Andrew's Wandering Mind
No new pictures yet. I'd use the excuse that the scanner is in a box for moving, but I only packed on Saturday.
So I'm moving within Jacksonville from 32217 to 32204, that is, from the sort-of non-descript blur that is west Baymeadows meets east San Jose meets south San Marco to Riverside. Yup, just Riverside. Well, ok, technically, it's Riverside-Avondale, though the two neighborhoods are a bit distinct from each other. The new 'hood is more historic, more walkable, closer to nifty cultural things downtown, and has a higher percentage of 'blue' voters, but is a little farther from work. I had to laugh when I was apartment hunting and I saw a car that was sticker-free, but had in its back window both Tinky-Winky AND SpongeBob SquarePants. But that's not the building I'm moving into. :) I can walk to nifty restaurants and cool little shops and a Publix and a couple of green, clean parks (one on the St John's river, hence the name), all in less than a mile, less than half a mile in some cases. I'm looking forward to the change.
The other event of note, is that on Saturday, I turned 34. This is an event of little note, however, as 34 is not a terribly interesting number. Ok, it's a little interesting, but who's ever heard of a heptagonal number or a nontient? 33 is a double-number, so that's cool. 32 is 100000 in binary, so that's cool. 31 is prime, 30 is a decade-year, 29 is prime, 28 is perfect, 27 is cubic, 26 was my golden birthday, 25 is a quarter-century, you get the idea. Even going into the future, 35 is the tipping point from 30 to 40, 36 is square, 37 is prime, and so on. About the only thing cool about being 34 is that I've lived longer than Jesus, depending on your interpretation of the story. And, in living longer, I've drawn a lot less attention to myself, good thing bad thing? It's safer, but far less interesting.
Ok, so it's been a while and there's lots more important things to talk about, but this'll just be brief 'cause it's 2:57 and it's 39 degrees out, with a high tomorrow (Super Bowl Eve) of 62, and the same for the big day itself. Which, really, isn't that cold for people from Boston and Philly, but the locals here will feel chilly if there's any wind. At least the Florida sun will be shining on us. Yay for sunshine.
But the real reason I wanted to write quicklike tonight was that as I drove across and back across the Fuller Warren and Acosta Bridges in down town Jacksonville, the city really looked like a city.. even at midnight! Wow. Most of the big downtown office buildings left their office lights on, so the skyline is much more visible than on the average night. The bridges are all lit up pretty.. have been for about a month now, and there's a big cruise ship docked up, right by the Main Street Bridge. That, and around midnight there were actually crowds of people.. real people... walking around down town Jax. Here we are with a metropop of about a million, and this is surprising to me. Hm. Felt good. Can't wait for even more people out and about tomorrow, then Sunday will be looneytuneville and I'll avoid downtown, watching the commercials and the big game either on the west side or on Gate Pkwy... going the whole time.... wow. that's actually here in Jax. I live here, and this is the most watched single day sporting event in the world. I could normally give two hoots about NFL football, but it is easy to be caught up in the silliness and excitement-attention that the city has for this weekend. We'll see what comes from it long term.
Go Patriots. Go Eagles. Go Downtown Jax.
