Another Non-Durham Post

For those of you who don't know, I do a fair bit of customer service work at my job. This definitely isn't anything that came from my work, but I couldn't help but laugh at these e-mails that I found on a website I frequent. Click on it to see a bigger view. Enjoy!

edit: If you're having trouble reading it, click here.

Duke vs. Lenoir-Rhyne

Yeah, you read that right. Lenoir-Rhyne, a tiny Division Two school in western North Carolina, played the Duke Blue Devils Men's Basketball team the other night, and Rachel and I got to go. The final score: 95-42.

With Duke currently ranked 5th in the nation in the ESPN/USA Today poll, I know that we're going to win many more games than we lose this year, but we definitely shouldn't get used to fifty-point blowouts. Even though it was a completely dominating performance, it was still really fun to be there.

If you don't already know, Duke supposedly has the craziest basketball fans in the country. Called "Cameron Crazies" (Duke plays in Cameron Indoor Stadium), the undergraduate and graduate students at the games get to sit in the "lower bowl" part of the arena, meaning that we get to sit significantly closer to the action than everybody else.

The Crazies also pretty much chant non-stop for the entire game. It seems like there's a different chant for every possible situation in the game. Here are some examples. When the opposing team has the ball and is moving down the court, the Crazies will usually hum in a monotone voice and jump up and down for the entire time they have the ball. Sometimes they yell "BOING! BOING! BOING!" whenever the opposing team dribbles the ball, and "PASS!" when they pass the ball. The "AIRBALL!" chant supposedly started at Duke, too.

Probably the funniest moment of the game is when a Lenoir-Rhyne player fouled out with about four minutes left. When that happens, the Crazies point at the player as he walks back to the bench and scream as loud as they can. They keep this up until he finally sits down, at which point everybody yells, "SEEYA!" We actually got to do this twice during this game, and the greatest part was after the second player fouled out, he took his time getting back to the bench, like he was doing everything he could to avoid the "SEEYA!" When his own coaches told him to sit down, he went about 4/5 of the way there, and everybody yelled, but he immediately popped back up onto his feet, thereby having the last laugh. It was pretty funny. If a UNC player did that, I'm sure he would get booed, but coming from a Lenoir-Rhyne player somehow made it okay.

I know there's an arm in the edge of this picture, but it lets you see the undergraduates on the left. They're all raising their arms up as the Duke player shoots a three on the left part of the court.

We'll probably post a little bit after all the games we go to, at least recapping the most interesting parts. That's it for now.

All About Matt Seashore

Well, it's sad to say, but our week hanging out with Matt Seashore had to come to an end. It was definitely sad to see him go, but everybody really had a great time. Rachel and I were really thankful to get some semblance of a break, even if we still had class interspersed the week. We picked Matt up at the airport on Sunday night and then had burgers with our neighbors, Tyler and Joy. Here are some of the brief highlights of the rest of the week.

Monday: I had to work, and Rachel had class, so Monday was kind of a shorter day in terms of fun. Matt went around the corner to visit the Motricity East team. For those of you who don't know, Matt is doing consulting work for Motricity, but at their Bellevue, Washington branch on the other end of the country. It was kind of a weird coincidence that we ended up living right next door to the company that our friend works for. He hung out with his new friends for a couple hours. The Motricity company is in the midst of laying off pretty much their whole Durham office, and will only work out of the Seattle office that Matt is at during the week.

Tuesday: Duke stuff. We showed Matt around campus and went to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, or the Sarah Palin Gardens as Matt nicknamed them. We also went to the Nasher Art Gallery. We're real cultured.

Wednesday: If you can believe it, this was the first time we got to go to Raleigh since we moved here. We figured having Matt here was a good excuse, and there was also the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Science Museum which was pretty sweet. I think we also ended up sending crazy pictures to Michael from Red Robin at dinner. Afterwards we all got to talk with Michael, Ashley, Isaiah and Melora (Mewowa as Isaiah used to say) on the webcame.

