I'm still alive

Hello I have been away for a while I suppose... mostly just too lazy to write here, mostly because I don't believe anyone reads it... which is perfectly fine with me of course.

Anyways my summer has been pretty crazy. It started out extremely boring, May was terrible and June continued that trend until my friends started graduating and most people at college were back and stuff... so I had a lot of grad parties to go to and hang out with people I hadn't seen in ages.. that was awesome.

I also ended up going to summerfest twice. One night I went with Alice to see Coheed and Cambria, who were (of course) absolutely AMAZING, and then I saw the Wailers with Kaitlyn and Natasha from track. That was hilarious because the entire crowd was potheads and they were all lighting up.. so we were very easily able to move to the front of the crowd.

On the fourth of July I got a few track club people together to go to the Winnequah fireworks with, but they were quite depressing as they last only about 10 minutes when usually they last almost a half hour. I felt bad for Ben because he had biked all the way there from downtown.

The next day I boarded a plane in Milwaukee and left for North Carolina. We flew over and then into a storm on the way to the Charlotte airport, so that was pretty exciting and I was busy taking pictures (duh). Then we had a short flight over to the Raleigh Durham airport where we (my aunt Kathy and uncle Jerry, their daughter Sydney, and myself) were picked up by my aunt Mary, uncle Eric and cousin Marianna and taken to their house in Fuquay-Varina.

I enjoyed my time in North Carolina because it is considerably different there. A lot of people have an accent there and the landscape itself is different-- all very dense woods in most places. You could be next to a town and not know it for the amount of tree and bush in the way. I would say it could compare to Northern Wisconsin but I don't particularly think thats true. There are different species of trees there which give it a different feel, a more dense feel than forests in northern Wisconsin. I am also particularly enamored of magnolias, so that was another lovely thing-- almost everyone has magnolias in their yard or something..

We did various things throughout the time there. On the Sunday after we arrived we mostly stayed around Mary & Eric's house. They took me for a tour around the towns of Fuquay-Varina... which if I understand correctly are two separate towns which are now morphed into one and divided simply by railroad tracks. I didn't know this but Mary & Eric own considerable property there.. in addition to their house, they own a small house down the street; a building called the Teacherage; and a large building on Main st. which used to be a car dealership. The small house they are trying to sell so Jerry, Eric and my cousin Maris spent time building a large porch on the back. They finished in a week. The Teacherage is an old home which was converted around the 1920s into a building where female teachers lived while teaching across the street. I had no idea about this stuff but Mary and Eric restored it (and won awards for historic preservation, also, which was kind of cool) and converted the building in turn into office suites for lawyers and other businesses. The large building on Main st is currently stuck in a rut. They want to make it into a big restaurant and/or brewery (which I think would be fricking AWESOME!) but they don't have enough money to develop it themselves and therefore have been looking for such a person who would be able to afford it.

On Sunday I also realized that on our second flight the previous night, my camera had falled out of my bag on take-off and I hadn't noticed. I was very upset because I had just bought this camera and although it wasn't quite that great-- I had bought it on eBay for $70-- it was all I had been able to afford, and taking pictures is something I love to do. Now I was upset that I wouldn't be able to take pictures at all. For some reason my aunt Mary decided she would buy me a new one which I couldn't believe and was really happy about. She bought me what turns out to be an excellent one and I am really grateful to her for that.

Anyway on Monday Mary drove us to get homemade ice cream at a farm, and we went to a historic town nearby called Hillsborough which was established in the 18th century. Unfortunately the visitor's center and historical society were closed for some reason-- it was a Monday and a lot of businesses seemed to be closed... but we wandered around the town looking at the signs marking historic places and then saw an old cemetery and a lot of old houses which were really interesting.

After that we went towards Durham and ended up looking around Duke University's campus, including Duke Chapel. That was really interesting and reminded me of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The stonework was very different but the Gothic revival styles were what struck me as similar. The lecture halls were all labeled simply with their subject- "Philosophy," etc., and most that I saw looked the same.

