Road trip, day the second

I woke this morning, seemingly healed from my close encounter with the Waffle House, and hit the treadmill for a brief workout (briefer than I would have liked, as the room had no air conditioning) before heading back to Georgia. The drive was pleasant, the GPS fairly reliable, and I had no problems until I got off I-75 and started heading to Colbert.

I've noticed that there is an inverse correlation between the urbanization level of a place and the number of auto shops and Baptist churches it holds. When you start seeing an overwhelming number of nondenominational churches, or churches housed in manufactured homes, you know you're getting out into the sticks. This relationship does break down, however; past a certain critical limit of salvage parts and sad-looking places of worship, everything disappears and you're left with only God's country, which in northwest Georgia means rolling hills of green that go on forever, crossed by oddly-named roads of dubious condition and pedigree. These are single-track roads masquerading as two-lane, their surfaces patched and pitted, and the trees grow overhead in a sort of half canopy as you pass through. It's almost claustrophobic in there, especially when you're not entirely certain where you're going, and once I stopped thinking of banjos, I recalled Stephen King's Lovecraftian story, "Crouch End," and hoped I wouldn't see signs for R'lyeh or some such around the next bend ("Beware the goat with a thousand young!" etc.)

Towns exist around Colbert, but most are wide patches that have grown up along the railroad tracks. To get there, I drove through Royston, the birthplace of Ty Cobb, and that was a booming metropolis compared to my destination. Again, thank God for the GPS, as there is no doubt in my mind that I would never have found the place if I hadn't been guided. Once I did stumble upon it, I realized two things: I had two hours to kill, and I wasn't going to find food in Colbert. Deciding a field trip was in order, I set my course for Athens and headed off in search of lunch.

Athens is a college town of the first order - it puts New Haven to shame - and to find the strip of restaurants and shops, I did what anyone would do: I programmed my GPS to find the nearest Starbucks to campus, then drove smack into the downtown area. I had lunch at Picante's, a decent Mexican place, then walked around, looking at shops and sweating in my dress clothes, as Athens was at least 70 degrees this afternoon. What was fun was explaining the nature and production of druzies to the girl behind the desk at the bead shop, who probably should have known, seeing she was trying to sell a gorgeous druzy and citrine necklace. A steal at $450, right?

Having eaten and strolled, and killed as much time as I could, I got back in the car and headed off to my interview, then set a course for Atlanta and my Holiday Inn, which is located in what appears to be a combination of Little Korea and Little Mexico. Fortunately, there's a restaurant on site, and the salmon was decent, even if the waitress hadn't the faintest idea how to operate the register. No matter; I've had a decent meal and I'm not sick to my stomach, which is all one can ask for, really.

Finally, a few interesting sights of the day:
1) Rhett Butler apparently sells real estate around Athens. Either someone's getting tacky with the agency's name, or someone's mom really loved Gone With the Wind.
2) A billboard for Bond, James Bond bail bonds. Yes, that's actually the name of the company.
3) This one was from yesterday, but I finally remembered to look it up tonight: there's a stretch of I-85 in Jackson County, Georgia named in honor of Lauren "Bubba" McDonald. Speaking as a Lauren...man, what did you do to your parents to make them hate you?

Road trip, day the first

If anyone from my writing workshop read that title and groaned inwardly, I swear, this has nothing to do with my dissertation novel, Rock City, or Layla and Wally. Really. Promise.

Currently, I'm sitting in my surprisingly well-appointed room at the Holiday Inn outside Anderson, SC. The bed is huge, the couch seems passable, and the Wi-Fi is free, so I can't complain. My only problem is the lack of local dining options - we're limited to McDonald's or Waffle House, and I'm having Scholars' Bowl flashbacks as I type. I could, of course, drive on down the road until I reached civilization and/or a real restaurant, but I've been driving all day and I'm really not feeling the whole I-85 thing right now. Besides, I have gourmet cake waiting, but more on that in a minute.