Thursday: I think we went to Chapel Hill that night. We didn't do much else. I had class. Lame?

Friday:
Matt and I went to Bennett Place, which was the site of the largest surrender of troops in the Civil War. It was free, and kinda cool. Then we went to Cracker Barrell (White People Barrell, remember?) for some fine cheap southern food. Mom, they have that crazy-good kettle corn for sale there!




Saturday: We snuck Matt into the Duke Basketball Blue-White scrimmage, which is basically when Duke plays itself. Coach K splits the team up into two squads and they scrimmage each other. Wow, that sounds kind of dirty. It was fun, and free, and we each got a cool t-shirt for free. After that, Matt had to go :(


All-in-all, it was a really great week. We spent way more money than we should have on food, but Matt generously paid for way more meals than he should have. It is kind of sad around here having to get back to normal, but my parents and grandparents are coming in a little more than a month for Thanksgiving, so that will be really good to look forward to.

P.S., I really hope Matt has some better pictures I can use. These are all I have from my phone.

Update: Basketball Tickets

Rachel and her classmates had their "draft" for the basketball tickets the other day. Here are the games she picked:
UNC (Rachel will probably go alone)
Georgetown (I will probably get to go alone)
Wake Forest (We got two tickets to this one)
UNC-Ashville (two tickets)
Lenoir-Rhyne (who?) (two tickets)

So we each get to go to a major rival (UNC for Rachel, Georgetown for me) and we will also get to go to a few games together, which should be fun.

In other news, our friend Matt Seashore will officially be the first person to come and visit us! He is coming out in a couple weeks and gets to stay for a whole week. I'm sure I'll post a full update on what we did when he comes.

Duke Basketball Season Tickets

People in North Carolina like basketball. This, combined with the fact that Cameron Indoor Stadium can only seat about 9,000 means that going to a Duke University Men's Basketball game is kind of a tough thing to pull off. Undergraduates, who aren't eligible for season tickets, have to wait before every home game in order to get a seat. They camp out for the UNC game for weeks.

Luckily, as a graduate student, Rachel has a different route to get tickets. I won't say easier, because it's not. This weekend was the 2008-2009 Graduate Student Season Ticket Campout. Even though I'm technically a graduate student, too, they only let full-time students camp out. Apparently my $6,500 doesn't go very far at a place like Duke. Here's how it works. About 2000 grad students all bring tents and beer to a parking lot at around noon on Friday. Then, starting about 7:00 that night, everybody is required to stay around their tents until 6:00 AM on Sunday morning. In between that time, periodic "roll calls" are made. Each person is required to go and check in with the campout committee and prove that they are still going strong. At 10:00 or 11:00 at night, these checkins aren't that bad, but at 3:30 AM, they can really start to drain on you. And there isn't some nice lady with cookies walking around and politely telling you that it's time to check in. There is, however, a blow-horn blasted into a microphone. That just kind of adds to the fun.

So this is how we spent out time this weekend. I think we averaged like 2 hours of sleep each night. In return for going through all of this, you're not even guaranteed tickets. If you make it to 6:00 AM on Sunday morning without missing more than one check in, you get your name entered into a drawing, and you then have about a 30% chance of getting tickets.

In order to make it worth people's while, the Duke PA Program pools all of their tickets together. So, out of 24 campers, if 8 people get tickets these are split up amongst everybody. But only the people that actually win the tickets get first pick of the litter. Which means UNC tickets. Just to let you know, tickets for the Duke-UNC game at Chapel Hill this year (not the one at Duke), are currently being sold for $5000 a ticket on stubhub.com.

Somehow, Rachel won. Meaning that with the UNC game, she will get probably 7 or 8 tickets. We can either keep the UNC game (meaning only one of us could go), or she could trade her UNC ticket with other people in her group and get probably like 6 or 7 tickets in return for this one ticket. Then we could both go together to a bunch of games. I'm not sure what we'll end up doing. It will probably depend on how often we feel like going.

