The ticket happened not 50 meters from my apartment. I leave for work every morning around 6am. Just down the street from my apartment complex is a T intersection where I turn right. This intersection has a stop sign. At 6am there aren’t a whole lot of people on the side roads of Simpsonville, SC. I can also see 200 meters in either direction at the intersection. Put those two together combined with my laziness at having to downshift into first gear means that I will often make a “California stop” at this stop sign – or, at least used to.

I have no idea where the cop was hiding – probably in plain sight since I’m still not fully awake at 6am. I ended up pulling into the Walgreen’s parking lot so I could stare at the great milk specials they were having while he wrote me a ticket. I could either pay the fine or go to traffic court in 2 weeks time. I opted for court.

Traffic court time finally came. My time was scheduled for 9am. I had no idea what to expect since I had never been to traffic court. I showed up at about 8:59am. It’s a good thing too, because they started at 9am sharp. I entered the courtroom and there were about 100 people in there. It was standing room only. I guess they do everyone at the same time. Very time efficient – for them anyway. At 9am they started roll-call. Probably 60% of the people were there. It’s a good thing too because no one else would have fit in that room.

After roll call we all rise and the judge comes in. He first asks if anyone wants a trial jury. No one did. Then he starts calling off names. There are two podiums in front of the judges bench. The officer who wrote the ticket stands at one and you stand at the other. Basically everyone pleads guilty and the judge reduces everyone’s fines. I came in with a good list of reasons I should get my fine reduced (my first ticket, holiday season, etc.) but no one got the chance to interdict. The judge, 1) read the charge, 2) asked if you plead guilty or not guilty, 3) affirmed that you weren’t under the influence or on drugs when you said your plea – one girl accidentally said yes and the judge had to pull a “Let me ask you again … and listen closely ..” before she realized her mistake, 4) the judge then tells you what your new reduced fine is going to be and tells you to pay at the clerk – who happens to be sitting right next to the judge. As you walk up to pay the judge moves on to the next defendant. I was happy to hear the judge decided to reduce my sentence to $100 and no points.

Now, I did a bit a research before going and found that in Laurens County the clerk only takes cash or credit card – no checks. I always carry a credit card so I figured no problem. Well, Simpsonville doesn’t roll that way. I get up to the clerk and find out that I can only pay with cash or check. Crappity. I pull out my wallet and I only have $95 (and only had that because I went to the ATM the day before). What happens now? Do I go to jail? Do I get to run to an ATM and come back? The clerk, probably seeing the fear on my face, leaned over and asked the judge if he could reduce the ticket to $95 since that was all I had. He agreed. So I got another 5% discount upon checkout. I got my receipt and was happy to be out of there.

I now come to a complete stop every morning at that stop sign.

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All the gas, food and camping options at the Joanna exit

Downtown Joanna … all of it.

My office

My stuff

My stuff partially unpacked

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1. My windshield wipers spend more time brushing dust off my window than water.
2. I drive to work with the cruise control set to 70 MPH … during rush hour.
3. I feel inadequate that I don’t have “a driver” (that’s a NASCAR driver).
4. “The Beach” is Myrtle Beach and everyone knows that but me.
5. I’m the only person at my office who doesn’t own a pickup.
6. I get to wear jeans, a hardhat and steel toe shoes to work.
7. I wear the same 3 shirts to work every day and no one notices because they wear the same 1 shirt to work every day.
8. I’m the only person at the office who doesn’t own and wear camoflague on a daily basis.
9. I get to work at 7am and I’m the last one there.
10. The local YMCA has better equipment than my gym in Boston.

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For those of you who don’t know I am now living in South Carolina. Right now I’m living in a Hampton Inn in exciting Clinton, but this coming Saturday I will be moving into an apartment in Simpsonville, SC (near Greenville). My job has me consulting with an OSB Mill. For those of you who don’t know – OSB stands for Oriented Strand Board. Basically they make walls and roofs out of it on houses. The next time you’re wandering around Home Cheapo walk down to the lumber section and look for the big panels that look like lots of little pieces of wood all pressed together. That’s OSB. I’ll be spending a lot of time working with the front line guys at the mill. It should be quite exciting.

