Construction update 5

Construction work ground to a halt last Friday when the inspector failed the porch. The inspections department is re-interpreting the rules for hurricane strapping so although the porch failed the inspector could not clearly tell us what needed to change to pass. Already there appears to be so much strapping to prevent the roof flying off during a hurricane I'm not sure what else can be done. The fact is that during a very severe hurricane the screened porch will be left standing and the rest of the house will have blown away (or one of our 35 pine trees will fall over and smash the porch!) Anyway, additional strapping has been added and we await the structural and electrical inspections on Monday. All going well the porch will be finished next week.





The pizza oven is also coming along nicely. The 4th layer of concrete blocks was laid last night by Andrew and Gary, with Daryl watching on. Lucy has been a little helper donning gloves and using a trowel in a rather expert way. She is really getting into her role as Pizza Slave! Andrew still thinks we can have a functional launch in October, let's hope so!

Enforced garbage collection

Whilst driving down the highway it is not uncommon to see this sign - "Caution: Prison inmates working ahead" And then a few minutes later you see a dozen or so men dressed in bright orange vests picking up garbage from the roadside and putting it in bags. The NC Department of Correction's website states that "Today's N.C. prison inmates work on the farm, on road crews and in prison construction. More than 2,000 minimum and medium custody inmates from more than 60 prisons work on the state's roads, clearing right-of-way, picking up litter and patching potholes. Medium custody inmates work under the supervision of armed correctional officers. Minimum custody inmates work under the direction of Department of Transportation employees." One thing I can say is that the highways in NC are incredibly clean and in our recent travels we did not see any litter lying around. I guess there must be a lot of prisoners to do the work.

Attention basketball fans

This sleepy town of Wilmington has some surprising secrets. Did you know that Wilmington's most famous son is Michael Jordan? Yes the man dubbed the greatest basketball player of all time lived just around the corner on Gordon Road and attended Laney high school. Apparently the basketball hoop he used to practice on is still up at his mom's house. His first job was at 'Whitey's' restaurant, a long time eating establishment here in Wilmington which still serves breakfast, lunch and dinner and has just gone smoke-free. I only realised that he had lived here when I saw a sign up on the I40 a few weeks ago and then made some inquiries of some Wilmington natives. See the things you can still find out after living here for a year or so!

The digital transition is coming!

Wilmington NC has been chosen as the test city in the US for converting from analog broadcasting to digital television! I guess we are big enough to be a test case but small enough that if something goes wrong it doesn't really matter. So on Monday 8 September our local stations are being switched over at noon. The rest of the US converts on 17 February 2009. I'll let you know how it goes!

It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring

Hurricane season has started and we are in the midst of Tropical Storm Cristobal which is our first taste of a hurricane since we moved to Wilmington. This means that is has been raining alot during the weekend but with patches of sun and blue skies in between the downpours. The humidity rose to 97% yesterday and our temperature sensor reached 106.5F so although it is raining it is still extremely hot. It is so humid you could cut the air with a knife and we are expecting great swarms of mosquitoes to arise from the waters in the next few days.

"Mummy, raining, pouring, old man snoring!" Lucy has been begging for gumboots for months ever since we got the book 'Ladybug Girl' as a present. I found these awesome ladybug rain accessories last week and knew they were perfect. As soon as Lucy woke up on Saturday and saw the tropical downpour she insisted on getting out there. Here she is exploring one of the huge puddles which become even larger with the 2nd and 3rd downpours and eventually formed into Lake T.

A different kind of normal

I mentioned at the end of the Williamsburg blog that things were getting back to normal. Well a sort of normal. This is what 'normal' looks like over the past few days:

Tuesday night - Andrew visits a friend having some issues. Whilst there another friend is in a minor car accident so they go to help out and put a tarp on the car.

Wednesday - Andrew leaves for work at 7am and gets home at 7pm. Potty training starts for Lucy. Drop over to Gabriel's to give him a birthday present. Get home. Lucy pees in toilet 6 times during the day. Pees on floor 4 times. Poops on floor once. Ava comes over to play. Lucy and Ava take turns using the toilet. Invite Margaret and Ava to stay for dinner. Cook dinner. Eat dinner. Clean house. From 8pm-10pm Andrew digs out grass from the driveway so that concrete can be laid in the morning.