I know a lot of you must be thinking, "Jeez, just sell the fricking UNC ticket. $5000?" Well, they don't actually give you tickets to each game. They give you a plastic credit card-like thing that you can only use along with your Duke ID card. So scalping really isn't an option.

So, Duke-UNC is arguably the biggest rivalry in college sports. I know Ohio State-Michigan football is up there, too. But when you have the two biggest college basketball programs in the country and they're only separated by about 15 miles of the 15-501 highway, it kind of pushes things to a new level. So whoever ends up going to that game, I think it will definitely be one of the highlights of our time in North Carolina.

So, we want to know, what would you do with that UNC ticket? Would you keep it and go by yourself? Or would you try and trade it for a bunch of other games so that the two of us could go together? Let us know.

Our neighbors, Joy and Tyler:

Completely Non Durham-related Post About Cookies

This post has nothing to do with Durham, our new apartment, Duke, medicine, ancient history, or anything else pertaining to our lives right now. It has to do with cookies. It's a craigslist ad that was taken out for a roommate for a Manhattan apartment, and it's hilarious.

new york craigslist > manhattan > rooms & shares

$1 Room for ONE DOLLAR in bright, clean apartment (Upper West Side) (map)
Reply to: hous-834022781@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2008-09-09, 1:44PM EDT

I am looking for someone to rent the spare bedroom in my spacious 2-bedroom apartment on the picturesque and desirable Upper West Side. You must read carefully, however, as this situation is not suitable for all.

The rent is $1 per month, utilities included, as long as you bake me fifty (50) tasty cookies every day by 6 p.m. If you have not completed this task by 6 p.m., I will pour vinegar on all your belongings, throw them into the street, and have the locks changed. No exceptions and no excuses. Hell or high water, those cookies better be done and yummy.

Cookies are always cookies and never biscuits. I do not eat “biscuits”.

I will decide the specific type of cookie the day before and will submit my preference in writing by 9 p.m. of that day. You are responsible for the recipe and ALL the ingredients (at your expense, of course). The kitchen is large and well equipped with cookie sheets, rolling pins, mixing bowls, etc. You may NOT hum or sing as you prepare the cookies. You may, however, recite song lyrics in a normal speaking voice.

Forbidden ingredients include anise, marjoram, allspice, caraway, and oats. I will nevertheless request oatmeal cookies from time to time and you must find a way to make them without oats. Good luck with that. The worst ingredient of all, though, is NUTMEG. If even one speck of nutmeg, even the tracest amount of the stuff, is discovered in my home, I will pour vinegar on your belongings and chuck them in the street. You may assume the locks will be changed. You may use cinnamon, cloves, and raisins, though I am rather indifferent to these and will likely not be impressed. Chocolate is encouraged, as is vanilla bean extract.

You will be given three cookie cutters: a crescent moon, a star, and a doggie in profile. All cookies must be in one of those three shapes. The doggies must be given names and all the names must be different and cute. Cuteness is my call, not yours. For example, “Smuggins” is cute but “Lionel” is not.

The cookies must be artfully arranged on a lace cloth on a silver platter and garnished. Permissible garnishes include jellied fruits and candied flowers. Sugared figs are under review, but don’t get your hopes up.

Your room contains a twin bed, a dresser, a desk w/chair, and a TV with cable access. The TV is tuned permanently to the Food Network. You may watch only shows featuring cookies and cookie by-products.

If you are interested in this arrangement, please submit the following:

1) Your favorite cookie recipe
2) A picture of tasty cookies
3) A short original poem about cookies

Thank you.

86 at B’way google map yahoo map
* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 834022781

Go Bulls!

Relax, all right? Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls - it's more democratic.

