Southern Kind of Life

The Durham County Health Department will be holding 3 H1N1 Vaccination Walk-in Clinics at local schools this Saturday, January 9 from 10am to 3pm.  The schools are Hillside High School, Riverside High, and Neal Middle School. More information can be found at http://bit.ly/8jDssD.

If you haven’t already gotten an H1N1 vaccination this is a good opportunity to get one. My wife & I managed to get one at our local pharmacy (Triangle Pharmacy on Hwy 54) a few weeks back and it literally took us more time to fill out the forms than to get the shot.

I would highly recommend getting a shot. My son’s violin teacher has already had H1N1 as well as one of my son’s schoolmate. Getting the vaccine will definitely help your chances of avoiding the virus.

The Durham Symphony will be holding their annual Young Artists Competition at the Durham Arts Council on December 12, 2009.  Applications are due by November 27, 2009.  This competition allows classical musicians ages 13-21 to compete to play solo with the Durham Symphony in their 2010 spring concert.  This will be the Durham Symphony’s first Young Artists concert with their new conductor William Henry Curry.  If you know of anyone who might be interested in this competition, please send them over to the Durham Symphony website for full details.

The Durham Savoyards, Ltd. presents

Gilbert & Sullivan’s

THE MIKADO

and invites you to join in a public

SING-THROUGH

at the Durham Arts Council building

120 Morris Street, Durham NC 27701

Sunday, November 1, 2009

2pm to 5pm

Scores will be available for loan or sale ($25).

——————

THE MIKADO

2010 Performances: March 18, 19, 20, 21
at the Carolina Theatre
309 West Morgan Street, Durham NC 27701

AUDITIONS
January 2010 at the DAC
by appointment
Sunday, January 3 from 1pm to 6pm
Monday, January 4 from 7:30pm to 9:15pm
Callbacks: Tuesday, January 5 at 7:30pm

To schedule an audition or receive more information, contact
mikado.producer@gmail.com
or 919-491-2364

Audition guidelines, preferred selections, and complete show and ticket information are available at
www.durhamsavoyards.org

The Durham Symphony’s fall season will soon be starting up but they are already doing fundraising.  Last week they held a fundraiser at the Nasher Museum.  Tonight, however, the Chili’s restaurant at Garret and 15-501 will give 10% of your order total to the Durham Symphony if you eat there and present this flyer:

• Chilis Flyer

This is the Chili’s restaurant at 4600 Durham Chapel Hill Blvd in Durham.

So, if you don’t already have dinner plans this evening, please print out the flyer, take it with you and have dinner at Chili’s.  I’m sure the Durham Symphony would appreciate it.

Durham, unfortuantely, has been somewhat at a disadvantage to the rest of the Triangle area with respect to DSL service. Verizon’s DSL service has always been fairly bad. Friends of mine that have worked at ISPs in the area have been universal in their dislike of Verizon’s DSL service.  Other areas of the triangle have been getting some competition to Time Warner Cable’s internet with the rollout of AT&T’s UVerse service which provides internet and cable over fiber optic lines.  I had hoped that Durham would get Verizon’s equivalent FiOS which is also a fiber to the home service.  However, it looks like Verizon has decided to pull the plug and sell all its customers in NC (and other states) to Frontier Communications. Whether this is good or bad for Durham remains to be seen, however a similar divestment in the north east has not gone very well. So, we’ll have to see how things go. I wish we could get something similar to Wilson’s Greenlight here in Durham as I think it would really differentiate us and encourage more people to consider moving to Durham, but I don’t hold out any hope that our elected leaders can be that forward thinking.

By way of newraleigh.com, it looks like Tori Amos will be coming to the Durham Performing Arts Center at the end of July. I haven’t seen her in concert since moving to Durham from the DC area in 1998, but I remember she had a good show then. I wonder what her stuff is like now.

I filled up my car’s gas tank this morning at the Circle K at Hwy 55 and Cornwallis Road. When I was taking my son to school they had the best gas price at $1.989/gallon but by the time I got there it had gone up to $1.999/gallon, matching the other two gas stations at that corner. While I was filling up, though, I had the pump automatically stop a couple of times at the highest pump level (when the tank was obviously not full) so I put the pump on the lowest pump level. My mistake was then to walk around the car to get my logbook. A UPS driver who was on the opposite side of the pump came out a few minutes ago and got my attention. It was a good thing too since the pump was overflowing out of my gas tank! It looked like I lost about a good 2-4 gallons on the ground!

So, if you’re pumping your gas, it’s probably not a good idea to leave the pump unattended.

Inside Streets at Southpoint (HDR)
© Steve W

I see from the Independent this morning that the owner of Southpoint Mall has declared bankruptcy. It says their malls will continue to operate while they reorganize. I don’t really know, but it seems to me that SouthPoint seems to be doing ok. At the very least, it’s always hard to find a parking spot there. It looks like mall performance wasn’t what did the company in, but rather that they financed their growth using short term loans and were unable to roll over the debt into new loans. So, now, they’re looking to sell malls to pay off their debts. Here’s hoping that a buyer for SouthPoint can be found soon.

Me

So, apparently, there’s a blogger bash at the DPAC tonight (also see facebook event) organized by 30Threads. I almost forgot about it but thankfully remembered it yesterday! Maybe this event will be a good kickstart for me to get back to blogging. Anyway, if you’re there, please say hello.  I’ll be the guy from the picture on the right.

Prairie Home Companion at the Town Hall Theater in NYC – December 12, 2008
©Arthur

If you haven’t been to the DPAC yet, you might want to consider going on May 9th.  It was just announced that in association with WUNC radio, Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion will be coming to the DPAC.    Tickets won’t go on sale until March 2nd but when they do you can get them at the DPAC tickets page.

I had heard rumors of this a few months ago, but had thought they fell through.  It’s nice to see they were correct.  A Prairie Home Companion is my son’s favorite show and he just picked up two books by Garrison Keillor at the Book Exchange in their going out of business sale.