Some Things Change, Some Stay the Same

Other than finding it extremely difficult to navigate outgoing mail and non-direct deposits, you might be wondering what else has been new and different in my first two weeks in The Dash.

I still live in a swing state, so presidential election attack ads are a norm on the local TV stations (which, for those of you who don't know, are all that I have. I opted to cancel my Dish Network in order to save money, so I'm left with two CBS stations, two NBC, the CW, and about five public access stations. I've been watching quite a bit of I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, Matlock, The Rockford Files, The Twilight Zone, and Perry Mason in exchange for Dr. Phil, which/whom I still cannot stomach.).

Although the commercial breaks yield some familiar sights, the weather reports on the local news have me marveling at my new locale. My local weather people categorize the local region into three parts: the Piedmont, the foothills, and the mountains. I have foothills and mountains! Eek! How delightful. If you're not-so-familiar with the geography of western NC, no, I do not live in the foothills or the mountains. I'm in Winston-Salem, one part of the Piedmont Triad. Greensboro and High Point make up the other 67% of the Triad.

Drive down my street just a few blocks, and you'll notice that we aren't in Kansas anymore, Toto. If you've been keeping up with this nail-biter of a blog, you've already learned about the new grocery store chains that I now call my own, but the fastfood chains are going to take me (and my digestive system) some time to get accustomed to. The first three fastfood joints you encounter on the drive out of my complex are...

Yes, that's Bojangles', Pig Pickin's, and Biscuitville, right in a row. Chicken, pork, and biscuits - what more could a girl want? Oh, that's right, maybe I'll want the old school 1995 Taco Bell that's just a bit further down the block. I noticed in the spring that Winston-Salem has not rebranded their Taco Bells, which I thought had happened at least a decade ago. Nonetheless, that mid-90s Taco Bell represents some comforting, familiar food among all of this unfamiliar comfort food on my block.

Perhaps my next post will be about the awkward sense of unbelonging that I felt as I parked next to a Crown Victoria and walked out to the sidewalk to take this photo.

Peace, love, something old, something new--

Emily