Category: general

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!

Here’s a cute little ramble about Junichiro Koizumi’s hair.

Koizumi always goes to a barbershop in the basement of a downtown Tokyo hotel, where he sometimes stays for more than two hours.

One time, he went in at 11 p.m. and did not come out until 1:30 a.m.

This became fodder for the rumor mill in the political community. The barbershop, the rumor went, must have a hidden passageway and Koizumi must be sneaking out to meet with someone in secret.

And that is also the reason why his hairdo is invariably the same before and after his barbershop visit.

Readers of Snopes send in some very good questions, including the following:

A friend of mine asked me if I’ve ever hear of invisible witches or ghosts that suck the blood out of a person’s arm while they are sleeping. Apparently, she saw “marks” on her boyfriend’s arm and this was the story that he told her.

—

Is it true that a girl cannot get pregnant if her mate smokes the seeds of marijuana when he smokes marijuana, please tell me if this is true because a lot of people tell me it is true and a lot of people tell me it’s not and I don’t know whaether to believe it or notbecause this town lies a lot. thanks.

—

can you tell me how i would analyze the effect each statistic has on the world.

I think that last one is quite profound. I’d like to know that, too. ;>

In other news,

An Italian couple stole 50,000 euros from a woman in the Sicilian city of Palermo after convincing her they were vampires who would impregnate her with the son of the Anti-Christ if she did not pay them.

o_o…

Danny Bloom at Japundit links to an article by “Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers” entitled “So You Want To Be a Sushi Snob?” It could be funnier, but it is amusing. Also, I discovered that I’ve been eating sushi incorrectly. Here is the proper method, apparently:

No! No! No! What are you doing? You do not put the Wasabi (Wasabia japonica) directly into the small bowl of Shoyu (Soy sauce). No one wants to see your plate with some revolting muddy green sludge – a putrid floating pile of flotsam and jetsam – in it. Disgusting. Have you no class? Take your chopsticks and lift the raw fish off of the top of the Nigiri (raw fish on a small rice ball), turn it upside down. Place a small portion of Wasabi on the underside (now facing up) and dip the upper-side (now facing down) into the Shoyu. Do not touch the Wasabi into the Shoyu. Then replace the fish, right side up, back on top of the Nigiri and eat. Try not to get any Shoyu on the rice directly. Also, please, in-spite of yourself, don’t have little pieces of rice floating around in your Shoyu bowl either. What do you think this is, an Olympics swimming competition? Of course please refrain from using your unwashed fingers to touch your food – we’re trying to eat with adults who have some class and a proper upbringing. We’re not eating with a bunch of animals here. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?

After eating each piece of Nigiri, take some Gari (Ginger) – and it had better not be red colored ginger, either – and chew it to clear your palate so that you may enjoy the fresh taste of the next piece of sushi. Repeat.

Rogers adds,

California Rolls and so-called Maki-Zushi (sushi that is rolled up in seaweed) is for kids and drunks who cannot hold their chopsticks.

So, there you have it.

What are you doing to me?!?!?!?