Smell my feet

It's Halloween but no trick or treaters paid a visit to 204. I guess I'll pile my candy in the giant bowl tomorrow along with everyone else's. Good thing I never go in the front door or up to the front desk so I don't have to walk by the candy despository.

In other news, I went to get a haircut today at the Professional Barbershop at Cameron Village and it cost $17 + tip = $20. That's the most I've ever paid for a haircut and I don't know if I'll do it again. Yeah they did a good job and even used the straight razor on my neck but so does the Friendly Barbershop in Carrboro and that only costs $12 + tip = $15. Is it worth my time and gas to drive over there? Probably not but I think I'll go back like I have if there's a reason I'm heading over there on a weekend. Otherwise it's good to know there's a normal barbershop I can use in Raleigh plus it's in a neat mall redevelopment near downtown.

Who am I?

So the girls of Pio-Nono (friends from Tech) finally made their "Which Pio-Nono Resident Are You" quiz. I know 3 out of the 4 roommates and apparently I'm the fourth that I don't know.


Mocks making cake for diabetics
and forgetful but well intentioned.

You're a Katie!!!

full sized pic at
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg591h/katiequiz.jpg


Which Girl of Pio-Nono Are You?
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Cutting up on a Friday night

Here is my attempt at carving a GT pumpkin. It's not too bad for a first shot, but definitely not as good as the guy's who made the pattern. GT Pumpkin Patterns

Who am I?

Saw this on Jenn's blog.


Bambi


Which DISNEY character are you most like?
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The yellow one's the sun!

This morning while reading the N&O I saw an ad for everyone's favorite comedian Brian Regan. He's coming to Meymandi Hall in Raleigh on November 20 for his "Take Luck" Tour. Who wants to go? Tickets are kind of expensive ($35.50) but I think it'll be fun plus Meymandi is a cool place.

Tickets

Facebook

Here's an interesting article from today's News and Observer about everyone's favorite online connection/random play service.

Making Facebook Friends

Hello Autumn

It finally seems like it's going to be Fall a.k.a. my favorite season. Nothing beats a cool, sunny October Saturday and it looks like this weekend will be another one. In honor of the season here's a bad camera phone pic of my gas fireplace which I got to work yesterday. It's definitely not as nice as a wood burning fireplace but it's better than nothing.



In other news, one of today's Google Quotes of the Day is pretty funny and is attributed to the former president Gerald R. Ford.

"Things are more like they are now than they have ever been."
- Gerald R. Ford

"I'm writing you to catch you up on all the places I've been" - John Mayer "3x5"

Where have I been? Friday afternoon after work I took off for a weekend of fishing and camping in Carolina Beach and Kure Beach. I intended to camp for two nights at Carolina Beach State Park, but I arrived at the park around 7:15 and the gate closed at 7 so I ended up getting a hotel room for the night and thanks to AAA saved 10%. Saturday morning I woke up bright and early at 5:30 and ate the free breakfast at the hotel with the other fishermen. If you didn't know, the fall is the best time for fishing on the NC coast, so there were fisherpeople all over the place making me jealous of their boats. After a bowl of Cherrios I headed to the Kure Beach Fishing Pier. I grew up going pier fishing with my grandparents and cousins at a pier on Emerald Isle so it was nice to get back on the planks after a long absence. I arrived at the pier around 6:30 or so and found that I was late. As I've read and soon realized, the north side of the pier is the place to be and due to my late arrival I was relegated to the south side. While not a bad place to be, I did notice that more fish were being caught on the north side of the pier. I fished until about 11:30 and caught one small Pin Fish which are bait stealers and one Pompano that was slightly bigger than my hand and those are good eating though I gave it to a family that was fishing next to me.