Thursday - Andrew leaves for a prayer group at 6:15am and gets back at 8am. Waits for concrete guy to turn up. He's running late so Andrew heads for work. Lucy pees on the floor after breakfast. We get ready for a pool party. UPS guy turns up with outdoor furniture. Lumber delivery truck arrives. Dilemma as to whether forklift will fit through gate. It does. Lucy plays with Ava on the swing while lumber guy is working. Takes 45 minutes to get lumber into place. Then since we are only 1 hour late we head off to a pool party in Castle Hayne. Play in pool. Pat horse and get a shock from the electric fence that was supposed to be off. Pick blueberries and one of the children steps on a beehive and gets bitten 5 times. All kids start crying and pandemonium ensues as we deal with a bitten child and mother. Drive home and get lunch on the way. Lucy pees on the floor of the lunch place. Eat lunch at home. Lucy sleeps and I blog. Builder expected this afternoon. Cooking a lamb roast tonight. Andrew is going out with friends afterward etc etc

Construction commences

This is the time that Grandad is sitting back thinking that he is very glad to be in Bexley and not in North Carolina. We are getting a screened porch built onto the back of our house! We have an existing deck but there are so many bugs in summer that the deck is unusable. So Steve the builder will be here over the next few weeks working on it. Here is a 'before' picture and I'll keep you up to date with the progress. The wood, concrete and screen were delivered this morning so we are ready to go.

short and sweet

After a week of thunderstorms and high humidity the weekend returned us to our North Carolinian blue skies. So we gardened, went to church, gardened and went to church.

Rose garden

Continuing the garden theme of last week here is an update on our roses. Our now famous yellow rosebush has yielded 67 roses in just five weeks. We moved into this house in June so we missed this initial crop last year. However the bush blooms until September so we are looking forward to many more sweet smelling flowers. I have given these roses to lots of people and each time people are amazed at their wonderful scent. They also look so perfect that people think they aren't real until they smell them (or a bug flies out).

We also have a couple of other rosebushes including the white ones on the trellises (the technical botanical name), the red one and the pink one (transplanted from the back and doing extremely well). Our dianthus plants bloomed (and died) over the past month with pink and purple flowers which made our garden smell very sweet.

Happy birthday mothers day

With so many celebrations in such a short time frame Lucy was very confused and kept saying 'happy birthday' to me! After explaining it was Mothers Day she decided that it was appropriate to say 'happy birthday mothers day' to me. She still thinks it is her birthday and often breaks out in song singing happy birthday to herself.

I was given a lovely pancake breakfast in bed! All three of us crawled into bed together for breakfast and whilst there were a few pancake crumbs in the sheets everything worked out surprisingly well and there wasn't maple syrup dripping from the ceiling! We did lots of gardening, mostly weeding and mulching before heading off for dinner at Kornerstone pizza (a wood fired pizza restaurant)

While at Kornerstone there was a tornado warning for our area of New Hanover! The skies were black. I mean really really black. There were loads of lightning strikes and menacing thunder rumbles. Suddenly there was sideways rain. Two minutes later the rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared and there was blue sky and sunshine! It was totally weird but fascinating. Andrew took a photo of the clouds when we got home. Look at the amazing light show we had!

Andrew's birthday weekend

The weekend was jam packed with fun activities to celebrate Andrew's birthday and most of them revolved around food. We breakfasted at Cracker Barrel (Kaka bawell) with maple syrup pancakes before heading over to Lewis Farms to pick strawberries. The farm is 3 minutes from our house!! Lucy was strategically dressed in a pink t-shirt and had a ball picking strawberries and eating them. After picking 2 and half buckets worth we headed over to the shop for some home made strawberry icecream. The farm was set up very efficiently and it was surprisingly quick and easy to pick the berries as the plants are on elevated beds covered with black plastic so it is easy to see the ripening fruit. Although there were lots of people around it didn't feel crowded.

Dinner saw us at Marc's on Market (2 minutes away) for a wonderful 3 course meal. Lucy is a true gourmet happily dipping her bread in a fruity olive oil and then eating pizza with chicken, rosemary and olives.

Sunday lunch was a home cooked lamb roast, which was Andrew's first taste of lamb for the weekend! It was followed by a lemon layer cake comprising of 4 layers of cake, 3 layers of lemon curd, swathed in a meringue icing - an awesome Andrew combination.

We finished off the weekend with some yard work. I didn't say gardening because it was mostly digging and pruning. I'll tell you about some of our projects another day.

To finish up Andrew is looking forward to picking out his birthday present - a bbq!

