What can you tell me about North Carolina?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Actually, no. They only have pre-packaged meat and fish and such.

Sounds like most of the Trader Joe’s I’ve been to. You have to know the right time to go to them, or else they are like that, and the parking lot is Demolition Derby. Saturday and Sunday afternoons are definitely not the best time to go.

Trader Joe’s doesn’t have a huge selection of stuff, and they don’t have a lot of the standard national brands. What they do have is their own label stuff that tends to be pretty good, and really good prices on the stuff they do have. There’s one wine they sell at the Trader Joe’s in my neighborhood that is I think $4.99 there and more like $8.99 everywhere else. They also have a much larger selection of kosher meat than any other grocery store around (which is nice for me) and sometimes have really nice-looking sushi-grade ahi for $12.99/pound (it would be at least $19.99/pound at Whole Foods).

I don’t do all my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. When I want something that they don’t carry, I go elsewhere. But I know that, if they do have something, they’re going to beat the pants off everyone else on price and still have good quality.

That, and I think they secretly put crack in their private-label stuff. They must- it’s soooo good, once you try it, you don’t want anything else.

22

per-KWIM-ans, Carter-ET, Tur-EL, and ber-TEE. You’re welcome. :wink:

23

*:: Writing them down :: * :slight_smile:

24

Well, judging by what you said in your post, I don’t see how one could - there’s just too many things I buy regularly they don’t have, and I don’t think I’m unusual in what I buy.

Thanks for the heads up. I must say I’m really disappointed! No fresh food, save for a bit of organic produce. I guess I thought it would be like Whole Foods but without the price tag. :frowning:

They did indeed have a good wine selection, but a 70-mile round trip isn’t worth it, I’m afraid, and Lord knows I don’t need to eat snacks (::glares at butt:: ). Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the Weaver Street Market opens next year in my little town.

25

By the way, Jodi, it’s Bah-HAY-ma. If you need to refer to Mebane or Conetoe, pick a neighboring community instead! :wink:

Natives, by the way, consider the city on I-95 a bit east of Raleigh to be Rocky Maount, with a New England /ao/ twang. (Wilson? We avoid speaking of Wilson. :)) Eastern Wake County poses no problems: Zebulon, Knightdale, Lizard Lick just as they sound. Wendell has the accent on the -dell, and yes, it was named for the Supreme Court Justice’s middle name. Zebulon, like Vance County, was named for the fiery anti-Reconstructionist governor.

26

Let’s not forget Butner either. Butt-ner. I still giggle a little inside whenever I hear it. We’re also home to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. Someone just wasn’t thinkin’ when they named that place. :wink:

What’s everyone’s take on Fuquay-Varina? I’ve heard the Fuquay part pronounced several different ways.

27

FYOO-kway.

Not to be confused with Duke’s Fuqua school of business, which is usually FOO-kwuh.

28

Okay, here’s something I can’t find online- tell me about bugs. Like, exactly. :wink:

We live in a nice, bug-free environment, summer included (though we vacation in some buggy places, so we’re not total wimps, but I don’t want to put up with too much). What are the major bug issues? Mosquitoes, biting flies, roaches, ants, bombardier beetles, redbugs, chiggers, ticks, what?

29

NC is a hotbed for Lyme Disease due to tick population. I in fact was infected there. I saw a mosquito a few weeks ago in the backyard during a Feb. warm spell. I am more confined to the indoors in the summer due to bugs and heat than I was confined to indoors in winter on the Great Lakes due to snow. Oh - and don’t let the locals fool you, “Palmetto bugs” are cockroaches.

30

Fire ants! Nasty little things; I’ve mostly encountered them in the eastern part of the state. There’s also a fairly healthy bumblebee population; they will chase you if you bother their nests. Biting flies (mayflies? they’re small, like housflies) are a problem in late spring/early summer. We do get nice things though – big butterflies, praying mantises, daddy long legs, potato (or pill, or roly-poly) bugs, etc.

On pronunciations: Roanoke Rapids is “Rownocrapids”; Scotland Neck is “Scotlanek.” In both cases, I didn’t realize that the spelling and the pronunciation referred to the same place until I was in fourth grade. I have also heard Fayetteville pronounced “Fe’dville.”