I left home at 7 AM in my spiffy, albeit cruise control-less, rental car, headed for parts unknown with only my Google directions and Hertz GPS to guide me. Once past Atlanta (and boy, that's a hurdle - I don't know how anyone learns to drive in that city, because if I had tried to learn in Atlanta, I would have ended up a whimpering mass on the side of the road), I had smooth sailing until I reached Anderson. Having allotted entirely too much time to driving, as usual, I found myself with nearly two hours to kill, so I parked and took a much-welcome stroll.

In many ways, downtown Anderson reminds me of Vicksburg, minus the casino boat. The storefronts are renovated 19th-century designs, and the downtown strip has plenty of pedestrian traffic and ample parking. I ate at a nice deli, then found a great little shop that sells beads and semi-precious necklaces, and bought myself a string of rough-hewn turquoise nuggets (it was either that or the lapis disks, and I went cheap at $50). Then I found a Thunderbird Motel and laughed - let's talk retro.

My interview went well, and concluded with a takeaway box of cake, which I am eagerly anticipating post-Waffle House and possibly pre-gym (we shall see whether the gym comes tonight or first thing tomorrow). I had called Brandon earlier to ask where her mother's store was located, and, thinking I had enough information, plugged what I had into my GPS and set off for Greenville.

Don't get me wrong, the GPS is fabulous. I would never have found Greenville without it, and I'm not sure what we did before these car systems came along. Nevertheless, half an hour later, I realized I was definitely on the wrong Main Street, and so I called Brandon back and got the address. I'm glad I did - her mother was as sweet as could be and gave me guides - and after I left the shop, I strolled through Greenville's shopping district until I found Falls Park. Must be nice to have a waterfall downtown; being from Birmingham, the great landlocked metropolis of the southeast, I wouldn't know. Birmingham needs to learn from Greenville - I'd definitely go back.

And now, slightly road weary but none the worse for my adventures, I'm off to find dinner. This may just turn into an early night after all.
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Post-dinner post script: Waffle House is as godawful as I remember. That has to be the greasiest omelet and hashbrowns I've ever had. Cake it is.

On the road again

After nearly a four-month stint in one place, I'm off on a road trip bright and early tomorrow morning. It'll be me, a selection of mix CDs, and my rental car - which, I should add, has a built-in GPS system but lacks cruise control - against the open road, all the way to South Carolina, but I'm hoping to come home with some good information. One of the other interns is also traveling this week, but in North Carolina. Sounds like someone's getting a phone call tomorrow...

The rental's built-in GPS means I won't have to rely on my new TomTom, which is sad, as I had programmed my unit to give me directions in the voice of Yoda. "In 50 yards, right you must turn" might get a little old after a while, but it would make me laugh. We'll see if I can't pull my faithful Jedi TomTom out at some point this week.

In other vehicular news, my Beetle is being repainted in the morning so it will no longer look like this:

Lovely, isn't it? I'm so good, I scare myself. The car was going to feature in a photo shoot today, even with its scrapes, but alas, the weather refused to cooperate and the shoot was moved, meaning they'll need another car. Too bad for me.

Finally, a moment of "Dear God, why does everyone think I have an accent?!?" randomness: while standing in line at Panera, waiting for my lunch, the lady next to me commented on my necklace and asked where I'd bought it. I told her it was from a Fair Trade store in Edinburgh.

"Is that where you're from?" she asked.
No, I explained, I just went to school there.
She seemed confused at this and asked where I lived. Eventually, we established that I'm a native, to which she gave me the old "You have a bit of an accent" line.
Yes ma'am, I know. I know.

Not the best day of my life

I had plenty on my mind Friday afternoon when I got ready to leave work. There was the traffic to consider. My upcoming trip. The movie that night. The possible rain.

The one thing that seemed to have left my mind was any sense of three-dimensional geometry. I got into the car, put it in reverse, and mentally did a slow-motion "NOOOOO!!!" a few seconds later when I cut the turn too sharply and scraped into the cement support pole.

I got out of the car and checked the damage. Not pretty. "It's okay," I thought, trying to calm myself down. "I'll just go to Royal and get them to buff it out."