Azalea Festival Weekend

We celebrated the 61st Azalea Festival on the weekend. The main event is the parade down 3rd street from 9am -12pm. So we dressed up in some pretty spring dresses and arrived just after 9. We got caught in a traffic jam, paid $5 to park in a vacant lot(!) and then wandered through the thousands on people lining 3rd street to get to our bleacher seats (we purchases tickets thanks to the GE social committee). There were hundreds of floats that cruised past carrying beauty queens, princesses, dancing troupes and cartoon characters. There were school marching bands, motorbikes, vintage cars, trains, horses and clowns. Pretty much anyone with a car and a desire to parade was allowed to, so there was the unusual entry of 4 average looking cars advertising bond bailing services (i wrote the phone number down for the next time i am arrested) Lucy's favourites were the several fire trucks that went past with sirens blaring. We had a great time waving and clapping but the best bit was that Lucy enjoyed it so much she sat relatively still for almost 2 hours and then we headed off to explore.

The other unusal aspect to this whole event was the number of beauty queens/princesses/junior queens/tiny princesses that were involved. There would have been at least 30 'winners' of various beauty pageants. There was the Shrimp queen, the Christmas queen, the Castle Hayne Queen and the list goes on and on. What is the motivation for entering such a competition? I hope they win some scholarship money. It was scary that many little girls were dressed with lots of makeup and tiaras and made to look like women. I discussed this whole thing with someone and they said that this only happens in the South. Not sure if this is true given that i saw an ad for the Miss America competition being shown live during prime time across the nation.

After the parade we headed down to the riverfront and browsed the stalls, drinking Port City Java, and then stopped off for lunch at a little cafe. We had a fabulous time and were sorry we had missed out last year having only just gotten off the boat. Next year we'll try and do one of the garden tours at a Southern mansion.

1 year later

We made it! We have lived in the United States of America for 365 days (though a little less for Andrew due to his quick trip back to Oz). We are still asked by Americans what we find different about living here versus living in Australia. The answer is quite simply everything. Whilst in some ways it is very similar there isn't a day that goes by that we don't feel like aliens. It's in the small everyday things of life that differences occur.


Here are some of the differences we've encountered:

• using inches, feet, miles, ounces, pounds and farenheit


• driving on the other side of the road


• corn syrup


• different pronounciations (eg 'erbs' for 'herbs')


• words with different meanings (eg telling someone to put something on the bench in the kitchen will be met with quizzical looks)


• free shipping


• cheap electronics


• obsession with new consumer goods


• big gas-guzzling cars


• no foothpaths and no walking


• Southern friendliness


• lack of public transportation


• ridiculous formality for visiting friends


• culinary ignorance (are these pine nuts?)


• bulk buying

and the list goes on...

Here comes the sun

One thing you can rely on in good old North Carolina is the sun. Most of the time we live in a world with a brilliant blue sky with a golden orb (it's like a real version of The Truman Show). When it rains it does so with gusto and will last all day. But you can be sure that the next day it will be back to those same old blue skies. You would think this kind of perfection would get boring after a while but it doesn't. So when it's 40 degrees outside you can still take comfort in the sun's rays and thank God that you live in North Carolina.

WILD DOGS KILL CHICKENS!

Yes our fresh egg source is sadly no more! Whilst we have an egg supply for this week the poor chickens (about 12 of the 18) were killed by dogs on Saturday night.

Apart from the sensation above we had a very quiet weekend. We did some planning for the front garden, talked to the neighbours, slept, and went to church. Jenny, Joe, Gabriel and Julian came over for a lamb roast and then the three of us went out to Cracker Barrel for a pancake dinner (after shopping at Costco).

Weekend sunshine

With such gorgeous weather in the high 60's we headed to our favourite breakfast spot Sweet & Savoury so that we could quickly access the beach. We drove to the northern most part of Wrightsville beach and had to wait for a car parking space! Lots of surfers, kayakers and walkers about. Andrew pessimistically thought we would only be on the beach for a few minutes but it turned out to be wonderfully pleasant. Lucy made and smashed sandcastles, collected shells in her bucket (not very discerningly) and begged for 'pig' (piggy back rides - her new favourite thing).

We were able to do some gardening mostly pruning dead branches as well as planting 5 new trees (which we picked up for free at TreeFest). We planted 3 wax myrtles on the left and 2 crape (sic) myrtles on the right. Fiona raked half the lawn of pine needles which thankfully Darryl wanted for his garden next door.

Still on the hunt for good Chinese food we consulted our Entertainment Guide and headed off to Double Happiness. Andrew had the best wonton soup outside of Hurstivlle whilst Lucy enjoyed her pot stickers and pork buns. Dessert is worth a mention - banana spring rolls. So awesome. Lucy had fried ice cream - green tea ice cream in a strange batter but she still liked it!

