Friends, it's been a long week in the life of this unemployed complainer.  A recap:

1)  Gym, every day, two weeks.  Pounds lost = 0.  <insert expletives here>

2)  Registered for 17 credits this Fall.  Yeah, haha, I laugh with you.  And it's ok to ask the question...don't you need a new car?  I've seen that piece of s@#$, honey.

3)  Speaking of cars, still searching for an apartment hard (not hard).  If anyone finds a place near New Paltz-ish with around 1200 square feet under $700/mth, let me know, please?

4)  Speaking of apartments, a few too many classes means I can't work between the hours of 9am-7pm, so there goes my part time career at the credit union.  Actually, they rejected my first application, but I was willing to put in one or six more.

5)  Speaking of work...there's really not much to complain about, I am having an awesome summer, suckers.  I'm tan for the first time in three years, and have taken up flute.

Enjoy your desk jobs!!  And yo kids!!

~A

A Tearful Goodbye

I'd like to apologize for abandoning you, reader, for a few days.  I had to wave goodbye to an old friend...Mr. Harry Potter and I had a date on Thursday night, and what can I say - I just wasn't up for blogging it out yesterday, after our sad farewell.

I'd like to take a break from the road trip catalog tonight, and really let my inner nerd go hog wild.  This entry is dedicated to none other than Harry Potter.  The pictures, incidentally, are from the trip I took to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios Orlando, this past April, for my 30th birthday.  Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

For me, this all started when I was dragged to the midnight showing of the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, where people stood in line, dressed like Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore.  

“How do they know what to dress up as, if this is the first movie?” I asked my sophomore year roommate (who had done the dragging).  Her reply was to shake her head at me, as if to say, fool.  I certainly was a fool, and a bored one, standing on line for what seemed like ever for a kid’s movie.  It all changed in the next two hours.

Like many, I can remember who I was with when seeing each movie for the first time, and which theater we were in.  There is camaraderie about HP fans, we find each other, share moments.  We get it.  But will that continue, now that the movies are complete?  I feel it will soon be over.

Watching The Deathly Hallows also reminds us of the bittersweet reading of that final chapter - I finished on 7-31-07, Harry's 27th birthday.

With just as fine a memory, we can recall where we were when first reading each book.  Not just the time and place (and company), as with the films, but a memory that contains an entire life we once lived, past homes and classes and jobs we had, the family and friends we saw each day…the lives we once had that are gone.  

Harry Potter, in ways large and small, helped us get through the challenges of those particular times.  The anticipation of not knowing what happens in the next chapter was a great incentive to get through an otherwise gloomy day; waiting to be alone, pull out the book (back when it still smelled fresh!), and read...and the world disappeared for a few hours. 

The world doesn’t really disappear, of course, because your nose is in a book.  It doesn’t stop when you watch the game on TV, or while you go out drinking with your friends.  It won’t stop while you work out at the gym or play the piano, or smoke cigarettes behind the school.  It won’t stop if your parents get divorced, or your best friend dies.   

 

Our minds knew those problems were waiting for us.  But Harry was going through the same shit.  Hell, he went through worse stuff than most of our trivial day-to-day troubles, but when life really punched us in the gut, he could relate.  We followed Harry and friends on their daily lives, to help us figure out how to get through our daily lives.  The answers were simple:  Use your strengths.  Hold to your values.  Have fun now and then.  Remember what is important.  Friends will see you through.  Don’t judge a book by its cover.  

We also followed him down the dark paths, the dark-night-of-the-soul moments.  He had a lot of those, but hell, so do we – and that’s when Harry really shined.  The answers were, ironically, the same:  Use your strengths.  Remember what is important.  Hold to your values.  Friends will see you through. 

 These books are private journeys each of us took alone, in our bedrooms perhaps, but more so in our minds.  Saying goodbye to the series is enormously saying goodbye to our past selves – our own private histories.   It is painful to see the end to films that have given us so much entertainment and shared joy, but also, even more painful reminders that our private journey with Harry has come to an end.  Harry and friends have walked with us for a long time, held our hand, gave us comfort and strength through the throws of life.   It’s time to wave goodbye for a while, and look into the future, alone.

~A

P.S.  Alan Rickman...you had me at hello.

"What's a grit?"

The Wilmington boardwalk is lovely, and this day was a particularly hot one.

Yes, I was looking for the restaurant Janelle worked at on Teen Mom 2.  That is one crazy bitch.













Love this sign:

SO, we stopped in a nice, air conditioned restaurant on the water, for lunch.

Hailey had some de-LICIOUS cheerios.  (A lot went on the floor, but what fun is it being a baby if you can't make a mess?)

*I* had a Soft-shell crab Po-boy, and a side of grits with parmesan cheese.  

HE-llo!  

This was my first experience with grits.  They..are..amazing.  That's it.

~A

The Price- Gause House

Our first stop in Wilmington was a haunt listed in one of my books:  The William J. Price House, on Market Street (otherwise known as the "Price-Gause House", for the family that later owned the property).

Listed as one of the "most active" in all of Wilmington, the property was Gallow's Hill prior to the mid 1800's, where men were hanged for wrong-doings - and if unclaimed, buried on the spot.  (Never a good place to build a house.)

This is actually (supposedly) an architectural firm, so I couldn't go wandering around the inside....but we did wander around the outside.  Maybe not such a good idea, in hindsight, seeing as it's private property.  Ah, well!  Adventures across the U.S., you know what I mean?

