Author: Heather Meadows

If you still want to have lunch with me today, post a comment and let me know when! I have brought a frozen dinner today, but am perfectly fine with going out somewhere instead. Just post what time and where you want to meet. I realize this is horribly inconvenient, but I can’t get on AIM or send email from here, and I also turn my phone off when I arrive, so there is really no other way to get in touch with me…

Today begins the four day sales tax-free spend-spend-spend weekend here in Georgia. In general, clothes, shoes, computer stuff, and school supplies may be purchased with no sales tax charged, state or local.

South Carolina’s tax-free weekend is next weekend; how convenient that they don’t overlap!

I don’t think Kentucky does this, because I’ve never heard of anything like this before. However, Kentucky doesn’t charge sales tax on food year round, so I think Kentucky wins. :P

I went to Mari’s beginners bellydance class tonight. Because I’m crazy, I biked over there instead of driving. The classes take place at the Warren Road Community Center, which is very close to my apartment. It actually only took about 15 minutes to get there, but it was very hot and there were all kinds of hills on the back roads between Pleasant Home and Warren. I was pretty hot and very sweaty when I arrived.

I’d left early because I wasn’t sure how long the ride would take, so I ended up being at the center a half hour before the class was to start. To pass the time, I spent about fifteen minutes riding my bike in a circle on the track near the park, eventually getting to where I could ride the whole thing without using my hands. Those turns are pretty tricky, but I figured them out. I’d gotten through three circuits no-handed when I finally decided I was tired and that I’d go see if anyone else had arrived.

I went into the center to ask if it was okay for me to bring my bike in, but no one was in the office…so I brought it in :> At that point I realized I wasn’t sure where classes were held. There were a bunch of people in the gymnasium playing basketball, and no bellydancers. So I walked my bike down a very dark hallway to the other side of the center, and was lucky enough to see Mari’s mom coming in. I followed her into the workout room and parked my bike behind a bench near the weight machines.

Class was good. I’d done some bellydance stuff with Mari privately before, so I remembered all the moves. Remembering and being able to actually do them are two different things, but I performed reasonably well. We warmed up, did a few drills of the moves in Waady, and then ran through Waady a couple of times…and that took up the whole hour. It was a great workout–I really felt it in my arms.

While the room was air conditioned, the workout was pretty intense, so I continued to sweat and feel hot. After class was over I decided to sit around and watch the Tribal class for awhile so I could cool off. Chris was there, so we talked a little about the girls who sing that Moulin Rouge song (his favorite is Pink, while I prefer Christina–purely for her voice, I assure you)–and before you think we are way behind the times, the Tribal class danced to that song…that’s why we were talking about it :>

After awhile I finally felt ready to bike again, so I came home. This time I chose to go the other way on Warren and then go up Washington Road to Pleasant Home. I’m not sure if this was better or not, hill-wise, because Pleasant Home has quite a few hills of its own. I was also unhappy to discover that there were no sidewalks on that first stretch of Washington Road, so I was forced to cross four lanes and a turn lane in order to get to the proper side of the street to ride on. Fortunately, traffic wasn’t too bad, but I would hate to have tried that during rush hour.

Now I’ve had a nice shower and I feel very refreshed. I’m glad I worked out today, and I’m glad I rode my bike to get there.

I’ve mentioned to Brooke before that I don’t really think bellydancing is my “thing”. I’d also alluded to the fact that I was starting to feel jealous/resentful because it seemed to me like I had to do something I didn’t want to so I could hang out with my friends. I have now decided to stop being a baby. Bellydancing is a good workout, and it’s far more interesting than regular aerobics.

There is a lot of pressure to perform–even though Mari always says nobody has to, the classes are very performance-centered. But I can deal with that. At this point, I don’t want to be on stage. I will wait until I’ve lost enough weight that I can show my belly without being embarrassed. This may take awhile. But a great way to work towards a flatter stomach is to actually go to bellydance class…so I think I will start doing that. I mean…why not?

Heat keeps many from reaching cooling centers

And while the city does have cooling centers open at community centers, many remain deserted, because of the difficulty residents have in getting to the centers.

“No one’s going to come here to be cool,” said Ruth B. Crawford, the founder of the Shiloh Comprehensive Community Center. “It’s too hot.”

I currently have a fan blowing directly on me. I suppose I’m reasonably comfortable, but I could be happier.