31

Mosquitoes are the biggest issue. Roaches can be problematic if you live in an apartment/condo, etc but not so bad if you’re in a house. Ants are everywhere, but most are harmless. They are easily controlled (poison traps) if you get them in your house. We do have chiggers and ticks, but these are only a concern when you venture into tall grass or woods. We have an abundance of bees and wasps, although they will mostly leave you alone.

We have cicadas, which can cause quite a racket at night in the summer along with treefrogs. You get used to it.

32

I live in Cary, and I like it, but I’m kind of a stick-in-the-mud/mouse potato, so I don’t feel the lack of cultural junk too much. If you are looking for someplace cool and less bland, definitely check Chapel Hill (especially if you have CA house money to spend).

We like it because it has pretty much zero crime, good schools, and friends for our kid. It’s consistently rated one of Money Magazine’s best towns to live in. I’m confident in our house’s resale value.

And actually I’m having an uncharacteristically cultural/community month or two. In the last two weeks, we went to see a travelling Broadway show, and took the kid to the free science museum in Raleigh to look at dinosaurs. And next week the kid starts soccer and ballet classes through Cary Parks & Rec, which are very reasonable.

Oh, and as to diversity, I suspect it’s less whitebread than it used to be. Yes, I’m sure we are still overwhelmingly white (I’m so pale I count for two white people, after all), but our neighborhood has a rising number of Indian families, as well several Chinese households. Our neighbors happen to be black. Most people I’ve met are mainstream religious, not kooky religious, and it’s not a problem that I have an “Agnostic Atheist” sticker on my car.

Let’s see, people who live here tend to be doctors, lawyers, and white collar folk at the big tech companies. Cary seems pretty republican - lots of SUVs with “W” stickers on them here. People are friendly, and it’s very, very rare to meet someone over 20 who was born in NC, so that’s no problem.

Oh, and Trader Joe’s was probably packed partly because it only opened a few months ago, so people are curious. Lots of two buck Chuck was moving those first couple weeks!

Oh, the summers are hot as hell, humid, and miserable. Just like people in MN pretty much stay in during a couple months in winter, it’s hard to do outdoor stuff here in July and August, for the opposite reason. In fact, check any prospective house’s cooling system - many can’t keep up at the height of summer and the house is at 80+ degrees with the A/C running full blast. This is actually another reason to avoid suburbs, at least new ones - getting an older house with plenty of trees around can help a lot.

33

I’ve never heard anyone in NC who wasn’t originally from Florida call a roach a palmetto bug. I think that’s pretty much just a Florida thing.

Let’s see - where we live, we do get ticks sometimes, but we’re in a semi-rural area so that’s to be expected. I’ve never been bitten, but they get on the dogs sometimes so we check them often and remove any we find.

Not much in the way of mosquitos, but I used to live in Va. Beach not far from the Great Dismal Swamp, so it may be a perception thing. I can go out in the summer and walk around now without being accosted by tiger mosquitos within seconds of setting foot outside - yay!

Ants exist here, but we’ve never had a problem with them, nor are there many roaches around. I’ve only ever seen a couple and I’ve lived here for more than 6 years now.

We do have lots of daddy long-legs and some interesting spiders, like the golden orb spider, which is squicky for people who hate spiders, but they are a harmless garden critter that spins cool-looking webs.

We also have camel crickets, which freak a lot of people out, but they are completely harmless and they don’t make any noise, either. I think they are kind of cool.

I have butterfly bushes in my yard, which grow exceedingly well here, so we get lots and lots of butterflies(this is a pic I took myself of a tiger swallowtail on one of our bushes) , some hummingbirds and some hawk moths, which can look either like great big bees or hummingbirds.

We also have five-lined skinks, which are just beautiful. They are very shy, though.

awldune mentioned the tree frogs (which I love, BTW - sign of spring!) and the cicadas, which I’ve always called ‘heat bugs’ since you hear them during the hottest time of the year in July and August.

We also get bunches of fireflies! And there’s also the time of year we jokingly refer to as the ‘plague of frogs’ when, for some reason, there are tons of toads out at night. If we walk the dogs after dark, we have to be really careful where we step.