BACK IN ALASKA AT LAST!!
That's right! After spending two weeks visiting family and beating the heat in the Deep South, it's so great to be back in Fairbanks! I returned home Friday night to...smoky skies?? That didn't seem right.
Anyway, during my vacation I briefly went to another place to go along with the aforementioned Winston-Salem, N.C., Rocky Mount, Virginia, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast: Jackson, Mississippi. There, we sent off Aunt Bobbie's son Larry Frye Jr. to tiny Belhaven College. During my time, I had to call up Charles Fedullo back in Fairbanks about how the Golden Days parade went. It was just like how "The Island" and just over the weekend "Stealth" did in the box office: BORING!!! He said there weren't anything interesting despite the 70-plus degree temperatures, and everything was poorly executed. Maybe it was because of my absence that this year's parade bombed.
Like I said, my time was about beating the heat, with temperatures rising above 90 degrees (or 30 degrees Celsius). But in the last few days, the rains on the coast helped cool things down to a more modest 80 degrees...which is good, because I've been used to very high climates before. Here in Alaska, the highest we can go during the summer months is in the 80s; anything above this is considered a "heatwave" for us.
In the second week, I did hit two casinos: The Treasure Bay in Biloxi and the Grand Casino in Gulfport, where we also dined for dinner and the lunch buffet respectively. The buffet at the Grand Casino had such a wider variety of food than any buffet you've eaten in your lifetime...except for sushi, which has its own bar across the building! Oh well, there's always next time, since I love sushi. I also tried my luck at the slot machines attempting for quick extra spending money for the airports, but failed. I'll probably be better off next time finally trying my hand at poker.
But here's a shocking side of the South you've never seen: It may be called the Bible Belt, but after some amateur investigating, it's becoming more like the Bootleg Belt! At almost every place I went, I saw pirated DVDs of recent films like "War of the Worlds", "Batman Begins", "Dark Water", and others. Some guy at the Jackson McDonald's tried to sell me a few bootleged discs. I told him, "I'm visiting here from Alaska, and we Alaskans don't buy bootlegs!" or something like that. But I didn't report this to the police because I never even thought of it. If this was in the West Coast, the sellers would be thrown in jail for this crime. If you want to buy a DVD of a more recent movie, wait till it's officially out in a few months instead of wasting your money on a bootleg that immediately!
On the last day of my trip Friday, I almost missed the flight home from Minneapolis (I flew on Northwest, and this was their hub). That's because I had to head to McDonald's a couple concourses down to grab me something to eat, then race back moments before the final boarding call. The lady at the gate to me it was "perfect timing" that I came just in time before they started closing...which would be about 10 minutes after I boarded.
I'll offer my final thoughts on all this tomorrow, but that's an abbreviated look at the second week of my Southern journey. Thank God I'm back!
That's right! After spending two weeks visiting family and beating the heat in the Deep South, it's so great to be back in Fairbanks! I returned home Friday night to...smoky skies?? That didn't seem right.
Anyway, during my vacation I briefly went to another place to go along with the aforementioned Winston-Salem, N.C., Rocky Mount, Virginia, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast: Jackson, Mississippi. There, we sent off Aunt Bobbie's son Larry Frye Jr. to tiny Belhaven College. During my time, I had to call up Charles Fedullo back in Fairbanks about how the Golden Days parade went. It was just like how "The Island" and just over the weekend "Stealth" did in the box office: BORING!!! He said there weren't anything interesting despite the 70-plus degree temperatures, and everything was poorly executed. Maybe it was because of my absence that this year's parade bombed.
Like I said, my time was about beating the heat, with temperatures rising above 90 degrees (or 30 degrees Celsius). But in the last few days, the rains on the coast helped cool things down to a more modest 80 degrees...which is good, because I've been used to very high climates before. Here in Alaska, the highest we can go during the summer months is in the 80s; anything above this is considered a "heatwave" for us.
In the second week, I did hit two casinos: The Treasure Bay in Biloxi and the Grand Casino in Gulfport, where we also dined for dinner and the lunch buffet respectively. The buffet at the Grand Casino had such a wider variety of food than any buffet you've eaten in your lifetime...except for sushi, which has its own bar across the building! Oh well, there's always next time, since I love sushi. I also tried my luck at the slot machines attempting for quick extra spending money for the airports, but failed. I'll probably be better off next time finally trying my hand at poker.
But here's a shocking side of the South you've never seen: It may be called the Bible Belt, but after some amateur investigating, it's becoming more like the Bootleg Belt! At almost every place I went, I saw pirated DVDs of recent films like "War of the Worlds", "Batman Begins", "Dark Water", and others. Some guy at the Jackson McDonald's tried to sell me a few bootleged discs. I told him, "I'm visiting here from Alaska, and we Alaskans don't buy bootlegs!" or something like that. But I didn't report this to the police because I never even thought of it. If this was in the West Coast, the sellers would be thrown in jail for this crime. If you want to buy a DVD of a more recent movie, wait till it's officially out in a few months instead of wasting your money on a bootleg that immediately!
On the last day of my trip Friday, I almost missed the flight home from Minneapolis (I flew on Northwest, and this was their hub). That's because I had to head to McDonald's a couple concourses down to grab me something to eat, then race back moments before the final boarding call. The lady at the gate to me it was "perfect timing" that I came just in time before they started closing...which would be about 10 minutes after I boarded.
I'll offer my final thoughts on all this tomorrow, but that's an abbreviated look at the second week of my Southern journey. Thank God I'm back!
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