The Luney Bin: H. Wade Minter

They finally finished rebuilding the bridge on Wilmington Street in South Raleigh that I have to drive over every day. It’s been about three years that the bridge has been under construction – they started shortly after I took the job in Downtown, causing the four-lane bridge to get squeezed down to two lanes while they rebuilt one side, then the other.

One thing I still don’t understand is why it’s possible to construct entire subdivisions or skyscrapers in a matter of months, but it takes years to pave one mile of road. Is there something inherent in road construction that has caused its technology not to advance over the years? Incompetence from government contractors? There’s got to be a reason that road and bridge construction is so poky.

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Forgive me, Father, it has been seven days since my last post.

Christmas 2004 has come and gone. We were pretty busy – heading up to Virginia the Wednesday before, doing the family thing for a couple of days, then coming home on Christmas eve. Since Hayley is old enough to be somewhat aware of Christmas, we wanted to start being at our house on Christmas morning. It made our visiting a little more hectic, but I think it was worth it. I’ll write more about Hayley’s Christmas over on her page, but Christmas was very nice.

The theme for me this year was DVDs and books – I got quite a few things off of my Amazon wishlist, including William & Mary alumnus Jon Stewart’s “America: The Book,” which was as outstanding as reviews said it would be. Holly’s big present to me was, unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to use any time soon.

I’ll make up for it by playing “NHL 2005” on my PS2. To top off Christmas Day, Holly cooked her first “holiday feast” dinner ever – turkey, stuffing, gravy, the whole works, with a lemon merangue pie for dessert. And it was outstanding. That was good eatin’.

The next day, we got what passes for a snowstorm in North Carolina. Maybe two inches of mixed ice and snow, kinda nasty on the roads but not much in the way of fun to play in. It’s been pretty cold here, though, so there are still quite a few icy spots on the roads.

The siding project is still ongoing. One side (the big flat side with no windows) is done, the other three are up to the first floor, with the second floor in progress. The guy estimates that he’ll be done siding by the end of the week, but we still haven’t gotten the replacement windows in, so he might not be completely done this week. The traces of my nice blue house are quickly vanishing, though. I’m going to miss it.

I moved out of the walking boot and into real shoes again for the first time post-surgery last week. Walking is still a little bit gimpy, but it’s a lot easier to move around in sneakers than the Robocop boot. Especially on the snowy ground. Yay recovery.

I think that pretty much covers the major stuff from the past week. Hope everyone out there had a good Christmas season.

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The siding’s going on. There goes my nice blue house.

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We got our first snow flurries of the season in Raleigh tonight. They lasted about 15 minutes. Knowing the weather down here, that might be all the snow we get for the season.

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A couple of pieces of depressing news on the sports front this evening.

First, William and Mary lost to James Madison 48-34 in the NCAA Division I-AA football tournament semi-finals, ending the Tribe’s best season with a sloppy loss to a team they beat during the regular season. A good run, but it’s a shame they won’t get to go to the finals.

Next, ESPN is reporting that the NHL owners will reject outright the players’ union proposal from last week. The players offered several concessions, including an immediate 25% rollback in salaries, among other things. The owners are sticking firm that they want a salary cap and nothing else. From a logical standpoint, I think the owners are right that a one-time rollback won’t fix the core issues, and that a salary cap is the way to go. At the same time, this news is most likely the end of the line for the 2004-2005 NHL season, and the NHL will become the first sports league to ever cancel its entire season due to a labor dispute.

I don’t know if professional hockey can recover from this – it is by far the fourth of the “big four” sports, and honestly is probably fifth behind NASCAR. Wiping an entire season is big. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the farfetched scenarios come to pass, like a major contraction of the league or the legal dissolvement of the NHL and the formation of a new league. At any rate, it’s hard to find something to be happy about in this situation.

Oh well, maybe I’ll go play some NFL2k5 on my Playstation. What’s that you say? Not next year? Nope. Again, ESPN reports that the NFL and NFL Player’s Association have signed an exclusive agreement with EA Sports and their Madden football franchise to be the only video game licensed to use NFL properties such as team and player names. That’s pretty much the death knell for other football games, as having to use generic teams went out with the Sega Genesis.

NFL2k5 was what is supposed to be right with capitalism – an underdog company provides an innovative game at a lower price than the slow-to-grow incumbent, spurring both companies to produce better products at a lower price for game fans. 2k5’s $20 price point was a rare breath of fresh air in a market where games are seriously overpriced. Madden was selling for $50 for three months of the price war until finally lowering prices. I know the $20 price on 2k5 convinced me to buy it, and I found a very good game that I enjoy playing.

Next year, you can expect to see Madden at $60 or so and few new features aside from updated rosters. Why should they improve or cut their price? The NFL has handed them a monopoly on football games, and that’s usually only good for the corporate bottom line.

Go team. Bah.

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Holly and I have decided to get vinyl siding put on our house. I’ve never been comfortable with the Masonite siding that was on the house when we bought it, especially given the dubious quality of the material, and the paint that was put on right before we bought the house three years ago is already pretty faded.

There’s a guy on our street who has put vinyl up on 7-8 other houses in the neighborhood, and he does good work. He’s also cheaper than most, which makes re-siding affordable. Assuming our home equity loan isn’t held up unreasonably, we may have new siding up before the new year.

We’re also debating on replacing our windows. It’ll be easier to do at the same time the siding is going on, and our current windows, well, suck. The drafts are so bad that I’m surprised people can’t slip in through the cracks. They don’t lock well, either. We’re leaning toward it.

It’s somewhat expensive, but I think it’ll be worth it in terms of the energy savings, reduced maintenance, and added value to the house.

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I know I live in the South and all, but there’s no reason I should be awakened on the morning of December 10 by a severe thunderstorm. It’s supposed to be winter!

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In the interest of posterity, if anyone’s curious as to what the chunk of sesamoid bone that they pulled out of my foot last week looked like, wait no longer. You can see a picture of the bone right here at lunenburg.org.

I don’t think the people who created the internet envisioned people doing stuff like this with it.

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Do you have that one person on your list who is hard to shop for? Are their interests so varied that you can’t seem to make them happy with just one gift? Well, if your special someone loves both informative literature and bird vomit, I’ve got the gift for you!

Behold, the boxed set of Owl Puke. This set includes both a 92-page illustrated guide to the life and eating habits of the owl, it also proudly boasts that it “includes sterilized owl pellet & bone collector tray.” The bone collector tray is key, and you know why. That’s right, a bonus meal without turkey leftovers! The kids will love seeing who gets the bigger half of the vole’s wishbone.

Remember: “As for the story the pellet tells, kids need only a toothpick to find out. The package includes a plastic tray to hold the bones and a chart to help identify the pellet’s contents. It’s a hoot!”

Order two – every heat-sterilized owl pellet is different. Collect them, trade them with your friends! And happy holidays.

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I went in for my post-surgery checkup today, a little over a week after getting sliced. They said everything looked good, but the incision wasn’t completely healed, so they took out two of the stitches and left the other two in. I was hoping to get them all out today, but oh well. I go back in a week and hopefully they’ll all come out then.

There is good news, though. I don’t have to wear the big-ass Ace bandage of doom any more, as I’ve moved on to a simple band-aid. I can get the foot wet, which meant the end of annoying tub baths and a return to showers. And I can move into the walking boot now, which should improve my mobility.

I guess I have to go back to work now, though. Hm. Maybe I can get those stitches put back in.

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