A Day in the Life, or Why I Hate Joe Biden

Sometimes, I'm not sure if my life is a sitcom or an after school special. Regardless of genre, it's always interesting and sure to keep me and everyone around me on our toes. Let's just look at yesterday, shall we?

I wake up feeling pretty good about life; my alarm clock hadn't gone off and I was feeling incredibly well rested. After breakfast and caring for a sort-of-migraine-y roommate, I decided that I would go to my internship early so I could stop by Barnes and Noble and gift browse since the fall birthday season is upon us.

But then, in one of those shots where the camera zoom in and the background does that weird thing, I realized that my car had been left in it's convenient-yet-illegal parking spot from last night. I raced outside and sure enough, Denty was gone. Surprisingly, I didn't panic immediately. Called the towing company (which is really one man named "T-Roy") and sure enough, my car was there. He told me he would let me have my car back for the low low fee of $150 cash.

What college kid has $150 CASH lying around?

So Christina took me to Harris Teeter and I got the cash back so now I have $150 in cash. We go to find this place, which is on the other side of Carrboro, and after a few minutes, T-Roy pulls up, opens the gate and takes my money. He might have said three words during this whole thing.

In any case, we try to get home, get sort of lost because of construction detours, but eventually make it. I'm still not panicking, but do feel pretty lousy for being out $150 for being stupid. I pick up a few things and head first to my on-campus internship to fill out time sheets, then on to Barnes and Noble to finally do some gift browsing, though now I have about an hour left.

And it is here, my friends, that the panicking starts. I don't know why and I can't really explain it, but I just started to feel so very very lousy about the whole incident. Maybe it was because this was the second time in a week my car has been involved in some sort of drama (rear-ended last week on 54), but I really wasn't feeling it. I left Barnes and Noble and headed over to Deep South not in the perkiest of moods. But Deep South is always good for making me feel better and after editing photos for 4 hours, I was back in semi-high spirits, though I was surprisingly very nervous while driving home.

Now, this is where we get to my hate for Joe Biden. I've had a relatively rotten day and I have plans to hang out with friends and relax and there really is very little that is going to keep me from this. Unfortunately, the Chapel Hill police dept have other ideas. I get to Chapel Hill and Country Club is closed. Fine. Stay on south and head up Raleigh. I'm only trying to get to Hillsborough, so it shouldn't be hard. Alas...Raleigh is closed. I asked the traffic guy at Raleigh what was going on. In a very frank and "are-you-kidding-me?" way, he responded "The Vice President of the United States," as if just saying Joe Biden would have gone right over my silly head... I asked what else was closed. Franklin, Rosemary, Cameron, parts of Columbia/MLK, and further up parts of South (which made no sense). He then said it would last about 30 minutes.

I'm not a patient person, and the first thing I could think of shouting was JOE BIDEN WILL NOT KEEP ME FROM MY HOME!!!! I made a U-turn and headed towards Manning, as calmly as any insanely angry person could. I get to the Manning/ 15-501 intersection and there is a CAR stalled in the middle. I rationalized this to being Joe Biden's fault. Further up, there was a lot of construction which caused a delay. I probably more accurately credited Biden for this malady as well. Later, after finding Estes and sneaking back onto MLK, I see that traffic is backed up. I've met the closed part of MLK. An officer came up and I explained that I just needed to get to Bolinwood (which was up a few dozen feet past where the stop was), and I guess I looked pretty desperate/crazy because she left me go.

I got home, angry, tired, and twenty minutes later than I had intended, but in my mind, I beat Joe Biden, and that was the important thing.

Joe Biden. I don't like him.

The Journey to Jordan Lake

Today, Christina and I decided that we wanted to go nature walking/ hiking at Jordan Lake. We got all ready and I mapquested directions. This was my first mistake. See...MapQuest has a misguided assumption that you know in general where you are going, and so gives you directions accordingly.

But nethertheless, we headed out with full confidence that we would have a great day at the lake and still make it home in time for me to pick up another friend at the airport and for Christina to get on skype.

The directions said to take Mt. Carmel Church Rd off of 15/501. We did not find this place and suddenly wound up in Pittsboro, very confused. We stopped at an Exxon station and talked to a rather displeased and grouchy woman.

"Um..we're looking for 64 West?"
"Where are you trying to go?"
"Um...64...West."
"No, where are you going?"
"Jordan Lake?"
"Okay, well, if you're going THERE, you need to get out to this stoplight. Do you see the stoplight? There's a stoplight. When you get THROUGH the stoplight you'll make a left and get into your far most lane....to the right. Then you'll get on 64 and Jordan Lake is right there."

This woman seemed very annoyed that we had interrupted her day to ask directions. But we followed them to the best of our ability/ my own personal willingness, which brought us through the stoplight. I then decided to follow my flawless navigational instincts and go LEFT onto 64 West, because that was the road we were originally looking for. It took about five minutes for us to realize this was wrong (okay, Christina knew the whole time, but I'm stubborn) and turn around. We did find the road where Jordan Lake was off of and got very excited. But then we saw the booth and it is here we met the Ginger.

The Ginger walked out and said it was $6 to park. Christina and I looked at each other. $6?! I asked if he took debit and he said no. I then asked if he could be cool and just let us go, but he also said no. He then said there was an ATM just a little further back the way we came, so we turned around.

There was a plywood box next to the road. I'm not sure if that was the ATM or not, but it was in the yard of two doublewides that had been tied together with what looked to be chicken wire, so I wasn't so keen on finding out. We decided that we might want to cut our losses, since we had been in the car for over 50 minutes to find a place that was 16 miles away. We decided to follow the MapQuest directions back to see if they were right.

We didn't get a chance to find out if they were right or not, because I saw a sign that pointed to Durham and turned there before I could see the road sign. We had gotten onto NC 751. Neither of us had heard of this, but because I am a stubborn driver, I forged ahead while Christina rolled her eyes and tried to convince me to turn around. A half a dozen dairy farms later, I decide to call my mom, who for some reason couldn't understand that we were on NC 751 and was convinced we had already passed I-40, which we hadn't. Knowing that 751 eventually led to 40 was enough information for me, and with a bit more confidence, we continued.

Turns out, 751 comes out near Southpoint, and there was much rejoicing. To celebrate, we went to PETCO and looked at the cats.

We returned home after two confusing hours and without any hiking whatsoever.