ITB-W

So apparently it takes about three months for me to get used to/less anxious about a new living situation. Here it is, end of September, end of month three, and the weather has gotten better, the job has gotten easier to deal with, there's better TV on, and my exam paperwork is going through ahead of schedule. Sure, gas is scarce and expensive... actually, most things are scarce and expensive. The economy is poised to slide down the poop chute. I've had to quit my favorite habit (coffee). But I'm starting to feel a certain level of familiarity with Raleigh, with commuting, with being an architect again, etc. etc. Life is certainly less shitty than it was during the summer.

In between studying for my LEED exam (which is probably not worth studying for, but that's just me I guess) I decided to take my first long walk to a part of the city I haven't visited before. Actually, back up a bit. I was thinking about Rome. And how, in the few months I lived in Rome in 1999, I could and would walk just about anywhere within the ancient walls of the city. Sure, my feet would get tired, but the fact is, it's only a couple miles from Campo dei Fiori (in the center) to any point on the wall. Then I realized that Raleigh isn't that different (uh, eh) in that its center is surrounded by the Beltline highway; the Beltline is only three miles from the center (give or take). And I live kinda close to the center. So... why not utilize this great weather and pedestrianilate my way around the city, from center to wall?

Today's tour was ITB-W: Inside The Beltline - West. It will be the shortest and easiest walk. And maybe the only one. No promises. Basically, it's the area between NC State, Meredith College, and Cameron Village (where I live).

Here's the map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=931+Washington+St,+Raleigh,+NC+27605&daddr=Gardner+St+to:Clark+Ave+to:Hillsborough+and+Beryl+rd,+Raleigh+to:35.781022,-78.650694+to:931+Washington+St,+Raleigh,+NC+27605&hl=en&geocode=%3BFcIfIgId1JZP-w%3BFWMrIgIdrV9P-w%3B%3B%3B&mra=dpe&mrcr=1&mrsp=4&sz=15&via=1,2,4&dirflg=w&sll=35.792684,-78.671165&sspn=0.027396,0.055618&ie=UTF8&z=15.

Here are the highlights:

I stumbled upon this amphitheater not too far from my supermarket... it's attached to Raleigh's Little Theater, that box behind it.

This is the kind of neighborhood it is--pretty clean, family-friendly, fairly affluent, but with some college student apartments in the mix. Decent sidewalks.

This is Meredith College, about which I know nothing aside from that it has a public bikepath along the campus edge that is fenced in, so I couldn't get off it where I wanted to and had to backtrack.

It wouldn't have made sense to not get all the way to the edge of the Beltline, right?

This place on Hillsborough Street across from NC State looks neat... but probably rife with college kids. Homecoming week starts today, and there were a bunch of coeds and frat boys out painting storefront windows with red letters and wolves (they're the Wolfpack). They play Boston University for their homecoming game next week. Hope they don't suck it like they did this week!



This is State's bell tower. You can see it from my supermarket, but I had no idea what it was until a few weeks ago.



So there you have it! It was a two-hour walk and approximately 6 miles.

Now for anyone keeping score on the weather here: it's been rainy here lately, too. In fact, the lawn outside my patio has been spongy wet since TS Hannah several weeks ago. It's been an unusually wet summer for this drought-prone area. I was surprised that, within the span of a few weeks from mid-September to late-September, we went from a temperature ceiling of about 90 degrees to one of about 80 degrees (and thank God for it). I guess ceiling is the wrong term... it went from hovering around 90 to hovering around 80. For a few days, it hovered closer to 70, but that was an oddity. In my mind, I imagined it staying hot hot into October and then peeling back a degree a week, so I was happy to get the same feeling of post-summer relief I'm used to up north. Today it's about 82, sunny, not humid... pretty ideal. Great for a long walk in shorts. Too bad I wore my jeans instead duh!).

Manbearpig?

Despite the awesome (though still sweaty) weather, I'm afraid to rescue my bicycle from the patio closet where I deposited it more than two months ago. I don't have a helmet yet, but that's not the root of my fear. Rather, it's the family of Crabfrogcrickets that dwell in the closet that truly freak me out. I've never seen such abominations in my life. They have the body shape of crabs (like huge lozenges), the "skin" color and texture of frogs, and the legs of mutantly large crickets. I can tell they are a family, because there is one of about every size from tiny baby up to big daddy. It's a large multigenerational Catholic family, too... there are a lot of 'em. I've become a little more inured to the big fucking hugantic bugs and spiders around here, I guess. But these ones really creep me out because they make joint-popping sounds when I open the closet door. It's like their legs are that big... it makes me want to set fire to them or spray them with Windex, not because they threaten me, per se, but just because they are SO WRONG. But instead I think I'll just avoid that closet. Maybe something bigger will come along and eat them. I bet they taste like chicken.

Today's mission was to enclose the porch/patio in some kind of netting so that the cat could roam out there sans leash... and so I could read my paper without him dragging me out of my chair. I spent about $20 at Ace getting garden netting--the real light vinyl kind you throw over your vegetable garden to prevent it from becoming the most popular salad bar amongst the local woodland creature population. The result looks like a clusterfuck, as most homemade project without instructions or design time tend to. But I was confident that it would dissuade the cat from leaving the patio. Well, it took him some time, but I blinked and he was suddenly on the other side of the netting. So not only did I have to undo the net to tackle him, I don't even know how to fix the clusterfuck. So now it will simply be a cat slow-down net so I can stop kicking the door jamb every time I come in and out to keep him from bolting. But he'll still have to wear the leash, only now there will be no walkies. He'll be leashed and lying down or leashed and tangled up in a net. Sucks to be rash, huh Fenway?

