Monday, March 24, 2014

North Carolina Randomness

I've been in North Carolina for over a week now and really like it here except for the rain.  Holy cow, has it ever rained a lot!  All of the locals keep saying that the weather this winter has been really extreme, which is all well and good except for when you get to continually experience it...with all of the errands that we've been doing, plus living in a construction zone, almost all of my clothes were muddy and wet.  Thankfully Sam's new washer and dryer were delivered on Friday and I was able to get some clean, dry clothes.  BTW, he bought a top-loader high-efficiency washer, which has no agitator like the top-loaders of yore, plus it has a smoked glass lid.  I confess that he and I actually watched most of the first load of laundry as it went through the cycles...it was pretty fascinating!

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Speaking of rain, the weather was terrible when I flew out here; we boarded the plane at DFW and ended up sitting at the gate for two hours because of lightening.  Needless to say, I got to know my seat mates very well during that time.  I was in the middle seat - to my right was a grad student (from Duke) who was watching the basketball game on his smartphone.  To my left was a nice woman named Joy, who decided to listen to some music...she was rockin' it old school:
Have Discman and CDs, will travel!

Loved seeing the span of technology with my seat mates...both were equally content with what they were using, too.

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So, we came home one afternoon to see this on the sliding glass door off of the kitchen:
Just as Sam was saying "what did you DO to the glass?" we saw the giant dead pigeon lying on the deck...ewww!  I mean, poor thing and all, but gah.  It was pretty gross to dispose of without a shovel handy.

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Speaking of birds, we had two encounters last week with Canadian geese that had us rolling with laughter.  The first was when we were driving on a very busy, three-lane road.  We were in the middle lane when all of a sudden the cars in the right lane stopped for no reason...we slowly crept up to the front, where we realized that there were two geese standing in the roadway, trying to cross it.  They weren't afraid of the cars; they were just standing there, waiting for a break in traffic (or more cars to stop) so they could keep going.  We busted a gut laughing at the absurdity of these crazy geese causing a long line of vehicles to stop, just so they could get across the road.  I wondered why didn't they just fly?  Then, a day later when we were coming back from Charlotte (Ikea, dontcha know), we'd stopped on the way home for a side trip to Starbucks, when we saw another pair of Canadian geese crossing the road!  At least these guys were almost in the crosswalk:
Good geese, following the rules of pedestrian safety.

I never realized that Canadian geese walk so much.  And where the heck are they going?  Are they like tourists, wandering the city, slightly lost, so the locals have to be extra patient with them?  Will they go back to Canada if winter ever ends, or is there a large contingent of Canadian geese living in North Carolina?  Maybe they're not Canadian geese, but rather Carolinian Geese??  I don't know, but this whole thing both tickles and fascinates me.

With that I'll leave you for the day.  I've got a lunch date with a fellow blogger, Rachel - although I've known her via blogging and emails for, gosh...at least four years now, this will be the first time we'll meet in person.  Should be fun!

14 comments:

  1. ahh Ive been lobbying hard to move back to nc!
    LOVE ME SOME Chapel HIll.
    LOVE ME SOME DURHAM.
    LOVE ME SOME CHARLOTTE.

    have fun!!

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  2. I will agree with the locals - they have had very odd weather there this winter. Not only that, but they are having a very odd NCAA basketball tournament as well. It's the first time since 1979 there is not one single North Carolina team in the Sweet 16.

    Confidential to Sam: Become a Duke fan please. And if you ever get the opportunity to attend a game at Cameron Stadium - go. If you have two tickets, call your mother for my phone number!

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  3. Haha y'all watched the wash-guess we all would the first time. No agitator seems weird.
    Apologies to Joy, but the disc man made me laugh. :) But hey, at least she has her tunes. Guess you don't know what she was listening to?
    How long is that flight? Yikes, 2 hours on the tarmac.

    As Jimmy Fallon/Sara would say EW!! to that bird! Gross! Maybe that won't happen when curtains/blinds are up.

    How many Ikea trips so far? :)

    Have a fun outing with Rachel!
    Chrissy

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  4. I love Canadian Geese. But out here, people think they are kind of a nuisance. And just yesterday I saw a pair staring at a house that was undergoing some construction. It was so weird, like they were thinking, "will they just finish, so we can move in?"

    How fun to have a blogger meet-up with someone who's been your pen pal for four years. Have a good time, take lots of pics, and tell us all about it!

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  5. Tell Rachel I said hello! Jealous - I'd love to meet up with her too. And I can't even remember the last time I've seen a discman! Have fun!

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  6. It's funny how we're all so busy, busy, busy; but we'll all stop to let the geese cross the road.

    That's a good thing!

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  7. A Discman! Wow, I haven't seen one of those in years! It was the top of technology when I was in college, I was pretty cool toting mine around in the pocket of my hoodie when walking to class.

    I have a front-loading HE washer, also without an agitator - it was cool to watch the first few times :)

    So do you not have geese in Texas? We have them here in Illinois, and they're more of a pain than anything else. They poop EVERYWHERE, and they're known to be pretty mean! Once I saw a gaggle of them crossing my bike trail verrry slowly - most bikers were just riding through them, but I was afraid they'd fly at me or something, so I patiently waited as well.

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  8. I used a cd walkman all through my 10-week backpacking trip of Europe in 2000. I haven't used it in years, but still haven't parted with it. I might just start using it again since I haven't downloaded all of cds yet.. ;-)

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  9. LOL We have hundreds of geese in my part of town. So funny to see 6-7 lanes of traffic come to a stop while they waddle across the road. (Same traffic that wouldn't stop for *me* to waddle across the road.)

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  10. I can confirm that here in Canada, Canadian geese walk around A LOT. And they poop A LOT too. I'm looking forward to watching the goslings walk/swim/grow. Should be around in a few weeks. Have a great day Shelley!

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  11. We have Canada Geese up the wazoo around here. They do walk everywhere. They only fly longer distances. Guess it uses up more energy to get in and out of flight than just to waddle along. Bird HIIT anyone?

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  12. I'm jealous of Rachel because she gets to meet you and I don't :) Have fun!

    We have too much Canada geese, other geeses, ducks, swans and seagulls at the moment. Because of the mild winter the birds never left for warmer places and stayed here all winter. They walk a lot here too. I realized how much of these birds we have when we were away this weekend. The population of f.e. ducks was much more normal than in my village.

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  13. Now you've got me wondering about walking geese!

    So I'm going to be landing at DFW tomorrow, hope you took that lightning away with you! And have a great time with your blog meetup, sounds like a fun lunch!

    --Crabby McSlacker, logged in on wrong account...

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