-Crash Davis, Bull Durham, 1988

The movie Bull Durham is nothing like going to a Durham Bulls Game. Not at all. For starters, the real Durham Bulls draw waaay more fans to their games than their Hollywood counterparts. Secondly, if you went by the movie, you'd think there was only one black person in the entire city. Seriously, would it have killed them to walk 3 blocks to the bus stop and pick up some actual residents for all the extras? But it is nice to be able to see the city that we live in. Durham's not that big (you could easily walk from one end of Downtown to the other in 20 minutes), and to see it up close and personal in a movie like this is pretty cool.

We've been to a few real Durham Bulls games since we've been here, and there really isn't anything quite like a minor league baseball game. You get to sit a lot closer to the action, and with the quality of pitching being lower than the big leagues, there tends to be more scoring, which is nice. The last game we went to ended up being $1 concession stand item night, so it was like having my birthday, thanksgiving, and and an epic session of colonics all in one night. Six hot dogs is tough for one person to pull down, and I was definitely feeling it the next couple of days, but it was totally worth it.

Sadly, the end of the season is upon us. For those of you keeping score, the Bulls are 72-69 this year and hold a 7 game lead over second place Norfolk in the South Division of the International League, so we're guaranteed a playoff game or two.

Mid-way through a gut-wrenching night of hot doggery:














Da Bulls:














Hit Bull Win Steak. Hit Grass Win Salad:

Durham, circa 1891

I have been checking out some of the other local blogs down here, and one called Endangered Durham focuses on showcasing the rich history of the city, particularly comparing the current layout of the city with what used to be. I've included a photo of a map of the town from 1891. The portion you see is a closeup of our apartment (marked with the number 19), which was built in 1874 and was originally part of W.T. Blackwell's Tobacco Manufactory. Either the map was never totally accurate to begin with, or the building has since been changed because its current form is not the Pi-shape that the map shows, but is instead a big square with an open courtyard in the middle. But the windows and the overall look of the building looks accurate to me. You can check out the blog where I found it at http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com

More maps like it can be found at http://digitaldurham.duke.edu

Blacksburg, Virginia

Well, we made it a whole week on our own before we felt the urge to high-tail it out of the state. Our friend Danielle, whom Rachel met in New York doing research, is a Forestry grad student at Virginia Tech in mountainous Blacksburg, Virginia. Danielle has lived all over the place, from Philly to Indiana, PA to Arizona to southwestern Virginia, so she knew what it was like to start over in a new place. The drive took us a little more than three hours, and right when you get to the Virginia border you start to climb back up into the Appalachians, or to be more specific, the Blue Ridge Mountains. Blacksburg was a good ten degrees cooler than we get it down in Durham, and after a week plus of 95 degree or higher temperatures, it felt really good to get to a higher altitude. We met Danielle at one of her favorite watering holes, the Hoakie House, and finished off a couple pints and caught up on our lives before heading back to her house for the night.

The next day begun with a late breakfast at the good old Cracker Barrel, or "White People Container" as Rachel has started calling them. Now, we used to have a Cracker Barrel off of 694 in Brooklyn Center, and I've been there a few times myself, but I forgot just how delicious a fat-filled Southern breakfast can be. Rachel was a Cracker Barrel virgin, so it was kind of a big deal. As a lot of you probably know, I'm kind of a food snob, but it really doesn't get any better than stuffing yourself with comfort food. Especially when you're homesick. Two huge bellies and twelve dollars later (seriously), we were feeling like we could go for another eight hours of sleep, but we had a big day with Danielle ahead of us.

Our next stop was the animal shelter (Danielle wanted to look at dogs). Turns out she found one just right for her, too, and she put down the money for a dog who for a while was going to be named after yours truly. Sadly, by the end of the day, the dog's name had changed from Charlie to Zap Brannigan to Hermes and Food Kitty before Danielle finally settled on George. Charlie or Zap Brannigan would've been waaay better. The funniest thing about this whole adventure was the fact that Danielle didn't have any cash on her to pay for her new friend, so she mooched off us until she could find a cash machine. I don't think very many people have paid for a dog with a few twenties, some roughed up ones and a hand full of quarters, but George has had a hard life so it kind of seemed fitting.

