Lenore? How Ironic.

Tonight was one of those rare COLD summer nights we occasionally get in VA. It's about 70 degrees so I decided to take the opportunity to go for a run. I was bad and couldn't get up super early this morning. I've been working so much that I've just been exhausted. I even took a 2 hour nap this afternoon after work. My jog was ok, I went for 2 decent sized clips, nothing grand or anything. I'm still just trying to learn my neighborhood so that I know where the best places to go are. So far what I've learned is that every single street is a giant hill, in both directions, from my apartment. Why do I live in the mountains again?

When I get a chance to jog I love to look at the houses. Tonight I went to the more seedy streets completely on accident. I probably won't be going there again. Can you really trust people who use road cones to put fake flowers in and line their yard with them? Oh my.... just kidding. But really... I saw that tonight. It made me put on my Tim Gunn face.

I was running along when I came to the cemetery on Roanoke St. Since it has paved roads that looked relatively flat I decided to run through the cemetery. Bad idea. Not because there was anyone there, or I fell in an open hole, or I was afraid of a zombie attack (if they ever do attack I would hate to live in the houses behind the cemetery... although I'm sure the rest of the time the dead make great neighbors compared to college kids), going to the cemetery was a bad idea because I got completely distracted!

One of the weird quirks I inherited from my parents is a morbid love of hanging out in cemeteries. This may sound odd, but I was really forced into this when my parents would just stop the car at a cemetery at very random times. Normally, we'd stop if we were in a cool new town we had never been to before, or old cemeteries we knew family were buried in, sometimes ones where we didn't know anyone, historical sites, and cemeteries where we were actually attending funerals and then just killing time. Since I have a lot of older relatives I have spent a lot of time in cemeteries due to deaths in the family. In my youth I spent a lot of time wandering around at funerals and during outings with my parents. Mom used to work at churches and used to send me out to play whenever I went to work with her. For some reason most churches put the playground near the dead people... so imagine my 6 year old self skipping around tombstones or chasing a ball, or riding my bike. Mom and Dad would often just leave me alone and go wandering off. That used to scare the crap out of me, not going to lie. Eventually, I got over it.

Tombstones are really interesting to look at. You can see different trends in tombstones. Some of the tombstones I saw tonight were cracked in half! I used to practice my math by seeing how old someone was when they died. You can find some really awesome names too. People back in the the day had some pretty interesting combinations. Such as, tonight I found a gentleman who was named Pearl and his wife was named Luzana. Yeah. I found a Lenore too, as in Nevermore by Poe.

You can learn a lot about the old families of the town too. In this particular cemetery almost every other name was Price. I will have to try and count them one day. So... I'm thinking the Price's have been around here a while because one of the big roads in town is: Price's Fork. A few of the tombstones had names that are also buildings at Tech, like Slusher. Another interesting trend is how people handled infants. I found it odd that none of the ones I found were named. I'm used to the cemetery back home where the first members of my grandmother's family are buried. There all the children have names, most of them, and all of their tombstones have white lambs on top. My family, the Thrifts, are right up front because they actually helped found the church at Woodscross Roads and their original homestead is still there right where Woodcross Roads meets Fletcher Rd. My great-grandparents built it and I love that old farmhouse.

There were a lot of birds out and about and I saw my first lightening bug of the season! I have discovered one thing I do like about the mountains: no swamps or open water for mosquitoes and horse-flies to breed. There are some mosquitoes, but not nearly as many as back home. I can actually go outside without getting attacked by horse-flies. I hate those things. I remember last summer whenever Sony and I would try to run! We put on bugspray and started running, we had our legs pumping and our arms waving the whole time trying to swat the bugs! It was extremely humorous to watch since we looked completely insane! It's very nice not to have to deal with the pests.

All around it has been a very serene night. The moon is full and gorgeous, the night is cool, and all it needs to be complete is the smell of honeysuckle and it would be a great night. I really miss the summer nights back home. One of the things the country is good at is the nights. Just laying around outside talking with friends while the bugs dizzily flew around the lights of the porch... or nights at the beach, or in the car with the windows down just singing to the radio with your best friend. Driving just to escape home. Days in Williamsburg and one day of the summer spent at Virginia Beach. I miss country summers. I don't know how to do mountain summers. So far they just don't seem as magical.

But maybe the magic of the summer is just beginning. After my lazy, 30 minute walk through the Roanoke St. cemetery it was getting late. The sun eventually started going down, the street lights came on, and I followed the lightening bugs home.