South Carolina has some unusual laws as I quickly found out. Apparently if someone comes on your property you can just shoot them. That is perfectly legal. However, there is a catch – you have to shoot them in the front. If you shoot them from behind they might investigate. My coworkers made sure to tell me that if I shoot someone in the back, make sure I roll them over and also shoot them in the front so I won’t get in trouble. Super.

South Carolina also has some strict sentencing laws. If you are convicted of armed robbery you go to jail for 10 years – no if, ands or buts. No chance for parole. You’re there for 10 years. So, just in case anyone was thinking of committing armed robbery in SC, you might want to think twice.

Last weekend I signed on my apartment. The cost of living here is fantastic. Let me do a rough comparison with Boston.

Boston
One bedroom apartment: $1200/month
Included features:
Fireplace: No
Pool: Ummm, no. Yes
Beach volleyball court: Huh?
Fitness center: Yea, right. Yes
Initial payment $3600 (first & last month’s rent, security deposit)

Greenville
One bedroom apartment: $630/month
Included features:
Fireplace: Yes
Pool: Yes
Beach volleyball court: Yes
Fitness center: Yes
Initial payment: $190 (security deposit, application fee)
Boo-yaw!

This weekend’s task was to buy furniture for the apartment. I needed to buy a bed, couch and coffee/end tables. I usurped a kitchen table set from my parents. I really like the tempurpedic beds, so I started there. I ended up settling on a Queen-sized Serta Vera Wang designer set memory foam/tempurpedic knock-off (which I though was more comfortable and also $600 less). As I was looking around the mattress section of the store I noticed one of Serta’s products was a really cushy pillow-top mattress they described as “European Style”. Yea right. If it were really European style it would be as thin, flat and hard as a mattress could possibly be. There are no pillow tops in Europe – not even at the Hilton.

I also bought a nice “oyster colored” (aka, off-white) couch. I ended up getting the sleeper version of it as well. I almost didn’t because those things are a bee-yatch to move, but then I realized – I’m an adult now – the company will relocate me and move all the stuff! I got a normal looking coffee table and matching end table as well. They had some really cool coffee table where the top is on a hinge and you can pull it up and out to turn it into a table while you eat in front of the TV. Since I almost always eat on the couch in front of the TV so I really liked this, but the only one that looked good aesthetically was too expensive. Oh well.

My bed will get delivered on Saturday and the Couch/coffee table/end tables will come a week from Saturday. At least I’ll have the bed on the day I move in.

During this trip I looked through 4 furniture stores and realized that 99% of furniture is fugly. Who would ever buy almost everything in those stores is beyond me. You must be color blind and have no taste at all to buy some of that stuff. It actually took me a while just to find a solid, neutral color couch. Why is that so hard??

Last night I went out with some of my new friends in Greenville. We started at a restaurant/bar called “O”. We’re sitting at the bar (which is on the second floor) and up from the first floor (the restaurant part) walks George Clooney and his entourage. Apparently Clooney is in town for a couple months making a movie. Among his entourage was Grant Heslov (who I always remember as being the camera guy from True Lies). The all gathered around the corner of the bar about 2 meters from us. It was pretty cool for about 5 minutes until we realized that all the waitresses had flocked over to that end of the bar and we could no longer get a drink. Beer is more important than George Clooney so we left.

We ended up hitting a couple more bars before winding down the night at a small Dutch-themed bar (at least that’s what I was told – the extent of the “Dutch theme” that I saw were some wooden clogs with cleats screwed in them behind the bar. There was also a Hungarian license plate on the wall. Well, I guess they’re both in Europe and maybe that’s close enough for them.

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Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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