Half an hour later, the idiot girl behind the desk at Royal's body shop gave me the bad news: $627 to repaint the car. "It's not that bad," she drawled.

"What do you mean, it's not that bad?" I exclaimed, resisting the urge to throttle her or say words of which my mother would not approve. "It's bad when you're on a minimum-wage budget!"

"Uh...yeah, I guess."

The man helping her suggested I take Pledge to the car and get the worst of the white marks out. Consequently, when my father pulled into the driveway, I was bending over the car with paper towels and the can of furniture polish, rubbing as well as I could and trying to avoid getting anything on my work clothes. Before then, however, I'd run by Estes, the place where we get our tires, and asked for a recommendation of anyone who could fix my car for under Royal's price. The owner gave me the name and number of his son-in-law, and I left him a message.

Saturday morning, I had resigned myself to forking over the exorbitant fee when the son-in-law called back. I drove out to his place in Pelham, which is so new that the main phone line doesn't work yet. I wasn't sure exactly what I would find, but he launched into his credentials almost immediately.

"When you said 'green Beetle,' I knew exactly what you were talking about," he began, examining the scratches. "Green and red are the two worst colors. Green gets milky, and red fades to pink. You don't notice it, but if you try to repaint it, it's obvious."

"It took Royal three times to get the paint right when they fixed the car after my sister's wreck," I told him.

He nodded, then reassured me he had done Volkswagons, even annoyingly painted ones, before. "I have a formula."

The turnaround was 24 hours. "And the price?" I asked, biting my lip.

He studied the car a moment longer. "$300?"

I could have hugged him. Instead, I took his card and said I'd call him. If all goes according to plan, the car will go in Tuesday night and be back when I return from my trip. Happy day!

Being spontaneous

I love moments of random spontaneity.

The following conversation (roughly) transpired at lunch yesterday, after someone got a few of us jonesing for Fun Dip by pulling a candy stick from her purse:

"Are there any candy stores in town?"
"Yeah, SoHo Sweets. It's sort of new."
"Where's that?"
"Homewood. SoHo. You know, by Zoe's."
"No."
"Do they have various kinds of gummy things?"
"I...think so? Maybe?"
"What about old candy? Necco Wafers?"
"I don't know." (Pauses, considers the half-hour left in the lunch break.) "You guys want to go now?"

What followed was a mass exodus in search of candy. Most of the party settled for gelato. Even considering that I only had the small size of the Peanut Butter Cup flavor, I was grateful for step class this morning.

Random fun

I've found a new way to waste time...

Futoshiki.

It's a logic puzzle in the same vein as Sudoku. Unfortunately, if you forget what it's called and try to find it by entering random parts of the word, you come up with some fairly obscene hits.

The main difference between Futoshiki and Sudoku is the addition of greater than/less than rules. Take this one, for example:
Fit the numbers 1-5 into the grid in such a way that no number is repeated in any row or column and the rules are followed. The box between the 5 and 4 could logically be either 2 or 3, but not 1. Simple enough, right?

Keeps me off the streets, at least...

Yessss...

It's slightly after 7 AM. I just woke up. The temperature is low, but the sun is shining and the electricity is still on.

I'm sore in a few places, so I stayed home from the gym today. This means that I got 10.5 glorious hours of sleep last night.

Good morning, world!

Blackout

I woke this morning at 3:30 to lashing rain, a lightning storm, and a lack of electricity. Fearing a puddle in the foyer, I grabbed a towel and ran to put a stopper at the door, then relaxed as the power came back on.

Then it went off again, this time for the rest of the night.

I don't sleep well once disturbed, and for the next hour and a half, I lay in bed, wondering whether 1) we would have any tornadoes, 2) we would get power by morning, and 3) it would be worth it to go to my intended 5:30 step class. At one point, I turned on my laptop and decided to play on Facebook to numb myself back to sleep, only to realize that, ha, the wireless router was also out with the electricity.

