Fun in the Bull City for $6 (kind of)

The Setting: Durham, NC.

The Time: From 6 to 11 p.m. Friday night

The Goal: Have as much fun as possible on a budget.

Here’s how it went down: One of my friends had tickets to the Durham Bulls game. I accepted his invitation. Then I got an e-mail from another friend reminding me the Bulls game was on the same night as the final concert in the Warehouse Blues series. What to do? How about both.

I’ve told you about the city-sponsored Warehouse Blues series before. It’s held on Friday nights during the summer at West Village. Anyway, the performers are top notch and it’s completely free. You can even bring your own beer.

Even though the concert series is over, it’s still worth heading over to West Village if you’re around downtown Durham. The developers have done an outstanding job transforming the shuttered Liggett & Myers tobacco factory into a gorgeous place to live, work and even play.

After the concert, we walked along the railroad tracks to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, at which point we realized we had forgotten our tickets in the car. Oops. No worries. For $6 you can buy yourself a spot on the lawn behind center field.

The Result: So for $6 we had five hours of outstanding entertainment and people watching on a Friday night.

The Bonus: I got to meet Lucky AND Friday nights at the DBAP always end with fireworks.

(OK, technically, I spent more than that b/c beer and dinner was involved, but I could have easily opted to eat before going out and not drink).

The Question: Any suggestions of other inexpensive ways to spend a Friday night around the Triangle?

Massive kitten adoptathon scheduled Saturday

If you find kittens ridiculously adorable and feel an uncontrollable urge to shower them with love, then you may want to make plans Saturday to head over to the PetSmart at 2800 E. Millbrook Road in Raleigh. That’s where the SPCA of Wake County will be hosting a “SUPER kitten adoptathon” (their words, not mine) from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. 30 kittens will be available for adoption.

Apparently, summer is kitten season at the SPCA, which has seen a major influx in cats being left at the shelter. The shelter is attributing the kitten explosion to the declining economy, according to a news release.

Current hard times are forcing people to make some dififciutl decisions, such as giving up their pets. The increase in surrendered cats and dogs combined with teh decrease in adoptions is leading to increase euthanasia rates.

As an incentive, the shelter is reducing the adoption price to $47.50, which covers spaying/neutering, a microhip, deworming and vaccinations (including rabies).

Also on Saturday, 20 kittens and 50 cats will be available for adoption at the SPCA adoption center at 200 Petfinder Lane in Raleigh. Raleigh. If you need to see some kittens to get you in the mood, check out the kitten generator or this video of a kitten tht one of my coworkers recently adopted.

But if you’re going to adopt a kitten, don’t forget that they grow into cats that seem to live forever. I adopted my cats in 2000 and have been dragging them around with me ever since.

Loving this cat could lead to a vampire clown attack

As seen in the window of a bookshop on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill.

I forgot to write down the name of the store, so if you know where this is, please post it in the comments below. I think all businesses should be required to have a cat. How awesome would that be (unless you’re allergic or hate them, of course)?!

Watch pig races and goat milkings at the Got to be NC Festival

I’m a sucker for a fair. Having grown up in southern Illinois, I’ve been to many 4-H fairs, carnivals, state fairs and the like. So when I found out the “Got to be NC Festival” was free and in full swing at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, I had to go check it out. The festival kicked off last night and runs through Sunday, June 8.

I was surprised and disappointed to see the fairgrounds sparsely populated last night. By 8 p.m. (when I arrived) there was a decent breeze stirring up the steamy day, so it walking around wasn’t too bad. I wonder whether it was the weather or a lack of promotion that kept families at bay. The festival is put on by the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, I’d definitely endorse going. Fireworks will dance in the sky at 9:45 p.m. tonight and Saturday, and assuming the display is anything like last night’s show, then it’s worth going for the fireworks alone. The show lasted about 15 minutes. If you want to watch them shoot up to the sky from the island where they’re shot off of, try parking along Trinity Road near the pond on the state fairgrounds. Here is a 360 degree spin of what you might see:

If your children haven’t had much exposure to farm life, this is an awesome opportunity to let them sample it. I’d suggest taking them to the pig races, where there are multiple shows each day, according to the brochure I was handed when I entered the gates. Watch last night’s pot belly pig race here:

You can also check out rows of antique farm equipment, the BBQ competition, dairy goats milking demonstrations and, of course, a petting zoo and plenty of carnival rides.

