More pictures

The 'W' stands for...

Here are some more pictures of our new house. I'll put up one more set when we've moved in more completely and have pictures on the wall. We have a lot of pictures to hang, a fact that I am reminded of every time we move. We have so many pictures that my beloved posters (remember, I was once a college student) have no home. I keep them, and will likely continue to keep them for the rest of my life, rolled up safely in a series of cardboard tubes. On the off-chance that we will one day live in a house so big that we can have a 'poster room.' Unlikely, I know.

That was quite a digression, but it seemed appropriate. I discover many, many pounds of things that have been kept in boxes for years, from one move to the next. We did a fantastically good job of shedding much of our excess weight when we moved to North Carolina last year. But we didn't get rid of everything, and we didn't even git rid of the inessentials, the vestigal remnants of our past lives and fascinations.

As far as I can tell, the dogs love the new place. They have a yard to run around in (finally) and now that the large-scale moving has finished, Julian has relaxed a bit as well. He hates large, unfamiliar things (like packing boxes) and was very much on edge for much of last week. I felt really bad for him and am glad that he is now sleeping peacefully on the couch, leaving behind a large, contented drool stain.

We live here now!

I tried to put this up last night, but our stolen Wi-Fi isn't too stable, and it gave out before I could actually post these last night. We will be getting our very own internet (and cable!) connection this Thursday. More pictures to come as the house takes shape.

Yesterday was a crazy, long day. We hired movers to get most of our stuff out of The Mill - the spiral staircase made this an impossible proposition for just us. But we couldn't get everything in the truck in one trip and the movers' time was up, so we had to go back for a second trip ourselves. What would have taken the movers about five minutes to pack up took us nearly two hours. If you are ever moving, do yourself a favor and hire some professionals. Sure, the $200 - $300 price tag might look unappealing a week ahead of time, but by the middle of Moving Day, it sounds like a bargain.

We painted some rooms over the weekend, and those who have seen our previous homes will surely recognize the colors: turquoise bedroom, green living room, yellow dining room. It feels really great to be living in the midst of those colors again.

Washington, DC: Metro Edition

I know that I've been obnoxiously slow getting pictures and stories up here. I'm kind of beyond apology by this point, so I won't even bother. But before I finish up with our last day of photos, I want to be sure to acknowledge one of my favorite aspects of the entire trip, which was the Metro. I wish Raleigh had a Metro system. I wish Orlando had one - if they had I might have never left. It does not take long to get used to the quick, inexpensive, convenient and (historically) safe subway system of Washington, DC. After one trip, we pretty much knew how to use it, although I had to constantly refer to my (now very worn) Metro map to verify my lines and stops. Between the two of us, for four days in the city, we spent $40 on the Metro and still have a few dollars left over. It may seem like a lot, but we really rode the Metro a lot, and all over the city. It was wonderful to essentially not have to worry about what the cost might be. Whenever we went anywhere, we pulled out the map and looked to see if there was a Metro station between us and our destination that might make the trip shorter, even if only a single block.

After all is said and done, I think that the Metro was probably my favorite single thing about DC. I loved every part of it, from the above-mentioned convenience and economy, to the design. I don't know when my fascination with architecture and building design was started; I do believe it to be a relatively recent development, but I might have always had it. Regardless of when my love buildings and structures manifested, it was in full swing in the DC Metro. The stations are amazing. I'm sure that they are absolutely nothing to those who are used to them, but to me they nearly blew my mind. I could not believe that such amazing structures were public use and I was using them! Since they are primarily made of poured concrete, they had a kind of permanent quality, as though they had always been there. Beyond the concrete, there were few embellishments - maps, signposts and some dim lighting were about it.

Absolutely amazing.

I would have taken some more pictures, but I didn't want to look like a tourist. At least, I didn't want to look like too much of one. Besides, there are implicit rules about privacy and eye contact on the Metro, and taking photos felt like a little bit of a violation. I took these photos in a relatively quiet station late in the day.






