East Bound and Down II: Mall Decorations

If you read yesterday's post, then you know that Jason and were in a crappy lil' town called Kinston last weekend. If you need to catch up, go here. As I mentioned at the end of that post, I wanted to show y'all the wonderful decorations at Vernon Park Mall (Kinston's poor excuse of a shopping center).

Many years ago, some brainiac decided it would be awesome-to-the-max to put up these HUGE banners advertising shows for the TV channel, WB. A channel that Kinston didn't even have on their cable network. Yes. That makes sense. Let's tease you people with shows that you can't watch. Remember - this was years ago. As in before Hulu. I'm not even sure if you could've gone to the WB's  website to watch the shows back then.

Anyhoo - fast forward to present day. Those banners are still there. Now, in Kinston's defense, I'm not sure if they now have the WB channel. But, to knock Kinston's credibility back down, all of the shows portrayed on these banners are cancelled. Some have been off the air for years. 

Look at us. We're soooo deliciously white. 

Ok, One Tree Hill actually did end earlier this year, so not so bad that this banner is up, right? But, I'll admit, I did watch this show for a few seasons (call it boredom), so I know that quite a few seasons ago the chick on the left and the guy left the show. So, this banner is still that outdated. Maybe the mall personnel left this banner up because the show was actually taped in North Carolina (and was set in this state too). Also, for a period a Winston-Salem native was a regular on the show.

Obviously this banner is trying to appeal to young, hip guys.
Should we tell them it's not working?

Look, a banner advertising 2 shows! Obviously neither show was big enough to warrant having their own poster. Well, Smallville did actually have a pretty good following from the nerdy crowd since this show was about Superman as a teenager. It made it to 2011. So, again this advertisement isn't too outdated. Everwood, however, ended in 2006. I'm assuming people saw the 2 guys portrayed on the banner, read the name Everwood, and figured this was a bad porno.

Just act natural and pretend that the creepy guy isn't
hanging out with us.  

Ah, Gilmore Girls. I actually watched this show while it was on... and liked it (hey, don't judge me). Notice I said "while it was on." This show went to the wayside in 2007.

This banner (tries to) show that the WB believed in
diversity by having a token black guy.

Three shows are portrayed here. I guess the makers of these large posters were just getting lazy. Whatever. Starting on the right. This actor was from King of Queens, which was cancelled in 2007. I have no clue what show the middle guy is from. I pretty sure his show is long gone. My favorite is the Bernie Mac, the guy on the left. Not only did his show end in 2006, but Bernie passed away in 2008.

If you ever happen to pass through Kinston, you should take the time to stop at Vernon Park Mall. You won't get to do much shopping or get a bite to eat, but you'll get to pay homage to some former WB shows. And that makes the visit worth a pound of shit.

East Bound and Down

This past weekend, Jason and I loaded up the Wookiee Mobile and headed to eastern North Carolina to a little pock-mark of a town called Kinston. This is the town where I grew up and it's about 3.5 hours from  the city where I live now (Winston-Salem). Although my mom, brother, and some other family still live there, we don't make the trek to Kinston much - for one thing I hate long car rides (seriously 30-45 minutes and I'm whining "are we there yet?"). Also, the town is dying and it's just damn depressing to be there.

Kinston wasn't always so crappy. We used to have a minor league baseball team - the Kinston Indians. But, after the 2011 season wrapped up, the Indians said buh-bye and headed to a city called Zebulon. When I went west into the state for college, I learned quite a few North Carolinians knew about Kinston because "my family stops there on our way to the beach" (Kinston's about an hour from the coast). But, now a by-pass is being built around the the town, so that tourism will be stopping eventually.

Of all the rundown, crappy parts of Kinston, the biggest disappointment is the mall... If you can call it that. Once upon a time, Vernon Park Mall was a pretty hip-happening place. In middle school and high school, my friends and I were the embodiment of the characters from Kevin Smith's Mallrats. We would spend alllll day, just hanging at the mall. We'd travel in packs and join up with other groups. A movie theater was in the parking lot, so if we needed to get out of the mall, we'd head there to catch a flick.

Sometime while I was in college, stores starting dropping out of the mall like flies. A store would close, something new would reopen in its place, and before you could say "grand opening," that store would close.  

One of my "favorite" visits was in 2005. Jason and I came to town for Christmas. Our Christmas present from my mom was that she took us to the mall to go shopping. On Christmas Eve. Now, in Winston-Salem, we avoid the mall from the beginning of November through the end of January because traffic around and at the mall is horrendous with shoppers (before Christmas) and then people returning gifts (after Christmas). But, in Kinston we could have run through the mall and not worry about bumping into other shoppers. Because there weren't any other shoppers. We went into Belk (ya know, one of the staple department stores that all malls have) and at one register there were 3 employees, hanging around, staring into space, bored. A manager came up to them and told them to draw straws because he'd be sending one of them home in the next few minutes. Whaaa?