What’s the most unusual thing you’ve seen at a state fair? Certainly someone out there has seen a cow give birth or a crazy butter sculpture or something else that’s a little bizarre.

An interview with Chickens in the City

Check out the Hens-side the Beltline Tour d’Coop from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday May 17 in Raleigh.

Raleigh’s city chicken owners invite you into their backyards for a first-hand look at keeping chickens in an urban environment. Discover the variety of breeds that might be nesting in your neighborhood, learn about raising chickens, and see how families integrate chickens into their gardening practices. In addition, you’ll be impressed by the ingenious coops that can be devised to shelter these feathered pets.

For information on where the tour stops and how to get tickets, click here.

Did you know there was such a thing as urban chickens? Could you kill a chicken you raised and eat it (I’m not saying thats what these folks do, I’m just curious)?

Bunnies are nasty little animals

Sure, they’re super soft, but that’s the only positive thing I can say about rabbits. I can’t stand them. My parents go me and my brother a rabbit when I was about five. We named him “Hopperoo” and built a pen for him in the backyard of our house in Chicago. The only thing I remember about Hopperoo is that he used to bite all the time. He eventually dug a hole under the fence and got away. Good riddance.

Fast-forward to my freshman year of college. My friend Karen needed someone to watch her rabbit while she went to New Orleans on spring break. It was litter box trained, she said, but that didn’t seem to be the case. That nasty little rabbit pooped everywhere but the litter box. It was disgusting. Oh, and all he ever did was bite too. What’s the fun of having a pet that bites you all the time?

So I’m happy to see that the Apex, NC-based nonprofit All Creatures Rescue & Sanctuary is holding its third annual “Adopt a Plush Bunny” campaign to help prevent impulse purchases of Easter bunnies in the Triangle area.

The “Adopt a Plush Bunny” campaign features “adoption” kits that come with a plush bunny of your choice, an adoption “contract” and care guide, a coloring book, and lots of other information on rabbits and rabbit care! Impulse pet purchases are almost always misguided, but when the pet is as misunderstood as the domestic rabbit, it can be even more problematic. Contrary to popular perception, rabbits are not cuddly pets happy to be toted around.

The organization is teaming up with the SPCA of Wake County to help keep bunnies out of the hands of people who won’t take care of them. Apparently, animal shelters and rescue groups receive an influx of rabbits following Easter each year. I volunteered at the SPCA of Wake County in January and was surprised to see rabbits there. Here’s some footage I took of the local bunnies.

Maybe you’ve had a better experience with bunnies than I have. If so, try to help me see the light.

How the power of the Internet helped me get a dinosaur

Here’s a step-by-step look at how the power of the Interwebs helped me score a cute blow-up brontosaurus:

1. In late January, my co-worker Wayne Sutton went to a Refresh the Triangle meet-up at the American Tobacco campus in Durham, where the folks from Bronto Software (an e-mail marketing software company)

2. The next day he showed me photos on his iPhone (Wayne loves his iPhone) of the event, and I couldn’t believe my eyes: There was a giant blow-up brontosaurus. I *gasped* and Wayne rubbed it in by saying: “Yeah, they were giving away small ones too.”

3 . Fast forward to last Thursday. Wayne and I were taking a video blogging class in Charlotte, NC, and we decided to live stream and chat with some Twitter friends (follow me on Twitter). Lucky for us, Adam Covati of Bronto Software logged into the chat room, and I quickly found out he had the power to distribute these cute creatures. (BTW, this brief live chat later lead to a critical blog post that prompted me to get a little defensive yesterday).

4. So yesterday, Wayne attended another Refresh the Triangle meet-up, and Adam passed along my new dinosaur.

Has networking through the Internet ever helped you snag something cooler than this dinosaur?

I’ve snacked on venison and I’m not afraid of live bait

For the most part, I grew up in the country. Rural southern Illinois to be exact. Each year my high school boasted “Drive your Tractor to School Day,” sponsored by the FFA (Future Farmers of America). Some of the smaller local schools canceled classes on the first day of deer hunting season. I remember going to my friends’ farm houses and riding pigs and horses, and even jumping off barn rafters into piles of hay. Fishing was a staple of my summers. Venison was its own food group during deer hunting season. And it was common to see pickup trucks with a dead deer hanging out the black and blood dripping down the road during the killing season.