We then moved on to the Tobacco district, in downtown Durham, where a lot of tobacco companies had had their warehouses and manufacturing plants back in the day. A lot of the warehouses are now restored and converted into business suites similar to the Teacherage, and one area is now a Mellow Melon restaurant. The area is duplicately known as the Entertainment district and we wandered around for a while until we stopped in the Mellow Melon. We were waiting for the boys to arrive because we were going to a Durham Bulls baseball game across the street from the restaurant.

The stadium seemed very new and was very nice. It seemed like a lot of people were there and this fact soon became surprising simply because the game was frankly terrible... I like baseball but it was a horrible game, and no one scored for the first 3-4 innings. It was all foul balls and striking out. We made it through the rest of the game and then apparently they had fireworks which were supposed to have been set off on the fourth of July but had been canceled due to rain. They were spectacular, a lot better probably than any show I've ever seen. Probably the only rival to it is Rhythm and Booms but this was a very good fireworks show.

The rest of the week was a mixture of lazing around doing nothing and going various places. On Tuesday we went to a nearby town where they have a large mall and I spent too much money. In truth, I needed a new pair of shorts, a new swimsuit and some new sandals, but I still spent too much and it was kind of terrible.

Wednesday we went to Asheboro to see North Carolina's Zoo with my grandparents. Sydney and Marianna constantly bickered, but to be fair, it was mostly Sydney misbehaving. The Zoo was very similar in construction to Nashville's Zoo and so was relatively unexciting. I think I probably most enjoyed the poison dart frogs and the aviary, and was sad to see the Peregrine Falcon locked in a [relatively] small cage.

Thursday we had been supposed to go to Manteo, or Roanoke Island, which was the site of the first Anglo settlement in North America but my family argued that it was too far to go in just a day and so we would have to go some other time I came to visit. Needless to say I was extremely disappointed and if I had had my own car I would have driven there by myself, thats how much I wanted to see this place. Of course I didn't go there but my aunts offered to take me (and Sydney and Maris) to a town called New Bern, which was at the conjunction of the mouths of the Neuse and Trent Rivers and virtually on the Atlantic coast.

New Bern was an interesting and historic town of its own accord. We went to Tryon Palace which is a replica of the first governor's mansion. The original (and all but one outbuilding- the stables, which are still intact) burned approx. 1791 and was rebuilt in the 1950s as part of a historic/preservation project. The grounds are well maintained with a labyrinth of gardens and the "backyard" is extensive, stretching to the banks of the Neuse River.

After that we wandered a portion of the historic district to a sort of downtown area where a bunch of shops were gathered. we first saw the place where Pepsi was invented. I am still not sure if the original building was still intact or if that was just the corner where the guy had had his shop and there was a new building.. I am not certain.


We wandered the shops, drove down to riverfront, saw more old & interesting buildings and then embarked on our trek back to Fuquay-Varina.

Friday was our last day and I had been promised a trip to the Krispy Kreme store in Raleigh. The boys worked hard to finish the deck and we relaxed by the pool as we waited. Eventually it was decided that the adults (and Maris and myself) were going to Raleigh to have dinner then get Krispy Kremes. We ate dinner at a place called Red Hot and Blue. It was mostly a meat place-- burgers, steaks, seafood, etc.-- with some southern dishes thrown in for good measure. The food was good although I am not a huge meat-eater; I had simply a cheeseburger.

After that we drove around North Carolina State University's campus because it was virtually across the street. It was a nice little campus, seemingly secluded although in the middle of a bustling city- it was pitted in trees and shadows-- but I suppose most of that was leant to the atmosphere by our twilight passage through the area. We drove to the Krispy Kreme store next and I got a dozen all to myself because I am weird like that. Following this we drove through some of the old districts and saw a veritable amount of insanely gorgeous old houses, as well as the governor's mansion and the capitol building. The latter was a squat, pillared building with a small, dull green (probably copper) dome which reminded me of a building I've seen before, either a previous capitol that used to stand here in Madison, or something similar to Monticello. Either way it was rather Jeffersonian in looks, but still interesting for its thereby assumed antiquity.