When we were in Kinston this go-round, Jason and stopped at the mall to see just how much more desolate the place had gotten. It was a ghost town. We were there on a Saturday night around 7:30pm. Most of the spaces where stores should be were just blackened holes, begging to be filled. Oh, what's that? You're hungry and want to stop at the food court? Sorry, there is not one eatery in this place. The best you can do is stop at a random vending machine to get a pack of Nabs. I'm serious - all restaurants have moved out of this joint.

Just for fun, we stopped to look at a mall directory, only to discover that thing hadn't been updated in YEARS.

This is only a shot of part of the directory. But, let's take a quick look, shall we? Notice there are 4 things listed under the heading "Restaurants & Food." As I've already told you, those places are no longer in existence. Moving up the list - Sound Shop has been gone since around 2007 or so. Did you notice that there's a listing for a Cingular Kiosk??? Ummm, Cingular merged with AT&T in 2004. KB Toys hasn't been in the mall in many, many years. In fact, the toy store left, something else moved into that slot... and that "new" store has been closed for awhile.

What about the mall decorations? Well, you'll just have to wait until tomorrow for that...

Technology Overload

If you've been following my blog, you know that at the end of May Jason and I had a little fridge trouble. In case you missed it, you can read all about it here.

When we went shopping for a fridge, we were reminded how expensive they are. I don't remember what we paid for our original appliance, but we bought it about 11 years ago. Obviously, prices have gone up. Due to the scary costs (and that fact that we were going to have to wait for about 2 weeks to actually get a fridge delivered), we came up with a cheap and temporary solution. Our "band-aid" was to spend $450 to get a small, unimpressive fridge.We'd been saying for years that we wanted to buy something that we could put in our garage for extra storage. So, we decided to go ahead and get that fridge. For now it's in our kitchen, being a temporary place holder for our "real fridge." 

I am taller than this fridge.
And I am only 5'4".

We are thankful to have a fridge and to have gotten one quickly (we got it the day after ours croaked) and for fairly cheap. Even better, we have 18 months of no interest (but, since it was only $450, it shouldn't take us that long to pay it off). 

This weekend, we headed to Lowe's Home Improvement to get a couple of things we needed for our house. While we were there, we decided to go look at refrigerators again (since this time we weren't in panic mode). We're not ready to get our "real fridge" yet, but figured it wouldn't hurt to just browse and start taking notes. We came across one unit that had me so flabbergasted. I just stood there, staring at the thing, asking "what in the hell is going on here?" 

 This fridge had apps. As in, things you download on your smartphone. Or on a tablet. Trust me, I can't make this stuff up. 

This is the screen on the fridge.

I don't know if you can download other apps, but here are the ones that the display model was showing. I can understand Pandora - often when I'm washing dishes or cooking, I like to bring my Ipod and the speaker dock into the kitchen so I can listen to music. But, what the hell is the purpose of Twitter on your fridge? What, am I going to tweet to the world that "I'm getting a can of biscuits outta my fridge"? And Weatherbug? Seriously? When I want to know the forecast, I turn to my phone or TV... or even look out the window. I don't look to my fridge. 

The fridge itself was purty.

Shiny!

But the price tag wasn't.

Good grief. Will it cook dinner for me too?

I wanted to play with the screen more than I got to, but Jason saw the look on my face and figured he'd better pull me away before I became enamored with this thing (too late, babe). In my defense, I'm (slightly) better than that. For one, I don't get the purpose for having apps on my fridge. And, another thing, I am well aware of our poorness. In other words, I ain't spending that kind of money on an appliance...that is, unless said appliance did something really special. But, if I want to tweet something frivolous about my life, I'm not going to do that standing at my fridge. Seriously, I don't need to be connected to the world by every item in my house. I promise.

Happy Anniversary, Eyes!

June 14th is a very special day to me. Five years ago I had LASIK. An amazing, wonderful, awesome procedure. To this day, I am still astonished over the results of the surgery.

My journey into the world of corrective lenses started when I was in the second grade. My dad realized that I was blind as a bat and horribly near sighted when he took me to the circus that had come to a neighboring town. Our seats weren't near the floor, but they weren't that far away. At one point, I pointed at a blob laying on the ground outside one of the circus rings and asked my dad how it was posible that there was a lion just lounging there, out in the open, with people walking all around it. My dad looked at me and asked where was this lion. I pointed to the blob to show him. He looked back and forth from the lion to me a few times before slowly saying, "That's not a lion... that's a pile of rope."

Days later, my parents took me to the eye doctor. During that visit it was determined that I had horrible astigmatism that was making me very near sighted. At the time, I thought it was kinda neat getting glasses. Not a lot of my classmates had them and I liked being different. I saw it as getting a cool new accessory. For my face. Neat!