Sunrise on Kure Beach Pier




The Pin Fish


The Pompano


After my jaunt on the pier I picked up some lunch at a local place called Hardee's and then headed to the state park to secure a campsite for the evening. I found a suitable site and set up my tent and then headed out for some exploration. I ventured to the end of the pensinsula to Ft. Fisher State Recreation Area. Ft. Fisher was a Confederate Civil War fort built at the mouth of the Cape Fear River to protect Wilmington. It was the site of the "largest naval and land-sea battle fought in any war up to that time." After two battles it finally secumbed to 56 hips and 3,000 troops in 1865. While I was down there I saw a couple of kayak fishermen and decided I'd rather have a kayak than a canoe even though I've never been kayaking. It seems like a great way to fish being right there on the water plus it's human powered instead of gas/diesel powered and thus is cheaper, quieter, and doesn't directly pollute as much. After visiting the site of the fort I scoped out a fishing spot on a jetty and had a great time watching the waves crash and pelicans scoop up small minnows. Unfortunately I didn't catch anything but still had fun. Following a couple of hours on the jetty I was getting hungry and went to the gourmet store known as Food Lion to figure out what I wanted for dinner. I ended up buying some flounder since I didn't have too much luck fishing. I ended up frying the filets and never had done that before and it was actually good. I also avoided burning the park down with my hot skillet of oil sitting on my Whisperlite stove. I definitely recommend Carolina Beach State Park but make sure you have long pants and long sleeved shirts to ward off the mosquitos. Luckily I had my Columbia fishing shirt and awesome North Face convertible pants/shorts which I think may be my favorite article of clothing I own.

















This morning I woke up at 5:30 again to get packed and get in some early morning fishing. The weather on Saturday was perfect, in the low 80s with a steady breeze to knock down the heat and humidity. Sunday morning brought a cool front and a shift in the wind from the SE to the NE and was noticibly cooler but it's finally fall-like! Unfortunately it was low tide this morning and I didn't catch anything again but it was fishing and thus was fun. I also got to stalk a big bird that looked like it was searching out some food as well. I was surprised how close it let me get to it but I guess it realized I wasn't too much of a threat as I walked in step with it down the beach. I also saw two sail boats get seemingly stuck in the boat channel from the park's marina and that makes sense given that from the high tide mark it looked like the river was 3' lower than high tide and with a big sail boat keel that probably doesn't make for a good combination. Also of interest was a Coast Guard boat that was stationed at the park that went out on a call and flew down the river being pushed by twin 250 hp Honday 4 stroke outboards. Upon it's return I realized that it had a huge machine gun mounted on the bow. When I say huge I mean at least 4-5' of machine gun, it was serious firepower. I left the park about 8:00 and headed back to Raleigh to pick Emily up at RDU after her fall break trip home and now here I am on the couch writing this.





Overall it was an excellent weekend. In high school I went camping with Scouts at least once a month and sometimes two or three weekends a month. After high school that's been reduced to two or three times a year. Now that I have a job and no homework (!!!) on the weekends I think I'm going to try to get back in that mode of camping or at least getting in the woods at least once a month. Now back to work on Monday.

Also, if you haven't seen, The Facebook now has photo galleries. I'll be posting pictures there until I figure out a better option (i.e. paying for webhosting) since the new Blogger photo upload interface is cumbersome and slow when uploading multiple pictures.

"Just country boys and girls gettin' down on the farm" aka The Wondeful World of Gourds

One of the perks of my job is that we get to do fun stuff thanks to the Fun Committee. This afternoon we went to the NC State Fair for a few hours. I had a Philly Cheese Steak, some fries, and funnel cake. Yeah that's a lot of food. Here are a few pictures of price winning vegetables and gourds, yes I said gourds, giant pumpkins.


Big Honkin' Pumpkins


First place hanbaneros


Prize winning turban squash


Watermelons that are almost 300 pounds


An old Allis-Chalmers tractor in the antique tractor exhibit


An International Harvester tractor in the antique tractor exhibit

Need a costume?

If you need a Halloween costume here's a good model for you from Saturday's N&O.

In my mind I'm going to Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine, can't you just feel the moonshine?...

It's been a beautiful weekend and an excellent end to a great week. Tuesday I went to Greensboro for the NCHFA 2005 Housing Forum and met some developers and consultants that we work with and also saw Rob Hammock who was there representing Enterprise Home.

Wednesday through Thursday my boss and I were in Ft. Lauderdale for the BB&T Faith Based Symposium and I had a great time. I met a lot of really nice people and actually got to promote the company and explain tax credits. Hopefully some of the contacts I made will pay off eventually. I didn't really know what to expect as for how the conference would go but I was impressed with the classes and the willingness of the participants to learn. As far as the nonwork stuff, the hotel was excellent and the weather was way too hot for mid-October. Thursday night I went to dinner with Tom, my boss from two summers ago, who is now in Ft. Lauderdale helping run his dad's real estate company and yacht business Broward Marine. Dinner was good, but the cool thing was that Tom offered to give me and Chuck a tour of the yacht (or as he says big boat) factory. We took him up on that offer and got a tour of the facility on Friday morning before heading to the airport. Some quick stats, they build 120', 140', and 160' boats. It takes 18 mths to build a boat and they can produce about 6-9 per year. We also got a tour of Tom Sr.'s yacht which was, as you'd expect, very nice.

