are seen in a variety of forms shapes and colors as they occur in nature. They are ever changing. As Gibran Kalil Gibran said, “ The mission of art is to bring out the unfamiliar to the most familiar.” With this, I would like the viewer to gaze, interact and experience my sculpture.

I am always so amazed when an artist can take a huge piece of any type of material, conceive and idea of how to turn it into art, and then have a unique wonderful piece of art sculpture that gets placed in an Exhibition to share with the world. I recently took at art class at Artist Oasis and we took cardboard, thin copper wire, paint, stamps, pieces of styrofoam plates, and a heat gun, and turned it into a work of art. Needless to say I was very impressed with myself.

Art is a language that transcends all cultures, people, times and universes. Enjoy some art today, even if it's just nature's art.

Four To Go - Getting Going on My Day!

Come See This Wonderful Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition

Cary, NC - There is an exhibit of art sculptures by various artists on the grounds around the Cary Town Hall Campus. This Special Exhibit presented in conjunction with Cary Visual Art, Inc. Cary, North Carolina will be on display through June 09, and here is just a sampling of one of the ten individual pieces. Also on http://caryvisualart.org and www.CarySculpture.org there is information on the artists and more information about the making of the sculptures. All sculptures are available for purchase. The picture of the Air Guitar below was our Four To Go family favorite.

Air Guitar Welded steel, stainless steel 17’ x 12’ x 3’ feet $30,000 Mike Roig Carrboro, NC “I’ve been making art since I was small, it’s what I came in hard-wired to do. Working in steel satisfies me in a way no other medium has. It is tough and durable, yet malleable, and open to infinite suggestion. It is heavy and obdurate, and yet can be made to express delicate movements of balance and grace. It can appear earthen and solid, or be polished to light-refracting brilliance.

Going to Finally Get A Minor's Passport

What an ordeal. We've been planning on getting daughter a Passport for over a year. I even started filling out the application last year, but got lost in all the parental consent guidelines.

http://www.officialtraveldocuments.com/Passport/Forms/Links/PassMinor_ReqDoc.aspx

Also then after going through all this completing and gathering all the supporting documents, everyone has to physically go to an approved Passport Agency for the required "stamp of approval." Usually this is a local Post Office branch. Now at the Post Office, you need an appointment to get your passport. Appointments are only available M-F 10-3:30 (with no appointments during lunch hours). Very convenient to just about everyone's schedule. We
finally learned of a branch about 30 minutes away that does offer Saturday appointments.

While we are lucky and don't have a real schedule trip planned, just getting for future travel, our neighbor ended driving from the Carolinas to Washington, D.C. and standing in a long line the day before they were to depart for Italy. Seems the U.S. Passport office had misplaced their original application filed many months before the travel date.

Actually there are several services online www.americanpassportexpress.com that for a nominal fee $50-$75 will expedite passports in just a short period of time. So if you are making last minute travel plans and need a passport or a renewal, check them out online.

In the do you know column - The U.S. Government is outsourcing part of the U.S. Passport to foreign countries. This means your personal information could easily be obtained even at the "very secure" facility. See the excerpt below.

Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security

Bill Gertz (Contact)
Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.

Bert V. Goulait/The Washington Times Public Printer Robert Tapella, the Government Printing Office's top executive, told a House subcommittee on March 6 that increased demand for U.S. passports produced "accelerated revenue recognition," and "not necessarily excess profits."

The Government Printing Office's decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times.

This is just downright scary, and leaves a lot of Americans more at risk from terrorists and identity theft than we've ever been. Write your Congressman or Legislator and let them know the outsourcing of American Passport Applications needs to stop. You can Google articles about this subject "U.S. Passports being outsourced".

Fourtogo - See we really do go, and go and go.