What is it with working on the weekend? What the fuck? Who else on earth has to do this? Is it really not enough to work a 48 hour week? I feel like I was given a guilt trip for not volunteering my Sunday afternoon to head back into the office, 20 miles away. Instead, I ended up doing a half day of work in my low-tech home so that I could at least claim to have made a contribution, but REALLY... what is this bullshit about? Don't feed me this line that architects, like lawyers and doctors, must do whatever it takes to get the job done. Those people make three times what I make straight out of their higher ed graduation. And they go on lengthy vacations. And get scads of misappropriated respect from the laypeople. I get shit. I get lousy stress working on junky projects that no one will care about even at the ribbon cutting ceremony. I AM NOT ON CALL. YOU DO NOT OWN MY TIME PAST 40 HOURS. Any time I'm willing to work past that is because I like to do a good job, so please start approaching your requests for my sacred weekend time in that light. I do not have a fiancee or wife or girlfriend or mom to cook my meals, do my laundry, feed my cat, do my grocery shopping, clean my bathroom, and return my library books. THERE MUST BE A TIME IN MY WEEK TO DO THIS AS WELL AS FIGURE OUT WHY THE FUCK I MOVED TO RALEIGH. Every minute I spend in the office is another minute that my ACTUAL life goals are not realized. So, do not be SURPRISED, do not act DISAPPOINTED, and certainly do not try to GUILT me if, for God's sake and my own, I want two full fucking days of not having to work. Fuck you, gees.

Raleigh Wide Open

I was anticipating missing the Sterling Fair this year, my first in a few. The Fair has been about my only opportunity to eat really, really bad-for-me food in great quantity and convincingly pass it off as family funtime. It was also my sole flirtation with gambling--I was happy to hand over much money to the token-conveyor thingy, just rolling them down their little sluce pipe into the kicking feet of the clown, hoping for many awful and cheap trinkets during my hours of standing there.

I definitely felt like it was time for a Fair. The Sterling Fair always comes the weekend after Labor Day, just as the summer heat has either been put over a barrel or is making its last heroic stand before being cut down in the first really cold morning the following week. I'm looking forward to that weekend down here in Raleigh and was subconsciously feeling like a good fair would hasten its arrival.

Well, though I could not make it to Sterling this weekend, the fair managed to find me here in Raleigh. This weekend was the third annual Raleigh Wide Open, a downtown fair and carnival that, aside from the tall buildings, is not too different than the parts of the Sterling Fair I like. Alight, there's not much "agricultural" to it; that fair is the NC State Fair in October, and it will blow the doors off of anything Sterling has ever seen. But Raleigh Wide Open had all the bad food, aimlessly wandering morons, inexplicable commercial booths, and attractions that the Sterling Fair has. RWO, though, has alcohol, which makes it much cooler (for someone like me, anyway). This year's RWO fair also had the much-anticipated opening of the new Raleigh Convention Center, which has some nice spaces and features, though I doubt it will make a big difference in how cosmopolitan Raleigh feels...

When not downtown, I've been conducting marathon tech support chat sessions with Dell to get my DVD drive replaced (it started skipping on my Michael Clayton Netflix DVD last night and never stopped after testing several other CDs; trying to break in my couch; buying new screen inserts so I can keep my windows open without the cat flopping out; catching up with my DVR recordings; NOT watching the Patriots, as they are not picked up by the local network coverage (bad news about Brady, though, huh?); etc. etc.

Not too bad of a weekend... now to just avoid thinking about work for another 12 hours!

Month 2 in the can

I have a couch now! I'm bonafide!

Now, just have to keep Fenway from scratching it up and making it instantly worthless. So the trappings of a real life are starting to collect here--car brakes that don't sound like they'll break on my next commute, furniture, wireless internet... yes, it's costing a lot, but so far I'm not at risk of getting myself into debt. You know... more debt. Still plenty of student loans to pay off.

With at least three named tropical storms kicking around right now, can I ask a simple question? When did hurricanes become political events? While visiting Grandma this weekend, I was forced to watch/roll eyes at Fox News. Their entire converage of Gustav last night was POLITICAL REPORTING. It was 100% about how the GOP was reacting to Gustav in regards to their convention planning. I sat there for an hour waiting for someone to simply say "Gustav is expect to make landfall at _____ at about _____ o'clock tomorrow." Nuthin. It was instead "McCain has halted all RNC activities for day one in order to 'focus attention' on the hurricane preparedness and cleanup efforts for Hurrican Gustav." They repeated that about every 30 seconds with a rolling clip of him and Tina Fey visiting the hurricane preparedness center, shaking lots of hands and apparently getting briefed on NO INFORMATION.

Like, I get it. Zoiks, Scoob. Hurricane. Fucked up once before, gotta get it right now, make sure Katrina isn't a Republican thing for ever and ever. But who shed a goddamn tear a couple weeks ago as Tropical Storm Fay hit Florida FOUR TIMES and dumped half the fucking Atlantic all over the flattest and wettest state in the country? I don't remember McCain or Obama cancelling any events except THE ONES IN FLORIDA. So honestly, folks. This is bullshit. Hurricanes are not political events and should not be in political news. Especially if they aren't being preceded by or followed by horrible political ineptitude, which has obviously not been the case this time around. Get back to your fucking party in MINNESOTA and get on with your lame ass convention.

And Tina Fey is OURS. Give her back.