Never got the chance to visit
After reading about the Outer Banks at jayesel, I realized how I never visited that portion of North Carolina despite living there for 11 years (or seven if you strike out the college years). It got me into thinking: What over widely known portion of the states I have lived in that I never visited? Here’s a list of what I thought about:
- While in New York City, I probably didn’t visit Rockefeller Center, the World Trade Center, Broadway, Guggenheim Museum, the Apollo Theater, Coney Island or even Manhattan. I lived in Queens, and my family was quite poor. The last time I was there was 1991, and all I saw were White Castle, Flushing Meadows and Shea Stadium in that trip.
- While in North Carolina, I never visited the Biltmore Estate, Mount Airy (the inspiration of “The Andy Griffith Show” despite being 10 miles away from while in college), Old Wake Forest campus, the previously mentioned Outer Banks. Just never got around to doing that. I may see the old campus in August.
- While in Georgia, I never visited Jekyll Island or the southwestern portion of the state. Otherwise, I pretty much saw everything there.
- While in Virginia, I never visited Monticello or the Pope-Leighey House. The house is still a possibility.
permalink | Comment | observations | 06/12/2008
Degrees of separation
When I looked at rental properties last August, my brain was focused on central heating since I was moving to Pennsylvania. The remaining summer wasn’t that warm last year and I thought my endless number of fans would be enough. When I woke up this morning, it was 88 degrees in my bedroom. Outside temperature was less than 80.
Thus far, I have ordered one portable air conditioner before it was sold out at Amazon for the first floor, and I might order another for the second floor. This heat makes me look forward to work because the AC is on full blast every day. It’s like I preserve whatever coolness from the office and take it back home — only it wears off around 10 a.m.
I thought I escaped the heat, but I still consider this mild compared to February in Georgia. I laugh when the meteorologists here say that it’s hot. “Hot” is one of those illegal words Georgia forecasters never use.
permalink | Comment | observations | 06/10/2008
Slipped my mind
I don’t know why I keep forgetting to post this, but this conversation happened months ago and I still laugh at this:
Person A: What are Applebottom Jeans? I got that song stuck in my head.
Person B: I think they’re like bell bottoms.
Me: No, they’re jeans that emphasize the rear.
Person B: Tamara, you just used the polite way of saying they make your ass look good.
permalink | Comment | observations | 05/29/2008
Just in case you're joining us late
I have enough daily experiences lately to make individual posts about them, so I figured that I would do this in bullet form:
- I found a CD that I had thought I lost three years ago. It was behind the front passenger seat in my vehicle the whole time. I was very happy to find it, even though it’s not my favorite. When I lost it, I fell into a deep depression because I had always been careful with my CD collection. For 10 years, I never lost a single one. When I lost this one, my system fell apart, and now I have three CDs missing and my collection is all over the place.
- My alma mater now has a new logo. At first glance, I didn’t like it and wondered what it was replacing. Then I found out that it was substituting a very poorly designed, generic one, I say bravo. Then again, this is in the land where the city’s motto is “O!”
- Just found out that there is no archive of my college paper from May 2000 to December 2002. Why is this significant? I was on the editorial board from August 2000 to May 2002. My record stops with my stint as an assistant editorial editor. No arts & entertainment editor/features editor/graphics editor record for me.
- I’ve been playing The Sims 2 too much. I’m engaged in the Royal Kingdom Challenge for about five weeks now.
- Watching Veronica Mars, Season 2 again. I started around August when I didn’t have satellite or Internet when I moved to PA. Now, I watch it on Saturday nights. That was until…
- My work schedule got switched. I now have Wednesdays and Thursdays off. No more Fridays and Saturdays. That also means that I no longer have my second job. For now until May 10, I’m enjoying my last remaining free Fridays with either movie runs or short day trips.
