Wilmington

I'm still in Wilmington, North Carolina. The job interview this morning seemed to go well - the folks I interviewed with were smart and had a sense of humor - I think it would be a great place to work. After the interview, I sent some time driving around Wilmington to get the "lay of the land". The part I saw looked pretty nice - some of it (particularly Wrightsville Beach) reminded me of Florida.

After my familiarization drive, I went to visit the USS North Carolina, a battleship berthed along the river in Wilmington. It was a 2-hour self-guided tour that took me all over the ship, from the bridge to the engine room. Very cool - I highly recommend it - a bargain at $9.00. It was a pretty good workout - several times, there were climbs up or down on the Navy's version of "stairs". Despite the forced air, the engine room was still somewhat steamy - hard to imagine what it would be like were it actually under power.

The keel of the North Carolina (BB 55) was laid in 1937, and she was commissioned in 1941, just in time for World War II. Her speed and armament allowed her to effectively operate in the Pacific Theater, and she is credited with saving the carrier Enterprise in the Solomon Islands. Her massive 16-inch guns last fired in anger at the end of the war, and she went on to be a training vessel for midshipmen. She was decommissioned in 1947, then sat rusting in New Jersey until plans to scrap her prompted citizens of North Carolina to bring her home. They were of course successful, and she started on her latest career as a war memorial in 1962.

Driving back to the hotel, I went by a Bojangle's - I didn't know they still had these. There are none in Arizona, and the ones that I knew of in Florida closed. That used to be my usual Tuesday night dinner when I was in school. My friend Steve commuted to campus, he'd pick up some biscuits, chicken, and dirty rice, and two or three of us would grab a quick bite before Dr. Munson's File Theory class. Of course, way back then, cholesterol didn't exist...