Menu Close

2006

Bye Bye, Dottie’s

Dottie’s Diner on Stratford Road will be closing this weekend.

Open since 1990, the place still bears a strong resemblance to its predecessor of 30-plus years: Your House, a central North Carolina chain that operated from the 1950s through the 1990s. At least one location is still open, on Greensboro’s Battleground Avenue in a replica of its original building. Your House was a 24-hour diner, something of a knockoff of the Toddle House and Hull-Dobbs chains that were found all over the country in those days, and a precursor to the Waffle House of today.

I grew up eating at the Your House on High Point Road with my dad. We’d very often go there on Saturday mornings for waffles. My dad would meet his friends there in the evenings to sit at the counter, chat, drink coffee, and harmlessly flirt with the waitresses. In my early twenties, I’d go there with my own friends for the double cheeseburger that seemed so necessary at 2:30 in the morning after a night of drinking cheap draft beer somewhere.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this except to say that these little diners are the real 1950s diners, and not some gay-ass imitation with fake neon and old records nailed to the wall. A sizable portion of our male population once got a significant portion of its sustenance from them, and from places like these, and it’s sad to see these little dives go.

I’ll also miss it because it was one of the first places Mark and I ate breakfast in Winston on one of our first exploratory trips here last winter. And they have really good grits.

The “Rat Community”

Outcry that 1,000 rats were euthanized:

Tina Bird of Campbell said rat fanciers were in the process of mobilizing when the rodents were killed.

“Maybe they would have been better advised to leave the animals in their horrible conditions until we, the rat community, had a few days to get moving,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Be sure that animal lovers across the United States will be scrutinizing Petaluma’s actions and culpability for this slaughter.”

I’m sure Petaluma is just shaking to its very foundations in fear. Maybe Tina should’ve gotten into her Volvo and driven the 1000 diseased and damaged rats down to her house in Campbell. The “rat community” indeed. Fucking morons.

Paranoid

New homeowner paranoia. We have a small water leak related to one of the showers that I’m trying to get fixed. A few minutes ago, right after taking a shower and lying down in bed, I heard this sort of rumble, followed by the sound of rushing water.

Panic-stricken, I ran into the hall just in time to remember that I’d set the timer on the dishwasher to start right as I’d be going to bed. Which, of course, explained the noise I’d just heard.

It’ll get less scary soon, right?

MySpace. Blecch.

Funny, I was just about to write this same journal entry, almost word for word, particularly with respect to cheesy Geocities and Tripod sites from eight or nine years ago. I’ve never seen a MySpace page that wasn’t absolutely horrible and ugly and tacky and annoying.

The only difference is that I would’ve mentioned how annoying it is that random MySpacers are always trying to do inline links to my graphics from their godawful sucktastic monstrosities, thus stealing the bandwidth I pay for. But I’ve pretty much thwarted those attempts, with a few lines of code.

I also would’ve added this quote from the original article:

Or perhaps it’s MySpace’s “social” element that disturbs me. I’m a misanthrope. Everyone on MySpace seems young and happy and excited and flip and approachable, and this upsets me. Still, at least the teenage MySpacers are getting on with the business of being young and alive, unlike the fustier elements of the “blogosphere”, who just waste the world’s time banging on and on about how important the “blogosphere” is and how it spells the end of every old notion ever, when the truth is that, as with absolutely every form of media ever, 99% of the “blogosphere” is rubbish created by idiots.

Especially the word “blogosphere”. A word I refuse to write without sneery ironic quote marks either side of it. Because I hate it and it’s crap and I JUST DON’T WANT TO KNOW.

I think I like this cranky Brit…

Reclaiming My Youth

My current task is to create some level of order in my new office. I’ve had mixed success.

I’d been holding off until I got a new desk, which I finally ordered last week for delivery on Thursday. So this weekend, I set about finding a place for it to land when it arrives. I thought it would be nice and easy once I got all the records organized and filed away in their new home in the closet, but there just keeps being more stuff.

The fact that I’m simultaneously trying to reclaim all the stuff my parents have been storing for me for fifteen years hasn’t really helped. But just look at this enticingly sexy sample of the stuff I’m finding in some of those boxes:

You should’ve heard the noises I made as I unpacked the above, along with a complete, unopened and unread Sunday Winston-Salem Journal from 1978 (with ads), and my collection of miniature Jungle Book figurines.

Pardon me while I re-live a childhood that may or may not have been mine…

My New Office

My new 210 square foot office:

The old bed in the new office:

You’ve still only seen a little more than half of it. I turn cartwheels for fun in the other half.

I love this house.

Randomly Monday

Dollar store tikis are a wonderful thing.

My week is all about teaching myself Flash and PHP for a project I’m working on, a couple of years after everyone else in the world did so. That should mean that all my questions have already been answered online by now, right?

Alas, I fear there’s no answer for my other question du jour. My G5 apparently doesn’t like being in an enclosed space like the CPU cabinet in my new desk. Even with the door open — which I had to do because it’s also too big for the CPU cabinet in my new desk — the fan is still running almost constantly once it heats up and I fear for its body temperature when it’s getting a real workout.

That’s what I get for having a really hot computer, huh?

Sorry.

Randomly Monday Again

And what kind of liver should you be? Why, the best damned liver you’re capable of being, by gosh.

I promise I’ll be ending this unplanned sabbatical very soon. Not that you probably care whether I do so or not, but there is birthday present solicitation to consider.

And, by the way, who knew that my birthday is also National Duran Duran Appreciation Day? I sure didn’t until I heard it on the radio coming back from Charlotte this evening. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I think I’m slightly more pleased by the fact that I share a birthday with Rosanna Arquette.

Happiness Is…

Happiness is:

  • Having a Target gift card and a $5.00 off grand opening coupon on the day that the first Animaniacs DVD is released.
  • Finding out that the expensive bathroom repair you were dreading is actually a really easy and cheap fix.
  • Hearing “Ah Leah” by Donnie Iris on the surprisingly inoffensive local radio station that you find yourself listening to in the car lately.
  • Seeing a classic movie in a 1927 movie palace, even if you are sitting next to a stupid, drunk middle-aged couple who are louder and ruder than most teenagers.
  • Having one of those breakthrough moments when you realize that all this PHP stuff is actually starting to make sense.

On the other hand, ambivalence is realizing that, after years of consciously avoiding it, I’m about to become a member of the ranks of Americans with cell phones. It seems a necessary evil, now that I’m in a place where I spend so much more time in my car than on foot. Not, mind you, that I’ll be conversing while driving. Heck, I rarely even converse on my land line; I can’t imagine that a cell phone will suddenly alter my distaste for telephone conversations in general. No, I just like the idea of being able to call AAA when needed.

Don’t worry, though. I still don’t do instant messaging. And while the new house does have a doorbell, you can’t hear it from the den.