VERY busy Wednesday
Yesterday I took off work (I am - for now - working at a startup biotech company. Very startup. It's fun/strange to be doing benchwork again. I'm amazed at what I remember - or as I put it the other day 'Molecular biology is as easy as falling off a bicycle'). Anyway, I took the day off, starting with Tuesday afternoon.

On my way out of town, I finally broke down and let a lube place put oil in my car because apparently I am too slack to ever get it done by myself. I had them replace the gear oil, too, and go figure, that immediately solved my issue with 5th gear that I've been in high angst about. Then I swung by a total stranger's house (sorry, mom!) to pick up some yellow cannas - which look like a plant so unfussy that even I will likely have success with them. The guy was digging them for fall and giving away the excess. I took them with me to the friend's where I was staying so I could split them with her. On the way to her house I picked up another friend and gave some to him and his wife. I had also made some candles from soy wax for these friends. I've started leaving many candles uncolored - the wax is so beautiful just plain white. We hung out for a few hours talking until, in a bit of a panic, I remembered I still hadn't written a campaign commercial for this weekend's IOPL assignment. Fortunately they helped me hash something half-decent out.

Wednesday morning we got up early and went to Mom's in Wentworth for breakfast. Great place! I love eating breakfast out, and Bill doesn't, so I always try to drag friends out to breakfast when I can. We went to Greensboro, picking up two more people on the way, and headed to the University for a student free speech protest.

Rather than bore you with details of the protest, I'll direct you to Paul Elledge's excellent posts and commentary about the event here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Incidentally, I took those pictures (except the one of me above, of course) and also made the poorly-lettered 'freedom IS free' sign in the last picture.


Afterwards we ate lunch with some of the people from the protest and then (at my instigation) visited Guilford Mill, which is a functioning commercial grist mill. There was an old Scotch miller there who very kindly showed me around including the 'underparts' (the pic is part of the Hurst frame and assembly for moving the large stones) - I felt like a bit of an industrial espionager taking pics after I'd already told him I worked at the mill in Durham :) He ribbed me a bit about working at the Durham mill, which puzzled me until I realised he was teasing me because of my "Libertarian Party" shirt (the mill in Durham is run by the county government) and then I was pretty amused. The difference between this going commercial business and our 'showpiece' mill was pretty interesting - their building was packed with ladies bagging and selling products and full of grain dust and noise - in other words, people were working their butts off (of course the miller did have a prime spot staked out on the porch for when everything was running smoothly:)

After the mill visit we drove to Chapel Hill to hear John Stossel speak at the university there. We were way early (even accounting for the perilous parking situation) so we went to the university gardens, which were closed, and walked in the natural area surrounding them. Nice to walk on a warm fall evening with all the great smells! I felt bad for being in the woods without dogs, so my friends offered to chase some rabbits for me, which was kind. They drew the line at eating deer poop, though ;-)

The Stossel talk was virtually unchanged from an earlier version I heard, but the larger and younger audience made it much more interesting. Of course we kept bumping into other L(l)ibertarians, and I felt like some prowling old lady exchanging names and email addys with a young student who sat next to me and mentioned he, also, was a Libertarian. After the talk we were wandering around the lobby and I ran into several more people I knew, including strangely enough ... the guy who had given me the cannas the day before! I also hooked up with a friend who worked with me when I was at UNC, and she joined some of the libertarian folk for late dinner at Elmo's Diner in Carrboro (which is NOT the same town as Chapel Hill!). I remembered the last time I was in Elmo's was with Michael Badnarik and Jon Airheart in '04. When we got back to my friend's van we found a tire was flat. Fortunately the very strong rain that evening had all fallen during the Stossel talk, so it wasn't too bad (of course it wasn't my car, either :-/ )

Although Chapel Hill is closer to my house than my friend's, I had left my car at her place, so by the time we got back to Wentworth, it was too late to drive home and I crashed there (thanks, B!!). That meant TWO hot showers for me (Bill's still working out the bugs in the solar heating system) and another breakfast at Mom's this morning. I went straight to work so I didn't get to see the dogs until lunch, and still haven't seen Bill.  ¶ 5:42 PM