Out of Sync

I did indeed go back to the new karate school last night, and I actually got to participate in the class this time. It helps to have not gotten lost on the way there, so I was actually early this time instead of late. Stupid directions. It’s actually really easy to get there; there was [...]

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Intimidation

In what seems to be a requirement for my personal blogs, I now write to say that I have found a new karate school. Given that this one is actually, really, truly in my prefered style, Shotokan, hopefully this will turn out to be a more long-term relationship. It really isn’t the same thing at all [...]

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Ridgewood Art

The small shopping center very close to my parents’ house (and not very far from where I live as well) is called Ridgewood. It contains a Whole Foods, a wine store, a yarn store, a bike store, and our favorite independent bookstore, Quail Ridge Books, amongst other things. It also has an art gallery. On [...]

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On Driving

Ever since I moved back to NC, I have been driving my parents’ extra car, a Toyota minivan. It’s not a bad car; in fact, it has many advantages, the main one being that it is free, no small consideration given that I blew all the money I made from selling the car I had [...]

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Housecall

Just now, walking back the 500 feet between Mark’s apartment and my own, I saw a strange and interesting thing. There is a mobile vet’s office, in the form of a highly decorated smallish RV, outside one of my neighbor’s apartments on the corner. This is not a concept that had ever occurred to me before, to put [...]

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Cup A Joe’s

Across the street from the Ballet Bulldozer, next door to one of the long-standing used bookstores on Hillsborough St., is my family’s favorite local coffee place, Cup A Joe. My parents have started going there every Saturday morning (my mom gets chai), and the main barrista already knows their orders, and mine when I go [...]

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The Ballet Bulldozer

When I was in elementary school, I took ballet. Our ballet studio was in a building on Hillsborough Street, a main drag in Raleigh that runs along the front of NC State’s campus, as well as past the state fairgrounds. It’s a very long street. In the area past the campus but still in the very [...]

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Rose Garden In Bloom

Just over a week ago, my friend Kevin came into town, ostensibly to help Mark unload all his stuff, but he came earlier in the week to see the area. Because I’ve been playing hostess and trying to encourage my friends to move here, I’ve been thinking about all the things I like about my hometown. So [...]

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