| Jekyll |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|09:27 pm] |
Spent some time in the sun today. Our agenda included walking Driftwood Beach, aptly named because erosion has caused the forest to slowly tumble into the water. Unlike the last time I was out there, this time it was low tide so there was quite a bit of sand between the water and the trees since tides here are several feet. We saw a lot of life on the beach including some huge crabs, live sand dollars, lots of conch shells with their residents still intact (chowder anyone?), and a school of fish flipping out of the water in a bizarre mating dance. Not far offshore were a number of shrimping vessels. The Georgia coast is one of only a handful of places I've been with a fair amount of fresh, local seafood available.
We had lunch over on St. Simon's, but that was nothing of consequence. I like St. Simon's more than most beach communities and should probably explore it more, but in a lot of ways it's still rather suburban. It reminds me a lot of Sanibel. In fact, the whole Georgia coast reminds me a lot of Sanibel because there are no high rises. Georgia prides itself on having the most unspoiled stretch of coast on the east coast and I think they may perhaps be correct in their assessment.
Speaking of unspoiled coast, Georgia hatches a lot of sea turtles every year. We're right in the midst of it all too. Today we visited the Georgia Sea Turtle Center right next to the hotel - see http://www.georgiaseaturtlecenter.org/ if you're curious.
We also spent a bit of time driving around the older Brunswick. Even in the past few years since Morgan and I have started coming here, downtown Brunswick has really begun to show signs of life. It doesn't look like an abandoned southern town anymore as many of the Victorians near downtown have been restored and a number of galleries have opened in downtown Brunswick, some looking like they might carry more cutting edge art than the landscape tourist stuff out on the islands.
Tomorrow's plan - lunch in Fernandina and then we head to southwest Florida. |
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| universities |
[Jun. 30th, 2008|06:56 am] |
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Yesterday we visited UGA, drank beer at The Globe while soccer fans cheered, and rapidly toured the town of Between. Today's plan is to visit Morgan's other alma mater Mercer College in Macon, swing through Savannah for a late lunch, and walk under our oak tree on Jekyll Island. |
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| Gwinnett County |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|11:42 am] |
We're in Gwinnett County, Georgia. 750,000 people live here, up from about two-thirds that number in 2000. Cheap land and a favorable development environment have made it one of the most populous jurisdictions in the southeastern United States.
Yesterday Morgan and her three former college roommates got together. Today we're heading to Athens. Tomorrow we're heading to Jekyll Island with a possible stop in Savannah along the way. |
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| in other news |
[Jun. 24th, 2008|03:41 pm] |
We went to the doctor's today. The ultrasound group that runs the machines at our doctor's office just did an upgrade, so it's like they have a new toy now. They ran the 4D scan after completing all of the other measurements. We have pictures of our little baby girl at size 2 pounds 1 ounce sitting there hanging out and smiling. She moves around too which is pretty cool. In one of the shots, the technician put sunglasses on her because her eyes are closed and look gummy (remember, she's basically underwater).
We think she looks like my sister when she smiles. Her profile is more like Morgan's than mine though. |
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| hose |
[Jun. 21st, 2008|02:48 pm] |
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Yesterday I put in a drip system for the pots on our porch and hooked it up using the garden hose. It works great. All of the plants are watered in about ten minutes. I ran into one problem, though. I turned the water off at the end of the drip system and forgot to turn the hose off. Today while we were gone, the hose burst in the sun. Uh oh. |
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| house |
[Jun. 20th, 2008|02:52 pm] |
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The main reason why our old patio door had a hard time closing and opening appears to have been diagnosed. The house is crooked. Funny, it doesn't look THAT crooked. |
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| directions to Georgia - Lawrenceville specifically |
[Jun. 20th, 2008|11:42 am] |
Microsoft tells me to head west, go down I-81 through the Shenandoah Valley, cut down I-77 over the Blue Ridge to Charlotte and take I-85 in towards Atlanta. 637 miles, 9 hours, 32 minutes.
Google tells me to head east, take the beltway, take I-95 past Richmond, and then take I-85 all the way through North Carolina and South Carolina into Georgia. 629 miles, 10 hours, 8 minutes.
