Avon honeymoon

M I made some coffee

R I made you some coffee!

M True, I just pushed the button…  Want some?

R sure.  You got up an hour ago?  I wish I got up with you!

M Sleep is one of the great things about this vacation.

R Yeah?  What’s the OTHER thing?

M All of them, babe…


Ten days!  Unreal.  Thanks LeeAnn and Bob for letting us dog-sit good old Charlie.

Friday, drove the Tesla out, what a joy.  Charged at the Food Lion and perused the shipwrecks on the only interesting T-shirt in the all-Trump freedom headquarters (resisted buying a Trump wig-in-a-hat).  Got a face photo at Dirty Dick’s.

Saturday, got up for an expensive and inconclusive 3-hour kite board lesson.  Learning to fly.  Most importantly, got me past the fear and feeling ready for next time!

Sunday was one of those perfect rainy beach days, with windows open to the storm and constant wind and rain.  Dope Thief finale, Jon Hamm entertained in Friends & Neighbors, and we discovered another amazing Korean drama When Life Gives You Tangerines, with perhaps the greatest one-two punch ever written.

Monday had us cruising the south end of the Outer Banks.  The cutest bookstore, Buxton Village books, was nicely curated, with local authors on display, and sections devoted to subjects like shipwrecks and southern lit.  Speaking of, the Graveyard of the Atlantic shipwreck museum was just down the road by the ferry at the southwest tip of the island, with an actual Enigma machine and plenty of tales of disaster, thanks to the ever-shifting shoals of the churning OBX sea.  We wrapped the day watching a wedding while sipping dirty Marys, at the Inn on Pamlico Sound, followed by a nice dish of tofu and veggies at Cafe Pamlico.

Living Large on Fayetteville

Wow so much has gone unblogged. Mostly, the big move! Regina and I jumped on a condo listing in the heart of Raleigh. We had looked around enough to know a gem when we found it! And then we upped our game by jettisoning most of what we owned and going all-in on DRAB TO FAB! Michael at the Design Haus in Clayton is really setting us up beautifully. Check it out!

I’ll post an update soon!

Raleigh Rodeo

Ken decided he was coming to Raleigh, yay! Then he talked Matt into joining. And I convinced Erik to come. So local friends and I gathered here and there all over town to pack in quite a fun-filled weekend.

Friday: Regina left a huge bag of St. Paddy gear on my doorstep! “Hide it until tomorrow” ok! ❤️ Young Hearts Distillery then Raleigh Times for plates and drinks; Slims for loud noise and bad beer.

Saturday: Slept through St. Paddy’s parade, met at 444 for breakfast coffee chat, headed to St. Paddy’s street party at Hibernian; met Kelly and Shannen, drank much Guinness, Erik fell in love with the young singer; went to Morgan St. Food Hall and grabbed pizza etc, had our epic Epic Axe battle, Matt wins $5 off us all by ONE POINT; Watts and Ward Old Fashioned Raleigh tradition, chilled and chatted; Regina met us for amazing Brewery Bhavana dinner, she and I shared small plates, everyone enjoyed such such good good beer… we were all pretty crispy by the end!

Sunday: up, breakfast, coffee, chill… toured ArtSpace’s gallery and studios; epic ART LESSON from Matt! He was in town all day, awesome; Regina called us to The Davie to meet up with Bob and LeeAnn and her sister Lisa, such a great mashup of great people; next we planned exits, how sad… Erik ran everyone to the airport.

Can’t wait for the next one!

Raleigh is ours

Regina and I walked from her old place to her new apartment at Peace that she will be in soon. It’s perfect. A 30 minute walk through the heart of Raleigh got us there. Raleigh was hopping today, with full parks, a set of Raleigh Astronomy Club telescopes beautifully filtering the sun (one showed dark spots, another had a hydrogen alpha filter that let us see solar prominences – unreal), live bands, noisy crowds, and sadly, lots of police (ahead of Tyre Nichols protests, Regina pointed out – a sad shameful ending to the walk).

The apartment is insane, right outside the door is the glorious pool, grills, a bar, the lounge with a theater, pool table and so much more. It’s basically the world’s biggest living room. Wow.

9.0 The Offer

It’s rare to find anything with this much high quality triple layering (actors playing actors playing characters). Some complain it is from a mysoginist eta (true) better left dead. Some elitist critics (*cough Rolling Stone *cough) find it shameful. Just focus on the world class acting through the twists and turns, it’s quite a journey.

