Dear Dopers,
On Wednesday, I called the apartment complex my new employers have a deal with. They told me that there was only one apartment left, so we needed to act fast :eek:. So when Morelin got home, we tossed some things in a bag and scurried up to Durham (where we stayed in a magnificent suite–we’re talking fridge, stove, kitchen suite–I scored on Expedia for $50) to check out the complex and do the paperwork and poke around the area on Thursday.
I think I should mention now that, as we crossed the border from SC into NC, we drove through a creepy, Sam Raimi style cloud of eerie fog. Instead of containing evil demons, however, the smoke carried with it the sweet, sweet scent of barbeque. This is surely a sign from the gods.
Thursday comes and we check the place out–it’s a few bucks a month more than we’re paying now but with 150 more square feet, washer-dryer hookups, a much bigger kitchen, there’s our bank, a mailbox place, a grocery store, and a nice mall about a mile away, and it’s walking distance to the place I’ll be working–and lurve it. And we check out the mall and-I say this as a fully qualified, Jay and Silent Bob and Brodie mallrat-it has to be one of the nicest malls I’ve ever seen. We had to leave cause I was muttering things like, “Screw it, let’s just stay up here. We’ll figure something out.”
And I say without qualification that the colors were brighter, the air was sweeter, and the drivers actually drove like human beings. When I stopped in the middle of an intersection to read the street signs, I was not immolated in a fiery inferno as a Starbuck’s crazed soccer mom in a Lincoln Penis Compensator came charging up my ass, which is what would’ve happened here. People used turn signals when they changed lanes. And not just once, ALL THE TIME. And, unlike in Atlanta, where letting someone merge in front of you means you have no penis, in NC, I regularly saw people changing lanes to allow people to merge.
Zeal of the converted? Perhaps.
I also noticed that if I happened to do something insane, like only 5 MPH above the speed limit in the slow lane, the drivers would NOT perch 3 inches off my bumper. Instead, they would change lanes (using their signal!) and leave me alone.
I hear you saying how impossible and unlikely this is, my friend. But I was there! I saw, with my own eyes, these wonderful things.
So we’re moving in mid-May. But I wanna be there NOW. A few hours in Durham was enough to atrophy my leet Atlanta driving skills. My ability to careen into lanes in front of semi trucks was already atrophying. And yes, I did use my turn signals.
Is this normal?
Signed,
Nothing Could Be Finer