So, like I mentioned earlier, I went to Aiken today.

I was really bored. Sean’s 1 to 10 shift is annoying, for reasons I’ve listed before. I didn’t know what to do with myself. The prospect of sitting around on the computer, or sitting around watching Friends, sounded horribly boring.

It was 4:30, so I called Brooke to see if she wanted to do anything. She wasn’t around to answer her phones, though, so I decided I would just go somewhere myself. I wasn’t sure where. On a lark I called Mari, not expecting her to be home. But she was! So I asked her what she was up to and if she wanted to do anything. She said she and Kelly were going to the gym and then to KMart and Target, and invited me for the shopping part. I agreed, and she said she’d call me when they were done at the gym.

I didn’t want to wait around for that, though. I was extraordinarily antsy. So, I headed towards the door with no idea of where I was going to go.

The Greeneway and the Canal both seemed like boring choices, as did downtown Augusta. I wanted to see something new. It occurred to me, randomly: “I’ll go to Aiken, I’ve never been to Aiken.”

So, I went to Aiken.

I took I-20 because I figured that’d be easiest, and I just drove until I saw an Aiken exit. (This took a long time, but I was pleased to see that I-20 is somewhat picturesque in South Carolina. It’s actually a little hilly, providing some nice vistas.) Then I followed the road off the exit until I found myself in Aiken’s historic downtown.

I drove straight through it, then turned around. I passed a neat looking fountain and decided to park and take a picture of it. There were all kinds of parking spaces, in the diagonal style of Augusta’s Broad Street. I chose one near an arbor and backtracked to the fountain.

From there, I decided to just stroll around the shops and see what there was to see. I headed off down an alley (named, conveniently, “The Alley”) with restaurants and shops, most of which were closed.

The Alley ended at the street I’d driven in on. I turned right and wandered up the sidewalk a ways. I noticed two old women sitting on a bench just ahead of me. They looked like they were having a good time. I wanted to take a picture of the street, but I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable. As I approached, though, I saw that my caution was unnecessary.

Lexington did a thing several years ago where artists decorated horse statues, and the statues were displayed all over town before they were finally auctioned off. I’m not sure if Aiken is doing the same thing, or if their horse statues are permanent, but there sure were a lot of them.

Downtown Aiken is pretty. The storefronts are old-timey and interesting, and there are plants and trees everywhere. There’s also a good deal of brickwork, which I love.

I walked up that street until it ended, then turned left to see if there might be another similar street. The street I wound up on had a few businesses, but mostly houses, including this one that I think looked like a postcard for America:

White picket fence and everything!

I headed up that street until it was clear that I wasn’t going to see much else, and then I turned left again, heading back towards the main strip. At that point I took some time to go inside Plum Pudding, a gourmet kitchen supply store, because I thought it looked neat. (It was also about to close.) Here, for your viewing pleasure, are some $20 wire whisks.

I headed back down the street to the right, spotting some storefronts I hadn’t seen from the other side, until I got to the opposite end of downtown. Aiken’s downtown really isn’t all that big; Augusta’s kind of dwarfs it. I saw another horse statue at that end, one painted with a patriotic 9/11 theme.

I finally cut back to the street where my car was parked, passing a federal courthouse and a funeral home. When I got there I took some pictures of the flowering trees at the end of the string of arbors.

A couple more pictures of the fountain, arbors, and a weird little blue van,

and I was ready to head back. I figured Mari would be calling soon; I’d explored for roughly an hour, and the transit time added to that meant that she and Kelly would surely be done at the gym at any moment. So I hopped in my car, rolled down the windows, and turned the ignition.

It was very, very hot, and I had a sinking feeling that it wouldn’t work even as I turned the key and the starter did nothing but click.

“I should have parked in the shade,” I bitched at myself. Thus began the who-knows-how-long joy of trying to air out the car so that it would start. As I sat there, sweat rolling down my face due to the heat, I tried it again and again, running the non-functional A/C to get some air moving (it is telling that the blast of hot air actually felt good to me–kind of scary that it was that hot).

After awhile I started to think that I should just go to a restaurant so I could cool off and have something to drink, because I’d been walking around in 101° weather with no water or anything. But I kept trying, and trying, and trying.

Finally, when I was about ready to give up and go hide in someone’s air conditioned pub, I turned the key and the starter went click and then, suddenly, the engine growled and died. I turned the key again, and it started up.