One of the highlights of our trip was driving up to nearby Roanoke for the MicroFestivus Beer Party (or something like that). We were able to try ten beers from dozens of mostly local micro brews, and we also got to check out Roanoke, which is a pretty cool city and a heck of a lot bigger than I was expecting for southwestern Virginia.

The next day, Danielle took us through the Virginia Tech campus. It was definitely a very powerful experience to walk through a place that so many of us only know because of one of the biggest tragedies in American history. To walk on the huge drill field that became the site of a candle-light vigil after a disturbed individual took the lives of over 30 others would have been emotional enough for a regular person, but things like these are a lot different for my wife. Maybe she'll say something about it herself, but she told me that it was important to be connected to other people who have gone through a similar thing as she has. It makes you wonder how the world can be so wonderful and so terrible at the same time.

We'll probably post some more in the next couple of days; have a good night.

At the memorial at Virginia Tech:














The drill field:














The memorial:














Rachel and I in the Blue Ridge Mountains:














The Blue Ridge Mountains:

A little about Duke...

So, here's my first post, and I think I'll tell you a little about the school that we've moved across the country to attend. I am here to receive my Masters of Physician Assistant Studies (MPAS). I chose Duke because it is one of the top programs in the nation and is actually where the PA profession began. The concept of a PA was created by Dr. Eugene Stead, who was chairman of the Duke Dept. of Medicine during the 1960s. He thought that by producing more "mid-level medical practioners," people would have greater access to healthcare and doctors would have more time to deal with more complex cases. When I'm finished with my degree in 2 years, I will be able to work in any medical specialty, take patient histories, do physical exams, order tests, write prescriptions, and develop treatment plans with my patients. I am excited by the flexibility that is available to PAs because I will not be confined to any particular area of medicine and I will have more time to spend with my patients. So, yay! I start orientation on Monday the 18th, and I think classes begin the 20th. I'm scared but really excited to be busy again and start filling my brain with interesting stuff.

Charlie and I decided that it would be a good idea to go on a tour of campus just so we had some idea of where things were and we thought it would be interesting. The info. session and tour we went on were meant for high schoolers who were trying to figure out where to apply for their undergrad degrees, so we were a lot more engaged in the tour than the others because Duke was already "our school." We got to see the chapel and a bunch of buildings that I'll never go inside again (because all of my classes are all in the same building), but it was fun anyway. The take home message was basically that Duke has a crap-load of money to spend, so the buildings are all gorgeous, and they will give you money (as an undergrad anyway) to do pretty much anything you convince them will advance science or aid society in some way. Apparently you can make some sweet money making tobacco products. Right in front of the chapel is a statue of James Duke (Duke is named in honor of his father Washington Duke), which we were told is one of the only statues in the world that shows a person smoking a cigar (WOW!)

Today the temp was in the low 80s, which is about 15 degrees cooler than it has been, so we decided it would be a good idea to go to the Duke Gardens again, and this time we brought our camera! We didn't stay as long this time because we had already been there several times (and Charlie's tummy was rumbling), but we took pictures of most of the things we had seen in the past that we thought were cool. I don't have too much to say except the gardens are beautiful and the pictures will speak for themselves. I'll make another post soon about the weekend trip we took to visit my friend Danielle in Virginia, but I'm still waiting on a few pics. I miss and love all of you! Thanks for reading.

Duke Chapel














Fountain at the entrance to the Duke Gardens














Flower we decided looked like a shower head














"The Terrace" at the Duke Gardens














Gazebo at Duke Gardens (top is completely covered by tree branches)














One of the trees growing on the gazebo



















Crazy Lily Pads at the Gardens














Duck Pond at the Gardens (we saw some huge turtles fighting here when we were with our parents)














Plaque on the side of an old Liggett-Myers building (Go big tobacco!)