At the other end of the transit spectrum, I want to mention how much fun it was to travel with our TomTom. It isn't a perfect piece of technology by any means, but I can't even imagine a trip through a city like DC without something like this. Isn't it funny how a brand-new piece of technology can so insinuate itself into our lives that we can't even imagine how to manage without it. There were times when we were walking around the city and I wished I had access to the internet. The old-fashioned paper maps just weren't cutting it for me and we wanted to find a restaurant - not a particular restaurant, but a good one. And we were hungry and tired and didn't want to just trust to walking and stumble across someplace. Which is what we ended up doing on our first night out and it was kind of a disappointment. We learned our lesson and that night in the hotel, we made sure to find places to eat lunch and dinner for the rest of the trip.

If the Mark of the Beast comes with a GPS and Wi-Fi internet connection, the apocalypse can't come soon enough!

Washington, DC: Day 3 - at the zoo

Day three was spent at the zoo. Apparently, Wednesday is bring your screaming children to the zoo day. I nearly had a meltdown when some kid was loudly smacking - pounding - on the meerkat glass. That was the tipping point, but was preceded by hours of shrill children. It kind of sets my skin on edge just thinking about it. I eventually calmed down after a sweet, well-behaved child (I had truly forgotten that they actually existed) offered me some unsolicited help finding a hidden chinchilla.

I have to say that, as an animal lover, I was very impressed with this zoo. They clearly put a lot of time and effort into making the animals as comfortable and sane as possible, very often to the inconvenience of the viewing public. There were plenty of places for the animals to hide from the sun and searching eyes of millions of visitors.

The zoo was pretty much all we were able to accomplish on Wednesday. We had an opportunity to catch up with an old friend for dinner - we took the Metro (more on the Metro in a different post) to Virginia. I realize that DC isn't actually a state, but it still amazed me to travel by subway all the way out of the city and into a different state. I'm easily amazed.

Washington, DC: Day 2

Day two was all Smithsonian, all the time. The museums opened at 10:00 am and that was exactly when we walked in the door. Day one was American History, day two was art. We started at the American Art Museum and worked our way through, stopping off in a few sculpture gardens. With so much to see, we had to breeze past some of the art that didn't hold much interest for us. It's true and shocking, I know, to hear that there is some art that does not interest us. There are reasons too numerous and deep to get into here, but we barely gave the Renaissance art a second glance. And after a while, art starts to look the same - the same subjects, the same poses, the same stories. Not that they aren't fantastic on their own, but so much exposure has a sort of numbing effect. In a way, that was a good thing, because it allowed the gems to stand out.

Unfortunately, we did not find those gems until the very last hour. We have to go back on day three for more of the National Portrait Gallery, which is our favorite museum so far. We also visited the National Air and Space Museum. And although we didn't spend too much time there, we took a disproportionate amount of pictures there. I don't take much pleasure in photographing artwork, but airplanes and spacecraft... that's another matter entirely!


























My only real complaint with blogger is that it does not facilitate captions on photos. You just have to imagine what I wanted to say about the photos.

Day three will start with the zoo. There will be pictures!

Washington, DC: Day 1

After a heartbreaking goodbye to our dear dogs, we hit the road for Washington, DC. It still amazes me that we live close enough that we can drive to a real destination in less than five hours. The last time we visited DC we came in on a train. We talked about doing that again, but ultimately decided against it for practical reasons. We did, however, leave our car parked at our Bed & Breakfast. More on that later.

The entire point of this trip was to shuffle around Smithsonian museums, and that is exactly what we have done. We arrived in DC at 2pm, and after getting checked in, unwinding and regrouping from the drive and relearning the Metro system, it was 4pm by the time we actually stepped into our first museum, the National Museum of American History. Please enjoy some photos!










More pictures to come!

Catch and release: pictures!

Here are some pictures of yesterday's heartbreaking, soul-crushing, emotionally draining search for a new house. These pictures are of two houses and are in no particular order. We said no to both - one decision was easy, one was not. But now on the other side of that decision, we are very glad with the choice we made. We are looking at three more places tomorrow - fingers crossed!