By the time I reached the age of 12, I was getting a bit more vain. Thanks to my lenses, my glasses  resembled the bottom of Coke bottles - very thick and they magnified my eyes a bit. I was never going to get a boyfriend looking like a bug. So I begged my mom to let me get contacts. We talked to my eye doctor about it. He said they normally preferred that patients wait a few more years to have contacts, but he agreed to let me try.

I had contacts for about a week before it was decided that I was too young. Grrr. During my trial period, I always struggled to put them in and take them out. When I would get them in, they irritated my eyes. The doctor told me to wait about 2 years and then we'd try again. TWO YEARS?!?!? In child-speak, that's, like, forever and a day away. Double grrrr.

Finally, finally, finally - the two years came to an end. The year I turned 14, mom decided my birthday present would be for me to try contacts again. Perfect. I was determined to make it work this time. And work it did. I got contacts and wouldn't be caught dead in glasses if I could help it.

As the years went by, the annoyance of dealing with contacts grew and grew. But the alternative, going back to glasses, wasn't an option. I started asking my eye doctor about LASIK. From about the age of 18 on, just about every year when I would go for my annual eye exam, I'd annoy him with questions about the LASIK procedure - did he know of any technological breakthroughs, did he think I'd be a good candidate, blah, blah, blah.

Fast forward to 2006. I was still wearing corrective lenses and wishing I wasn't. I started really researching into the procedure and the legit places I could go in this area to have the surgery. And, most importantly, I started saving up. Finally in May of 2007, I called a facility to schedule my consultation to find out if I was even a candidate. On May 14, 2007, I was told that I was one. I was really scared that my astigmatism would be an issue. The doctor told me that, believe it or not, the technology to correct my particular issue had only been around for about 5 years at that point.

So, now that I knew I was a candidate, the next step was scheduling the actual surgery date. Due to the doctor's schedule, the first date he could get me in was one month later. Only one more month of dealing with corrective lenses? C'mon, June!

The day of the surgery, I was nervous, but excited. The whole procedure took about 10-15 minutes! That's all. And, yes, that's both eyes. The surgeon was great - he talked me through each and every step of the procedure.

The best part? After the surgery, I was sitting up on the operating table. Sort of in daze (prior to the procedure, I was given a sedative to help calm me and then would later knock me out - they want you to pretty much sleep the first day away to let your eyes rest). The doctor pointed to a clock on the wall and asked me what time it was. Without thinking, I read off the time. As soon as I did it, my mind snapped to attention. I just read a clock on the wall... on the other side of the room. And I'm not wearing corrective lenses. I looked at the doctor wide-eyed, to find him grinning at me and my shock of realizing that I could see. Without contacts or glasses. I wanted to jump from the table and run through the halls of the facility, shouting my joy  But, alas, I was too drugged up to actually do that. Oh, yeah, I suppose my sense of decorum would've stopped me too.

So, here I am - five magical years later - still just as amazed about my eyesight as I was on June 14, 2007. So, today, raise a glass in honor of my beautiful, uninhibited brown eyes.

Here they come to save the... Just kidding.

While traipsing through Target over the weekend, Jason and I cut through an aisle in the toy section to get to our intended destination. While passing through, something caught my eye:

Step away from the cheeseburgers.

What. The. Hell? Seriously? These are toys for kids. If I were in grave danger and one of these super heroes came to my rescue, I'd know - without a shadow of doubt - that I was fucked. Does it look like Superman can leap a building in a single bound? No, I doubt he can even step over a crack in the floor. Wonder Woman's invisible plane ain't that sturdy. The latest battle royale between The Joker and Batman will be an eating contest. The Green Lantern is now used as a lighthouse. Batgirl... yeah, who really cares about her. 

Although, thanks to these figurines, I suddenly didn't feel so bad about myself.

I'm so not a girly girl

When I was a kid, I was a tomboy. I preferred climbing trees with "the guys" over playing house with "the girls." I've always hated dolls, finding them creepy with their glassy blank stares.

When I was in college I became friends with a Girl. Yes, Girl with a capital G. We became roomies in the dorm and eventually got an apartment together. In this apartment she taught me the way of shoes and purses.

While I have gotten in touch with my feminine side (so to speak), I'm still not one who knows or cares much about makeup. Every once in a great while I'll actually wear some... but, I usually can't be bothered with it. Hey it cuts into my reading time in the morning.

The biggest part of this whole "look I'm a girl" thing is my vanity. Wanting to make sure that I stay looking young and healthy for Jason, I've ventured into the area of having microdermabrasion treatments on my face. For those of you who don't know what these treatments are - it's basically taking a dremel tool to my face, sloughing off the top layer of skin to help smooth things out. Sounds horrible right? Well, those treatments aren't too bad. Yet. This past Wednesday I had my third treatment. It is starting to get a little more painful because at each visit the intensity of the sanding (oh god, that sounds ridiculous) is increased.