Apparently, from the time a house was constructed in the mid-19th century, there were strange things happening.  Footsteps on the stairs, the smell of tobacco pipe, doors opening and closing on their own...

 The most fascinating phenomenon happens on hot summer nights...an upstairs window frosts up, and the word "HELP" is clearly written in the frost.  I looked closely...no ghost-S.O.S. signals today!

Entities have been seen peering through window curtains, and people often feel a strange pressure in the side yard (where the unmarked graves are located),  Naturally, I had to walk through there, with my Ghost Radar on full-blast:

...I'm sorry to say that although the Ghost Radar app spit out some strange words, and we got a few blurbs on the radar (that supposedly signify "entities"), I didn't see or feel anything paranormal around the house.  Perhaps it was just too nice of a day to stand around haunting?  Still, a cool place to check out! 

We had a hungry, fussy someone with us...and the baby wanted to eat, too (haha)...so, we went down to CAPE FEAR (which is the name of the river), and got us some delicious grub.  We would need it, walking all over Wilmington, and then taking a very private - and creepy - tour of another historical (haunted) building, as a storm was brewing above us.  STAY TUNED!!

~A

Wilmalicious!

     What's a trip to Raleigh without a day-trip to somewhere else?  After the fried goodness of Saturday soaked up all the alcohol in our systems from Friday night, well Sunday was like being born-again.  We began it with some bacon, some more bacon, and some killer omelets (with bacon in them) whipped up by none other than Cousin John (putting the Austin, TX street-food vendors we were watching on No Reservations to shame).

(Hailey had sunscreen for breakfast...mmm)

 Then we decided to put a plan into action (well, that was all Lynne).  We shoved off to Wilmington, NC for the day - about a two hour drive south, down I-40.

 

It's a beautiful little city on the Cape Fear River.  It took me a while to understand this, that "Cape Fear" was the river, I dunno why.  I asked John and Lynne like 8 times..."wait, what is Cape Fear?"  A: "THE RIVER."

 
     I was particularly excited to see Wilmington because my old friend Craig lived there for four months of excellent partying, until he couldn't find a job and came back home.  Although there were lots of entertaining "NC stories" from those times, I remembered two highlights from his excursion:

#1) Craig got chased by locals for wearing a Yankees hat.
#2) Craig climbed a palm tree while intoxicated.

SO, although I brought a Yankees hat to wear around Wilmington (You know, all that NC sun):

...I remembered Craig's words of wisdom, and left it in the car.  Cousin John seconded this choice.

(Sorry, Yanks, but I want to arrive in New Orleans in one piece.  Matter of fact, I kept that hat well hidden from here to Arizona, if I recall correctly.)

Oh!  And I found Craig's palm tree...

...yeah, 5 feet looks a lot like 12 when you've been drinking.  No, I get it, Craig.

Who doesn't?  That's our one claim to fame.

We hit up not one, but two haunted establishments in Wilmington, and had lunch at a very nice restaurant (in addition to homemade milkshakes for the road).  But because it is fully my intention to stretch out the Wilmington visit for at least two more entries, I will leave you here, to go watch Sense and Sensibility. 

Jane Austen and Emma Thompson?  and Hugh Grant?  and...*gasp*...Alan Rickman in...uniform?  I gotta go.

~A

Southern Fried Hangover

I was planning on an early night the first one in Raleigh, I really was.  But there was some serious catching up to do with my closest cousin, and after like four of these:

...which consisted of blueberry juice, rum, and diet something-or-other...
well, all I remember is walking around the neighborhood, as the sun came up.

Then walking around it again, by myself, looking for a cell phone I had somehow zippered into my own suitcase.

 

After "sleeping", John drove us to a heaven-sent drive thru called "Bojangles", and a delicious creation was stuffed into my hands:  Chicken-Egg-and-Cheese on a biscuit.

Can we just talk about this, for a minute?  I have never, ever seen this breakfast sandwich in the North - and we do breakfast, alright.  We do something called a "heart attack sandwich" consisting of three types of meat stuffed into a roll (with scrambled egg and cheese, to balance things out).  Well, they do that in Fishkill, NY, at least, and I have seen brave co-workers eating it in the A.M. 

But this was a glorious breakfast, truly a "Breakfast of Champions"...champions who like to drink until the wee hours of the morning, that is.  They don't have these type of flaky, light, buttery biscuits at McDonalds.  And you can't get this fried chicken at KFC, that is for darn sure.  How do they get fried chicken so delicious down here?  And how do the biscuits come out so.....perfect?

Anyways, the chicken-egg-n-cheese did the trick; it made me drink lots of water, pass out again, and wake up sober.  We took an afternoon hike, as a matter of fact:

...during which I somehow managed to pull a muscle in my arm that lasted for the next four weeks.  Yeah, I know, it was a bad 24 hours.

But then, everything turned around.  We drove to this place and got these things:

Fried pickles!  With ranch dip...OMG they were delicious!  Here are some cute pics of the baby eating fried pickles, which she was decidedly, well, undecided about:

(my favorite)

In an attempt to eat a balanced meal in North Carolina (ahahahaha)...I had a veggie wrap for dinner, which was actually quite delicious.

Oh, and some of John's cheese fries.  

Have I mentioned how much North Carolina rocks?  It does, Raleigh-eating totally rocks the socks off of Poughkeepsie, NY.  Stay tuned for some Wilmington adventures!  Ghost hunting and good eating, alike :)

~A