Foggy Monday

Saturday was packed full of downtown Raleigh goodness. We went to the Farmers Market and had breakfast and picked up some fresh squash and onions. The Farmers Market is huge - when we live closer (and no matter what we find for housing, we will certainly be closer), we will be able to go to there as an actual regular produce market. They sell fresh baked goods, fresh local goat cheese and local honey in addition to the local fruits and vegetables - many of which I have never seen before.

After that we went and checked out houses. There was a pair of houses we had marked out specifically to visit, but after seeing both of those (both were good, each had pros and cons and they both depend on seeing the interior) we moved on to driving up and down and in and out of neighborhoods. Now that we have a large list of prospects, it is getting very exciting. We're starting to think about painting, which we did not do at the Mill (thank goodness!).

The benefits to moving into town are tangible and exciting - not only will we have quick access to restaurants and coffee shops and Whole Foods and, in a year, a new Trader Joe's (the one that is here is in Cary and not exactly convenient), but we'll also be in a neighborhood with people. Not that the Mill doesn't have people, but they are kind of reclusive. They are the kind of people who enjoy living in relative isolation (there's a Super Target ten minutes away, so it isn't quite the middle of nowhere) and not really fun to spend time with. However, there are also some things that we'll lose by moving. Things like this beautiful morning, as you can see below, will be missed.

The art of View-Master

We took a recent trip to Selma, NC, to visit their antique district. The town itself was a bit of antique, a portrait of what the world used to look like. It was a little unsettling to find it so apparently deserted on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, but I guess if I lived there, I would take every opportunity to leave for more exciting venues.

The antique district itself was impressive - at least, to people like us it was impressive. We went with open minds and an open wallet, expecting - hoping, even - to find something to take home. Sadly, we found nothing except for a booth overflowing with an excellent collection of View-Master reels. I bought quite a few fantastic reels and, when we got home, I pulled out my existing collection and viewer and spent hours flipping through them.

If I haven't mentioned it before, I'll say it now: I love View-Master. I think it is an art form that is nearly totally lost. In the time I've spent writing this post, I have also done some cursory research on making your own reels, and it is still possible, although slightly expensive - $100-$200 for a working vintage camera, $40+ for a set of 6 blank reels (apparently they are no longer in production), $50 for a film cutter, plus the cost of 35mm slide film and the expense of having the film developed. It is intriguing - I am inspired to make the attempt, although I want to make sure that it is a potentially sustainable hobby. For example, if the blank reels are no longer available, I doubt if it is really worth the investment of hundreds of dollars to produce a half dozen reels.

At any rate, as fun and rewarding as that may be, my real joy is discovering old reels. I love the slight discoloration that they have. I love seeing the old cars, the old tourists in their old clothes (ankle-length skirts and suits and ties to see Yosemite!) frozen forever in time. But more than that, they are captured in 3-D. There's something very special about that. It is also amazing to see the clothing that is clearly from an era long-gone posed next to vistas that are practically unchanged.

I am very interested in a d.i.y. View-Master hobby, but it will certainly require some research. There are plenty of methods for creating 3-D images from digital photography as well as film, but making it a View-Master reel is something special.

Please enjoy some additional photos from Selma.

Saturday afternoon at the Bain Waterworks

Please accept the usual apologies for my extreme negligence in failing to maintain this blog properly. We - especially me, since I do the writing here - have been extremely busy (not a real excuse, I know) for the past few weeks. More importantly, we haven't done much of interest lately. I don't really feel a strong compulsion to write or post photos when nothing of any real importance or interest has happened. Things have happened, now that I think about it - last weekend our friends Charlotte and Loren came over and we plunged into the chilly river behind our home. Bronwen put some pictures up on her Flickr account - you can check them out.

But this week - oh, boy. It was amazing! We visited the Bain Waterworks - a defunct old waterworks facility that has been cleaned up and touched up by a dedicated crew of artists. There were so many little details, so many heavy machines, industrial gears and pipes, switches, levers and peeling paint that we could have spent several more hours there just taking pictures. As it was, we took 197 photos between the two of us. It was wild and crazy fun. One of the most entertaining and unique experiences I've had since living here.