Four To Go Going to Our Local Lazy Daze Art Festival

Every town has their art or pottery or Harley Davidson festivals each year. Our metro area has all those and more. One of my favorites is happening this Saturday August 24th. It's a wonderful juried art show held on the main streets of uptown. The artists are not only Carolina artists and potters, but many come from far away as they work the festival circuits each year.

It's usually a gazillion degrees for Lazy Daze, but I always make my annual pilgrimage. I love to see how the artists use different medium and everday materials to create true art.

There's always the traditional festival foods, live music and street actors to make it fun. Last year for the first time the festival vendors served beer. Created a great stir of controversy in our predominately Bible Belt community. No reports of disorderly conduct or lewid activity was reported following a couple of beers.

I hope your town has a festival like this, and that you can attend and see all the arts and crafts from all over the U.S. It is truly part of our cultural heritage.

Four to Go - Lazy Daze for us on Sat.

Suprise Me

Daughter is turning 10 on Sunday. She started talking about her Birthday List way back in January. She's has a never ending list, and it's hard to surprise her. I did order a couple of items on www.overstock.com, and she wanted a new pair of Rainbow sandals, which we also ordered (after she had already researched and picked her shoes online).

I remember when she was 3,4,5, and we managed to surprise her each year with a balloon man, a magician, and a pool party. But hard to surprise her now.

I want to have her party at the Carnivore Preservation Trust Preserve in Chapel Hill, NC. We toured there a couple of years ago, and daughter was impressed with the animals there. Check this place out at www.carnivorepreservationtrust.com They take such wonderful care of the animals while teaching people about their needs for survival. They are looking right now for donations to offset the cost of transporting two tigers from a Missouri preserve to their facility. Please donate if you can, follow the links in the weblink.

Here's hoping this tour will be her best 10th Birthday Surprise.

Fourtogo Going To a Birthday Party Really Soon!

Ella Minnow Pea Book Review

Our Eva Perry Regional Library's bookclub book for the month of August-




Ella Minnow Pea was written in 2001 by author Mark Dunn. http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1002/dunn/interview.html. This book was easy to read, but hard to stay interested in. In the small country of Nollop (off the SC coast ), the people are a throwback to the 1950's. The town is the perfect small town with statutes, small stores, small newspapers, very proper ladies clubs and where schools teach formal grammar and English.

The main town' father, Nevin Nollop, deceased, the creator of the phrase "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog", is immortalized in a statute and the phrase written on tiles, that start falling off letter by letter. The leaders interpreted the falling tiles as a message from beyond the grave and ban each letter as it falls off from spoken and written language.

The ban causes people to be admonished, publicly shamed and causes terror within the town lest someone does accidentally break the ban.

The book is written in in very formal grammatically perfect letters between the characters.
Eventually, there were only four letters remaining (LMNOP - read Ella Minnow Pea). This book addresses censorship of the spoken and written word by "government".

This is a book I would have never selected myself, but I always enjoy reading something somewhat quirky and different. This is a real plus for a joining a bookclub-gets you out of your comfort zone and makes you expand your literary horizons.

Fourtogo - going to bookclub.

Beautiful New Framburg Light for My Dining Room

A very simple project of sewing two chain covers one for my kitchen and the other for my dining room light turned into a real project. To put these chain covers on, you have to take the light down from the ceiling. This was a project all by itself. The old dining room light was the cheap fake brass chandelier the builder put in the house. While we never loved it, it was one of those "someday" type replacements.

Someday became immediately. After we put the chain cover on and put the light back up, it never worked again. Husband, quite electrically knowledgeable tried several thing to fix. Finally we just looked at each other and said, "you know, we don't even really like that light".

Then began the holy grail quest for just the right chandelier. Many trips later we agreed on this beautiful Framburg light at our local House of Lights. While it was more money than we thought we'd have to pay, this light is exceptionally well designed. Framburg makes beautiful lights in some very unique (almost custom looking) models. The have a nice website www.framburg.com complete with a way to even download a catalogue.



I give the product ***** for quality, beauty, design and value.