Soon after this little detour through the city, we left for Fuquay-Varina. Near town we saw a field with at least twenty deer gathered and grazing. I've never seen that many in one place, not even in Wisconsin.

The next morning we left shortly after 8am in my grandparents' van for the drive back to Wisconsin. We drove west into the Smokey Mountains and then continued on to Knoxville (I'd never been in that part of Tennessee so it was cool), then struck northward towards Lexington, Kentucky. We nearly stopped then but continued on past Cincinnati, Ohio (my first time in that part of Ohio, too) and started towards Indianapolis. We stopped at a town called Shelbyville, about 20 miles south of Indianapolis because we had been in the car now for over 10 hours and everyone was fidgeting.

We actually had tried to stop in several places, and went to almost a dozen hotels looking for cheap rooms. Finally we found the Best Western in Shelbyville which was well-priced and had a pool (something Jerry and Sydney wanted for some reason). They went off to the pool while we ordered a pizza, but returned in short order for us to gasp at Sydney's face--- she had a large bump on her forehead.

As soon as we saw them, we freaked out and asked, "What happened?!"

Jerry said "God, why'd you say anything? I told her it wasn't that bad!"

Sydney shouted simultaneously "Daaaaaaddy you TOLD me it wasn't that BAD!!;" all the while bursting into tears and running to a mirror where the sight of her reflection caused a renewal of sobs to burst forth.

Apparently Jerry had told his 8 year old daughter that it was ok to dive head first into three feet of water, and she had done just as he told her to, with the added bonus of a large knot on the top of her head. We took care of her right away to make sure she wasn't severely concussed. I got her a bag of ice and checked her pupils and we watched for any other additional signs such as dizziness, vomitting, etc.

After a while the swelling went down and she seemed to be normal. We had dinner and later fell asleep, to wake at about the same time for the rest of our drive home.

We drove up to Indianapolis and west to Bloomington-Normal, then straight shot north up to Madison. We were home by approximately 2pm and I set about unpacking and then packing again for my next trip which I was leaving on the next day.

My friend (and soon-to-be roommate) invited me to stay with her family in the Dells from that Monday to Thursday. We stayed at the Chula Vista and mostly just hung out in the waterpark all week with the exception of one day when we went to the new Tanger Outlet mall to look for things for our apartment. I also spent way too much money there, on clothes I probably really didn't need but also on some kitchen utensils which I did sort of need.

That Monday evening I also hung out with Jeremy after he was done with work. It was really nice to see him because I hadn't since he had moved to the Dells in like March.. so we spent a lot of time talking and such. It was an interesting night, thats for sure.

Anyways, it was a nice rest and I wasn't looking forward to coming home because it meant I would have to go back to work. I got back on Thursday and spent time cleaning up and unpacking. Friday I went to Maxwell Street Days and once again spent too much money. Thats trouble, since I need to save money for the apartment. Therefore, now I am trying to work my ass off every day the rest of the summer to try in some way to get as much money as I can (and hopefully not fucking spend it all this time!!!!) because I have really been kind of worried about having enough money to pay for the apartment in addition to utilites, cell phone and car insurance. Uck. I don't know. Oh well I suppose. I returned to work yesterday and surprisingly still remembered everything and had a slightly better work ethic than I had had for a long time before I left town originally. Today didn't pan out quite the same although I did get a considerable amount done.

I am just waiting until August 1 (although for other reason I do not want this date to approach quickly) because then ISIS goes down and I literally won't be able to do work. So I can go to work and get paid to do absolutely anything I want, which could be considerably boring but counterbalanced by the benefit of being paid for said nothingness. Warped Tour is also August 1 so I'll be gone that day.. but oh well. haha. Whatever.

Wow this is a long blog. Haven't written like this in a while but its nice.