Just after the kids went to bed tonight we had a southbound CSX train work its way down our track. Knowing my backyard train watching chances will soon be over, I hopped up from the living room for one more pass. As I watched from the warm moonlit deck, I saw the train driver wait until he was past our yard before he throttled up again.
The crew was tiptoeing through our neighborhood. Seeing that kinda choked me up.
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In an effort to jump-start our home-selling experience, we’ve knocked a little off the top of our Great Raleigh Home. Kelly and I (and a friend in the biz) talked it over and decided we weren’t doing ourselves any favors by being the most expensive house on the market in our neighborhood. We pulled our initial asking price out of thin air, so perhaps we weren’t being realistic.
We’ll see if any of those close-but-no-cigar folks now turn into winners.
Update: Scratch that. We’re holding off on the price change. We may … may have found a buyer!
Laurence Lovette, the 17-year-old accused of murdering Eve Carson, appeared in Durham court today to be arraigned for the murder of Duke Student Abhijit Mahato.
According to the N&O, Durham District Court Judge Craig Brown “chided the media, saying they were focusing on the case because one of the victims was a young, white woman. Black crime victims, he said, don’t get nearly as much attention.”
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So squeaky-clean former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer got caught in some hanky panky. Spitzer, his squeaky-clean image now, uh, less than squeaky clean, did the right thing: he owned up to it, and stepped down.
Politicians and sex. Same old story, right? But what I find to be the big story here is the way Spitzer and others were caught: with financial tracking software, some of it possibly made by Cary’s SAS Institute.
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I got called back into the office last night when it appeared the work I had done on our company’s firewall had taken down our network in Germany. It turned out to be a power failure rather than something I did, but I did appreciate a peek at what the area around my office is like at night.
Wow, was I amazed. The streets were full of people! Some waiting to get into a club that by day is a sleepy storefront. Others enjoyed drinks at sidewalk tables in front of The Raleigh Times. Bicycle taxis drove people from one end of Fayetteville Street to the other.
In spite of all the activity, I still managed to snag a street parking space right in front of my building. Before I could even log into my computer, I got the call about the cause being a power failure, sending me home again.
I remember my first visit to Raleigh in the fall of 1987. A friend had started at N.C. State and he took me on a tour of the city. On a Friday night downtown were deserted! I had to smile last night when I considered the contrast.
My, how things change.