I must have slipped into a doze around 4:30 or so, because I woke again, this time with significantly less pep, when my Jeeves clock roused me at 5. Seeing no change in the power situation, I packed a change of clothes, shampoo, and a hair dryer in my gym bag and headed for the Rec. Class was good, even before caffeine, but the best part was being able to dry my hair afterwards.

My dad met me in the foyer upon my return, fully dressed and with our dinner table votive in his hand. I figured then that it would be one of those days, and began nursing a Coke.

Alabama moment

My mother graciously re-upped the family's membership at the Hoover Rec this weekend ($240/year is the senior family rate - that covers me until May, and then it's only $100 more for me to continue on the plan), so now I can sweat in relative comfort. Granted, treadmill running is boring as hell - I kept looking at the distance indicator and comparing it to lake laps, and wondering what was taking so long - but it beats having to run around in three layers, sweating through your gloves and wishing for June. The good parts about the gym are the weight room, the likes of which I haven't seen since I left Edinburgh last August, and the classes, which I'll try tomorrow. Come on, doesn't 5:30 AM Cardio Step sound like a great way to wake up?

Anyone?

Anyway, as I was driving home this morning - it's only a five-minute trip - the SUV in front of me came to a halt, and I peered around to see what the hold-up was, thinking it would be a cat.

It was a possum. Honest to God, it was a possum, just taking his sweet time crossing the road.

They do exist in Hoover. Fancy that.

Long weekend

For the first time since I started kindergarten, I had Presidents Day off this year. Staring down a long weekend is always fabulous, especially when you're coming off a week of dress rehearsals, one of which was on Valentine's Day. I'm sorry, but there's something horribly depressing about Requiem practice on Valentine's Day. It just doesn't bode well for my love life, ya know?

Anyway, we did our two Brahms concerts (3 of 5 stars, according to the Birmingham News critic, but he's a jerk and sits too close...and he only ragged on the sopranos and tenors, anyway), and by Sunday, I was ready for a day of rest. We had a farewell soup and sides luncheon for Sarah, who's off to rock Midland, Texas in a Ron Burgundy sort of way (She's kind of a big deal. People know her.), and I went to bed that night eagerly awaiting the next morning, when a group of us would make a pilgrimage to the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro.

What, you may ask, is the Unclaimed Baggage Center?

It happens all the time - your luggage doesn't meet you at the carousel. Sometimes, if it's my sister's bag, it ends up on the wrong continent. Other times, it winds up lonely and discarded, and then the airlines sell it to this group in Scottsboro. They then dissect the bags, dry clean and tag as needed, and open the goods up to the waiting public.

I kept hearing "Schadenfreude" in my head all weekend, but swore I was doing my patriotic duty for Presidents Day by improving the American economy. As it turned out, however, the joke was on us.

Let me tell you a little about Scottsboro, Alabama. It'll have to be a little, because honestly, there's not much to say. Scottsboro makes Fort Payne look like a booming metropolis. It's tiny. It's tucked up near the Tennessee border, about 30 miles from I-59. Unlike Fort Payne, it doesn't even have a band or a claim to global fame - all it has is the Unclaimed Baggage Center.

We didn't know this when we set off, so Jason, Brandon, and I were looking forward to the excursion when piled into Jason's car for our day trip. After a pit stop to take pictures of Brandon's smashed car (including one of her hugging the car goodbye), we set off, stopping only for gas and for lunch in Fort Payne. Don't you love little restaurants where everyone stares at you as you walk in the door? Still, they make a good cheese sandwich.

Somewhat satiated, we headed out into what can only be described as God's country, hoping for bargains. What we found was, to put it mildly, disappointing; the place was rather like a flea market with a high price point. Granted, they had some jewelry and a few fur coats, plus a selection of iPods, a couple electric guitars, and two saddles, but the only thing any of us bought was a paperback, and that cost me a whopping $4.36.

There was one bright spot, however. They had this:

It's Hoggle, from that Bowie classic, Labyrinth. (Thanks, Roadside America, for taking a picture!) The puppet arrived in someone's suitcase and has lived there ever since. Go figure.

