Stacey the aspiring stewardess

On Saturday night, I was coming back from dropping my friends at the bar, wanting to head to bed early after a long day… and then I ran into Stacey in the landing of my apartment building.

I was all dressed out from going out, and after I offered her a neighborly hello, she responded, “You look delicious.”  I then stopped walking, deciding this is was conversation that needed to be continued.

We continued our awkward bantering, as I tried to unwind whether I was delicious or if she was referring to her Hot Pocket she was nibbling on. We also covered other topics, such as the fact that she watches me from her balcony when I come home from work, and my current relationship status:
Stacey, “So do you have a girlfriend?”
AJ, “No…”
Stacey, “Oh.  … So, do you have a boyfriend?”
AJ, “No.”

Just like in the movies, it was pretty easy to quickly move from initial flirting to getting her in my apartment.  Unlike the movies, I proceeded to stall for the next 2 hours, both keen to see what would happen and horrified to what could happen.  In that time frame, I learned the following things about Stacey:

1.       She’s currently a nurse, but is an aspiring stewardess, and just got hired by Jet Blue and will be heading to Cape Canaveral for training soon.

2.       She’s earning a degree in business, but only because her Dad wants her to.

3.       She doesn’t like people from Pennsylvania, or at least the fact that there are too many of them here in Wilmington.

4.       She’s 30, which I found out after I incorrectly (and honestly) guessed 22 ….

5.       She’s the Maid-of-honor at for a wedding August 3^rd.  I know this because she asked me to be her date. I politely declined, explaining that I will be in Milwaukee at the time.

6.       Stacey made blueberry jam for the wedding as table-toppers.  We sampled some, it was quite good.

7.       Stacey is not very good at banagrams, but she’s certainly a trooper while losing badly.  

After nearly 2 hours I got tired and sent her back to her apartment, and I went to bed.

The following lessons were learned:

1.       That girl/guy down the hall that you always check out but never talk to… they are probably doing the same.  The key is to wait until one of you admits it, preferably the other person.  

2.       If you are patient enough, you can, in fact, wait until a girl comes out of nowhere and completely throws herself at you. No need to actually go somewhere, or try in any capacity.  

3.       As a corollary to #2, chicks dig guys that are well dressed.  So when walking down dark alleyways, dress nicely, and eventually you will meet a nice girl. 

Blueberries and a battlefield

My mom was visiting me for this past week.  I was pretty busy at work Monday & Tuesday but was able to get off work at a decent time to spend time with her for the rest of the week. We had a full week. On Wednesday we attended Shakespeare on the Green and wittnessed perhaps the most adorable rendition of 12th night I'll ever see by the youth troupe.  2 identical 8-year-old-girls alternating the lines for Festes? Yes.). On Thursday we took a river boat tour of the Cape Fear River and got to check out the Port of Wilmington 

A ship, from Saudi Arabia

Tanks, presumably lined up for said ship

The crack security team

Are we exporting M1 Abrams tanks to the Sauds? Yes, yes we are. 
And on Friday, we went to a Jazz concert at Arlie Gardens, after mom got herself sunburned on Bald Head island.  :(

On Saturday we went to the Pender County Blueberry festival, because who doesn't want to spend their Saturday morning celebrating blueberries?  As blueberries have beeen my official favorite fruit since early elementary, I certainly was not going to miss out on the action.  As you can see below, you could get just about anything you wanted with blueberries.

My take-away from the festival? Ryder makes blueberries. 

We ended up having blueberry smoothies, blueberry turnover, blueberry ice cream, and blueberry wine.  Additional wine was purchased for later consumption.
Mom left from the festival, and I since I was in the area I swung by Moore's Creek battle, a small but very well done National Battlefield from the Revolutionary War. It was nice to walk around in the woods for awhile, and I got to brush up on my US History and certainly learned a lot about the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War, which often gets short shrift at the expense of the North.  When I got back to my apartment I tried to look some stuff up in my US History high school textbook, to compare what I thought I learned with what I actually learned, and was disappointed to discover I had left it in my bedroom back in Carmel, . And to think people ask my why I have nearly all of my notes and textbooks from college in my apartment... you just never know what you might need to look up. 

After leaving the battlefield, I had a lovely drive back to Wilmington on Blueberry Lane. For the first time since I purchased my Civic, I found myself sorely disappointed I wasn't driving a convertible. 

Race and Education

Just got back from volunteering at one of the local public schools, New Hanover High School (NHHS).  Through GE, I was volunteering to grade the oral presentations for student's Senior Project, which is basically a senior capstone project that is required to graduate; I had never heard of this before, but every student as to do it as a part of their senior English class, and I think it's a great idea.

