Monday

I returned to Greensboro today. I ate good deli food. I'll hopefully hang out with a lot of my friends tomorrow. My trip into town was fine: sunny and clear, with no tough decisions to be made about driving without working windshield wipers. What a relief after yesterday. I spent all Sunday night walking outside the hotel to check the sky. It seemed very much like the clouds were here to stay when I checked. Then, right after four and just before going to sleep, the sky started clearing and I relaxed a little. There was a slight breeze and I could see stars and moon for the first time all night. I was turning to go back inside when a shadow caught my attention and I stopped. A dark shape was quietly making its way across the parking lot. In the dark, at the distance, I was still able to tell it was an adult fox; but there was no need to guess: in a minute it was very close in the bright streetlight adjacent to where I was standing. There was no question about it. It was a large, healthy fox. Its fur was an even brownish-gray with black tips. It was about four feet long, half of which was bushy tail. When it came closest to me, about eight feet, it stopped, stood very still, and looked me over--I could see its whiter chin and fluffier cheeks. Its ears were very big and its head was very flat. A minute later it moved again, off at an angle that took it into some landscaped brush shadows and out of sight. A minute later I moved again, too, going inside and to bed. After tonight, these postings may not happen again regularly until after Friday. [Cavin]

Sunday

Sometime this morning the major winter storm system that dumped snow all over DC made it here. When I left the hotel it was grey and rain was falling in what I'd call a driving drizzle (but most people would call miserable). I love weather like this; only, see, the driver-side windshield wiper stopped working correctly over the recent weeks of snow and ice. Before heading downtown, I decided the rain wasn't too bad to navigate without wipers; but would I attract police attention without them? It isn't as if the broken side won't move at all, it just gimps along slowly while the other side, at some point along the arc, rams into it. If the two meet early in the left-hand wiper's arc, then it's trapped down by the right-hand blade, which is, in turn, lifted off the windshield and I am blinded by rain. If the wiper blades come together in mid-cycle, it causes a jarring t-bone on the windshield, and everything jams to a halt. That time, rain blinded me on I-85 and I reached out the window to untangle the wipers causing the car to weave some. I wondered if the police noticed that. Next my favorite thing happened: the blades struck one another at the latest possible point on the driver-side arc, the right blade flipped over and started squeaking torturously against the window while the left-hand wiper went into reverse, waving off the side of the car to watching police. I had to get out to fix this. Apparently, Durham itself was reeling under this storm, too: no traffic lights working downtown and when I got to the theater for the Nevermore Film Festival's final day, much of the building was without power.* I got to see all my movies, though. [Cavin]

Saturday

I stayed up a little late yesterday, a product of my finally being able to access the web on my own computer again. Getting up by eleven was so difficult I didn't do it, and therefore only had about twenty-five minutes to jam down a salad in a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place across the street. I also got some take-out to jam down during one of the half-hour gaps between movies today. Then, with a little extra daylight-driving time to spare, I finally discovered the real route back to the highway from the theater, and then drove it twice so I wouldn't have any trouble tonight at midnight when I was doing it for real. Then I watched four different feature-length horror movies and two scary short films. Both shorts were excellent. Otherwise, Nevermore Film Festival is an interesting mix of offbeat horror movies from around the globe as well as amateur productions from the US that might otherwise be difficult to see. So far the mix of amateur American to professional foreign movies has been fifty-fifty. I watched one amateur production last night, and two more today. I have also seen a Bangpop* dark-haired-ghost story from Thailand, a South Korean giant monster slash searing social indictment film, and New Zealand director Peter Jackson's peerless zombicide Dead Alive. I wish that this horror festival had more than that one classic title, but I also understand the impetus to feature new material that might not otherwise have a venue. Still, slogging through too many underdeveloped, wooden, washed-out, and tinny shoestring productions in a row ends in tedium. After a while I stop seeing the good ideas and plausible up-and-coming talent and start to dwell on the bad editing. A fifty-fifty mix is about the most amateur I can take. [Cavin]