Microsoft gives me some easy options to check and routes based on traffic as well. Curiously, if I tell Microsoft to route based on distance, it drops the mileage by 50 miles and sends us down U.S. 29 all of the way from Haymarket, Virginia, to Lexington, North Carolina, but this route takes 10 hours, 42 minutes. Hmmmm.... |
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| good idea or bad? |
[Jun. 16th, 2008|04:21 pm] |
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Should a couple entering the third trimester avoid fireworks demonstrations? |
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| Sunday |
[Jun. 15th, 2008|05:52 pm] |
Tired today.
We went to pick out cabinets and counter tops. There are two types of counter tops - cheap and expensive. The cheap ones coast about $300 uninstalled for a small to medium kitchen. The expensive ones cost about $3000 - $5000 for a small to medium kitchen. There are very few choices that fall in between these two categories.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) beachdog thinks granite and stainless steel have run their course. I am mostly in agreement with this assessment. Granite has been hot in kitchens for about a decade now as have stainless-fronted appliances. When I picked our appliances, I chose white for more timelessness. And because it's cheaper.
Artomatic is over tonight.
I managed to rid our basement of three computers yesterday. The county sponsors a monthly computer-recycling drive run by a small business down in Chantilly, so we went and dropped them off. Afterwards, we went to the Multiplex in Centreville to see Sex and the City which should be thought provoking for any married couple which communicates honestly and openly. Then we had cheesesteaks and I took Morgan downtown for her volunteer duty. I went book shopping and walked nine miles while she was volunteering.
I saw:
A presidential motorcade
The beginnings of the Pride parade
Netherlands Carrilion
Lightning
Rain (lots of it)
A Pakistani family from Pennsylvania in a red Fit
Families of ducks
The tents for the folklife festival
Pennsylvania Avenue totally shut down for some mysterious event but there was no setup
That about sums it up. |
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| to-do |
[Jun. 13th, 2008|06:40 pm] |
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On Wednesday I caught up to a state of organization, that state which exists when you know what's on your to-do list. And now, at 6:40p.m. on a Friday, I have finally managed to tick something off my to-do list so I actually have forward momentum. With luck, I'll tick off a few more on Monday. I need to have my to-do list substantially complete by next Friday. |
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| right hand drive |
[Jun. 13th, 2008|10:20 am] |
I've driven a right hand drive stick shift a number of times. I've also driven a right hand drive automatic a few times as well. And I've driven a left hand drive stick shift on the left hand side of the road (these are common in the Carribean it seems...).
The first time I drove a right hand drive stick shift, it was a real pain in the ass. First off, I had driven automatic for a few years at that point so I had to learn to concentrate on clutching again. Second, it was underpowered so it stalled easily. Third, I was learning UK street sign placement and learning to look on the other side of the street, so all in all it was a very stressful experience. It was surprisingly easy to adapt to shifting with my left hand, though.
Basically if you drive stick shift on a regular basis and not just once a year, it's a lot easier to adapt to the other side of the road. Last year when we bought a new car and then went to the UK a month later, all I needed to concentrate on was driving on the left and looking for signs and traffic on the opposite side of the road.
When I went to New Zealand, I had a woefully underpowered Hyundai with an automatic. The strange thing about this car is that it is the only car I have ever driven where, if I recall correctly, the turn signal was switched to the other side - the driver's door side. Every other car I've driven had the turn signal on the left even though the wheel was on the right. I don't think it would be easy at all to drive a car where the pedal positions were switched. If you've ever had to drive home with a broken right foot in a two pedal car, you'll understand that the subtleties of gas and brake require muscle memory that your left foot just does not have until you really have to think about it :-)
To me, the hardest aspect of driving in foreign countries is remembering and applying different rules of the road. 95% of international driving is the same, but there are some quirks. You need to memorize the national speed limit in most countries as it typically is not posted. In New Zealand, you have to remember when turning right (remember, you're on the left side crossing traffic) that you have right of way over somebody who is coming towards you and turning left to the street where you are turning but not over the guy who is going straight. Where you can park and where you cannot park in most places is indicated by lines of various colors on the curbs (most states here still don't do the yellow curb thing it seems), but this doesn't help you if you don't know what which type of line means and you cannot read or speak the language. A lot of this is readily available on the Internet, but it's a pain in the ass to find. |
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| Democratic Primary Tomorrow |
[Jun. 9th, 2008|12:59 pm] |
On Saturday, we started seeing "Democratic Primary Tuesday" signs all over town. Huh? Didn't we have that already? Apparently no, at least as far as Congress goes. Locally, Virginia's 8th, 10th, and 11th districts are having primaries tomorrow.