I was very, very thankful as I put it in gear and sped off. Driving gives me a nice breeze and helps me cool down…

The first thing I did was go to McDonald’s and get 1) a vanilla cone; 2) a bottled water (ugh, Dasani, but what can you do). Then I drove home, deciding to try route 78 instead of I-20. (This was quite successful, marred only by my getting lost in North Augusta and wasting a lot of time driving all the way out to exit 5 of I-20. On the bright side, I now know quite a bit more about North Augusta’s geography than I used to…)

I had barely gotten in the door when Mari called, so I didn’t have time to upload my pictures then. I went and met Mari and Kelly at the Big K in North Augusta (I had just been there!), and we shopped, then came back to Augusta Exchange (right down the street from my apartment!) to go to Subway and Target. (That teriyaki sandwich they have at Subway now is killer. I get that every time.) Then, finally, it was time to go home.

It was a little before 10 when I got in. The reasons it took me so long to upload photos and write this post are: 1) uploading the pictures took 47 minutes; 2) I left the room to watch some more Friends and ended up just staying in there for awhile; 3) tagging and captioning pictures takes time; 4) it also takes time to write posts about stuff.

So there you have it.

Now, I am pretty tired. I think this was a good day. I didn’t buy anything or go out anywhere special to eat, but I got to explore and take pictures, and I got to see my friends. Sounds like a winner to me!

Yeah, so this is why when we move next year, we’re not going to live in Richmond County if we can help it.

The first robbery happened around midnight at Madison on the Green Apartments, on River Ridge Drive. The second was at Ramblewood Apartments on Center West Parkway. The last robbery happened at Helena Woods Apartments on Alexander Drive, around 3:30 Tuesday morning.

[…]

People who live here say this is a quiet neighborhood, not the place you normally hear of robberies. They say that’s why they are worried. Authorities say during one of the robberies a suspect told a victim that he was robbing her to get in to a gang. That’s one of the reasons they’re taking these crimes very seriously.

Makes me real happy to be living in an apartment, I tell you what…

So, this is kinda fun.

(Via BoingBoing)

I strolled around their historic downtown and took some pictures, in 100 degree weather.

More info and photos to come later; right now, I’m running out for shopping and dinner with Mari!

Last year, it was proposed that two new interstates be built in Georgia. One, I-3, would run from Knoxville through Augusta and down to Savannah. The other, I-14, would begin at I-3 at Augusta and run west, roughly parallel to I-20 but serving less populated areas. It has further been proposed that I-14 could extend west to Austin, Texas, and east to Myrtle Beach. The routes for these two interstates have apparently not been finalized, but plans seem to be moving along without many problems.

However, there are plenty of people who oppose these new interstates. Most of the websites you can find on the subject point out that Knoxville doesn’t need another interstate and that the construction would cut further into the Smokies. An engineer at UGA in Athens mentions that neither of these interstates would help Athens or UGA, which in his words is “the largest flagship state university in the nation that you can’t get to almost directly by interstate”.

An image of the proposed routes can be found here, though from what I’ve read, this is not a final draft. Lawmakers have until the end of this year to determine the impact of possible routes. Here’s a discussion of the current route debate, including Charlie Norwood’s (US House, R-Georgia) own proposal.

I personally love the idea of being able to get to Knoxville without going through Atlanta, and to hop on an interstate and zip all the way to Savannah or Myrtle Beach. Making Augusta more of a “hub” than it currently is would be fine in my book. I disagree with the Athens engineer that I-14 would be purely government bloat, too; the interstate would open up more of the country for development, taking pressure off the highly strained big cities. However, I am concerned about the environmental impact of tearing up the Smoky Mountains, and the Athens guy does have a point: a direct route from Augusta to Athens is sorely needed.

Ultimately, I hope they’re able to figure out a way to do this that can minimize the damage to the mountains, and it would really be nice if the route could curve through Athens.

I hate it, because the day seems to begin when he leaves for work, but then suddenly it’s 7 pm and I haven’t done anything all day. And nothing’s going on and no one’s around to hang out with and Sean won’t be home until 10:30 or so and it feels like I ought to be doing something…I mean, it doesn’t really feel like lounge around time when he’s not home.