- I never thought I would say this, but there is too much ice cream in my freezer. There’s more ice cream than there is meat in the refrigerator. An ice cream bar is now dinner for me, and I can’t seem to stop myself.
permalink | Comment [1] | observations | 05/01/2008
The week of awesomeness
I’m going to get a bit chippy with this post because this week was both awesome, tiring and busy. The highlights, if you will:
- Clinton and Obama were in town on the same day. Talk about presidential congestion (in a good way, of course). I attended the Obama rally because it was in the morning and would not make me late for work. However, it meant waking up at 8 a.m. with just less than four hours of sleep, getting press credentials and standing through the entire thing. It was very cool, and I was glad not to be chained to a desk and drawing boxes. I have “video” of the rally, and I will post photos on flickr next week.
- My laptop arrived a day early. It didn’t matter, though, because my old computer decided to undergo a 13-hour virus scan before I could copy files over to the new computer. So, I did all of that yesterday. The laptop is pretty cool thus far, but I didn’t think that I would have to buy so many add-ons just to get to this point.
- Today marks the start of a seven-day workweek, second in five weeks. I will adjust accordingly.
permalink | Comment | observations | 04/04/2008
Lymph nodes
Darn it, I’m sick again. It’s my 427th cold since I moved to Pennsylvania.
permalink | Comment | observations | 03/14/2008
Day 3
What my 7-day work schedule did to me on Saturday, my usual day-off:
- Do the laundry.
- Sweep snow off the porch and shovel the rest off the sidewalk.
- Take a nap.
- Upon waking up, I thought to myself, “What was the top movie this weekend?”
- Then I realized that I just did my Sunday routine on Saturday.
- My workweek is already screwed up.
permalink | Comment | observations | 02/24/2008
Squalls
Last week, I sent my update-on-my-life e-mail to all my friends and former co-workers and told them how I have gotten used to the cold Pennsylvania winter. Well, it gave me a good test on Saturday when I was stuck in thundersnow and snow squalls. It was so funny because I was traveling to my side job and saw that the early morning snow was just quickly melting.
I figured that I would have just some flurries when I was to leave for the day and drive home. Boy, was I wrong!
I was eating at Wendy’s during my dinner break when I heard this booming sound and saw a flashing night sky. I thought that I was seeing something else; clearly it couldn’t be a thunderstorm. Well, it was and it was pretty bad. In fact, a lightning bolt stuck an apartment two blocks away from where I was eating. Then, thousands and thousands of pebble-size snow/hailstones filled the streets. I made a cautious drive back to work and did the same back home.
On the way home, however, I greeted by a very dense fog and I couldn’t see anything. Then some idiot had his high-beams on, making it even worse.
I did a lot of praying that night, and I made it home safely. Yet, the experience has yet to change my feelings about winter.
permalink | Comment [1] | observations | 02/10/2008
What happened to you?
My current life goals include waking up at 11:30 a.m. each day, enjoying a side job I’m starting on Saturday and scoring high scores on Rock Band.
Things I’ve neglected since making these goals: sleep, sanity, appetite, Web sites, any rationality I ever had.
permalink | Comment | observations | 01/30/2008
Rewind
OK, enough with all the promises of summing up 2007. Here is the abbreviated version of what I had wanted to post:
- Best movies of 2007 (or just watched in 2007): No Country for Old Men, The Bourne Ultimatum, American Gangster, Daddy’s Little Girls, Hot Fuzz, Zodiac, Children of Men. I didn’t watch many new movies last year. I tried to catch up with the ones I missed in the last four years.
- Big changes: Going on job interviews and traveling across the country for them, my best friend got married, I got a new job and moved further north, parallel parking every day, new furniture.
- The bad stuff: Not going to grad school after years of preparation, destroying the five-year plan to take new job, forgetting to pay the electric bill once, registering my car at the nearest DMV two hours away from home — twice.
- The future: Paid off my vehicle, pay off the new furniture, get used to driving in the snow, rethink the five-year plan, get a new art show, launch photoblog (yeah!).