Fouttogo can once again see to eat our food.

Wow -so if your child is parking your car, you can park here !

I saw this sign yesterday at the local Harris Teeter grocery store, and found it amusing.

Fourtogo always out and about looking for amusement.

Go Daddy Hosting and Domain Management

I decided I needed to advertise our Condo For Sale in No. Myrtle Beach, SC differently than on this www.fourtogo.blogspot.com blog site. I created a website in Microsoft Publisher, and purchased a domain from Go Daddy. I bought the lowest tier of hosting service, since I didn't need a big traffic presence. I have had nothing but trouble with the Go Daddy domain and website that I purchased. To be honest, again, I purchased the lowest tier of service, but thought that would be more than sufficient for my needs.

Finally after many hours and calls to the customer support number ( a non 800 number), I managed to get my website uploaded on July 26th. On Saturday August 10th, I decided to add a blog to increase my overall page content. I did have a "blog" hosting as part of my "package" from Go Daddy. I set up a subdomain under my domain and called it "blog". All looked okay until I decided to upload two test posts to this subdomain. The content would never load. Again more calls to Go Daddy customer support, and many many trial and errors later, the content showed up, but I had somehow wiped out my Website contents.

I deleted all the blog detail and tried to upload just the original content to my website. It is now 9:30 on August 14th, and I have been unsuccessful in reloading my website as originally loaded. I have called 3 times today, each with a different accented voice, who could only tell me my image files pointed to the wrong file. No information on how to correctly "point" my files.

I am taking down the site and selling the domain on Go Daddy. It's just too hard for me to do my website management there. You get what you pay for, and in this case cheap was just that - C-H-E-A-P!

Four to Go - Running Real Fast AWAY from Go Daddy services.

Olympics Beach Volleyball Team Uniforms - Just a Tad Skimpy

Of all the USA team uniforms, the skimpy bikinis of the USA Beach Volleyball "team" are the most ridiculous. First of all Beach Volleyball is not an Olympic sport. It's a game you play at the "resort" beach between margaritas and Corona beer - and not in the two girl team format. In the resort venue the skimpy bikini is an asset showing plus.

That said, as I watched the Cuba and USA ladies Beach Volleyball event last evening, I was surprised by their suits. Yes, they certainly showed off their tight stomach, abs, and long toned legs, maybe just a little too much. It looked more like they were costumed for an upcoming reality show than showcasing the USA team at the 2008 Bejing Olympics. Other sports (including swimming) wears a more modest while still stylish uniform appropriate for millions of people watching on national television.

There are many differences between beach resort volleyball and Olympic Beach volleyball, I wish one of them would have been the bikinis. It just didn't seem appropriate. I'm neither old nor prudish, but I'm surprised that the US Olympic Committee would have approved these suits.

Fourtogo - watching the Olympics every night and loving the Chinese History Lessons also.

Politics in America - Urghhh

Today our own NC former Senator John Edwards admits he had an affair, but has not had a paternity test to determine if he is the father (or that he is not the father) of Rielle Hunter, his campaign videographer with whom he had an affair.

Am I shocked - or am I shock proof (after Bill Clinton's denial) that public officials have a sex life (or a secret sex life), and have an affair with someone that the person has spent many weeks of intimate contact with. Also, it's always someone that they had an affair with many years ago (and why is there always a "love child" involved). The affair began in 2006 is that so very long ago?

In January 2008 here is what John Edwards said as he began his 2008 Presidential Campaign:

John Edwards' remarks in New Orleans, 1/30:

I began my presidential campaign here to remind the country that we, as citizens and as a government, have a moral responsibility to each other, and what we do together matters. We must do better, if we want to live up to the great promise of this country that we all love so much.

Nope just 24 short months ago. Whatsup with all that disappointment, and do we "need" to declare our laundry so publicly. Is the victim/af-affair-ianced just getting a good $$$ deal now to come forward. Who leaked the affair to the Enquirer? It will be interesting why she choose to come forward now. Is she recipient of that monthly hush-hush $15,000 being paid by "someone".

