Richmond: Cooler Than You Think

Okay, I have to admit that going into it, I was under the impression that Richmond, Virginia, was pretty much on par with Richmond, California (i.e., super-high murder rate and generally crappy). I'm not sure how I first came under that impression, but how delightfully wrong I was!

This view from the hotel shows the James River and Belle Isle. I was particularly intrigued by the pedestrian bridge that's hanging under the main bridge, though I didn't get a chance to check it out in person. There appeared to be several breweries across the river as well, but again, being in town on a "business" trip, I wasn't really in control of my agenda.

Just a few blocks from the hotel heading away from the river is the Capitol building. Not much to say about it... it's pretty white, pretty majestic, pretty Capitol-ish.

Richmond is home to VCU, which is making a name for itself as an art school, so there are a lot of murals and artwork around the downtown area. This old building skeleton was home to several cool large-scale pieces.

 

Lastly, there was this crazy albino squirrel chilling out in a tree! I've never seen such a thing, but now I can assure you that they do exist. So, positive points for Richmond: walkable (at least in the downtown/financial district), great restaurants, cool artwork, albino squirrels, and immediate proximity to a river. 

Yeah, I'd visit again.

Cat Motivation

Sometimes we just need a little encouragement.
(And especially encouragement from Shia LaBeouf. Seriously, search for his motivational video and give yourself the kick in the butt you really need.)

Your favorite Virginia college town in the mountains

A.K.A. Blacksburg!

I moved to Virginia Beach in May, which will be the subject of a later post, and after realizing how hellish Memorial Day weekend would be in the area, I opted to take a quick getaway to Blacksburg. It's a groovy little college town situated along the Blue Ridge portion of the Appalachians, and aside from all the awesome hiking within an hour's drive away, it's got a lot of nice things to do in town.

The following sign was a curious one I saw at a rest area en route via I-64 near Waynesboro. Toilets that use mineral oil instead of water and thus have zero effluent discharge?? I had never heard of or seen this before, but the toilet liquid was yellowish, so I would have assumed it was just the area's water, were it not for this sign.

I got to check out the Huckleberry Trail on a bike, which provided a nice ~10 mile ride around the area, and I also enjoyed Heritage Park, which had some sweet wildlife, nice wetlands and streams, nightshade plants, and decrepit old barn buildings.

.. Old barn buildings complete with artsy graffiti, as expected.

Blacksburg also boasts a cute, compact downtown with some good restaurants and a bus system with a great reputation that I sadly didn't get the opportunity to try out. The best part: the students were gone for summer! Hooray for a being a crabby old townie!

An Ode to the University of the South

Sewanee, how lovely thou art!

 

 Let me count the ways... with your Oxford-esque architecture,

your Shenanigans,

 

your giant War Memorial Cross,

 

and even your splash of artsiness,

 

all roads point to the Domain of the University of the South.

(Of course, it could still be argued that the best thing about Sewanee is its proximity to Chattanooga. Just sayin'.)

 

I Heart New York

... well, not really, but NYC is okay.

I took a little trip to New York over Spring Break (woo!) and actually had a pretty good time. I wasn't really anticipating it to be that fun since I was mostly going for a job interview, but I met up with several friends in the area, did a ton of walking, and rode the Staten Island ferry more times than I'm willing to admit.

I used public transportation for my trip, which included $3 trips to get from Midway airport to my airbnb on Staten Island (bus to subway to free Staten Island ferry to walking 1 mile). It took close to 2 hours to cover that distance, but I have a weird love of public transit, so it was kind of perfect.

I found the subway system fairly easy to use; I'm not really sure why everyone talks about it like it's impossible to navigate, but I guess it could be confusing if you've never had to use a train system before. Other pros: $2.75 per ride, and trains run all night! (What! Not that it matters when you're asleep before midnight on any given night..) The only problem I ran into was that my Metrocard got demagnetized in my wallet, so I had to mail in a claim for the money that was stuck on it. Where are you supposed to keep a Metrocard so that it isn't near credit cards or your cell phone??

