Saturday
Jeff and I got up about 7:30 and started packing as Friday was a late night. About 9:30, Mom drove up and we packed the car. Said goodbye to the kitties and we're on the road. The drive down was fairly uneventful until we hit the last bit of West Virginia and the rain caught up to us. It pours and is very foggy. Hotel is clean and relatively nice. Quality Inns are great, and cheap. Dinner was at the Carolina Brewery, and out of the three places we had dinner it was the worst, though still pretty tasty. The other places outshone it. It continued to pour.
Sunday
We woke up at a leisurely 7:30 and puttered around a bit getting our complimentary breakfast. Jeff and I garbed up, I managed to roll my hair up for the first time. It needs some work but I got the gist of it. Mom's camera has pictures. We drove off to North Carolina Renaissance Festival's new Wake Forest location.
The festival was very interesting. The location was new, a fallow golf course that once had the aspirations of being a lovely expensive community. The rain had left the place very muddy, we saw a few of the patrons struggle with cars in mudholes. As we walked in, they had set up merchants inside the poolhouse. I was not thrilled with this, it was dark and too close together. Once outside, there was a bit of surprise with how spread out the fair was and how thin the merchants looked because of the spacing. It was clearly an established faire, the court and wandering performers were all professionals, but clearly the move had lost a large portion of vendors and outside performers. It's a faire in flux, so it was hard to see how things really were.
We left at about 4:30, after a great chat with the SCA, meeting
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silverstah and
baronessadriana . From there, we went back to the hotel to change and then to wander around Chapel Hill and find some food. We found it in Carborro at a diner called Elmo's. The food was excellent while still being very reasonably priced. We shared salmon patties, chicken and dumplings, and roast beef as well as a strawberry shortcake made with lemon poundcake.
And then there was more sleep.
Monday
We get up again, this time a bit earlier, so just in case there is traffic on the way to Chapel Hill. There we split up, Mom and Jeff to go scout out the lay of the land and me to my interview.
The building, first off, is huge and was built in two stages. The first were two triangle shaped buildings, then a third built around them in a hemicircle incorporating them. It made it very difficult to navigate. I spent the morning with the grad students, who were verybusy finishing up assignments on top of their work for Pride and Prejudice. It made it a little hard to ask questions, but they also asked questions which helped. The classes were pretty much 'work on what you can time' with a little bit of meeting up for fittings and assigning the next project. I did get to learn how to drape in knit and pattern out a leotard with sleeves.
Lunch was brought in, and was pretty darn tasty burgers, I had mushrooms and pesto mayo on mine. Then it was time for a tour of the building, where I was thoroughly lost but intrigued by their costume collection. It is something of an entirely different genre than the one at OSU. When they say costume, they mean costume. They may have some vintage things, but they could still be used on stage for a production. At least that is what I was given to understand.
Next up was my portfolio review. It didn't suck completely. I always had something to say, and some of it even made sense or got approving noises and nods from the department. The head spent a bit of time looking at it up close, so hopefully she felt that it was grad quality.
That was pretty much it for the formal part of the day. I spent a little bit afterward talking to the grad students and
labricoleuse about living around campus, sewing techniques and general things. Another thing I noticed was that none of the grad students had outside jobs, they were entirely too busy with school to do so, which would cut out all of my income
I met back up with Mom and Jeff, and we drove around the area some more. The map we had only showed a little bit of Raleigh around the airport so we were terribly confused as to why the state capital had no downtown. It does, just further east and south. We wandered around Durham and Duke, taking in the sights before deciding we were hungry and going in search of Mama Dip's. It was late (about 8:30) , so things were pretty quiet. Mama Dip's managed to get somewhere between Elmo's and Carolina Brewery for rankings. Jeff says differently because he had the best fried chicken livers ever, but I only had one (and he was right, they were fantastic) and the fried chicken was pretty good but the mac&cheese was downright boring compared to the food at Elmo's.
We went back and crashed for the last night.
Tuesday
We woke up and packed, checked out, had breakfast at the Waffle House where the waitress seemed very concerned that we didn't want any meat (ie bacon or sausage) but had two eggs each which for me is plenty of protein in the morning plus hashbrowns and a waffle.
Jeff wanted to stop and meet the manager of the Tandy in Raleigh so we went down there and cursing the google map finally found our way there. The guy was nice and seemed very interested about having someone else in the shop but judging from the size of the store there is no way he can afford a full time employee. Though it would be the easiest way to have an income immediately after moving, even if it's just a couple of days a week, Jeff could be job searching the rest of the time.
After leaving there, at about 11, we began the long trip home. It was fairly uneventfull but for the conversation, a brief stop at Tamarack WVa and Mom getting a speeding ticket just north of Circleville randomly , e cop had been following for three miles and said she was going 70 in a 55. And wow, does 23 feel slow at 50. We made it home at 9, the cats were very happy to see us. I have mail from Savannah to sort through, but that is going to be a separate post.
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