Ride a train from Spencer to Charlottesville and back!

During my last swing past the North Carolina Transportation Museum, I asked one of the staff members there if they were going to run another excursion train anytime soon. He couldn’t give me a firm answer and I was worried I’d missed my chance.

Woo-hoo! I found out today that the museum will be running another excursion passenger train this fall! Its called the Virginia Autumn Flyer and will make the round-trip between Spencer and Charlottesville on November 1st and 2nd of this year.
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Downtown bargain

I saw this on the Longview Gardens website. Its a nearly 5000sf home on a 1.2 acre lot two miles from downtown and across the street from the Raleigh Country Club and its Donald Ross-designed golf course. How such a stately home can be only $315,000 is amazing to me.

Yeah, it fronts New Bern Avenue, but wow what a value. If I had some money to invest in places like this, I’d be all over it.

Love is blind

Remember the deal on Levolor blinds I mentioned way back? Looks like the promotion is still good! Our new home needs 7 sets of blinds, so I ordered them through Levolor and bought them all for $334 with free shipping. That would’ve been over $600 at my local big box hardware store, and I would’ve had to make two trips and waited all day for them to be cut!

So, if you’re still needing some amazing blinds at an amazing price, shoot me an email or leave me a comment. You can get 50% off, too!

Commercial debut

The Janet Cowell campaign commercial I mentioned is now available on YouTube. The first few times I watched I actually missed our scene. Then I realized we’re on the bottom of a split-screen part. Its not much screen time, but considering how Travis was making faces and our nerves were getting a bit shot, the scene is better than I expected. Regardless, it was a lot of fun!

Look for us 19 seconds into the commercial across the bottom of the screen when the announcer says “improving our schools.” Blink and you might miss it: we’re there for less than half a second!

How’s your hearing?

BoingBoing mentioned the “Mosquito” anti-teen-loitering device which drives away teenagers with sound frequencies that only younger people can hear. Curious about the state of my own hearing, I decided to use The Google to find some samples to play.

Behold TeenBuzz.Org, and its collection of “mosquito” ringtones designed to allow students to discreetly hear their cellphone ringing without the teacher catching on. While clever, isn’t that what the “vibrate” setting is for?
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Gang presentation

Tonight’s Raleigh East CAC meeting focused mainly on gangs and introducing my neighbors and I to Raleigh Police’s gang efforts. There was a middle presentation regarding new townhomes being built in our area by Wake Habitat for Humanity but I was more interested in the police information.

There were a few things that surprised me about the presentation, one of them being the geographical spread of gang activity around the city. I’m used to reporting graffiti around town but the idea that it isn’t really concentrated in one area was new to me. Also I was intrigued by the differing mindsets of the two groups presenting. A volunteer with the county stressed prevention and rescuing the gang “wannabes” before they sign up, while the police say there is no such thing as a “wannabe” and that even the young kids pretending to be members are almost surely on their way to being members. I assume that division is natural by the concentration the volunteer has “before the problem,” i.e. a crime gets committed, whereas police usually only get involved “after the problem.”
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Romantica Redux

Our friends, the band Romantica, are back in town tonight and playing at the Berkeley Cafe. We thought we might play host to them again but they’ve upgraded their accommodations since last time. I’m told their crowds have gotten ten times bigger since they’ve been touring. Not too shabby.

If you’ve got the evening free, swing on by the Berkeley and check ’em out. See you there!