In a fog.
Sunday, November 16th, 2003
No, really.
It’s Sunday morning (as Charles Osgood intones in the other room), and I’m having trouble seeing the back end of our back yard out my office window. It’s a fine fog we’re in. No, indeed, I’m not complaining. There’s something nice about fog and autumnal colors…they fade away elegantly, stepped down into greyscale, as if vignetted by an expert 1940s cinematographer, while the close-up leaves pop out as if it was all part of some cosmic lighting plan.
But truth is, it’s probably just the dew point. Or something.
We just got back from a couple of days in Charlotte, where I checked in on a news channel I designed last year and Sammy attended the Southeastern Archaeological Conference meetings, where, I’m sure, the papers presented are important and profound, but for me, the taste of Rob Benson’s fine home-brewed stout (in considerable quantities) will be my lasting memory.
It was a fairly painless trip. The iPod kept us company (although, remarkably, we weren’t dark silhouettes rocking out on bright flat-color backgrounds) by sending Music for People Our Age out the iTrip and thus out the radio in our iHonda. We journeyed past twin towering fireworks outlet stores that sit on I-85’s entry to and its exit from South Carolina, twin bulwarks of our Constitutional Right to bear explosives. We beheld the enormous peach (some say it’s a water tower) that guards Gaffney, SC from high gas prices, and we shook our heads in incomprehension that Charlotte would actually name a road after Billy Graham.
Once there, we enjoyed the company of some fine archaeologists, most defying the cliche of tweedy-jacketed pontificators, sherry in hand. This was more the blue-jeaned clan of big hand-gesturers, opining with a homebrew at the ready. There was dancing. There was conviviality.
And although there wasn’t out-and-out dancing at News 14 Carolina Charlotte, there was plenty of conviviality amidst folks working hard to crank out 24-hour news. And there was feasting–Meteorologist Jeff Crum brought in homemade candies that were amazing, and there were homemade chocolate chip cookies in Jim Travers’ office. So we were all on a sugar high amidst discussions of typefaces and colors.
Not bad for a quick trip.