The 11th is the most exciting of the three with both a Democratic Primary and a Republican Primary. A long time congressman has decided to retire, something which pleases me greatly because I strongly dislike the man. In the 11th district, there are four choices on the Democratic ticket and two on the Republican ticket. Two of the Democratic candidates are very strong and quite viable for the race.
Sadly, we are in the 8th district with a strong incumbent and a fanatic newbie lawyer duking it out for the Democratic nod. We have no Republican choice either. |
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[Jun. 4th, 2008|08:53 am] |
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A month from now, I will be a thousand miles away walking on the beach with my sweetheart. |
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| weather |
[Jun. 3rd, 2008|02:27 pm] |
So I'm looking at the normal weather averages for Fort Myers, Florida.
End of June, early July - normal high every day is 92 degrees, normal low every day is 72 degrees. Record high is 98 or 99 degrees most every day, record low is... 67 degrees.
"Watch out Martha... They're forecasting record lows tonight. May need to wear an extra sweater! It may drop to 66 degrees!!!" |
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| weather |
[Jun. 1st, 2008|10:44 pm] |
I said to Morgan tonight that it's beginning to feel like we're going to have a normal summer. What is a normal summer? Oh, from about the third week of June on it's above 90 degrees in the afternoon with humidity, dropping to about 75 at night, lasting until at least Labor Day. And in a normal summer, pleasant, springtime weather ends by Memorial Day and pleasant, fall weather does not begin until the middle of October, that is if it comes at all. Instead, we get days that are uncomfortable enough that you don't want to cool your house by having the windows open yet not so hot that if you're from up north like me you feel kind of weird clamping them all shut and running the air conditioning. You would think you could cool off at night, but no, around midnight it's still 70 and humid, and by morning it drops to maybe 62. All of this, from mid-May to mid-October, is punctuated by pretty frequent rain stroms and frontal systems, often with daily afternoon thunderstorms almost but not quite like they have in Florida. It's all rather pleasant. But if you've suffered through a few of them, you go about your business, eating outside later in the evening and taking walks after dark when it's still uncomfortable without the sun beating down.
I don't feel like we're going to get a record breaking summer because we have not had any hot spells yet. I remember a couple of those since I moved here, though. It actually is reasonably rare for the temperature here to top 100 degrees. The moisture from the rivers, bays, and forests makes that pretty hard to happen. It does happen though, and I do remember the last summer I lived in Falls Church having a string of hundred degree days in late July. As luck would have it, that was the year the air conditioning on my car was broken.
Anyway, I just checked the weather. Depending on the forecast you follow, there are four 90 degree days planned in the next ten with the bulk of the remaining days remaining closer to that than not.
Summertime weather and wintertime weather reaches sort of a homeostasis in temperate zones. When it's warming up in the spring, there are waves of warm and then waves of cool. The cool waves get fewer and less shallow and the warm waves grow closer together and more severe. Eventually the cool waves are almost like warm days and the weather gets consistently warm or even hot. That's what we're working towards now - the good old Bermuda High getting strong enough to push anything more comfortable well away from the eastern seaboard. |
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| crime |
[Jun. 1st, 2008|12:01 am] |
7 murders in DC overnight Friday night.
One was a block and a half from Art-o-matic, on the NE side of the tracks from Union Station right on the sidewalk. Three were also on the street, half a block off H Street, two blocks down from Palace of Wonders, 35 shots fired. The last was a local guy, friends with the neighborhood, with his throat slit as he was sleeping in his car. Up off of Rhode Island Avenue. |
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| update to last post, regarding the wine festival |
[May. 31st, 2008|10:24 pm] |
Today was a day spent dodging crowds, sitting on tables, and going from place to place.
( long one ) |
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| wine festival |
[May. 31st, 2008|04:32 pm] |
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Thunder, lightning, rain, wind, evacuation due to tornadoes. At least it was sunny for the first hour or two, long enough for two people to pass out, one straight behind me and one standing next to me. Gave up when the cops came around with sirens suggesting we leave. |
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| so now we must decide... |
[May. 31st, 2008|07:59 am] |
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Do we trust the weather forecast that says it will most definitely be stormy today with most of them severe? Or do we trust the weather forecast that tells us 30% chance of isolated storms? Or do we scratch our heads in confusion as we look at the radar map? It looks like a small line of storms may come through in a few hours unless they dissipate, and it looks like a much, much larger line will follow two hours later, that is only if they turn more south than east. Honestly, it's hard to tell. |
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