A day of rest

A great day of rest. Started the day at St. Paul's for the 11 am service with Pat and Hosanna.

After church we had a great brunch at the Starlight Cafe. In the afternoon, Kathy and I laid around our room, reading.

At 6 pm we drove over to the kids place where Pat made carnitas for dinner, and Hosanna helped us scan our documents and print our boarding passes for tomorrow's flight to Berlin. After a FaceTime session with Phoenix and Finnley and mom and dad, we said goodby and headed to bed.

Bears and Farmers

Saturday morning arrived sunny and a little cooler; or, maybe we're getting a bit acclimated. We had breakfast at the B&B and the kids picked us up a little before noon for a trip to New Bern. (I had heard them saying the name for a year, but I always pictured Neuburn or something like that in my mind.)

Eastern Carolina has extensive tidelands back behind the Outer Banks, and New Bern is the closest on-the-water town to Greenville, about an hour away. Today was the 2015 New Bern ride for MS, so we saw several packs of cyclists on the highway. As soon as we got into town, there was a 10-minute torrential downpour. I just can't imagine riding my bike through that.

I know that Bern has something to do with bears, and they don't let you forget it. Here is the City Hall with a patriotic bear out front and bears escaping from the pediment above each of the entrances. Around town, you can meet more bears on almost every corner. (Greenville does the same thing with pirates.)

As soon as it stopped raining, we had a nice lunch and then went looking for what we had apparently come to New Bern for: the Flea Market.

Kathy and the kids spent quite a bit of time "antiquing", but I don't think anyone bought anything. Hosanna looked an anvils (which she wanted for her work, but all of the tools were restored for, essentially, decorative purposes.

Later that evening, though, Patrick expressed some regret that he didn't pick up this hat.

Back home, we don't have cable TV; several years ago for Christmas we hired someone to put up an antennae on the top of our house, so we watch the local broadcast stations and the two PBS stations we can get from Newport Beach: KCLS and KOCE. Since Hosanna moved back to North Carolina, one of the shows we enjoy is "A Chef's Life", the story of Vivian Howard and her husband, successful chefs in NYC, who were lured back to Kinston, NC, a town about 50 miles from Greenville, with her parent's offer to help them start their own restaurant. It's a sweet and addictive show. (No artificial battle of the chefs, or anything like that.)

Since we were so close, we offered to take the kids. Patrick, who is very interested in cooking, tells me he has never seen the show, but that Vivian and her Chef and the Farmer restaurant are famous in the area. Patrick had called in to get reservations when he first knew that we were coming.

The food was definitely different and delicious. We ordered several "share plates" (essentially tapas) and then a few entree's which we ate family style. For the sharing plates we had peaches wrapped in bacon, cheesy grits with shrimp and andoulie sausage and a pizza that included pickled peppers.

Since Kathy and I had watched the "Butterbean" episode a couple of times, we wanted to get something with butter beans (a baby Lima bean). We got pork shoulder with butter beans and a faro ragout, as well as the famous tomato pie, with grilled vegetables. All of us agreed each dish was absolutely delicious.

After dinner, we had home-made butter-pecan ice cream, with candied pecan pieces and a sweet-potato, caramel reduction, along with coffee.

We got finished with dinner about 9:00 pm and headed back home. Tomorrow is Sunday, and we're going to meet the kids for church. I'll be back. Thank you for bearing with me!

 

Here there be pirates!

For someone born and raised in Southern California, North Carolina, where we've stopped off to visit our daughter, Hosanna Rubio, who is finishing her MFA in metals and jewelry, seems a tad humid, even after a summer of endless "monsoonal flows" coming up from Mexico.

A full day of airline transfers, lines and cramped seats just isn't that interesting, and certainly doesn't deserve its own post. Since this was a domestic flight, there was no food and no movie unless you swiped your credit card. To make up for that, though, the in-flight screen ran five hours of promotions that you couldn't turn off. Here's a packing tip, if you are flying domestically: bring a 4x6 index card with a piece of tape so you can cover the monitor. You'll be glad you did.

We rented a car from Hertz though AAA and drove the seventy miles to Greenville from Raleigh, stopping to eat at Ruby Tuesday's along the way. We've both agreed that the diets can wait until we get back home. We got into Greenville about 9:30, found our lodging that happens the only B&B in town. And it happens to be right across the street from the main campus of East Carolina University.

The next day, Friday, we got a late start. While Kathy got ready, I walked around the campus looking for the Starbucks (naturally). I found it and was able to face the day (although my clothes were completely soaked at 8:30 in the morning; it wasn't raining, either). I also discovered that the ECU mascot is the Pirate, just like at OCC (Orange Coast College).

