I took a bit of a sentimental journey on Monday. Ever since I moved back to Charlotte last year, I’ve been curious about my old apartment, the one I rented in 1988 and 1989 and have always thought of as my favorite apartment ever. As it turns out, the very same apartment became vacant this week, so I popped over to the real estate office, checked out a key, and took a stroll down memory lane, as it were.

That particular period of my life is sort of “lost” for me now. I have very few pictures, and absolutely none of this particular apartment. I was very drunk very much of the time, and I’d also stopped doing much in the way of journal entries. So I’m always interested in finding little tidbits that will jog my memory of that last year in Charlotte.

I found that my somehwat run-down flat was now in even worse shape than in 1988. What looked to be the very same shit-brown carpet (with the very same stains) covered the floors, and the very same old window-unit air conditioner was in the bedroom. The bathroom was filthy, and the kitchen sink had the rust stains which come from years of tenants who aren’t very proactive about washing the dishes. There was a new thermostat, but it was powering the same old wall-unit furnace. Mysteriously, the relatively new (in 1988) bedroom door had been replaced by a much older one.

But the place still had its endearing qualities. It had a nice layout and a great location, and there were more closets than you usually find in apartments from that era. This one-bedroom pad was about the same size as the two-bedroom place where I spent thirteen years in San Francisco, and wasn’t in much worse shape. It rents for $450 now, up from $250 when I was there in 1988. I wouldn’t live there now, but I don’t question my decision to do so back then, either.

I think I was expecting some mystical, quasi-religious experience, sort of like when George visited the tenement where he grew up on that Christmas episode of “The Jeffersons”. It didn’t end up being quite so emotional, really, but it did offer some intersting perspective on how my life has changed in light of our upcoming move. I enjoyed being an “edgy” 24-year-old. I think I’ll enjoy being a boring 41-year-old with a house (and without a hangover) even more.

It’s Confederate History Week in Mecklenburg County.

I understand that the factors leading to the American Civil War went considerably deeper than “to enslave or not to enslave”. I also understand that Hitler’s rise to power in Germany was the result of numerous complex issues, most of which weren’t related to anti-Semitism.

We do not, however, have Nazi Heritage Festivals. We have World War II memorials. Would it have been so fucking difficult for the county commission (I no longer feel compelled to capitalize them) to have adopted the alternative “Civil War Remembrance Month” proposal instead? It’s not “historical revisionism” to suggest that we reflect on the whole fight rather than just on the losing side.

Whether he admits to it or not, anyone promoting “Confederate heritage” or flying a Confederate flag has a very specific social and political agenda in mind.

I don’t think I’m terribly neurotic, and I don’t have a lot of phobias. I’m not afraid of flying, even though I don’t really like it because it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient. I don’t fear heights, and depsite my extreme distaste for them, I also don’t exactly fear large crowds. I was even spared the most common phobia of all: the fear of public speaking. I prefer not to do it very often, because I don’t think I’m very good at it, but the thought of speaking in front of a crowd doesn’t give me panic attacks either.

There are things I’m afraid to do, like riding on motorcycles, or using drugs, or watching “Friends” re-runs, but those are rational fears, involving things which really are dangerous and could cause me great harm.

As far as debilitating irrrational fears go, I’m limited to two really big ones.

Number one is simple and not really all that debilitating. I cannot watch a hypodermic needle pierce skin, whether live, on TV, or in a movie. I just can’t do it. The only time this was really a problem was when I got out of the hospital in 2001 and had to give myself injections of a blood thinner for a week. Either way, this phobia pretty much guarantees I’ll never be an IV drug abuser.

The second is related to claustrophobia. The thing I fear most in this world is being in an enclosed space where I can’t stand up or move. I’m not talking about elevators; they don’t bother me. I mean things like crawl spaces, the trunks of cars, full-body casts, or the Jefferies tubes on a starship. An MRI, of course, would be out of the question for me without complete sedation — or, oddly enough, unless they’d let me stand up and be vertical in the tube. I know a lot of people would find these situations uncomfortable, but they fill me with such an overwhleming sense of panic that I sometimes even have trouble going to sleep if I’m exposed to something on TV just before bed which makes me think of it.