Frustrated, we tried the knock-off unclaimed baggage store across the street. This proved to be a mistake, as the proprietor was of the surly, probably-has-a-gun-under-the-desk variety, and the best item for sale in the shack was a giant box of Tampax. Doesn't get much better than that, I suppose.

Tiring of this exercise in futility, we got back in the car and headed home, planning to reconvene that evening for pub trivia. As I was driving back to Hoover, I couldn't believe I'd failed in my mission to acquire cheap goods. On a whim, I pulled into the TJ Maxx parking lot - I'd only been in once before - and took a look at the women's racks. Half an hour later, I emerged with a black Dana Buchman sport coat and a khaki linen Tahari jacket, for which I paid only $175. If I'd been at Saks, they would have set me back around $825, so I felt pretty good about myself. I'll be going back to TJ Maxx.

Trivia was fun but for the cigarettes, to which I am annoyingly allergic. We only missed one point all evening, but so did three other teams, one of which had fewer players and thus won. If only we'd known that a Black Velvet is Guinness and champagne, we wouldn't have had this problem.

Evil empires and all that

As a Republican Southern Baptist from Alabama who spent the better part of her undergraduate Sundays at Mass, doesn't care about her friends' orientations, wants to see women in the pulpit, and has a fairly strong conviction that the world is, in fact, more than 6,000 years old, I've been associated with various evil empires for most of my life. This week, it pays off.

Along with the preceding, I'm also a bred PC user. I grew up with an IBM my parents bought from the Spiegel catalogue, a computer with 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 drives but no CD reader, a sweet little machine running on an 386 processor with glorious Windows 3.1. My mother instructed me never to push the Delete key, as she was afraid I might remove something important. Consequently, I got cozy with Backspace.

My school computers were even sadder than what I had at home - they had actual boot diskettes, and you could only access SimCity through DOS. We had a few Apples floating around, but I never used those but for Oregon Trail and Scarab of Ra. Now those were some good times.

Around sixth grade, after I complained that my friends were teasing me because we didn't have a color printer and my mother realized that this newfangled AOL 3.0 needed more space than the old computer could give, we got a spiffy new one with Windows 95 and the Aptiva software package. It even had a CD-ROM. I loved that thing, and then I got my first laptop, a Gateway Solo that weighed about 10 pounds, and forgot all about the PC. Since then, the family has upgraded and I've been through two more laptops (a giant Averatec and a much smaller Vaio), and I spent many of my college vacations troubleshooting issues with the family computer. I've done things in the registry no novice should be allowed to do, but everything still seems to be working, at least for the time being. (We do need to re-up our anti-spyware software, after all.)

Suffice it to say I've seen my share of frozen screens, error messages, and the Task Manager, but I can't help it - I love my Windows, and I love my PCs. Don't get me wrong, Apple's products are intuitive and shiny, but there's somehow less of a challenge when the icon jumps up and down, practically screaming, "Pick me, pick me, you moron! Click the button!" These Apple features have come in handy, however, as I've been forced to jump in and use them at work since my college internships.

And yet, beginning tomorrow, some of my department's Macs will be replaced by - gasp! - Dell desktop computers. The staff isn't too pleased to be losing their Macs, especially since almost no one is comfortable with PCs, but we're all going to PC training on Thursday to get us on the same page.

The Mac tech called me today to see which programs he'd have to transfer to my new computer. While I had him on the phone, I asked how useful the three-hour PC seminar would be, since I already know my way around XP. "You're going to be bored for quite a bit of it," he said. Good times.

Other than that, today was a mixed bag. I had a great impromptu lunch with a friend at Urban Standard, a relatively new cafe/coffeehouse on the north side that has the best grilled cheese sandwiches I've ever tasted (they come with balsamic dipping sauce), but then I had a mall pretzel for dinner. I found a copy of Live at The X Lounge III at What's on Second for $2, but I fell down a few stairs on my way to purchase it. I had to drive to Brahms practice in a monsoon, but I saw a fox running across the road when I was leaving work, and that made it all better.