Avon and the art of motorcycle repair

Real sports for kiteboard watching and a wrap

Aussie food truck free.coffee

Donna yoga on the beach sunrise

Nice good old boy pulled us from sand trap bought him beer

Walked a mile to beach, nailed the Nemo, extra poles

Sat at edge of tide, let it wash into us on the top of a steeeeeep bank.

Jamaica convenience cafe man scared us when I changed my order. Saw pinball and video games and poptart slippers and beers and…

Saw the sand motel

Swam and body surfed in huge waves, dragging feet to keep from getting rolled, or floating on back, so fun

Cooked tofu and veggies, pancakes and sausage, made so much coffee

Bluetooth speaker jams

So many sand crabs on the beaches! Sand pipers, gulls, a pack of crows… On sup, saw sting ray, crabs, seaweed beds, pelicans. So many dogs too! And cat alley.

On drive and hike into triangle of state Park land, saw beautiful green snake yay! And spiders. No beach in site, lol

Got extra Nemo poles for Anderson’s

Pelican limerick, kucuberaa sits on the electric wire, tears in his eyes cause his pants are on fire.. laugh kb laugh kb, gay your life must be

BattleBots 2021/22

It’s robot fighting betting time!

Loser buys Winner his favorite snack!

There are 32 teams in the single-elimination tournament, all ranked based on prior performance in the group stage.


RULES

For each day of competition, pick the winners of each battle.

If your bot wins, you score points!

Points Scored = (contestant rank difference) / 4 rounded to nearest integer – so root for the underdogs when it makes sense!

PLOT TWIST! If we pick the same robot to win a battle…
… if the robot loses, the point leader after the round cannot pick the winner to win in the next round.
…if the robot wins, the point leader after the round MUST pick that bot to win in the next round.
…if the point leader has conflicting rules in a battle, the rules are all invalidated.

Round of 32

Ep11 Mike Skorpios Minotaur Copperhead Glitch/WitchDoctor Hijinx P1 Huge Riptide
Ep11 Dan EndGame Bloodsport Lucky Glitch/WitchDoctor Sawblaze Hypershock Huge Riptide

Ep12 Mike Ribbot MadCatter Blip Tombstone Whiplash Yeti Rotator Tantrum
Ep12 Dan Hydra/Defender BlackDragon Blip Tombstone IceWave Cobalt CaptainShredderator Gigabyte

Dan2 – 2 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 4 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 8 – 8 – 8 – 15 …
Mike2 – 4 – 5 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 7 – 7 – 7 – 7 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 11 …

Round of Sixteen

Dan EndGame WitchDoctor SawBlaze UpperCut Hydra Blip Cobalt Tantrum
Mike Minotaur Copperhead SawBlaze Riptide BlackDragon Blip Cobalt Tantrum

Dan15 – 15 – 18 – 21 – 22 – 25 – 25 –
Mike11 – 15 – 15 – 15 – 16 – 19 – 23 –

Quarterfinals

Dan Minotaur Sawblaze Blip Cobalt
Mike Minotaur Riptide Hydra Tantrum

Dan25 – 26 – 26 – 26 – 26 – 26 –
Mike23 – 23 – 24 – 30 – 31 – 31 –

Semifinals

Dan WitchDoctor Hydra
Mike Sawblaze Tantrum

Finals

Dan WitchDoctor
Mike Tantrum

Dan26 – 26 – 31 – 31
Mike31 – 32 – 32 – 33

Kayaking the Roanoke River at Jamesville

Stephen and I drove out to his home town of Jamesville to check on his family’s properties there. It’s about 3/4 of the way from Raleigh to OBX. Classic old town America.

After we visited his parcels, we hit the Roanoke, and saw fish jumping, a great blue heron, a kingfisher, turtles among the natural lily pads (beautiful), what looked to be a copperhead fall from a tree and take a gentle upstream swim, and a pack of turkey vultures enjoying a catfish head on the shore, ha. A beautiful natural river.

9.0 Promising Young Woman

I found my militant feminist movie last night, after Hustlers failed hard to deliver on every level. Damn, some intense manhating. Good stuff, hahaha. Carey Mulligan continues to steal my heart.

About as dark as I Care A Lot, but with a solid theme: men are disgusting lustful gluttons.