Saturday, Sept. 09, 2006 - 8:15 a.m.

In the vicinity of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill this weekend, on celebratory family business. I like this area a lot. I'd live here. (I don't say that about most places).

My lack of puttering time is getting to me these days, though. I crave ink on my fingers (and not the kind that comes from the overhead markers, either, dammit).

Visited the Duke gardens yesterday-- liked the fish pond. Nice lilies. The turtles would be very happy in a place like that. I've always sort of wanted a water garden. After we moved off the boat, my imagination was consumed in part with gardening (none of that going on on the boat, needless to say), and I got these catalogs on water gardening. LIlies. Lotus. Nice. I still want it, though now it's tempered with, "it kinda looks like a lot of work, though."

Also went to an art museum, which did nothing at all for me. The best thing was a Book of Hours from 1490, if I remember the date correctly. The rest of it was sort of not my thing. Some films playing in rooms. I don't like to have to read an essay to get an idea of what the artwork is about. That may make me a simple person, but there it is. I am a simple person.

Oh, at the gardens I also saw a cicada being savaged by this enormous wasp, a wasp bigger than the cicada-- it was ovipositing. It was awesome. Wasps, although scary, are also very cool.

Dinner at Mama Dipp's-- southern cooking. Very tasty. I got me some fried flounder, but they never give me enough lemon anywhere. Where I got this lemon habit (Sea Harvest in NSB), they gave out little packets of lemon juice (not entirely natural tasting, but good enough), and I could just drench my fish. It would be so lemony, the breading would be soggy and there would be a little pool of juice left over in the bottom of the styrofoam container when I was done. That's what I want. Or we would bring it home to eat and I would juice 3/4 of a real lemon over it, a big fat juicy Florida lemon. Even better.

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