Doodle Dispatch: Week 1 in Winston

My sister Doodles and I summarize her first week in town (click to enlarge):

Bruce Rocks Steensboro!

I'm not a particularly big Springsteen fan, but I do like a good music concert, and somehow my friend Paul was able to score four $100 tickets to get us onto the floor of the Springsteen show in Greensboro for about $40 a piece. So I rustled up Doodles and DJ Dan, filled my trusty flask with whiskey, and we headed off to the show at the Greensboro Coliseum.

Three hours later (including a six-song encore), the flask was empty and we had a lot of great memories from the evening:

	I love to see weird old people come out of the woodwork to rock out with bands that were big 30 years ago.
	Bruce goes through the crowd picking up signs for musical requests -- pretty much any song was game, even if not a Springsteen song. He played "Seventh Son" and "Hang on Sloopy" and a couple others. Sloopy was really fun...
	Town is renamed! (Photo from the Smith Family Times... check out their account of the concert.)
	Just Bruce looking like a fucking rockstar. (Photo by Nelson Kepley (News & Record)

The Cool Kreme Trap

Doodles and I wandered into Krispy Kreme on Stratford to redeem a coupon I had scored for a free Cool Kreme ice cream cone. We wandered in, and were greeted by a cheerful cop who was on his way out.* "Make sure that you ask for a sample cone," he said, "it's free!"

So we ended up going to the counter and getting a cruller and a custard-filled doughnut and our free ice cream cones for a little over 2 bucks. After we handed her the money, the cashier handed us two MORE coupons for free Cool Kremes, meaning that we'll have to go back, I suppose.

As we were walking back to the car, eating ice cream and donuts:

Doodles: "I think that living in the south is going to turn me into a heifer."

Me: "There is no Doodles any more... There is only Helga."

Doodles: "I ate Doodles... she was tasty."

* Krispy Kreme was also running a promotional campaign at the time called "Cops on Doughnut Shops." Go figure...

Doodle's in town!

My sister Doodles made it to North Carolina about 48 hours ago for an extended stay after two years in Korea. We were both up by about 8:30 the next day and by 10:30 (without any help from me, btw) the kitchen looked cleaner than it had in months... a cleaning dynamo...

After seeing this level of industriousness, I decided that it was clear what I needed to do: get her to start contributing posts to Blue Ridge Grass.

One of the first things she wanted to do was make a visit to the nearest bakery. We headed to Ollie's, where she walked in and stared at the bread and the pastries for a good while, soaking it in. After a couple years of nothing but white bread that was pretty nasty anyway in Gwanju, Korea, she said "You don't know what this means to me."

She didn't shed a tear though... just bought a loaf of light wheat bread. She's a trooper I guess.

Bee Uprising

Less than a day after spotting a bee getting to work on a hive under my garage, I found a new bee doing the same thing, and even further along. I now know that that first bee was not a fluke, but a harbinger of things to come. I dosed the bastard with Raid and plucked down his little handiwork to put as a little souvenir in my kitchen.

The next day, I went into work and was quietly minding my business when a bee the size of my pinky started buzzing around my office, presumably filled with massive amount of venom and orders to avenge his fallen comrades. I paced the office for a good 15 minutes waiting for my moment to strike and then pounded him with a clipboard as he rested on the windowsill. After this I left for lunch and came back an hour later to find the bee upright and walking around, like an aging prizefighter who refuses to stay down for the count. So I clubbed him again (killing big insects is gross, btw).

Basically, it looks like the bees and me have a score to settle. In fact, I'm so sure of this that they even get their own label. Bring it on, you bastards...

R.I.P., Flavio II

R.I.P., Flavio III

Bee Startup

"Lookit -- some bees are trying to make a hive right on my garage. They're just getting started."

"How do you know it's bees?"

"There's a bee right there."

"Oh. Weird."

"Yeah."

"You should take a picture of the hive and then kill it."

Musical Flight

Short note that my pal & fellow contra-dancer Leah will be playing a couple hours of classical music starting at 5:30 tomorrow (Friday) at RayLen Vineyards as part of the Sky Meadow Strings trio. I expect it will be an entertaining couple hours with wine, fine music, and nice weather... My other understanding is that this concert is ultimately being performed to help the trio advance their noble goal (?) of collecting beer money to help kick the weekend off with a bang, so donations are appreciated.

Here's a link for more information -- hope to see you there!

http://www.raylenvineyards.com/index.php/Future-Events/

Bad-Ass Turtle

I was biking around Reynolda Gardens today when I bumped into this guy, definitely one of the most bad-ass turtles I've seen in a while, clocking in at maybe 2 1/2 to 3 feet from head to tail:


This picture was about as close as I wanted to get to him -- I got a little closer at one point and he snapped and sort of hissed at me. I like my fingers and other extremities, so I left him be.

I think that a good name for this feller is "Soup". As in "Sup, Soup?" or similarly: "Sup? Soup."