It’s Christmas.
There are a few new photos in the Triad gallery, if you’re so inclined.
We’re a week away from our first Christmas in the new house. There are lights. There are presents. Domesticity abounds.
Mark has posted his salute to the Christmas spirit. I’ve done my annual posting of the official Otherstream Christmas anthem. Our wish lists (mine and his) are both available for last-minute browsing. All is well with the world.
We made our first fire Saturday night. We plan to spend Christmas Eve and morning in the basement, since that’s where we keep the fireplace. This particular Christmas morning will be especially nice since it will (a) be the first one in our new house, (b) be the first one I’ve ever spent adjacent to a fire, and (c) will allow us to wake up and have our morning to ourselves without having to share it with my parents or whomever, but will still allow us to drive over and spend the afternoon with them.
Apologies for all the domestic bliss and stuff, but Christmas is the squishiest time of year, after all.
After six months or so, an update to the “home” page. There’s even an “interactive” floorplan, using 1997’s most cutting-edge technology: the client-side image map. Netscape 1.0 or higher is required:
This is our beautiful new house in Winston-Salem. We took possession on 26 May 2006. If you want, you can see a video I shot the day we closed here. We own it, so we can make all the holes we want in the walls. We can also paint everything lime green if we so choose. Fortunately, we don’t so choose, but still…
It’s a big house. But we’re big boys, so that works out just fine. For comparison purposes, it’s five or six times the size of the dingy hovel I called “home” in San Francisco for thriteen years and a good three times the size of our apartment in Charlotte.
Our house was built in 1963 (the year before me) and has had two previous owners. In the fashion of the time, it’s somewhat overbuilt and should withstand considerable punishment over the years without collapsing. It also features parking, a yard, a shed, utilities that work, and a refreshing lack of mold in the bathroom.
Sadly, there’s no psycho living downstairs, and the neighborhood lacks roaming bands of crackheads and drunk guys who piss on the front steps. There’s also no big gang mural across the street and I’ve yet to find a single used syringe or condom by the curb. I’m happy to say, though, that I’m learning to live without these amenities.
If you’d like to see the inside, you can click on any arrow below to see a photo and description from that viewpoint. If you prefer, you may also use the thumbnails at the bottom of the page.
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OK, so you all thought I was making up my story about people in North Carolina treating the word “license” as a plural just because it ends in an “s” sound, didn’t you? Listen as the presumably well-educated attorney below very clearly says “your license are revoked for thirty days”. You’ll believe me next time, won’t you?
I’ve been pondering this for several weeks now: is a world without its own best pecan pie really a world that I want to live in? Fortuntately, I always end up remembering that I never really liked pecan pie all that much to begin with. I’m usually OK after that.
All the same, I’ll miss Anderson’s. At least, though, its owners chose to close. The owners of Athens, my favorite diner just up the street, didn’t have that option. Athens is being demolished so that CPCC can build another neo-Colonial building. There’s nothing Ch
I’ve been desperately seeking those damned pigs for many years now, especially for this specific commercial.