Taking the scenic tour of Birmingham

I realized somewhere around mile 10 of my half-marathon today why the iPod was invented. No, it wasn't so listeners could have their entire CD collections at their fingertips. It was so runners coming down off a hilly course and flagging with three miles to go wouldn't get that perennial classic, "Running on Empty," stuck in their heads.

Man, I missed my iPod.

I had heard headphones were allowed at Mercedes, but when I checked over my race instructions last night, I found otherwise. Reluctant to leave my Queen at home but unwilling to risk having my iPod confiscated, I left it behind this morning and decided to run my first distance race without music. Considering the last time I ran anything without music was ninth grade, this development only made my stomach knot more tightly.

I'm going to be honest, I was nervous going into this race today. Prior to this morning, I'd hit the half-marathon point exactly once, and that was a) on a flat course, b) in December, and c) before I was out for the better part of a month with an injury. Suffice it to say I was feeling under-trained already - hey, I've really only been running since October - and rumors were circulating about the course. Mercedes is a Boston qualifier, and they make you work for it. Birmingham's anything but flat, though you wouldn't know this from the Vulcan 10K, which has only one decent hill. The Mercedes course, on the other hand, is bitchy. The city's fine, but around the fourth mile, you hit the bottom of Greensprings, which is a solid uphill mile. Following that ordeal (the band at the top helps you on), you hit Valley, which undulates, and then the road descends (briefly) into English Village. Once in the Village, you head for the hill and start making the trek back into Birmingham proper. By mile 9, the worst of the hills are behind you, but that's small consolation when you're running on empty.

Undaunted (and blissfully unaware of exactly how demanding the course is), I was dropped off downtown at 6:15, bib pinned in place and chip strapped to my shoe, and spent most of the following 45 minutes waiting in bathroom lines. When better than 3,000 people are racing, there are long bathroom lines, especially for the women. We just can't be rushed. While waiting, I happened to notice that at least a quarter of the people around me had earbuds and iPods, and thought unkind things about reading the race rules. Slipping out of the waiting area just before 7, I entered the chute between the 9- and 10-minute mile groups, and waited for the 7:03 (don't ask) gun.

The first few miles were largely flat, and everyone seemed to be doing well, even the asses who had been smoking stogies in the chute before we started. Several people laughed when we came upon the first portalets and found racers lined up outside, but the biggest shock of the morning, at least for me, was looking down and seeing that the ex-Marine-type beside me was running barefoot. Some people just feel that need to be a little more hard-core than everyone else, I guess.

We left town, heading for Greensprings, and then the yells started - "Man, I love this hill! Yay, Greensprings!" - which were most definitely facetious. I didn't allow myself to walk on that hill - we were only four miles in, after all - but I was a bit shaky at the top, and midway down Valley, I gave up and walked for a few minutes. This pattern continued for most of the remaining hill course, running as far as possible and then walking to recover, but I wasn't the only one who hit the steep English Village hill, looked up, and said, "Ah, screw it, I'm taking my sweet time on this one."

To keep us from collapsing, refreshment stands had been set up at nearly every mile, and the small army of volunteers was busy handing out water, Powerade, gels, and bits of fruit as we passed. I became fond of those stands very quickly, and so when I saw one on the south side of Birmingham, I picked up the pace, hoping for another drink. Then I got close enough to hear them, and realized this stand was passing out Twinkies and beer. Something tells me it wasn't an official stop on the route.

Finally, wet, cold, and more than a little crusty, I crossed, got my medal and finisher's shirt, picked up a banana and couple of Powerades, wrapped myself in glorified aluminum foil to stay warm, and met my mother and Sarah, who had come down to watch me finish. It took me two hours, 12 minutes and change from the gun start to finish - the chip results aren't up yet - but by the gun time, I was the 493rd woman to cross. I'm not winning cash any time soon, but I finished respectably, and that was the goal in the first place - just finishing.

