Dan Zanes

Dan_Zanes-20090718We enjoyed the Dan Zanes and Friends show at the North Carolina Museum of Art this evening. I’d been looking forward to it for so long (four years!) and Dan and the band didn’t disappoint. Their smiles becoming as infectious as the music.

Highlights were a cover of Wabash Cannonball, a whirling dervish end to The Monkey’s Wedding, and guest appearances by Raleigh’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Children’s Choir and the Durham Ukulele Jam Band.

Dan stayed after the show to sign autographs, which is very classy. But then again he’s just a great guy.

It was DZ and Friends’s first visit to the Triangle. We’re already looking forward to the next one!

Zydeco moon

Kelly and I had a chance to go on another date last night, so we went out to see the movie Moon (if you don’t mind spoilers, see the Wikipedia entry.). All the reviews were right: it was a very good movie. Actor Sam Rockwell had a huge burden, as he is the sole actor on screen for almost the entire film. He pulls it off, though.

We left the theater in time to head downtown to hear Zydecopious play at The Big Easy. We stayed out dancing past 1AM. Haven’t done that in a while!

Seeing the Light: touring Wilson’s municipal Internet system

Greenlight_LobbyI was invited today to tour the City of Wilson’s Greenlight municipal Internet system, so I took the day off and jumped at the chance. I’d helped win the latest battle against the anti-municipal broadband bill and the folks at the City of Wilson wanted to offer a tour to show their appreciation.

I arrived a little after 10 and met Brian Bowman, Public Affairs Manager with the city. He took me around the office and introduced me to other staffers (as a “famous blogger”…ha!) before giving me a ride out to the Greenlight offices in the city’s maintenance services building.
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Big day for a day off

I had a big day today for it being a day off. I started the day with a trip to Wilson to take a tour of the city’s municipal Internet system. After lunch in Wilson, I headed back to Raleigh to meet a friend for coffee and a discussion of local politics. Then I headed home to have dinner with the family before I left again for the Raleigh CAC meeting.

That’s a pretty busy day off, if I do say so myself!

Tour de France

I’ve been enjoying the Internet coverage of the Tour de France, though the local media never covers it enough, in my opinion.

Yesterday’s stage 10 was an agonizingly slow ride, as riders apparently protested a decision by tour organizers to ban radio contact with the riders’ team managers. It was dull-city for the most part except for a few diversions, such as when a bored cameraman showed a group of snails crawling towards the path of the peloton.

A viewer texted to the BBC live text coverage, asking “any snails spotted yet?”

The BBC commentator didn’t miss a beat:

No sign of any snails yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long before they make their move. With a little more luck one of them could have won yesterday’s stage…

How true!

Finding a Southerner at the flea market

The family and I went to the flea market at the fairgrounds Saturday morning to window shop for some furniture. We enjoyed looking around at all of the wares for sale and chatting with all the people there. While talking about furniture with one man I felt myself comfortably slipping into my old Southern self, with plenty of friendly y’alls and an added accent.

It made me appreciate again how rich my heritage is; how I can slip back into this friendly Southern mode without thinking about it. It’s not forced, it is who I am. The bigger surprise to me is that I tend not to talk Southern most of the time. I tend to be a bit of a chameleon with accents, as I’ve mentioned here before. Maybe it’s because Raleigh has such a mix of people from all over. Still, I’ve enjoyed those visits I’ve made to the deeper South (and to flea markets) and the chances they provide to reconnect with my roots.

Dog as weather forecaster

Kelly and I were amused at our dog Rocket’s attempt to hide himself in our closet at bedtime last night. He’s usually banished to the den so that we aren’t kept awake by his snoring. Occasionally, he’ll park himself outside our door when he wants company but his sneaking into our closet was quite unusual. Four hours later, at 2:30 AM, thunder first rumbled outside. Like most dogs, Rocket is terrified of thunder.

Today I’m left wondering: did our dog somehow know about the thunderstorm long before it arrived? If so, how? Was it the drop in air pressure? If air pressure is the answer, why doesn’t he react similarly when fronts move through that don’t cause thunderstorms?

In other news, I’m thinking of selling my weather radio. 🙂