Sunday saw us at church and we were invited out to lunch with Terry & Petra. We headed over to Cracker Barrel (their choice) which worked out well. During the wait for the table we sat in the sunshine in rocking chairs (with a sleeping Lucy in my arms). Turns out Cracker Barrel serves breakfast all day so we indulged in pancakes, eggs and sausages.

We were also invited to a superbowl party at the Westras but given the late timing (6-10:30pm) we decided to have a quiet one at home. We watched a couple of minutes of football, 20 minutes of ads and then switched over to watching a Canadian sitcom called 'Corner Gas' (it's supposed to be like Northern Exposure). We are checking it out, still not sure if it's something worth watching.

Steve & Rory are coming over for dinner tonight (lamb roast).

Life is full (of food)!

Busy bees

It's the end of January already. We are so busy living life there isn't much time for blogging.

Yesterday Lucy and I spent the day outside playing in the sand pit. It was nearly 70 degrees so we were in tshirts soaking in the sun. Once again I can only say the weather is extremely variable! And it was so nice outside yesterday we ignored the computer and just played together! Today however we will be spending time indoors reading books.

We are all tired this week as last night we had a games night with bible study at our house playing Scattergories (it is amazing how many categories were US-centred!) and the night before attended the Yahweh Center Third Annual Blue Ribbon banquet with Michael Reagan guest speaking. I got a cool flower arrangement from the table (note that it is a double vase). Each garden club member donated a unique arrangement and there were truly some amazing ones there. Michael Reagan was very inspirational and I bought his book 'Twice Adopted'.

Tomorrow Lucy and I are going to a dress party and Sunday is Super bowl night.

Now I just need to find 3 consecutive days to potty train Lucy!

color fun with jello

Lucy and I headed downtown to the Wilmington Childrens Museum with some of the moms from our group. We had a great time shopping in the grocery store, cooking in the diner, camping in tents and playing in the rubber pit. The 'color fun with jello' session was a disappointment as the toddlers didn't have enough co-ordination to inject dye into huge jello moulds! In any case Lucy had a ball and is now peacefully sleeping.

A fishy weekend

On Saturday morning, Andrew and Lucy headed south to the Aquarium for the 'Daddy and me' program. They had a great time looking at the sharks, turtles and fish as well as playing with the toy eels in the playroom. Lucy had so much fun she fell asleep in the car on the way home but was easily woken up for a pizza lunch.

We went Outback for dinner, dining at the Outback Steakhouse. It's full of kitschy Aussie decor and it even has Fosters on tap. We called ahead for a table but there aren't reservations, just a place on the waiting list. This meant that we only had to wait 35 minutes for a table as opposed to the 75-80 minutes that walk-ins were told. The food was fine with very large portions. Funnily enough they had NZ lamb on the menu instead of Aussie lamb?? Now we've been there and done that. Won't be heading back here if there is such a long wait again.

The weather has turned cold again! We enjoyed the spring weather last week so much as Lucy and I spent a lot of time playing in the backyard, eating ice cream and wearing tshirts. It is just so variable here!

Food roundup

Grannys Country Kitchen
The last weekend of 2007 was quite hot (25 degree celsius) so we decided to head down to Carolina Beach. This was partly so that we could try out a restaurant called Grannys which is one of a few independent restaurants that is not part of a chain. We had a good Southern cookup of shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, scrambled eggs and fresh buttermilk biscuits. The food was excellent but for some quirky reason they served their beverages in styrofoam cups!?! Unfortunately Pops, an ice cream parlour up the road from Grannys, was closed for the winter but reopening again in April. We'll have to head back down south to check it out and maybe fit in a visit to the Grind.

Kornerstone Pizza
This place had been recommended to us so we were eager to check out their wood fired pizzas. The pre-fab oven (both gas and wood) was very large and impressive. Whilst there was a very good range of pizza toppings we were very disappointed with the actual pizza produced. The base was so soggy and flimsy that a piece of pizza could not be picked up with a hand (as the pizza just flopped 90 degrees). It tasted good but its not good pizza if you can't pick it up to eat. Their butternut squash ravioli was great but again we'll have to wait for the Wilmington branch of Andrew's pizza to open to get some great pizza here in NC.

Cracker Barrel
Given the diabolical fridge situation we ate out a couple of nights last week. We ended up at Cracker Barrel one night as we had quite enjoyed the food last time. Unfortunately CB still allows smoking. Whilst we were seated in the non-smoking section, the table next to us was a smoking table. There was a wall between us but the smoke just drifted over the top. So we've decided to boycott CB until they become a non-smoking restaurant. iHop has just become totally non-smoking and hopefully it won't be long before more restaurants in Wilmington follow suit.