But, that's not the issue. At my appointment prior to this past Wednesday's the technician performing this sadistic sounding ministration suggested I try a chemical peel the next time I came in. She said that the chemical peel could be done immediately after the microdermabrasion treatment and it would be great. The two procedures together would really get my face on the right track to looking better.

So, I thought, why not. I'm fully committed to helping myself stay looking good for the Hubster. I'll do it. The next time I come in, I'll have this extra service performed on me. How bad can it be?

Beyond horrible. That's how bad it can be. Wednesday, I sauntered into the  doctor's office for my appointment. The visit went as normal - with the technician cleansing my face and then performing the microdermabrasion procedure. Then came The Next Step. She massaged this sticky goop onto my face. It burned a bit, but I could handle it. The massaging helped ease the burn. She informed me that this mask doesn't get removed. I would wear it the rest of the day. I was allowed to wash my face that night if I put on makeup. Well, since I've already discussed my thoughts on makeup, there was no fear of that happening.Then for the next 5 days I was only allowed to use face cleanser. No toner (whatever the hell that is) or moisturizer. She informed me that it was ok if I had to start re-using my products after 3 days, because some folks couldn't hold out for the full 5 days. She also told me that I may or may not peel that day because there was a good bit of humidity in the air. My head was spinning by this point.

Wednesday night, my face was fine. No peeling. Things were good. A chemical peel was pretty nice.

Thursday I woke up to find my chin peeling a bit. No biggie. Things got a little worse as the day went on, but I could handle it. Still liking this newly discovered procedure.

Friday was a different story. My whole face - let me repeat - my whole face was a hot mess of flaky goodness. And it hurt. My face, not the flakes. Imagine having a sunburn on your face that is now peeling. That's what's going on here. Only I've never burned this much of my face, so therefore, never had this much peeling going on. I reach to scratch my cheek and it snows. Disgusting. The skin that is now exposed, thanks to my nails, starts to scream.

Seriously? Women do this shit on a regular basis? Why? I told Jason that I am never doing this procedure again.

Well, unless I see some miraculous results. Then it all may make sense to me.

My dilemma

Last Wednesday, Jason and I went to a spin class at the YMCA. Before class started the instructor, Melissa (not to be confused with my best friend of the same name), came up to me and said that some of the other instructors had been talking about me recently. Oh boy, what had I done now?

There's a dance class at the Y called Sh'Bam. While the actual Sh'Bam class has been around for a good bit, it's still fairly new to our gym (they just picked up the class in late February). Loving to dance and having no shame, I dove head first into this class. I took dance lessons for many years as a kid and I miss those. It's so hard to find dance classes (at an actual dance studio) for adults around here. This class fulfills my need to shake my moneymaker for all it's worth. My Zumba class did it too, but due to a change in my schedule, I haven't been able to make it to that in forever.

So, why were the instructors talking about me? They are looking to hire some new teachers for this class and they thought of ME! Whaaaa? Really?!?! When Melissa told me this, I was shocked and honored, but I didn't know how serious they were.

Since my brief talk with Melissa, I've been approached by two other instructors saying they think I'd be awesome and I should do it. Did I mention that I'm so honored that they thought of me?

I am leaning toward doing it. Just going for it. Why not? But, I'm faced with some barriers.  As outgoing as I am, I do still battle with self esteem and self doubt issues. My inital reaction when the instructors have talked to me about this is "Yes, sign me up." But, right on the heels of that is "Oh shit. I can't do this. I'm going to be completely off beat and forget the moves and... just look like a big ol' douchebag."

In addition to those fears is the question of "how do I fit this into my schedule?" I'm already so busy with my life in general - between my workout schedule, trying (and failing) to stay on top of reading blogs I like and writing my own (how long has it been since my last post???), and giving myself down time. I'm not one of those people who can gogogogo all the time. I can go for a bit, then I lose steam and want to just sit on my arse with a good book or my TV. I don't know how to balance everything. Sh'Bam is a class that's through a group program called Les Mills. This means you have to go through 2 days of training to get on the path to certification. Then if you pass that ass kicker, you have send in a video tape of you teaching a class. Then, after you become a certified instructor, every few months you have to learn a new set of songs/dances to teach the class. I have no idea how many hours go into those training sessions. Obviously the instructor has to know the new moves before they can release it to the class.

Jason's words of encouragement are to not make a decision now, but to get with the person in charge of setting up the training to discuss everything - how often would they want me to teach, what kind of compensation would I receive, will the Y pay for my training, etc,etc. Just get the facts and then figure out if I want to do it. The issue is - I'm on a deadline to figure this out. The certification programs travel around the country. One is actually going to be in our area next week. So, I need to figure things out asap.

Any thoughts/words of advice/heckling from you guys???