Still raining here in North Carolina. Been raining off and on for several days now though they are forecasting clear skies by the weekend. Does not help the people living in Wilkesboro though with part of Highway 421 washed away. That is my regular route to the mountains when I go sightseeing. It’s on the eastbound lane so the problem will be on the return trip to Winston but considering that it will take weeks of some heavy construction work, westbound lanes may also be affected in the weeks ahead. Not planning to go to the mountains soon but if I do go up, it will north on Hwy 52 and then return on on a country road that will take me back to 421 somewhere east of the damaged section.
Last night, the Powerball lottery had its draw for the $232 million jackpot with one winner somewhere in South Dakota. I never got around to buying a ticket. My luck is terrible on these things so I never really bother even when it gets as high as it did. Still, I would like to imagine that if I ever did win such an amount, I would do a world of good, giving it back to the community so to speak rather than let it sit in an account somewhere.
The Stanley Cup Finals are set with a rematch between Detroit and Pittsburgh. My early call: Detroit in 5.
There was an article in the WS Journal about a barbershop located in the Reynolds Tower in downtown Winston-Salem that is moving across the street to a new location in the Winston Towers. I worked at RJR downtown for 5 years and I never knew that it was there nor did my buddy Jerry who also worked there. As the article went on to report, at one time, the Tower was not all RJR business but had other offices and shops located on several floors of the building including the lobby area. This is similar to what I saw in the Empire State building, the big brother of the RJR Tower, which had shops at the ground floor and different offices on every floor. But as RJR grew it took all of that space for itself and then built another Tower next door for expansion, the same tower where it is consolidating all of its back office staff and executives. In any event, this tower, with its Art Deco lobby and brass elevators may become a highly desirable location for offices to relocate downtown with the required modifications for each floor.
The Downtown partnership for Winston-Salem has a blog now at http://downtownwinstonsalem.blogspot.com/. This is a good source of news on the developments in the downtown core. From a few posts of late, we will find out that there is new talk of getting an arts cinema located downtown, the downtown jazz concerts got off to a good start, and a new tenant is moving into the old Speakeasy jazz joint on Fourth St. Good signs to see considering the current state of the economy.
Last night posted a slew of photos, nearly all concerning the family over the past five months or so. It is the so-called Missing Photos. The source of the photos came from Andrea’s camera which I just now got around to download to my computer for uploading to the website. The photos include Christmas, Madeleine’s birthday, Easter and the Celtic festival. Plenty of Madeleine in the shots but there are others too as well.
Finally, talking about Madeleine, here’s the video from her concert a few weeks back that was put on by her day care at Pine Grove Methodist church. Enjoy.
So here it is the day after Memorial Day. I could say I had a productive holiday, worked around the house, tending to business and what not but I would be lying. For the most part, I just rested the weekend. The only thing we did of consequence as a family was spend some time in Old Salem. It is always good to visit the historic part of the city. Nothing ever changes there but it is such a beautiful place just to walk the cobblestones and see the historic places. Plenty of tourists around as well. Madeleine had a grand time just being herself; she has so much energy that I can not keep up with her. Appears time for me to get back into shape.
But before getting into shape, Memorial Day holiday is time for BBQ and I did my bit. Ribs on Sunday with potato salad and baked beans; Hamburgers and corn on Monday. All very good eats. Ate so much, I probably could go without eating for a day or two.
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So what time I had left for the weekend was spent on catching up with my reading and my photography. I am still going through the photos from the Dance Recital and the Celtic Festival from earlier this month. Also had to take care of some of the photos from the Old Salem trip too. It has been taking a bit longer to do the photos as I have to been experimenting a bit on them especially on the Dance Recital. My experiments in photos will be the subject of an upcoming feature this weekend.
One thing about the photography of late is that my hard drives are ready starting to fill up. An event like a dance recital will use up my 2GB flash card in my camera. Put a string of such events together and hard drives start shrinking tremendously.
So it looks like I will be in the market for another external hard drive soon. I am stunned to see that 1 TB drives are going for $120 now a piece. It was just a year ago or so, that I paid $100 for my 250GB. Prices coming down fast and that is good. At the rate I store photos now, I will need 100 GB/year. Of course, if I start doing more with my photography, then that usage will definitely jump.
See ya later…
