Year: 2009

Tips For A Northerner Moving South

I was cleaning out some old documents from the early 90s on my work computer this afternoon. There were even letters of resignation from the BMG and Columbia House CD Clubs. I came across this that some one had sent me way back when we moved from New Jersey to South Carolina. Republished here as a public service:

  • Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later how to use it.
  • If you forget a Southerner’s name, refer to him (or her) as “Bubba”. You have a 75% chance of being right.
  • Don’t be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store.
  • Do not buy food at the movie store.
  • People walk slower here.
  • If it can’t be fried in bacon grease, it ain’t worth cooking, let alone eating.
  • The proper pronunciation you learned in school is no longer proper.
  • Don’t be worried that you don’t understand anyone. They don’t understand you either.
  • Get used to hearing, “You ain’t from around here, are you?”
  • Remember: “Y’all” is singular. “All y’all” is plural. “All y’all’s” is plural possessive.
  • The first Southern expression to creep into a transplanted Northerner’s vocabulary is the adjective “Big ol'”, as in “big ol’ truck” or “big ol’ boy”. Eighty-five percent begin their new southern influenced dialect with this expression. One hundred percent are in denial about it.
  • Be advised: The “He needed killin'” defense is valid here.
  • If you hear a Southerner exclaim, “Hey, y’all, watch this!” stay out of his way. These are likely the last words he will ever say.
  • If attending a funeral in the South, remember, we stay until the last shovel of dirt is thrown on and the tent is torn down.
  • Most Southerners do not use turn signals, and they ignore those who do. In fact, if you see a signal blinking on a car with a southern license plate, you may rest assured that it was on when the car was purchased.
  • As you are cursing the person driving 15 mph in a 55 mph zone, directly in the middle of the road, remember, many folks learned to drive on a model of vehicle known as John Deere, and this is the proper speed and lane position for the vehicle.
  • Northerners can be identified by the spit on the inside of their car’s windshield that comes from yelling at other drivers.
  • The winter wardrobe you always brought out in September can wait until November.
  • Just because you can drive on snow and ice does not mean we can. Stay home the two days of the year it snows.
  • If you do run your car into a ditch, don’t panic. Four men in the cab of a four wheel drive with a 12-pack of beer and a tow chain will be along shortly. Don’t try to help them. Just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.
  • If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the most minuscule accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It does not matter if you need anything from the store, it is just something you’re supposed to do.
  • Florida is not considered a southern state. There are far more Yankees than Southerners living there.
  • In southern churches you will here the hymn, All Glory, Laud and Honor. You will also here expressions such as, “Laud, have mercy”,”Good Laud”, and “Laudy, Laudy, Laudy”.
  • You can ask a Southerner for directions, but unless you already know the positions of key hills, trees and rocks, you’re better off trying to find it yourself.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 96

Lucky Duck

For the second time this week we chickened out of bicycling because of dire weather predictions, so we drove, but Monday’s dense fog and today’s morning rain never materialized.

This morning about a mile from home, while pulling away from a stop sign we both noticed a rustling in the bushes between two houses. There was some sort of animal, mostly white, moving towards the road, fast, so I slowed. Sure enough it ran right out in front of us and in typical animal fashion, noticed the headlights and stopped right in our lane. So I hit the brakes, hoping it was in time, watched as white faded from view and waited for the thump.

Didn’t happen, our lucky opossum scurried across the road and disappeared into the woods.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 95

Monday Night Off

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 93

Torn

Donna’s youngest brother Scott and family live near Seattle and we have visited them there a couple times now and we both have come to enjoy the northwest. We didn’t visit them in 2008, instead opted to remodel our bathrooms, but this year we are planning a visit. As much as we like the northwest there is one part of the country we enjoy more, the southwest, which we last visited 20 years ago and now we have a chance to kill two birds with one stone. Scott’s wife Beth annually helps out at a cattle auction in New Mexico in April so we are sketching out plans for a visit to that area down where poor ol’ Bug Bunny keeps making wrong turns in, Albuquerque.

Do we drive or do we fly?

Flying nowadays is such a hassle and that is after you have wrestled with mystical flight planning. We can fly from Charlotte (our preferred airport) on Delta, but not non-stop. We would have to go through Atlanta (surprise.) So why don’t we fly from Atlanta, it is only a little further away than Charlotte? Yahoo Travel doesn’t offer that option. So I went to the Delta web site and found that I could do that, but it costs $200 more per person to fly fly 250 fewer miles.

Driving is our preferred method of travel, but from here to there the most direct way is 1,600 miles of mind numbing interstate. That translates into roughly four 8 hour days with more of the same in store for the way back, so we would probably rent a car (because the Miata is not really optimal for that sort of travel.) Even though we would have to rent a car in New Mexico if we flew, driving would probably mean a 2 week vacation instead of just a week for flying.

Flying and it’s shorter trip would mean the hotel and meals would be half the cost of driving, but 2 weeks and driving would mean we could do sightseeing on the way out and back.

What to do? What to do?

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 92

A Day Late

Saturday dawned foggy with a threat of rain and even with a splotch of green on the radar barreling down on our little town, Donna and I went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods. In deference to the verdant pixels on the Weather Channel site we packed small umbrellas and waterproof jackets. Halfway through the walk (of course it was halfway, momma didn’t raise no fools,…) it indeed started to lightly rain (…we know enough to come out of the rain), so we donned our jackets and turned around. Fortunately it has been a mild winter so hypothermia did not set in.

The title of this post is “A Day Late” because I’m writing it on Sunday, but I will date it late on Saturday, because when we got home last night it was too late for me to think about doing it then. The mild winter came into play then as well because the clouds and fog kept the temperature in the upper 50’s even at eleven o’clock at night, so we got to drive home from Augusta after dinner out with friends with top down.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 91

Metal

On our bicycling route to work there is one house we pass that has a small screened-in porch. On that porch are two large dogs, I haven’t seen them because of the way the porch is situated, but they sound large and I’m glad they are kept inside. Definitely on the way to work and most times on the way home, we are the only traffic on the road this house is on, but we can not get within 25 yards of it before the dogs start barking. They bark continuously until we are probably 25 yards down the road past them. We are not usually talking at this point in the ride, it is flat so we aren’t doing any gear shifting, we are just pedaling along with the only sound being the whir of the chain and invariably those two dogs start raising a ruckus long before we get anywhere near them.

I think James Cameron must have been a bicyclist and had similar experiences with dogs hearing him coming a long way off because he includes a bit in the Terminator movies about humans using dogs to detect the cyborgs (AKA Metal.) If dogs can hear a component of the high pitched bicycle chain noise from a ways off it stands to reason that they also can pick up the sound of a motor moving a metal joint encased in a layer of human flesh.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 90

Saving Grace

A while back Mark asked me if I had seen a movie called “Saving Grace” about an English widow who grows marijuana to pay off her debts. I said yeah, but after reading the blurb on Netflix it didn’t sound that familiar, so I dumped in the queue.

The movie arrived in the mail yesterday and when I opened the envelope I though to myself, ‘maybe we have seen this.’ Then I remembered that if we had rented it from Netflix I could find out, I could check my movie spreadsheet and we had seen it, back in April of 2001. It didn’t have a DNF (did not finish) next to it, meaning we must have somewhat enjoyed it, so we watched it again today. And we watched it all the through this time too. An enjoyable comedy that only falls apart at the very end.

So Mark, thanks for the recommendation and because of that, I have granted your request of yesterday.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 89