I changed clothes, hit the after-party, and discovered, once again, that I don't do well with food after a long run, no matter how good the barbeque sandwich tastes going down. Skipping the Michelob and the massages, I called my poor mother, who made her third 20-mile round-trip to Birmingham today, and went home before I could be sick or pass out. Once back at the house, Mom gave me a most welcome massage, and then I curled up on my bed, slightly sweaty clothes be damned, and didn't move for two hours.

It's 9 PM, and I'm going to bed. Something tells me I'm going to be a bit on the stiff side at 6:30 tomorrow morning, but there's no time for that - it's Brahms week.

One of those weeks

Ever have one of those weeks in which it feels like you're running on a treadmill and can't find the red emergency button?

To summarize: work, Brahms, proofreading, vote, doctor, work, emergency baby shower gift, House, proofreading, get Brahms score bound, work, proofreading, work, mix crabmeat dip, finally get a 20-minute run in, finally get back to Duma Key, which I haven't touched all week, work, bake crabmeat, dinner party (thanks, Jerry!), more Duma Key.

And...breathe. I'm going to the pre-race expo in a bit, then out for fro-yo with Sarah. Then I'm coming home and taking it easy, because tomorrow's race starts at 7:03, and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I'm going to wake on the hour tonight. And that just sucks.

Next week: nightly Brahms practice, then two concerts. We were supposed to be at the Alys Stephens Center for our first rehearsal with the conductor on Monday night, but we got bumped by the Indigo Girls. That's fine by me; Briarwood's a heck of a lot closer than the ASC.

Super Bowl commercials

The best part of the game -the advertisements.



Bud Light: Jackie Moon


Bud Light: Caveman party


Bridgestone: Running over Richard

Whistlestop tour

This weekend has to go down as one of the briefest home visits in collegiate history.

Stuck in Chicago when her flight was cancelled on Friday, my sister made it home around 10:45 Saturday morning. Twenty-three hours, a shopping trip, and a salmon-and-field-peas birthday dinner later, we drove her to Nashville for her grad school interview tomorrow morning. A strange weekend, certainly, but it was great to see the kid again.

We made it home at 5 PM, just in time for kickoff. I don't particularly care for football, and I have no great love for New York, but I was so psyched to see that touchdown pass with two minutes to go. (Actually, I looked up just as they announced it - I began reading Stephen King's newest during the second quarter. I said I don't care for football...) Oh man, why can't Yale play like that?

Actually, Yale did play like that. They played like the Patriots to Harvard's Giants, only much, much worse...

Huzzah for democracy

It's sad, and yet somehow reassuring.

Poor Florida. I normally have no sympathy for Democrats, but the party has done them dirty. For holding their primary early, they get no delegates. As Fox put it, "The Democratic race is a beauty pageant."

Still, they've been voting all day. With 24% of the precincts in right now, Hillary already has nearly 300,000 votes, and Obama over half that. Nice that the democratic process lives on, even if the Democratic Party's national officials suck. Let them hold their primary early! Who cares? Heck, hold all the primaries on the same day and let's get this charade over with!

In other news, Ron Paul has a whopping 3% of the vote at this point. I'd say he's next to go, but then he's crazy.

Prop sale postscript

This afternoon, I bought a plastic bin in which to store my prop sale purchases, and, on a whim, a roll of bubble wrap. While I was taking the price stickers off my pieces and wrapping them, I finally got a good look at the markings.

Several pieces are handmade and dated.

One set, for which I paid $10, is signed, dated, and numbered (2/1000, to be exact).

And the real clincher: the two plates I'm not crazy about, the delicate ones with the blue and gold rims, are Wedgwood bone china.

I love prop sales.

Prop sale

Everyone (at least on the east coast of this country) has probably glimpsed a bit of news footage from the Filene's wedding gown sale. On a signal, the doors are opened and hundreds of brides-to-be stampede in, grab as many dresses as they can carry - whether they like them or not - and frantically strip in an effort to find the perfect gown at a fraction of the cost.

Today's prop sale was somewhat like that, minus the stripping.

