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January 2007

Randonly Tuesday

Randomly Tuesday:

  • For the record, I may have been premature in my earlier endorsement of this insurance broker. Enough said, for the moment. You can be certain, though, that I’ll ultimately say more. At least I am now definitively insured.
  • After all my work recording, editing, and burning to DVD epsiodes of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, I read today that a legitimate release of sesaon one is on the way. I think I’ll keep working on season two, though, as I have my doubts about how well this one will sell.
  • Alas, it will be ore difficult to record these episodes, since a power surge last week seems to have caused problems with our spiffy new multi-room Dish DVR. I hope it’s not a replay of our earlier problems.
  • Coming this week: snow (maybe), a visit from Duncan on Friday, and about three more trips to Greensboro to deal with the current family situation (sigh).

I’m an Adult Now

Frankly, this adulthood thing is no longer amusing me, and I’d like to reconsider the whole process. Anyone know of a good attorney in the Piedmont Triad area who specializes in regressions?

Wow. Eleven Years.

It was eleven years ago today that I began doing the website that more or less became this one.

I’ve been doing this for more than a quarter of my life, and, depending on your definition, for more than half my adult life.

That’s a mildly disturbing thought. I can’t say for certain that I even remember how not to do it anymore.

Raleigh

Hillsborough Street, Raleigh NC: Among the last of a dying breed…

If all Krispy Kreme stores still looked like this, the company wouldn’t be having so much trouble now…

 

The Little Things

Sometimes it’s the little things that make you happy after a long day dealing with family crises, things like discovering that Boomerang is running Wait Till Your Father Gets Home reruns in the middle of the night. Or realizing that the microphone input on your G5 actually accepts a line-level input as well, thus sparing you one of the more time-consuming detours in your vinyl digitizing journey.

Family Crises

After thirteen years on the other end of the country, it’s sometimes strange being so close to home again. There are small and inisgnificant aspects, like the fact that my mom tells me about sales at stores I can actually go to, and that we discuss local news stories on the same channels and in the same newspapers. There’s also the disorientation that comes when I realize that I’m living in the same general area where I spent so much of my early life, but not in the same city; my hometown is thirty miles away, and it still feels like a bit of a road trip to visit it.

The thing that’s hardest to get used to, though, is the fact that family crises have suddenly become much less abstract and much closer to my everyday exisitance. When a close relative is sick or has a problem, I’m expected — not just by my family, but by my own conscience — to be there and offer help when I can. It’s inconvenient and unpleasant, but it has to be done. That’s how families work; I know that if I ever have issues myself or with my own parents, my extended family will help me out as well.

Right now, it’s an uncle who had a stroke last week and clearly can’t take care of himself, but seems determined to do so anyway. It’s an issue that’s going to make my parents’ lives miserable for weeks and months to come. My uncle’s illness and my mom’s new computer have taken up a lot of my time over the past two weeks. But I guess it’s an investment; my turn for help might be next.

It was a lot easier being 3000 miles away, to be sure. All in all, though, I’m still glad to be home. And at least I’m far enough away that I’m not usually the first one called in a crisis.

Heaven Is a Place on Fifth Street

Yer Humble Host at the Kopper Kitchen in downtown Winston-Salem Friday morning.

You can pretty much tell just from the color of the booths that the place is pretty close to my idea of heaven. It’s one of those ancient eateries in a slightly run-down low-rise building on the periphery of downtown. Most of today’s planners and downtown boosters would want to raze the place and replace it with some sort of shiny, overplanned “mixed-use” complex (with loft condos, of course) because that would, by definition, be more “urban”, right?

Yeah. Right.