Saturday brought a beautiful and fun-filled day of football and friends. Katie, Joel, Ben, and I ate lunch at Bullock's BBQ in Durham before game. That's the second time we've eaten there on a football game day so I guess it's on it's way to becoming somewhat of a tradition. After arriving at Duke we found scalped tickets for $10 each which was pretty good considering at the gate they were $25. After procurring tickets we hit one of the open fields and threw the football around for awhile and that was a ton of fun. I hadn't had a chance to just play like that in a long time so it was much needed. The only downside was loosing my football which I hid in the bushes during the game and it not being there after the game. Onto the game, the first half was horrible, but the much improved play of the second half more than made up for it. The Tech crowd and band were fantastic. Fans that travel to away games are definitely into Tech and the game. The band blew away Duke's band and controlled the stadium. Overall an excellent fall afternoon.



Today I went to First Presbyterian again and I think it's going to stick. I really enjoy the minister and the music. Finally, here's the Carolina blue sky that's been cloudless all day today.

C is for cookie

I got this from the Pio-Nono crew.


And your love smells...

sweet and innocent like chocolate chip cookies.


How Does Your Love Smell?
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Movin' on up to the east side...

I'm back in Raleigh after a great couple of days in Ft. Lauderdale. I'll post an update later but here are some pics from and of the swanky hotel the Westin Diplomat Resort and Spa.

"Sun tanned toes ticklin the sand..."

Conferences #2 and #3

Tomorrow we're going to Greensboro for the 2005 North Carolina Housing Finance Agency Housing Forum. Should be good to get out of the office even though it'll be a long day leaving at 8 and getting back probably around 7.

Speaking of getting out of the office, I'm going with my boss to Ft. Lauderdale for the BB&T Faith Based Community Development Symposium from Wednesday through Friday. It'll be great to have a 3 day conference/trip to see where I could have ended up instead of Raleigh and hopefully I'll learn some stuff too. Another cool thing is that we're staying in another awesome hotel, the Westin Diplomat Resort and Spa. Like my dad told me yesterday I'm going to get spoiled.



In other news, Emily is following in my footsteps, well creating her own footsteps and is now a photographer for The Daily Tar Heel. Here is here first published photo.

"Dinner Benefits Hurricane Victims, Spotlights Youth Work"

Saturday Katie, Joel, and I are going to the Tech vs. Duke game in Durham. Hopefully the result will be in our favor unlike two years ago when we went and watched the embarrassment. You should come too.

UGH!

Well another Braves season bites the dust thanks to some sorry bullpen play. This year they had the team but like always something goes wrong and this time it was the bullpen all season long. I wonder how many blown saves the pen had this season. Hopefully they'll be able to keep the team intact and definitely improve the bullpen for next year.

In Between Times

Here's an interesting article from the NY Times Magazine that my sister sent me this morning about "Twixters" a.k.a. people that are between college and starting a family. I guess that would be me and most of my friends. It's an interesting place to be in life and I guess by the time I figure out it's like to be a twixter I'll probably be moving onto the next phase. I think much of the anxiety that can be part of being in this middle part of life is that up until now we've always had a next step that would occur in a defined period of time. Now things happen when they happen and that's definitely unsettling. Having goals is helpful but not knowing how to directly achieve them or when or if they will be achieved is difficult. I guess we all just kind of cruise along and take the paths that we think will get us where we want and we learn from the wrong paths (are they really wrong if we learn from them?). I guess I should just say read the article.

Post-Teenage Wasteland?

Ugh

Man, I really don't like NC State. Work is going to be tons of fun tomorrow.

August in October

So I'm not very good at updating, but who wants to sit in front of a computer after sitting in front of one for eight hours.

On Sunday one of my favorite playwrights died. I didn't really remember that he was my favorite playwright until I read the list of plays he wrote. August Wilson was a spokesman for the African American community and his media were plays. In 10th grade we read Fences in American Lit. Then my freshman year at Tech the Shelors (former minister and his wife) took Josh and me to see Jitney at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. I highly recommend both plays. Here is his obituary from the NY Times.

This is pretty interesting, saw it on JLew's blog.

Brian took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Seeks affectionate, satisfying and harmonious rela..." Click here to read the rest of the results.