A stiff wind pushed against me as I rode home one day last week. Its strength and steadiness reminded me of a sea breeze and it surprised me how intensely I miss the sea.

Extraordinarily brave or extraordinarily stupid? There’s often a fine line separating the two. At 2:30 this afternoon, a man blurred that line when he robbed the Mechanics and Farmers bank right next to my office.

The M&F bank is tiny place, so small its almost two-dimensional. What it lacks in size it makes up in location, though: it sits right across the street from the Raleigh Times. The Times is a place where patrons fill outside tables all morning and afternoon. There were guaranteed to be a handful of witnesses who could’ve seen the guy. Not only that, but top brass from the Raleigh Police visit so often that its practically a police substation. Cops could’ve been at that bank in ten seconds.

I walked by the bank around 1:30 after meeting the family for lunch at the new Roly Poly. As I passed, a bank employee was on the sidewalk, cellphone to her ear, scolded a couple for parking in the bank parking lot.

The bank is so close it literally shares a wall with my office. I can’t see it from my window, though. Can’t see the sidewalk outside my building either without moving to the window. And though I had my scanner with me I didn’t listen to it all day. Don’t know what good it would’ve done if I’d had.

Ah well. That’s life in the big city, eh?

I walked over to the credit union branch today to deposit a check. Right after I finished with the teller, I decided to get some cash from the ATM (though there were no less than four tellers sitting idly by, surfing the web. No kidding, I’m funny like that).

As I swiped my card it dawned on me: I could not remember my PIN.
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I’ve been fortunate not to have to travel much lately but when I do I usually do it alone. I like to eat good meals when I travel as there is only so much fast food one can consume before losing one’s mind. Thus I’m often walking into restaurants as a party of one.

What many hosts and hostesses like to do is to park single customers at the bar. While I would rather not take up a 4-spot or 6-spot table with my lonesome, I find a bar seat to be a bit wanting.

When I’m eating alone in a new place, I like to spend my time absorbing the surroundings. A fly on the wall, if you will. Unfortunately, a lot of bars aren’t configured this way, making customers at the bar face a wall of glass and mirrors rather than the rest of the restaurant.

Restaurants that put the bar out in the open are the ones that get it right, at least for people-watching clientele like me.

Raleigh’s bigwig developer (and my office landlord) Greg Hatem got hitched this weekend to Samantha Smith. A huge group of people attended. My friends who were there pointed out that the wedding was a reunion of sorts of the staff of the N.C. State student newspaper, The Technician. Greg did a lot at the Technician.
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While I’m on the subject of newspapers, I’m such a media geek that I always tote home a copy of the area’s paper when I travel. I like to compare these papers to Raleigh’s.

I did the same in Milwaukee, and let me say how impressed I am with the quality of Milwaukee’s paper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Journal Sentinel reporter Dave Umhoefer won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. From the story (emphasis mine):

Journal Sentinel Editor Martin Kaiser said the story reflected the newspaper’s commitment to local news, digging deep on important issues and making a difference in the community.

That’s what I’d like to see from our local paper. An unobtainable goal?