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2005

5 July 2005

Went up to Greensboro overnight to visit the folks after putting Mark on a plane in Raleigh. This may come as no surprise, but my cable internet service was still down upon my return an hour ago. It may be something fairly major, as all of Time Warner’s phone lines are busy now, so I can’t even call for an ETA or update. Heaven forbid they should have system status updates on their website like Pair and any number of ISPs do…

Dang, dialup sure is slow. Especially when you have actual work to do…

Records

Now don’t think for a moment that I don’t miss Mark a lot since he left on his two-week road trip this weekend. Tonight, however, I was able to get my mind off it very successfully because I have — after thirteen years — finally been reunited with my vinyl. And this is a truly wonderful thing…

I never brought the records west with me. There was just too much stuff and I never really had a way to do it. So they’ve been in the closet of my childhood bedroom in Greensboro since 1992. Until now…

Having been heavily involved in the college radio thing during the early 1980s, I have a fairly interesting collection of stuff, much of which never made it to CD. In addition, I have copies of old syndicated radio shows from the period, like “Rock Over London” and the “BBC College Concert”. And I found tapes of my old radio broadcasts which I’d though were lost forever…

Let the digitizing begin. Anybody wanna sponsor me if I start an internet radio station?

Squishiness and Supermarkets

Damn. I already miss the boy like crazy, and then I read this and it gets me all sniffly on a Monday morning. Come home soon, m’love…

I did my Charlotte research for Groceteria yesterday afternoon at the main library downtown. No, wait. That’s “Uptown”. Nope, that’s not it either. In “Center City”. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Anyway, I was very happy to find that (a) several parking garages are free on the weekends, and (b) Fuel Pizza at 6th and College is open on Sunday. The latter made me especially happy, since I hadn’t realized how long I’d be in the library and neglected to eat before I went…

And yes, I was geeky and entered every address into a spreadsheet last night after getting home. To coin a phrase: I love “spending (my) free time doing things which uncomfortably resemble work for most of the world.” Yes, we very much ARE meant for each other, thanks…

OK. Back to job hunting…

13 July 2005

I’m so glad I no longer live in a place where it’s easer to buy a bag of marijuana than a hamburger. I knew there was some reason people were so much less annoying here. Link, by the way, is via my hubby, who’s sitting at a Starbucks in Fresno enjoying his free T-Mobile account and waiting to become an uncle…

Me, I’m just sitting here frustrated at not being able to buy a pair of shoes tonight. All I wanted was a nice, semi-dressy pair of black oxfords. For the past several years, we’ve been in a period of REALLY UGLY men’s shoes, one which rivals the worst years of the 1970s. Why must everything either be boxy and square-toed and buckly, or (even worse) look like bowling shoes? Something must be done about this, and soon…

Back to the living room for me. In Mark’s absence, I’m doing my annual viewing of the entire Godfather series, and tonight’s feature is Part II, Disc 2. That’s one thing I DO miss about the 1970s: Robert DeNiro looking sexy and studly rather than just sort of looking like Harvey Keitel…

More:

Visit from Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad came down for a visit this morning, their first since I moved back to their end of the country. We had lunch (at the cafeteria, natch), wandered around town a bit, and tried unsuccessfully to shop. It struck me that this was the first time my dad had visited a place Mark and I lived in together (my mom too, for that matter), and the one bed didn’t seem to cause him too much discomfort. Or else, he was just comforted by the nice, cold Piggly Wiggly orange soda I had waiting for him…

Speaking of home, I guess it’s time I updated the Where I Live page with some tentative new photos. Keep in mind that it will look much nicer when we finally buy a couch…

More:

  • Now that Mark has broken the news, I can also now mention the fact that we’re uncles. And damn, I’m glad he’s on the way home…
  • Tonight, for those of you who care or keep track of such things, is the twenty-third anniversary of my first time on the radio. And now that I’ve found it, I can actually listen to a very low-fi recording of that first broadcast…

 

Where I Live

This is where we lived from June 2005 to June 2006. It’s a bland and soulless suburban apartment complex in Charlotte NC, and I loved it for a while. The old apartment had “character”. The new one had appliances, and plumbing that worked, and nearly twice as much space. In addition, it cost much less than the old one. What was not to love?

 

This ass the living room. It looked cozier and more comfortable once we got a couch. There was also a dining room. I’d never had a dining room before…

This was the kitchen and the dining room. The kitchen had a dishwasher and a disposal, and the doors led to a laundry room. We were very excited to have a laundry room. And in the dining room, you could see our lovely table and chairs from Wal-Mart…

This was the office. We finally had all out books in one place, and my collection of old radios was adequately displayed…

 

David’s desk and Mark’s desk…

 

This was the bedroom. It was more than twice as large as our old bedroom, which was about the size of the walk-in closet…

Finally, there was the bathroom. Actually the bathrooms. There were two. It was good…

And that was our home. Thanks for visiting…

Hotels

The latest from the City of Doom: the Board of Supervisors is considering yet another bit of reactionary legislation, this one aimed at the owners of the Fairmont Hotel, who want to convert a 1960s-era tower annex (not the historic, original hotel) into condominiums. It would apparently become illegal now to convert transient hotel rooms into residential units. Of course, there are already prohibitions against turning residential SRO hotel rooms into transient units as well…

Perhaps there should just be one city ordinance which forbids any change of usage whatsoever within any building in San Francisco. Unless, of course, that building is to be turned into a homeless shelter or a medical marijuana dispensary…

Cross-country Family Stuff

I get to have my husband back tomorrow night, after nearly three weeks. I was thinking about it last night as I drove home from visiting my parents in Greensboro (and taking the really wrong scenic route, which gave me lots of extra time for thinking), and I’m pretty sure they’ve probably never been away from each other for more than a week or so at a time…

Of course, there was never family on the other end of the country in their case — other than me, and I was shared. In fact, all my aunts and uncles but one have lived within thirty miles of the towns where they were born for their entire lives. Men of their generation got their wanderlust out of the way in the military, but sometimes I think some of the women — my mom and my aunts — feel just a little regret at never having lived away for a while…

That said, I’m really glad my mom is at least comfortable traveling even if my dad prefers to stay at home. She gets around pretty well, and I keep encouraging her to blow my inheritance getting around even more…

Bookstore?

After a little over a month, I think I’m pretty successfully reacquainted with Charlotte. I’ve learned which Food Lion stores I like and which ones are to be avoided. I’ve settled on the best local news channel. I’ve pretty much figured out which locations are best reached by using the trendy new beltway and which are better served by the ever-mysterious old standby Charlotte 4. I’ve found all the local Chick-fil-A locations and cafeterias, and even passable pizza…

What I’ve yet to find is a really good, fairly large used book store. Ideas? The one at Central and The Plaza is definitely NOT that bookstore, in case you were planning to suggest it…