I actually got out my crocheting stuff and started making some sort of red throw. I have no idea how it’ll turn out. I’ve done two and a half passes on it so far. (It was kind of cool that I was able to just start doing it without even thinking about it. I guess I really learned those first and second stitches. Too bad I don’t know any other ones!)

You know what? You know what? I keep whining about how I’m never going to learn Japanese, but I never do anything about it, so I’m going to do something! I’m gonna grab my old textbook and start doing some exercises!

I haven’t watched a single episode of Joey–I mean come on, a show about my least favorite character? Please–but I would totally tune in if Courteney Cox Arquette’s plans [that link’ll be dead in a week, but oh well] for a Thanksgiving episode come to fruition.

“I can see us coming back together to do something like a Thanksgiving show,” the onetime Monica Geller Bing tells the New York Daily News. “Not a reunion, but, ‘What are the friends doing this Thanksgiving?’ as if they’re always together.”

Cox has even given some thought to the fate of her small-screen alter ego: “Monica and Chandler would come in from the country with their two kids, who are a couple of years old now. I think their story is continuing, even if we’re not watching. I think they see each other every Thanksgiving.”

Man, wouldn’t that be cool?

Look, CNN has a spiffy graphic for their “London Terror” special section.

Is that ridiculous or what?

You know, I am just really not a fan of how sensationalized our news can be.

By the way, the young man who was wrongly killed by British anti-terror police was shot eight times, not five as previously thought. I am just sick at this whole thing. Sick at the bombings, sick at the attempted bombings, sick at the wrongful death…and sick that there have been bombings in Iraq like every day recently, and so many people keep dying. Is this ever going to be resolved?

There is so much hate, and all it seems to be doing is growing…on both sides. Is there anything we can do? How can we keep children from being indoctrinated into hate? How can we save ourselves from being consumed by it?

How can we stop terrorism?

CNN has a piece up about NBC’s plummet from glory, and the network’s vow to start doing things right.

Accustomed to success, the network had failed to recognize “underlying problems,” Reilly said. He took over as entertainment chief after his predecessor, Jeff Zucker, was promoted. Zucker now is NBC Universal Television Group president.

“We’re insane if we stay on the same track. That is the definition of insanity to keep making the same mistakes and doing things the same way,” Reilly said.

I often notice patterns and think it would be cool to write a piece exposing them, but then never get around to actually doing the research it would require. (One of these, a discussion of the use in movie soundtracks of what I call “the scream” and what is officially titled the Wilhelm Scream, has been preempted by others.) An expose on the standard jokes and plotlines used in 1990s-2000s NBC sitcoms is an idea that rattles around in my head every time I watch Friends.

Friends, as you know, is one of my all-time favorite shows, but even it fell victim to NBC’s rampant self-plagiarism. Monica was fat as a kid? Wait, that was done in Wings (Helen). Joey and Treager (the super) as ballroom dance partners? Wait, that was also done in Wings (Antonio and Roy). Friends even recycled some of its own jokes–sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. In one episode, Rachel serves Monica a cup of something at Central Perk. Monica says, “I didn’t want cinnamon on that.” “Oh, sorry,” says Rachel, and scoops off the cinnamon with her fingers. In a later episode, after Ross and Rachel have broken up, Ross hands Rachel a mug, and the exact same event occurs, this time with Rachel on the receiving end. It didn’t play out as if it was meant to be a throwback to the previous incident, though I suppose there’s a slight possibility that it was.

There’s plenty more where that came from, spanning quite a few NBC series. All the series that shared writers shared jokes. After awhile, it just got old. I’m not sure why they thought they could get away with it–maybe they had a really low opinion of their viewers?–but now it seems to have finally come around to bite them in the ass. (It helps that the other networks are putting out quality shows at last.)

Ricky Martin (of “Livin’ la Vida Loca” fame infamy) is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, and has done lots of great work for children all over the world. He recently pledged to work to end stereotypes against Arab youth. More information about Martin’s work is available at the Ricky Martin Foundation website.

I was looking for Tian (of Hanzi Smatter)’s email address so I could point today’s Questionable Content out to him, and I discovered that he has a couple other blogs. Reading through what tian has learned, I came across this post, which features the following car. (I’m shamelessly ganking the image from Tian’s blog, because this color is so awesome.)

They also have it in other fabulous colors, including an adorable blue:

I don’t care about the name, that car is cute! I want one!