I have a full Thanksgiving weekend ahead.
Nuke is coming up from Southport on Wednesday. Thursday, we’re driving up to NoVa for dinner with the family. Nuke’s parents are in California and his girlfriend is in Texas. It will be good to have someone along for the long drive and back. We’ll need to get an early start Thursday to get to Reston in time for the afternoon dinner.
Friday, we’ll drive back to Raleigh. No time requirements so we can make the drive whenever.
Saturday is the final football game for the season – UNC at NCSU. Pre-season this was expected to be a huge game. Early predictions had both NC State and UNC as possible contenders for the ACC Championship game and BCS bid.
Well, that sure as heck didn’t happen. Especially not for NC State. I expected a 7 – 5 or 8 – 4 season with 9 – 3 a real possibility. After Saturday we’ll end up 4 and 8 - maybe 5 and 7 but I don’t think we can win this one. I looked on Stubhub yesterday; there are a whole lot of NCSU tickets for re-sale. I guess a lot of State fans just can’t stomach the idea of watching us lose to UNC as the final nail in this season’s coffin.
Sunday afternoon there’s a home basketball game – New Orleans I think.
I haven’t made the drive to NoVa in a long time – possibly almost a decade. I don’t like making long drives, especially by myself. My trips up there have all been by airplane. But, flying would take almost as long. An hour to the airport, and hour checking in, the flight takes an hour, and about an hour to pick up my bag and get to M&C’s house. Altogether about 4 hours at the very best. What used to be a convenient, almost pleasant travel experience has become an ordeal of long lines and stress.
The drive will take somewhere between 5 and 6 hours. Plus, having Nuke along for company will be nice.
So, for a relatively short trip such as to NoVa - the boredom of driving vs. the stress of TSA has become a wash.
I haven’t made plane reservations for Christmas yet. I’m waiting to see how this drive goes.
Ringing
There’s another downside to driving. Starting about 6 months ago I developed Tinnitus.
Folks, its dammed annoying. I get it when there's a lot of background noise. So, everyday, on my drive to and from work, the wind, road and traffic noise set it off. And it’s loud. The volume of ringing can sometimes overwhelm the volume of background noise.
It usually persists for a couple hours after I get to work / home. Which means I’ll have it all day Thursday and Friday. Plus the drive up to the games Saturday and Sunday and the noise of the games as well.
I’ve been thinking about getting some noise cancelling headphones – but I don’t think it’s a good idea to drive without being able to hear. On the other hand, the Tinnitus is getting so bad I just about can’t hear when I’m in the car anyway.
Overall though, the long drive notwithstanding, I’m looking forward to the weekend. It will be good to see the family and there’ll be lots to do over the long weekend.
Recession Visual
Speaking of Nuke, he had this posted on his blog - it's very strking. Similar to how charts and graphs can help one grasp numerical data - this depection of unemployment progression by county just reaches out and grabs you.
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
2 comments:
Consumer grade "active" noise cancelling headphones only cover up lower frequencies (such as the constant low roar of jet engines on a plane). They don't cover up the higher ranges (like car honks or human speech).
Of course, if you get over-the-ear "passive" noise/sound headphones, those will reduce the dB sound pressure of the entire range.
And wearing noise cancelling headphones makes tinnitus worse, not better.
You need a white noise generator, preferably tuned to your tinnitus, to mask it out.
Welcome to the constant noise club, I have had tinnitus for a few years now . . . it does get annoying.
I normally turn something on for background noise, because when there is total silence, it sucks.
Try listening to NPR as you drive, that should work.
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