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2003

Talking About the Weather

I’ve said if before and I’ll no doubt say it again. Eureka CA has the best weather in the entire world. It never gets hot, it never gets all that cold, and there’s more rain in Eureka than just about anyplace else in California. It’s a shame they don’t build a city there. I’d move to it if they did…

That said, yer humble host is feeling like absolute crap today, and I’ve decided that it all stems from the fact that the weather has been absolutely fucking miserable here for most of the past week, with abundant sunshine and highs above 80, and my body is rejecting summer. Next week looks even worse. Come on. It’s San Francisco. It’s not supposed to be like this here…

Anyhow, Mark and I have our tickets to North Carolina now. More details to come, but the best part is that we get to miss pride week completely. The down side, of course, is that it’s REALLY miserable in North Carolina in late June…

Route 666

I’m sad about the renumbering of Highway 666. Aside from the fact that I’m tired of the Bible-thumpers getting their way (again), this also means the loss of yet one more artifact of the original Route 66, since U.S. 666 got its name by being an offshoot of the more famous road…

Anyhow, Mark and I did a little road trip of our own this weekend, and I got to see one of those few remaining chunks of California I’d not yet visited. Details and pictures to follow…

As for this week, seems there’s a visitor in town…

Lastly, I’m working on a bit of a reorganization of the journals section, so don’t be surprised if some random links don’t work for a few days. Should be fixed shortly…

Still Here

In case you’re wondering if I’m dead or alive, I’m actually just doing a little re-working and re-configuring on the site, and it’s taking a little longer than I’d planned, so look for an update in another day or two…

Updates

OK, so I’m alive, but don’t look for any new content for another ten days or so because I’m leaving for North Carolina tomorrow. So there…

By way of updates:

  • I’ve had this annoying cold/allergy thing going on for three weeks now and it’s getting on my nerves. If it screws up my trip, I will be pissed.
  • The cardiologist decided yesterday that my heart is quite healthy and strong yesterday and that my thyroid is pretty well normal, and that I’m ready for that procedure which should get me back to normal after two years. That happens on 18 July.
  • I’ve been to Susanville and have lived to tell about it. Pictures and stuff soon.
  • I’m still in the process of reorganizing this site a bit, but it’s OK for now. Some older journal permalinks may not work for another week or so until I get all the redirects in place. Sorry.

Coming soon:

I’m gonna go eat barbecue and drink Cheerwine (and probably sweat a lot) now. See you in ten days or so…

Ready to Go

Assorted motel and rental car reservations are now complete…

Why am I so strangely paranoid about aspects of this trip? Not about the actual trip or its itinerary (or participants), mind you, but the logisitics. Maybe it’s because I haven’t flown since before 11 September 2001, and I’m not sure how much more annoying that part will be nowadays. God knows, it would be hard to make air travel any more of a pain in the ass than it already was, but if there’s a way, the airline industry is sure to find it…

This is also my first cross-country trip with a slew of medications which have to be taken everyday, thanks to that thyroid-related heart condition (which may be eliminated soon at long last), so I’m being obsessive about that as well…

Of course, it’s also the first time I’ve seen my mom in over eighteen months and my dad in over two years. And I’ll be expected to show Mark all the excitement North Carolina has to offer when he shows up on Wednesday. Gosh, what pressure. OK, not really…

Anyhow, bags are packed, bills are paid, reading material is being contemplated, and I’ll be gone in eighteen hours, happy in the knowlege that I’ll be missing all the stupid “pride” nonsense around here, not to mention avoiding all its assorted irritating participants…

SF to Charlotte

 

Mark dropped me off at the airport early in the morning on his way to Fresno to see his own parents. I settled in for a very long day of plane rides and airports and cravings for food, nicotine, and a chair which didn’t have another chair six inches in front of it.

My layover was in Dallas, and the size of that city’s Sunday paper plus my new used copy of All the President’s Men kept me relatively entertained in the air.

Mom and Dad were waiting for me in Charlotte. They fed me at a Waffle House there and headed northeast for Greensboro. I marvelled at the highway construction along I-85. We just don’t have that much highway construction in California anymore.

Greensboro

Up early to go pick up the rental car. It turned out that a weekly rental actually cost the same as a four-day rental so I opted for the former.

 

We drove around town a bit in the afternoon, covering downtown and my grandmother’s old neighborhood (which is where I just might want to live if I moved back to Greensboro), and sort of generally seeing all the sites and getting me re-oriented. What I noticed, mostly, was how much more green and attractive North Carolina is compared to California.

 

My mom and I stopped in at a big band concert by the lake in High Point to meet up with my aunt and my cousin’s wife, but it was just too damned hot and mosquito-filled. All the same, I planned to spend as much time as possible with my parents during these first few days because I knew things would get hectic later in the week.

Greensboro Again

I didn’t go for the free cigarette tasting because I hate all the pretense, the palate-cleansing, and the pressure to buy. Besides, the place seemed to be closed. So my mom and I went to Yum-Yum and had hot dogs and ice cream instead.

Actually, I stayed pretty close to home today, going through boxes and boxes of my stuff which my parents have in storage. I do some of this every time I’m home, just to try to reduce the bulk a little. It seems each passing year makes me a little more ruthless and allows me to throw away more stuff. This is good.

Dinner at the cafeteria again. Lest I sound bored by this, I’m most certainly not…

 

Tonight, I went out on my own and did my little circuit of Greensboro, visiting all the neighborhoods my parents would just as soon skip (including the increasingly ghostly and creepy shell of the former Carolina Circle Mall), checking out the supermarkets, etc.

Family Dinner

I worked a little more on the pile of stored stuff today, and then ventured over to High Point to take pictures of old supermarkets and see if I still knew my way around. I was moderately successful on both counts.

 

Tonight, the family (and I mean pretty much the WHOLE family on both Mom and Dad’s sides) came over for dinner. It was great to see everyone, if a little exhausting. Dinner was set up “open house” style, which meant the first guests arrived before 5:00, and the last ones didn’t leave until almost 10:00.

 

I was sort of beat when I hit the bed tonight. And Mark was coming tomorrow…

Danville, Charlotte

Today was a fairly long day, with an awful lot of travel (in two directions). In the afternoon, Mom and Dad took me north to Danville VA to hit the thrift stores and this big discout store they go to up there. I bought a nice new pair of $58.00 Silvertab jeans for $18.00 and got a few shots of “used to be” buildings, one an old Howard Johnson’s restaurant and one a former Burger Chef.

 

We came home down the “Future I-785 Corridor” (now simply known as US 29), had a quick dinner at the cafeteria, and I headed south to Charlotte to pick up Mark at the airport and then go ever farther south.

 

Once grabbed at the airport, we did a late-night drive around Charlotte and had dinner at the very same Waffle House my parents had taken me to on Saturday night. I showed him some of my favorite strips, and downtown, and all the sites you can see in one very fatigued evening.

And then we went back to the Motel 6 and committed several felonies together. Or what we thought were felonies, at least. Actually, they’d just been ruled legal and Constitutionally-protected activities mere hours before…