The North Carolina Trip

Don't get me wrong, I love Florida, but sometimes you have to get out for a while or you feel like you've aged 50 years and been fried in an oven. Granted, it's worse when you live in a retirement community (like I do) and summer is already practically here. But given that I needed a vacation, I decided to visit my friend Ashley in North Carolina. This is Ashley:



She doesn't always wear a tiara, it was a birthday thing. For those of you trying to figure out how I know Ashley, she was my roommate that summer I spent at the Duke Marine Lab. She was pretty awesome then, so I figured eight years couldn't have changed her much. I was partially right, in that she did change a little. But she got more awesome.

Roughly Chronologically:
I drove up Thursday night (the 13th).

Friday I wandered around the UNC campus and shopped on Franklin Street. I took no photos of this because I suck. Friday night i have pictures of though!

Friday evening we (Ashley, me, a couple of her friends, and my friend Adam) went to the Durham Bulls (minor league affiliate of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays) opening night game in Durham. I had a great time! I had pizza and beer (yay for sports food!) and got to see JJ Redick throw the opening pitch:


(Photo from jjredick.net)


(Photo from where we were sitting. JJ is the guy in the red shirt walking toward the mound)

Here's Ashley and me:


Here's Adam and me (notice the cute pink bulls hat I bought!):


The Bulls were down by three at the bottom of the ninth with two outs and a full count when BJ Upton hit a grand slam and we won! That was pretty unbelievably amazing. Then we had fireworks:



The rest of the baseball picture are here.

Saturday morning Adam and I had breakfast in Chapel Hill (mmm...m&m waffle!) and started driving to Wilmington. After we had driven a while (an hour? two?) his brother called to let him know that he had leave for 24ish hours from his marine training at Camp Lejeune (I think technically he was at New River Air Station, but I'm going to call it Lejeune). So we stopped by and picked Abraham up and continued on to Wilmington. We had lunch, I shopped a little, we toured the USS North Carolina, then we headed back to Chapel Hill.

The USS North Carolina:


Abraham and Adam Blocker:


That night we (me plus Adam and Abe and friends) went out in Chapel Hill. There were a lot of military guys there. I had significant amounts of vodka to try to drown out all the "my branch is better than your branch" talk. Seriously, you all wear uniforms to theoretically defend our country, you're all awesome, let it go. (end rant.) Also, if I never hear "ooh-rah" or "napalm sticks to babies" again, I'm really good with that.

Sunday was Easter. I meant to go to the service in Duke's chapel, but I slept through that. I don't really remember much about Easter to be honest, I think Ashley went to church and I watched movies maybe.

Monday was Ashley's birthday!!!! Here are the rest of the pictures from her birthweek celebration. (Since I was there over the Easter holiday and for her birthday, just a quick listing of the food consumed: candy, ice cream, red velvet cake, chocolate cream pie, apple cobblerish thing, brownie sunday, cupcakes, pizza, cheesecake factory, etc. I pretty much never want to see sweets again.) On her birthday I went to work with her and went to lunch with her and her boss. We went to Elmo's Diner, I can't remember what we ate, but it was pretty good and I bought a tshirt. I'm going to include some birthday pictures now:


Blowing...


Blowing...


Blown

Ashley also has an amazing job. She works at Duke. Kindof. She works in an office on the East Campus at the Center for Academic Integrity. I spent a whole day there with her and with her boss and I still don't quite get what they do. I'm sure it's important though, and I want to go to the conference in Boulder in October. This is their website if you're interested in it. You can see if your school is among those striving for academic integrity. Mine are, not that you'd know it from actually attending classes.

I spent two days on campus at Duke, one with Ashley and one wandering around by myself. Here are a few Duke photos to make me happy:


The Chapel


In the Duke Gardens (limited pictures because I spent pretty much the whole time I was in the gardens on the phone with Edith)


Mecca


Retired Jersey Display

I spent two hours in Cameron. There are quite a few additional photos on flickr, and more on my computer that I didn't upload. Go see all the Duke photos. :)

Driving back I stopped in Fayetteville to see the Airborne and Special Ops Museum. I did this because I really don't get why Adam (who was airborne) and his friends volunteered to jump out of planes. I was hoping the museum would help with that, since the billboard for it said some variety of "Find out why sane people jump out of perfectly good airplanes." It was a really well-done museum with excellent exhibits and movies and pictures and such. I still don't understand why they want to jump out of planes, but I was impressed both with the museum and the soldiers it honored. I recommend it highly to those passing through the area. Here's what it looks like:



That's pretty much it for things I have pictures of. Things I don't have pictures of:
Going to the movies. I saw V for Vendetta, Thank You for Smoking, and Lucky Number Slevin.
Going to dinner with Adam.
The UNC campus. (which I did tour with Ashley, but at night so no pictures.)
Watching movies with Ashley in her living room.


To summarize: I had a great time. Now Ashley needs to come to Florida so she can see the good things down here. :)