One of my friends found that the American Folk Art Museum was having an exhibit on Masonic imagery and symbols, so we ambled through Central Park (first stopping through Belvedere Castle) and made our way to the museum at Lincoln Square. The museum is free with donation-based admission and housed a cozy 3-room personal collection of paintings, sculptures, and clothing items amassed over the years.

The above dimly-lit picture shows all the major symbols of the IOOF (Independent Order of Odd Fellows), many of which are common to Masons. It's a huge mess of symbols, including heart-in-the-hand for integrity; skull-and-bones, coffin, and winged-hourglass as reminders of mortality; and a bundle of rods showing strength in numbers. Needless to say, we're pretty much experts now.

And here's the exterior of the lovely Staten Island airbnb house I stayed in. My room was approximately the size of a large walk-in closet: large enough to fit a single mattress, a small set of plastic drawers, and a little space for walking around the mattress. It was $37 a night, but I ended up having the whole house to myself! Not too shabby. I also nearly destroyed my phone during this trip by initiating dreaded Updates, but possibly more on that another time.

An Artsy Chattanooga Christmas

The trek to Chattanooga this Christmas was complete with cats, lots of family time, and lots of rain.  Evan and I took the 3 kitties with us for a little over a week and split our time visiting the various members of our family and friends who were in town for the holiday.

I made it a point to walk around my favorite parts of downtown, so I got a few artsy or interesting pictures, including this obligatory one looking north through the Walnut Street Bridge.

The legacy of my old favorite restaurant and coffee house, The Mudpie.. replaced by Hill (sh)City pizza, and now by something else under construction.

This sign was only slightly comforting, but mostly disturbing, located at one of the shops on the North Shore by Coolidge Park.

I mentioned rain, and I'm not kidding: there was a thunderstorm on Christmas Eve, which is HIGHLY unusual, and the Tennessee River showed off that craziness with its swollen flood stage (not in itself an unusual occurrence). The above picture is looking south across the river, and it doesn't look too bad, but observe the closeup from the south shore:

All those little nubs that are separated from the stone staircase are actually 8+ foot tall lamp pillar things, and the stairs go all the way down to a sidewalk at their base. None of that is supposed to be underwater, so the river was probably close to 10 feet above where it should have been! A final more-closeup by the stairs, with ~1 foot of the pillars above water:

... And Rembrandt's in a coffee cup, mmmm.

Voting Made Easy (?)

I have a short backlog of entries to make, but I thought I'd write a timely one while it's fresh in my mind, especially since I don't have pictures to remember it by.

Today was (is) Super Tuesday, and Georgia is one of many states hosting presidential primary voting today. After 2 and a half years as an Athens resident, I figured it was about time for me to actually register to vote, so back in January, I did just that. If you have a Georgia driver's license, you can register online pretty quickly and easily, and I got my voter's card in the mail a few weeks ago.

My polling place is a short walk from my house, so the overall time it took me to walk there, vote, and walk home was about 25 minutes. I was afraid I might catch some flack for my driver's license address not being up to date, so I brought the voter's card along too, but it didn't seem to be a problem. Cell phones were not permitted in the voting area, so I couldn't get any pictures of the voting process.

I used an electronic voting setup (ExpressPoll maybe?), consisting of a touch-screen monitor and a card reader. The process was so quick and easy, I thought that there was no way anyone could screw it up. Seriously, you slide this plastic card with a chip into the reader until it clicks (as per directions on the reader itself), then you read a screen with directions, mark your vote on the next page, click "Cast Your Ballot", and it slides your card back out. Done, 10 seconds, maybe a minute if you're still deciding between candidates.

But sure enough, no sooner had I had turned in my card, gotten a sticker, and walked out the door, when one of the polling volunteers ran out and said I had forgotten to click "Cast Your Ballot" and that I needed to come back and finish voting. I said that I had clicked it, walked in, and saw that someone at a different machine had not actually finished before walking out. (The "Cast Your Ballot Screen" was showing in huge letters, with the chip still sitting in the reader.) The volunteer ran out and found the guilty party, who was completely clueless that they had not correctly completed the process, and all was well.

Seriously? Seriously.