The third is a little more obscure. I’ve talked about my phone phobia before. I’m not a huge fan of talking on the phone in general, but what freaks me out most of all is making unexpected calls to people I don’t usually speak on the phone with. The idea of making the call and asking for the specific individual I need to speak with can cause a sense of dread which can keep me from thinking of anything else for days in advance.

This fear doesn’t apply either to complete strangers nor to people I know well and call regularly. I don’t have a problem with making business calls. And if I know the person on the other end is expecting me to call at a certain time, I’m fine. The problem comes when I call relatives or acquaintances I’m just not used to speaking with and do it “out of the blue”. Maybe I’m worried I’m bothering them, or maybe it’s because I don’t know what they really think of me, or whatever.

Yes, I know it’s irrational. I also know it flat out terrifies me and can make me break out in a cold sweat. In fact, before the advent of email, it probably kept me from going on numerous second dates. It’s also why I’m so anal about writing thank you notes to my aunts and uncles rather than just calling to thank them.

Sorry. I haven’t revealed any neuroses here in a while, and I figured I was about due…

This is known to many Winston-Salem residents as “the K&W cafeteria that blew up”. It was a really cool, mod 1960s location that was connected to the Sheraton Motor Inn at Knollwood Street and old I-40. Until it exploded.

Today, the site houses the world headquarters of Krispy Kreme, a company which is apparently more in danger of imploding these days.

Internet via cable is a mistake I won’t be making again anytime soon.

Charlotte is an overlay area code zone; we have two different telephone area codes, 704 and 980, serving the same geographic area. What this means for the average person is that he must dial the area code for all phone calls, even for local ones within his same area code. These overlays are somewhat unpopular, particularly among older less tech-savvy people, and they were actually banned in California before they could really proliferate there. Therefore, in a place like San Francisco, the city itself is in the 415 area code, while the suburbs and surrounding cities are in a variety of other ones.

Charlotte’s overlay has been in place for years, and I’ve always wondered why. The whole thing seems rather unnecessary to me, mainly because I’ve never known a single individual or business to have a 980 number, whether for a land line, fax, cell phone, or anything else. I’ve never seen a sign nor an ad featuring one. Even brand new numbers, like my home number and our eFax number are assigned to 704. If adding a new area code had been so alll-fired important, you’d think that someone would have been given a number within it after all these years.

This morning, while leafing through the telephone directory in the bathroom (yes, I sometimes do this), I finally saw a 980 phone number. A whole slew of them, in fact. It seems the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools may be the only entity ever to have been assigned a phone number within the 980 area code. Apparently, Charlotte moved to 10-digit dialing so its school system could have its own area code. Now that’s bureaucracy…

If you should one day find yourself in Florence, South Carolina on a Saturday afternoon, as I did today, you might be interested to know that it is very easy to buy a map of Myrtle Beach in Florence, South Carolina. It is also easy to buy a map of Winston-Salem or Charleston or even Augusta, Georgia.

What it is apparently impossible to buy in anywhere in Florence, South Carolina on a Saturday afternoon is a map of Florence, South Carolina itself.

I keep thinking that today is the anniversary of some great event in my life, but I can’t for the life of me think of which one. Anyway, I’m going to celebrate by going to the thrift store and to the library and maybe even up to Mooresville to visit the Super Target and buy the Sunday Winston-Salem Journal.

Unless I get caught up in another movie.

God, what a useless slug I am today.

We have a completed appraisal and final loan approval now. The only hurdle remaining is the home inspection next week. And the big closing check. Anyone got a few thousand bucks to spare?

It’s perfect timing, of course, that I also had a call this morning inviting me to interview me a job I applied for three months ago. A job that’s in a town where I won’t be living soon, alas.

And it’s not surprising that our apartment complex, henceforth known as Nickel and Dime Chickenshit Property Management Company, Inc., has told our mortgage lender that they won’t supply them with a rent verification until I go down to the office and cough up a $25 check. Bloody pricks.

