Steve Winwood

I heard "Gimme Some Lovin'" on the radio on the drive down to North Carolina, and totally forgot Steve Winwood sang it.

Here are two of my favorites from that talented fellow:

11-30-09: Long Long Drive

Yesterday was a long day of driving. It began at 5:00AM for me, waking up before I needed to. My mother and I left the house (in Southport, NC) at about 6:45AM. Our destination: Chatham, NJ. Total driving distance: 762 miles, which was the long way. We sought to avoid the heavy DC traffic (which did turn out to be quite awful), and ended up taking I-64 north of Richmond to I-81 and headed up through West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Including stops, it took us about 13 hours. Not too bad overall, considering we hit a couple spots of traffic near Harrisburg and Allentown. I drove from Southport to Richmond, and my mother drove the second, and longer, leg to New Jersey.

My favorite part of the trip was the drive through the scenic Shenandoah Valley in northwestern Virginia and West Virginia. It was a lovely drive, with some awesome views. The other fun part was the goofy town names. Here were my favorites:

Goochland, Virginia

Kutztown, Pennsylvania

Micro, North Carolina

Krumsville, Pennsylvania (same sign as Kutztown)


The second part of my trip was the relative chip shot from Chatham, NJ to my apartment in Derby, CT. Instead of following my mother's directions to go back up I-287 to the Tappan Zee Bridge, I followed my GPS and took I-95 through the city, driving over the George Washington Bridge. Fortunately, traffic wasn't TOO bad, and I made it back in relatively good time. Long day in a car. Total distance traveled: 861 miles. Total time on the road: 15 hours.

The Outfield - "Your Love"

Long drive ahead tomorrow (12+ hours). I plan on having this song stuck in my head:

11-26-09: Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Even though I'm celebrating my first Thanksgiving outside of New England, I will stick to the tradition. Here is Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant:"

Phaneuf vs. Wickenheiser

As a former women's hockey coach, I'm happy to see this sort of behavior. Well done, Hayley Wickenheiser.

11-25-09: UNCW 115, VMI 95

Since I'm down in "basketball country" visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, I figured I'd catch a game. Last night, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW) took on the squad from Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in a Division 1 Men's Basketball matchup.

What it turned out to be was the highest scoring game in UNCW history. I think the score after the first half was something like 55-44, UNCW leading. My parents and I all thought "Neither team will reach 100." Not so. With more than three minutes to play, UNCW hit the 100 mark on one of their few successful three point attempts of the night. The final score was 115-95, UNCW winning big. It's not too often you can say "We scored 95 points and lost by 20." Neither team played much in the way of defense. If VMI didn't hit as many three pointers as it did, which was a lot in the end, the game would have been an even bigger rout. Very entertaining stuff.

11-24-09: Zotero

While reading through the lady's graduate final project, I was pointed (by the author) to a neat new Firefox extension called Zotero. It's a very versatile and powerful tool for referencing websites and PDFs and whatever you need to write a paper, book, article, or even a blog post (I may begin using this soon).

If you ever need a fast and easy way to cite sources (or even take notes for later reference), try it out. Really neat, and completely free.