Myself, Igor, 2 older men from the community, and an English teacher graded 4 students.  Igor actually made the observation right after we left, but the difference in both background and quality between the first boy and girl, who were black, and the second girl and boy, who were white. Their speech was different, the quality/expensiveness of their presentation material was different, and their educational prospect were, in turn, different.  The black girl and boy were going to a junior college and enlisting in the Navy, respectively, and the white girl and boy were going to ECU and UNC Chapel Hill, both traditional 4 year colleges.  Not to take anything away from the black student, but they early were not entering the world at 18 as prepared & developed as the white students.  The black guy, for example, seemed like a sharp, well-grounded kid who was joining the military with the hope of getting into engineering and earning his degree while in the military (and having the military pick up the expense, of course), but he mentioned during his presentation that his father was incarcerated, which certainly did not help him have more flexibility to go to a 4-year engineering school without needed to join the military.

The white girl* was clearly nervous and shook the whole time, but she had clearly done excellent research, had put together a website as her "product," and had really impressive booklets that she had printed out, and the white boy had a PowerPoint and fancy handouts. In contrast, the 2 black student used tri-folded posterboard and had handwritten index cards for notes; the teacher, who taught computer applications, mentioned that the reason not every student just puts together a PowerPoint presentation is because many students are not "comfortable" with a computer. In other words, they do not have access to a computer at home, and do not have easy, frequent access to a computer at school or a library extracurricularly. For me, this was an real life example of how a student can earn a high school diploma but still be functionally illiterate.  Knowing how to type is a basic skill in the 21st century, and it needs to be taught just like shop class was taught decades ago, and how cursive was mandatory for every student when I was in 2nd grade [apparently, and thankfully, that is no longer require because, case in point, everyone just types these days].

*Her name was "Chaffin"  I love the South.


On the way back to our apartment from NHHS Igor and I drag raced our Civics on Market Street.  Though Igor had the superior car (Civic SI), I one handily due to superior decision making. 

Lexington County Museum

I spent this past week in Atlanta, completing the 2nd leg of my Foundations of Accounting exam.  For reason no one but myself understands, I decided to drive to and from Wilmington, instead of flying like everyone else in my class. I felt I needed the departure time flexibility, and with over 38mpg on my trip, I'll make a tidy profit off of mileage reimbursements.

But most importantly, driving the breadth of South Carolina gives one the opportunity to visit gems they may never be near again.  AAA GEM attractions, that is.  So Saturday morning, I found myself sitting in the kitchen of ACE Atlanta, thumbing through my Georgia, NC, & SC AA Tourbook (2011 edition). I skipped over the Augusta and Columbia attractions, under the assumption that they are real cities I might actually pass through again. Thinking I would't make Moore Creek National Battlefield before sundown, I zeroed in on the Lexington County Museum complex.

The 'complex' didn't disappoint. it was a collection of old, mostly pre-civil war buildings from around the county that had been moved to a park across from a Bi-Lo supermarket in the middle of Lexington. Pulling in my Civic with Indiana plates, unshaven, and wearing running clothes, I would say that I looked out of place, except there was no one else there to out-place.

I came into the front office and startled the 2 old men shooting the breeze, clearly unused to people showing up unannounced during operating hour. After a brief back-and-forth in which I wasn't sure if the man was trying to be nice to me or was telling me to get the heck out of his office in a polite, southern-ly way*, I paid my $5, and my personal tour began.
*He strongly suggested I come back another day when one of their buildings was reopened after renovations. When I pointed out that I would probably never pass through Lexington again in my life, he finally conceded.

It was a pretty good tour, and I can tell you all sorts of things about quilts that I don't remember.  The highlight was entering a school house dated from 1815, and was something like the oldest schoolhouse outside of St Augustine, FL. The lowlight was when he pointed to a house and said, "this was Tom [some German name]'s first house when he moved to the area," and I asked, "who is Tom?"  He paused, and said, "I don't know, no one has ever asked me that before. I just know I"m supposed to tell you about him." Right.

After my tour I asked for dinner recommendations, and headed 17 miles to Batesburg-Leesville, SC to Shealy's Bar-B-Q.  Though sitting by myself among droves of local families chowing down on mustard-vinegar BBQ pork was a bit disconcerting, no one questioned my presence and I thoroughly enjoyed myself some South Carolinian BBQ.

Main street, Leesville, SC

Pre-Civil War farm house, Lexington, SC

The one and only

Physics!

I finally got my act together and restarted blogging, after gchatting with my good friend (and fellow traveler) Julie. But as it is nearly midnight, I have work and a 7 hour drive tomorrow, and an exam on Tuesday, this will be short.

I was up late (2am, which is very late for us old*, post-college 22 year-old, especially for a sober weekend) last night, helping out my cousin with her Physics 101 homework. It had been nearly a year since I've done that, and it was fun** to dust off the old intro textbooks and do some good ole rotational kinematics again. My cousin has an exam this week, so we skyped from 11.30pm to 2am, working our way through her practice exam. All in all a successful evening, given my other option was to continue watching Legion with my roommate.

*I was called old by both my cousin and her roommate. Unthankful little...

** I was a physics major. Don't judge.

Carly's roommate made a comment, "well, at least you don't have to worry about this stuff [studying] any more," to which I sadly responded, "you would think that...."

And so it begins again!

This blog will be about my time working for GE, moving around the United States (and hopefully the world) during my 2 years Financial Management Program (FMP)