You’d probably be silent too if your head had been cut off…

I know you’ve all been waiting patiently for the past month, so here it is: the exciting story of my recent road trip to Central Ohio. Cleveland may rock, but Columbus has the very first Wendy’s.

Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minuteman Project, is a a bigger moron than I’d thought if he really believes that a furniture store owner’s decision not to allow Glichrist’s merry band of vigilantes to stage a rally on the store’s private property is somehow a violation of anyone’s “First Amendment rights”.

What a crock. Has anyone else noticed how the assorted right wing nut jobs and fundamentalists in America have begun to employ the very same whiny “oppressed minority” conspiracy theory bullshit they’ve derided for so many years among leftists?

Apparently, the Minutemen believe that their desire for a rallying place to keep anyone they don’t like off American soil trumps an individual property owner’s right to keep people he disagrees with from trespassing on his own private property. A clue: freedom to use other people’s resources however you see fit is not included in the concept of free speech.

Anyone with that many American flags plastered all over his website should know that. Then again, most people with that many American flags plastered all over their websites seem to know precious little about much of anything, liberty or the Constitution included.

Wow. For only $14,000 more than we’re paying for our house in Winston-Salem, we could own this lovely two-bedroom single-wide trailer on a rented lot in a trailer park in Cambria CA. An extra hundred grand on top of that would get us a double-wide with a covered porch. Unless, of course, there were to be a bidding war.

And to think we’d convinced ourselves there was no affordable housing on the west coast.

My cable internet has now degraded to the point where it’s even slower than dialup, so a technician has finally been dispatched for Tuesday morning arrival. I must say that, all in all, I’ve found cable internet to be every bit as reliable as cable TV.

Which is why I have a satellite dish.

Anyway, my boy comes home tonight, I just finished a month-long ordeal I’d rather have skipped, I found a semi-legal not at all legal copy of the very rare “Streets of San Francisco” pilot for sale today, and the final leg of our home purchase begins Monday morning. So I’m looking forward to a happy weekend.

Danged if there ain’t a lot of stuff you have to do when you buy a house…

And, as luck would have it, I got another call yesterday inviting me to interview for yet another job I applied for three months ago. Why couldn’t any of these people have called me when I was still living in the city where the jobs in question were located?

Oh well. Only one more round of inspection-related negotiations and we’ll be the owners of a very well-constructed home Winston-Salem NC that’s only a year older than I am. And just for the record, the cigarette brands were named after the city where they’re made rather than vice versa.

The internet’s back. Did I miss anything?

I think this little gem from 1974 pretty much speaks for itself:

This week has been really insane, and I needed a little break. Last night, I went on a group tour of a museum with Mark and my grandmother. We got a little annoyed at my grandmother for insisting on coming along, since she can barely walk and the tour involved lots of stairs. We missed half the tour waiting for her. The museum was fun, though.

When the tour was over, we all landed in a giant reception room where a huge crowd of people was watching the local news from San Francisco on a widescreen TV. Cyndi Lauper came on to do her nightly report, which she sings. We all enjoyed it, and then finished our drinks and went home.

Then I woke up.

I should think that almost everyone from squishy granolas to staunch defenders of private property would find this pretty horrifying. If the real goal here is to “prevent overcrowding”, wouldn’t it be more effective to limit the number of occupants per room rather than to legislate the types of relationships permitted among the occupants?

Local standards my ass.

I can’t tell if (a) I’m a great big ball of stress because we’re finally closing on the house tomorrow morning, or (b) I’m just out of sorts because my allergies are bugging me something fierce and I didn’t sleep well last night. Whatever the reason, my head hurts, I’m irritable as hell, and I can’t seem to concentrate at all.

Either way, though, I’ll be a homeowner the next time you hear from me. Anyone want to help us move?

Video of our new abode…

I guess “Disneyfication” isn’t exactly the right word to throw around when it’s an amusement park that’s in danger of being gentrified, huh?