Biggerwife and I took a mini-vacation to the wonderful twin city metropolis of Raleigh-Durham.
I'm just not a fan of traveling. I don't really care too much for flying and all of the preparation for travel is a bit of a pain. I started out the trip pretty grumpy (as usual) but once I get where I'm going it seems fine.
Anyway, our previous upstairs neighbors and good friends moved to Durham last year. She is preparing to be an ER doctor. Holy moly! She works 80 hours a week. Not an exaggeration. This was after the tremendous amount of hours in medical school. She is one year into it and has 2 more years left. The payoff is sweet, though. Once complete, she can work as much or as little as she wants and will be bringing in some serious money. Her husband is a hardcore fisherman who taught me a buttload about saltwater fishing. He also introduced me to biggerwife so I'm indebted to him big time.
Wife's best friend lives in Raleigh so we decided to combine visits. We stayed with wife's friend, but made the drive to visit our other friends. That was the good part. The bad part was that wife's best friend has a 2 year old, a 4 year old, and a socially inept distant husband. We hung around all day Sunday and it just sucked. The entire time she was corralling the kids while he was somewhere other than where we were. Pretty much sucked, but I'm glad (and so was she) that she got to spend time with her friend.
We did manage to do a little sightseeing. We visited Duke Gardens. I highly recommend this if you are ever in the area. They were beautiful. It is split up into 5 sections with lots of little trails everywhere. There were a lot of people there, but you never felt crowded. And, it is FREE. Well, $4 parking but what a bargain.
I sort of failed at picture taking but here is a couple.
This one is the manicured step garden (probably not the official name).
Some weird wicker sculptures. Pretty cool imo.
A random panda appears!
All in all the trip was OK. The weather back here in Florida was horrendous (Alberto) so I didn't miss any fishing.