When I came back, our kids stopped by and picked us up for breakfast and a walk around town. We ate at a very popular place right in the center of downtown named The Scullery, in keeping with the pirate theme, which is evident everywhere you look.

After breakfast, we took a walk along the Tar River Greenway to Hosanna and Patrick's house, a beautiful 3-bedroom duplex about two blocks from the river, with a lovely back yard in a nice neighborhood. Of course, such luxury has its price; their landlord just raised the rent $50 a month; it now costs $650.

In the afternoon, the kids had to head over the the DMV which had inexplicably failed to cash the check they sent in for their registration. Everything got sorted out, but standing in line at the DMV isn't pleasant, no matter which state you're in.

After Kathy and I rested and the kids got their errands run, we all hopped in the car and drove out to the town of Aden, for the best BBQ in the region. That's saying something in a state that is the home of Smithfield pork. We all had pulled-pork sandwiches with slaw that were really out of this world.

My only regret is that the Collard Shack next door was closed. Maybe next time.

We got back to Greenville just at dusk and Hosanna took us for a walk around the campus so we could see where she works. The buildings and the campus at East Carolina University is interesting in a kind of East Coast/Southern University style that we don't see too much in California, except for maybe the Claremont colleges.

As part of her graduate assistant-ship, Hosanna has to maintain and help out in several of the labs, where she can also work on her own projects. We got to visit all of them, and she demonstrated some of the equipment, including the centrifugal sand caster.

Afterwards, we stopped by Coldstone for some ice cream, and didn't get back to bed until almost midnight. It was a really nice day.

Greenville North Carolina

Made it to Greenville NC, where our daughter, Hosanna, is completing her MFA in metals & jewelry. Here's our room across from the main campus.

Something to Aspire To

One more day now. More errands; bank, car rentals, train tickets, a few more hotel reservations.  Still waiting for some credit-card details. Started on the packing.

Looks like the iPad and Blogsy will be staying home, though. We didn't get a Surface either. Instead, I'm writing this on our new Acer Aspire 10 Switch, a Windows 10 2-in-1 tablet-computer. We took an early version, an Aspire One netbook, on our trips in 2011 and in 2013. When I went to dust it off, though, the Windows XP computer really showed its age.

Last week, I went to Costco and found that they had rolled out its successor (at the same price, too, $299). Unlike the Aspire One, the Switch 10 doesn't have a mechanical hard drive. It has a 32GB SSD drive, with a slot where I've stuck another 64GB Micro SD memory card. Since we used less storage than that on the Aspire One (even though it had a 300GB drive), I think this will be fine.

You can remove the "tablet" portion and work with that just like an iPad, or, you can plug it into the keyboard/dock. The keyboard seems really nice. I can type on it much easier than the keyboard we had for the iPad. All-in-all, it looks like a nice choice.

My First Blogsy Post

We have only a week and one day before we take off for two months. That's always stressful. Have we forgotten anything? Are we taking the right clothes; are the credit cards going to work?

Today I went to the doctor and made sure I had enough medication to get through the trip. I'm at work right now, finishing up a final problem for a textbook I'm helping out with. Now, we're trying to figure out what to take with us for blogging.

Should we buy a new Surface tablet? They're nice, but Kathy pointed out to me that our Netbook just sits on the shelf when we are not traveling. Should we take our old Windows XP Netbook? I turned it on over the weekend and waited while it downloaded 37 updates. I had to take a Xanax, so maybe not.

Then, we thought about taking Kathy's iPad. She has a nice Logitec blue-tooth keyboard. It's an older, iPad 2, so it doesn't have Airdrop. However, I've gone ahead and purchased a blogging app (Blogsy) for all of $4.99, which is a big difference between the $699 I'd pay for a new Surface 3 at Costco. If it works, (as you might have guessed, that's what this post is about), we'll see how it goes.

One of the things that Blogsy is supposed to be good at is inserting photos. So, I'm going to start by putting in a photo of Kathy doing announcements at Calvary Chapel last Sunday. She does the announcements once or twice each month. I think that she's great, and I'm pretty sure that everyone else agrees.

Kathy announcing at Calvary Chapel

The other thing that happened this week is that we got to go out to dinner with Kathy's folks, Ed and Eileen Gross, celebrating Ed's 86'th birthday at the Rusty Pelican.

Getting ready for another trip

It's the end of August, and Kathy and I are getting ready for another trip. In about three weeks, on September 10th, we'll be heading out for seven weeks in North Carloina, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Greece. We're really excited, although we will be missing our grandchildren quite a bit.