While the media has in the past protected public officials (John F. Kennedy, our beloved), why is the media so quick to throw someone under the bus now? Ratings, ratings, ratings.

Politics??? Interesting bed-fellows always.

Fourtogo - not going for the sympathy story today. One is ALWAYS free to choose, but there are always consequences. For the whole Edwards family, the consequences may be life changing and career breaking. Or not - just look at Bill and Hill, they not only weathered it but thrived after it.

North Myrtle Beach SC Is a Great Place to Own a Second Home

Our Condo In No. Myrtle Beach

Is For Sale By Owner

Cherry Grove Beach
5709 North Ocean Boulevard, Unit #201
Reduced to only $195,000 or Bring Firm Offer
For information, visit our website www.3togo.info
Also listed on owners.com, search property I.D. WTJ2055

Our Foursome Tried a New Boxed Dinner from Macaroni Grill

I purchased Romano's Macaroni Grill Chicken Alfredo Dinner kit for $4.99 from my Lowe's Foods Store. It's one of those boxed dinner kits that includes all ingredients except the meat. For the chicken, I purchased Perdue prepared Grilled Chicken Strips available in your refrigerated prepared meat section of your local grocer. You can check out their other varieties at www.shopfoodex.com. This site also has a lot of other items to check out.


The directions were easy to follow, required about 1/2 hour total prep time box to table. daughter - who don't eat anything picked at the pasta, my husband ate multiple helpings, and I finished what was left over in the pan. The adults declared the product to be a 7 out of 10. on the scale.

I would buy this product again. It's flavorful, quick, and reasonably priced.

Four to Go - three eats for cheap!

Angel Juice Pinot Grigio Wine Review

On Saturday while out at our local Crossroads Shopping Center, I stopped by the Total Wine Store. I was searching for a wine we found at the Boulineaus IGA in North Myrtle Beach, SC bag in the box Pinot Grigio Turning Leaf wineries. I thought the Total Wine might have it, but they did not.

While I was at Total Wine store I saw a nice unassuming blue box Pinot Grigio named Angel Juice from http://www.underdogwinemerchants.com/home.html the Crystal Coast, CA area. While I had never tried this wine, the description on box was creative and sounded intriguing.



I purchased the wine and tried it when we got home. Both my husband and I agreed that it was better than most bag-in-the-box pinot grigio wines we had tried. The flavors were somewhat complex, not too dry, and with a pleasant finish.

I did a Google search today for Angel Juice and found the website that reviewed this wine at http://www.boxwines.org/articles/angel-juice-pinot-grigio.htm. They had similar reviews for this wine.

If you want a good value, summer on the patio, drinking wine, try to find this in your area.

Four to Go - Went to Angel Juice heaven...

Eight To Go Went to Wet and Wild Water Park

Daughter has been begging to go to Wet'nWild Water Emerald Pointe in Greensboro all Summer. Today we went with our neighbors and 4 kids in tow. We got lost on the way there, and we got to the park half an hour after the pool opened - oops, just that little 30 minute made a huge difference in the line to get in being longer and the park being out of large lockers. We finally got situated and the kids paired off in twos. Everyone got lost a little at one time or another. Also, once the tour and church busses showed up, the park got very crowded.

While the wait for the rides were long, everyone got to ride some of their favorite rides. We had waited in one of the most popular rides called The Edge (also the slowest moving, because only one person at a time can go). Just as our two were about to get their tube, the sky darkened, and it thundered and there was lightening. The Edge immediately closed down, followed quickly by the park closing.



Any way this is a great water park and very well and safely operated. I think everyone had a great time and a little too much sun. You can usually get discount tickets online or through supporting vendor stores.

Fourtogo (Eight Today) Going To Put Aloe on Our Sunburns!