What, then, is a prop sale? Periodically, one of the magazines' closets will get too full, and so they'll put out props from old photo shoots, priced at a fraction of the cost. This might not be so exciting if one has a nice, established home, but if one is a twenty-something female, the prospect of cheap plates is thrilling.

Of course, there are a ton of twenty-something females at the company, so one needs a decent bit of strategy to successfully manage a prop sale. Fortunately, our supervisors were only too happy to pass on tips.

First, you must arrive well in advance. As today's sale began at 12, a group of us interns gathered outside the doors at 11:15, sack lunches in hand, and ate in the hallway while we watched the pre-sale people leaving with their purchases. As soon as the hour rolled around, we rushed inside, grabbing items and only really considering whether we wanted them while we waited to check out.

Secondly, one needs to bring a bag of some sort. I neglected to do this, and ended up holding roughly 20 pounds of pottery in my arms for a good half-hour, waiting to check out. When I got back to my desk, my co-workers asked how I made out. "Well," I panted, "but I can't feel my arms."

Thirdly, one must not only go at the beginning of the sale, as the prices drop toward the end of the afternoon. When I went again at 2:15, everything was half-price. When my supervisor went shortly thereafter, everything was $1. And when I went for the final time, just after she returned, everything was 50 cents. I bought four $9 place mats and two chargers for a whopping $3. Not too shabby.

Fourth, one must look out for fights. I didn't see any today, but then again, this wasn't the largest prop show - they've had shows in the parking lot before. The things we do for castoffs...

Overall, I'm pleased with my purchases. I brought home two small plates I'm not crazy about - I grabbed them almost as soon as I got through the door - but most of the loot is nice, and I even managed to snag a bit for my sister. The crazy thing is thinking about how much this stuff would have cost at retail - my best buy of the day was a handmade bowl, originally $20, that I got for $2. They might not all match, but hey, now I have some serving pieces for my hypothetical apartment.

Come on, prop people, I need furniture.

Snow?

I'm feeling rather cheated right about now.

We were promised snow this weekend. For days, the weathermen cautiously built up the idea that Birmingham - yes, this Birmingham - would receive up to four inches of the white stuff. We haven't had a really decent snow since 1993, the infamous "Storm of the Century" that dumped a whole foot in places and paralyzed the city for a week, and we still have a Flexible Flyer in the garage that has yet to go for its maiden run, an impulse buy purchased in the hope that '93 would be repeated. To date, it has not, making northern transplants and southern kids who've never seen snow sad.

Anyway, we were gearing up for our four inches. Bread and milk were flying off the shelves. Firewood was purchased by the truckload. Pipes were dripped. And then...

...and then, we got maybe a whopping inch. Insult to injury, the temperature warmed enough to melt the damned stuff, leaving us with brown grass and sporadic patches of roadside ice. All the planning (and cancellation) came to nought, and the Great Blizzard of 2008 turned out to be a great big bust in Birmingham.

Still, Callie saw her first snow, and was predictably confused. She didn't like to pick up her snow-covered football, heaven only knows why. Border collies.

Sweeney Todd

My friend Roy braved the possible sleet (hey, this is Birmingham, and we take our winter weather seriously!) to see Sweeney Todd with me tonight. Having never seen the musical, I had heard that the movie was good but gory, and I was looking forward to seeing it, even if I ended up watching bits with my eyes closed.

I've got to hand it to Tim Burton and Johnny Depp - they make one heck of a weird, wonderful team. Add Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Timothy Spall to the mix, and you've got a great cast of slightly twisted actors. Spall's a great toady - I recognized him from Enchanted, then later realized he's Peter Pettigrew in HP3 - and Alan Rickman has 'unlikeable' down to a science. The scenery is classically Burton-esque, the blood is so over-the-top it's only slightly disturbing, and the eyeshadow is abundant. Plus, someone is singing every time you turn around. It borders on camp, but it's a good time.

The only downside to the evening was the theater lights, which came on sporadically throughout the screening. Bizarre...