300 Blackwell Street, Apartment 208

Well, here goes our first big post. We left home in Minnesota at around 3:30 AM on the morning of Thursday, July 31st. Apart from the latter half of Wisconsin, which smelled like bratwurst and BO, our trip was fairly uneventful. Tom kept us at a pretty good clip; we only stopped every four or five hours or so. Because of how early we left, we were able to make it to Knoxville, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains by the end of our first driving day. I think that everybody who was with us would have voted for either Kentucky or Tennessee as the prettiest states that we drove through.

We finally pulled into Durham at around 12:30 on Friday, and we went straight to our apartment to unload. As it was the first day that our building was open to anybody, it was a little busy with other neighbors moving in around us. It could have been worse, though. Only half of the building is currently leased. The next day and a half was spent moving everything in from the cars and finding a spot for it once we got it inside. We saw a dead body in the alleyway. Just kidding. I put that in there because Rachel just said that my first post wasn't very exciting. Take that, Rachel!

At the end of the first day, Tom, Sherry, Deb, Rachel and I had dinner at Tyler's Taproom, a bar/grill that's just around the corner from us. After that we walked around the rest of the American Tobacco campus (that's the big development our apartment is a part of), and stopped in for the end of a Durham Bulls game. There wasn't anybody manning the gate at the time, so we were able to catch an inning of baseball and a great fireworks show for free! After that, it was back to our apartment for some well-earned sleep.

One of the coolest things about our apartment is that it is just across the block from the Durham Bulls Ballpark, and we can hear the crowd cheering whenever something big happens. On top of that, the American Tobacco campus is chock-full of really cool businesses and restaurants. Just off the top of my head, there's Tyler's Taproom (where we went the first night, and where they have about a billion different kinds of beer), the Mellow Mushroom (a gourmet pizza place), Symposium (looks like a cool date place), Cafe Zen (sushi), SalaDelia (???), a YMCA, a ton of Duke University administrative offices, the WUNC North Carolina Public Radio broadcast studios, and a neato central square area with a big water tower, a giant smokestack (from when they made cigarettes and cancer back here in the day), and a man-made river. Basically, it's the bee's knees, as Rachel and the beatniks say.

Saturday was spent going around on various errands and spending so much money that Wells Fargo called to see if we got robbed. We bought an entertainment center from Target, a bedroom set, and a new car battery because mine crapped out in Tennessee. We also went to Hog Heaven, a great Eastern Carolina barbeque shack, and the Sarah Duke Gardens, which is pretty much a must-see if you come down here.

Tom and Sherry had to leave us on Sunday morning, and it was one of many really sad moments since we've been down here. That's probably the hardest thing about moving down here. We really miss our family and friends back home, and hope that as many people visit us as possible over the next couple of years.

Deb, Rachel and I ran a bunch more errands on Sunday, including buying a gigantic Majesty Palm plant on a whim that we're pretty sure will off itself sometime in the next couple weeks because we put it in a size-too-small pot. But oh well, Flora, as Rachel calls it, had a heck of a run with us, as we had the top half hanging out the side of our car as we crawled home from Costco. We ended the day on Sunday by going out to Pop's, an Italian restaurant at nearby Brightleaf Square just west of downtown.

Monday morning was my turn to feel really sad. I drove my mom to the airport early in the morning for her flight, and we both fought back tears saying goodbye. I'm pretty sure we both lost it the second we were out of eyesight from one another. When I got home from the airport, I cried some more because the Verizon guy took so freaking long to get our internet to work. But we finally got everything up and running in the end.

Tune in for more! Here's some awesome pictures of our place!














Our bedroom. And big kitty.














The kitchen.














Charlie's office.














Our gigantic tv.


















The view out of our living room window.














Our living room from the entryway.

Welcome to Our Blog!

Hi, everybody! Welcome to our blog about our new life in Durham, North Carolina. We've been moved in for about five days now, and I thought it was about time to get this thing up and running. This first post won't be much, and I will make a bigger one later today, but make sure to bookmark this page and check in regularly for our latest update.