Getting By, Dreaming Big

This is a blog for me to share my thoughts on my favorite things: books, traveling, food and entertainment!

Monday Bookworms: Zachary Taylor (16) May 11, 2010

Filed under: Book Reviews,Life Goals,Monday Bookworms,Presidents — readerbean @ 8:03 pm
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Zachary Taylor (The American Presidents Series), by John S.D. Eisenhower

140 pages, @2008

If you are a regular reader of my blog, or a good friend of mine, or someone I was just talking to at a BBQ this weekend, you know that one of the goals on my “Life List” is to read a book about each President in order.  Zachary Taylor, was President #12!  Only 32 more Presidents to read about, at the rate I’m going, that’ll be 16 more years (although there will be some new ones to add to the list by then I’m sure!)

Interesting fact about Zachary Taylor, he was the first man to become President who had never held a public office.  He was never a Senator, Representative, Mayor, Governor, etc.  He was a military guy, and a Mexican War hero and that reputation put him as the front man for the Whigs in the election of 1848!  President Polk had promised not to run for another term so Taylor was up against a new Democrat running mate as opposed to an incumbent President.  President Taylor himself never expressed any interest in running for the position, he was pushed to it by the Whigs,and even though they did push him, he was very reluctant.  They had to get him to sign two different letters at two different times during the campaign to convince die hard Whigs that he was really interested and even then it seemed that the letter was written for him and he was encouraged to sign it. 

Unfortunately, President Taylor died only 16 months into his office.  Many believe that as a Southern slave holder who was not interested in creating additional slave states, that he might have been a calm voice a reason during a time of great turmoil for our nation.  I guess we’ll never know.  He died of an infection.

President Taylor wasn’t my favorite of the bunch, but I am still enjoying learning about each President in their time, who they were before they became President and what they accomplished as President.  The riveting President Millard Fillmore is next, only one book ever written about him to date and it’s big, this next one is going to be a tough read.  Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong.

3 stars

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Do you remember President Taylor’s nickname???

 

Tuesday Travels II: Annapolis January 20, 2010

Filed under: Music,Presidents,Tuesday Travels,Uncategorized — readerbean @ 6:23 pm
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As I stated yesterday, to make up for my lack of posting last week, I’m doing double posts this week.  I’m hoping I can stay ahead of the game though because I’m heading to Florida Thursday morning where I will not have internet access.  Since I have a couple of posts to write tonight and schedule for later this week I’m going to get right to it.

A couple of months ago Jon, me, his brother Matty and his wife Karen decided to venture down to Annapolis for New Year’s Eve.  Annapolis for New Year’s you say…well we were going to see our favorite band…The Pat McGee Band.  So we booked our hotel rooms for a three night stay and met up at the Baltimore airport on Wednesday, December 30th.  I had never been to Annapolis before so I was super excited to explore a new place.

We checked into our hotel and got situated before  heading out to explore.  We started off with lunch at Ram’s Head Tavern.  This is a huge music venue in Annapolis.  We all had a really good lunch.  Jon enjoyed a beer sampler with his turkey burger and I tried black bean soup for the first time – LOVED IT!  I know, I’m so adventurous – hahaha!  Then we basically walked around Annapolis, saw the State House, grabbed some coffee, saw the waterfront, bought an ornament for our tree, got the lay of the land.

Then we got all dressed up for our night on the town, but before that, we headed out to Sandy Point Park and drove through the “Lights on the Bay” display.  Lights on the Bay is a display of about 60 Christmas lights displays.  You wind your way through the park on a guided “trail”.  Some of the light displays were pretty traditional, but some were pretty cool (moving lights – love it!).  After that we took the “heated” golf cart from our hotel to Osteria 177 our fancy dinner for NYE but a night early so we could really enjoy it.  We had an amazing meal, we lingered over wine, enjoyed our appetizers, entrees and desserts and our waiter was fantastic.  We were seriously the last people to leave the restaurant, everything in Annapolis closes much earlier than NYC.  After dinner we decided to do a “pub crawl” of sorts.

We started out at Treaty or Paris, a bar/restaurant that Grammy Lorraine & Coley recommended to us.  Their bar was awesome; exposed brick, little nooks, old wood tables.  We had a drink there but since we were pretty much the only people in there we decided to move on to Sly Fox.  Sly Fox is located in the Cellar of the historic Reynolds Tavern.  It was a pretty fun place, there were a ton of people out having a good time.  We ran into some PMBer’s and enjoyed a couple of pints and ”Mr. Scarf Guy” was created before we moved on to our last destination Ram’s Head Tavern (again!)  After that we called it a night.

We started out our 2nd day in Annapolis with a short run (2-2.5 miles).  It was sleeting and a little slippery but we managed to make our way.  After a great breakfast we headed over to the Naval Academy only to find that there were no tours that day.  So we made our way around the Academy and just kind of explored on our own.  Then we headed to the State House to see where George Washington resigned his military commission after the Revolutionary War.  Being the history buff that I am (especially when it comes to our Presidents I just couldn’t miss out on this!)  Then is was time for Karen and I to enjoy manicures back at the hotel spa before our evening out.  We had paraffin wax treatment on our hands and it was divine. 

Then the craziness ensued.  Like I stated before, we were there to see the Pat McGee Band’s New Year’s Even concert.  Our tickets included appetizers and open bar.  We got there at 8PM and started enjoying the atmosphere and some drinks before the concert started.  While we were a little disappointed that the full band wasn’t there (Chardy & Brian we missed you), it was still an incredible show.

So incredibly that we danced the night away until 1AM in the morning, when it was clearly time to hit the sack!  In between sets, the dj was jammin’ some fun tunes to dance too, which I really really enjoyed!  I let it loose on the dance floor for sure!  New Year’s Day was spent mostly lounging, we went for a short short run, had breakfast and then spent most of the day napping, watching football and walking around town one last time.  Not much was open but I did manage to enjoy to ice cream:)

All in all it was a great trip, with great memories, and it was fun to spend it with family! 

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Have you ever been to Annapolis?

 

Martin Van Buren – President # 8 January 25, 2008

Filed under: Book Reviews,Presidents — readerbean @ 3:24 pm

Ahhh…Martin Van Buren! President #8. I decided it’d be good to get the first President of the year over with early so that I don’t get stuck with two books to read later in the year. For Martin Van Buren I choose once again a book from the American President’s Series.

Martin Van Buren, Ted Widmer

I bought the book used off of amazon.com for like $3.00 – yay! It was only 200 pages, so I felt pretty confident about reading it. It was filled with lots of interesting tidbits:

- MVB was the first President to hail from New York
- MVB was the first President of non-English descent (he was Dutch!)
- MVB began what is now the Democratic Party
- MVB was the first man to run for President as an Independent (this was after he was already President).
- MVB was the fifth longest living President

As for the book…This book briefly covered his life; early years, his rise to political fame, his Presidency and his retirement. Widmer, does a great job in just 200 pages of giving the reader a sense of who Martin Van Buren was. He also does a great job of making you realize why Martin Van Buren should be remembered and pointing out all the great things he accomplished in the name of democracy, without overselling him and making the reader believe he should go down in history as one of the most important Presidents. This book is a good read for the regular reader, one who does not normally read non-fiction or biographies. I did not find it too dense and it flowed nicely.

I have to say my expectations where low for MVB, but I found him to be pretty darn fascinating. Next up William Henry Harrison, or as many of your may remember, Tippecanoe and Tyler too!