So I had to smile when I read about the upcoming Dixie Deer Classic outdoor show scheduled this weekend at the N.C. State Fairgrounds. The 28th annual event features seminars on “Cooking Venison,” “Preparing your trophy for the Taxidermist,” and even something for the ladies: “Becoming an Outdoor Woman.”

Perhaps the highlight of the event will be the “bragging boards:”

Of course a visit to the Dixie Deer Classic would not be complete without seeing all the deer that are scored placed on display around the scoring room.

And I would be remiss in not sharing the details of how you too can have your deer head judged:

Getting your deer head scored at the Dixie Deer Classic is really simple; you just bring it with you. The price of admission includes scoring one deer head, so all you have to do buy your ticket to get in the show, and then take the deer head to Building Three, The Exposition Center. There you will find in the middle of the floor the “Fortress” or scoring room. The east side of which is the Check-In Counter, where you check in your trophy. This is also where you go to claim it when you are ready to return home. That’s it. Your trophy does not have to be a taxidermy prepared mount, we will score just the antlers on a skull or skull plate. We will NOT score sheds.

The event is sponsored by the Wake County Wildlife Club, a non-profit that promotes conservation and education and fund raising for hunter education, safety classes, wildlife research and more.

Anyone else ever live in a town where deer hunting season led to canceled classes and playing with pigs didn’t seem strange?

Should I feel guilty for hanging out with some elephants?

Last night I was in the company of elephants, tigers and clowns … oh my. Yes, I sat among thousands of big-eyed children at the RBC Center watching the “Greatest Show on Earth” — the Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus. Most of the feats were stellar.

Bello the clown was our guide through the evening. Sporting an high-top haircut that would make Kid (of “Kid n’ Play” fame) jealous, the seemingly fearless clown climbed up a wobbling pole that stretched nearly to the ceiling of the RBC Center and performed stunts that actually made me nervous for his life. He also ran atop a “wheel of steel” similar to what you’d put your hamster in. A married couple was shot out of a cannon at 65 mph. And, of course, there was the flying trapeze. One of the “flyers” (yes, that’s what you call someone who performs on a flying trapeze) even fell, landing on the net below.

But, I have to say, my favorite part was watching the elephants. They’re magnificent gentle giants. It’s incredible to see them balance on small platforms, spin around and even stand on their hind legs. PETA and other animal rights activists have a lot of bad things to say about the use of elephants and other animals in circuses. And if you read their press releases, it makes you feel pretty guilty for appreciating the splendor of the performing pachyderms:

Since 1992, eight Ringling elephant deaths have been attributable to either osteoarthritis or chronic foot problems–conditions directly linked to prolonged chaining and lack of space. Former Ringling veterinarian Dr. Gary West wrote, “Foot-related conditions and arthritis are the leading cause of euthanasia in captive elephants in the U.S.” In addition to the serious health risks, chaining and confining elephants is also cruel. It denies these highly intelligent and social animals everything that’s natural and important to them.

“Ringling’s elephants are beaten, chained like prisoners, and forced to serve life sentences—with no parole,” says PETA Director Debbie Leahy. “The best way to stop this abuse is for people to boycott Ringling and other circuses that use animals.”

I would have taken more pictures at the circus, but they ticket guy said my camera was “too professional.” But luckily, I was able to snap this pic of the protestors.

So what do you think? Should I have protested the circus because of the elephants and other animals? Or does a girl deserve a little pachyderm performance in her life?

Guess Who’s Going to be in a Circuit City Commercial

It’s Hank! He’s the local Golden Retriever I blogged about that was competing to be “the next Firedog,” a contest put on by Circuit City. I have no personal ties to Hank, but I thought it was cool that the Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue (a local nonprofit that does exactly what its name implies) stood to win $50,000 if Hank won. That’s because Hank found a home through the organization. Hank was the only North Carolina dog in the contest.

As a side note, it’s pretty cool to think that the NRGRR will be $50,000 richer simply because of the power of the Internet. Organizers say people cast online ballots for Hank from not only the states, but also from Canada, Singapore, Venezuela, Grandy Cayman, Poland, Russia, England, Germany, France, India and other countries.