The only constant is change…
8 minute read
April 5, 2016, 6:06 PM
On March 30 and 31, I went on a road trip down to Stuarts Draft with Elyse, where I showed her a whole bunch of stuff. I showed her the mountain, we visited my ex-store, we went to Staunton Mall, and we saw JMU. All in all, a fun trip. The lesson to be learned from this trip, however, is that change is inevitable, as many things that I had hoped to show Elyse had changed, and other things were going to change.
Coming down from Maryland via US 29, we visited Afton Mountain. I have photographed this area many, many, many times before. So I more or less know what’s there. I did spot a few new things in the process of going about things, like this vintage television:
Continue reading…Categories: Afton Mountain, Elyse, Family, Fire alarms, Stuarts Draft, Urban exploration, Walmart, Waynesboro
Cranberry sauce. From a can.
3 minute read
November 26, 2015, 10:09 PM
First of all, I hope that everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. I certainly did. Since I have Wednesdays and Thursdays off for the current pick at work, Thanksgiving worked out perfectly, so I went down to Stuarts Draft on Wednesday and came back Thursday. Not bad.
That said, one of the things that we had with our Thanksgiving dinner was cranberry sauce. My opinion on cranberry sauce is that if it doesn’t look like the can it came out of, it’s not cranberry sauce. Last year, I posted this photo to Instagram, and captioned it thusly:
“This is that weird kind of cranberry sauce that doesn’t look like the can it came out of.”
Categories: Family, Food and drink, Stuarts Draft, Thanksgiving
Sometimes you have those weekends where you just have to get out of the house…
12 minute read
June 11, 2014, 6:06 PM
Ever get that feeling of “I just have to get out of the house”? I recently had that feeling, where I just needed a change of scenery for a little bit, and so I planned a weekend trip down to Stuarts Draft to visit the parents, going down Friday, and coming back Sunday. They were, as always, delighted to see me, and on the whole, we had a good time. I also made some extra space in my house, as, on Mom’s request, I brought my sister’s old bicycle back to my parents’ house. Gave me some practice in “beheading” a bicycle by removing the front wheel, and then reattaching it at my destination. But it travels much more easily without the front wheel:
The freshly-liberated front wheel.
Categories: Bicycle, Companies, Driving, Family, Fire drills, Harrisonburg, Middle school, Reddit, Stuarts Draft, Walmart, Waynesboro, Weather
A little polish and elbow grease is a great way to move on…
5 minute read
December 2, 2013, 10:36 PM
Sometimes you never know what is going to provide a sense of closure to a chapter in one’s life. In this case, shining up my water bottles provided a sense of closure to a chapter in my life that I have been trying to move on from. Recall that I left Food & Water Watch in July as I looked to determine what the next chapter in my career would be. However, it’s hard to move on when I was staring at the branding of my former employer every time that I would take a drink of water. To put it another way, I love my stainless steel water bottles from Klean Kanteen, but what was screenprinted on the bottles reminded me of something that I would prefer to put behind me.
In other words, this:
Categories: Food and drink, Myself, Stuarts Draft
Two near-identical photo features…
5 minute read
September 2, 2013, 11:54 PM
As of this writing, the photo feature shows a street sign marking the intersection of Forest Springs Drive and Springer Road in Stuarts Draft, taken on August 25:
Categories: Roads, Schumin Web meta, Stuarts Draft
I can now add “commode critic” to my resume…
4 minute read
March 28, 2013, 12:44 PM
So I got back Tuesday night from a trip to Stuarts Draft. That was fun, though not the fun that I was expecting. I got to visit my friend Bergit in Charlottesville, and then spent two days spending time with my parents. The original plan was to go to Roanoke with Mom on Monday and also visit friends and see transportation-related stuff, but that unfortunately got snowed out.
But first, though, in case you’re wondering what the deal with the title is, let me explain. My trip started out with proof that my kidneys do great work, and that having a cup of coffee before a three-hour road trip is inadvisable. Yes, I took far more restroom breaks on this trip than I normally would. I ended up stopping at the rest area on I-66 near Manassas, Sheetz in Madison, the new Trader Joe’s in Charlottesville, and then the rest area on I-64 near Ivy. Usually I can make it on one restroom break. But, noooooo… my body decided that this was the perfect time to unload a bunch of water. And I was not shy about discussing restrooms on social media on the entire trip. This from the Sheetz in Madison:
And I accompanied this on Instagram with the following caption: “This road trip has been brought to you by the letter P, and by the number 1.” Yep… that kind of day.
Categories: Driving, Family, Stuarts Draft, Winter weather
And this is what Shenandoah Acres looks like now…
3 minute read
September 21, 2012, 9:01 PM
So while I was out and about today, I got new photos of Shenandoah Acres as a follow-up to my previous Journal entry on Shenandoah Acres. And if you ask me, it was kind of depressing. Take a look:
One of two platforms in the lake, and the 1997 beach house. To give you an idea of the normal lake level, the platform was less than a foot above the water level, and the platform was completely surrounded by water.
Categories: Shenandoah Acres, Stuarts Draft
What to do with Shenandoah Acres?
8 minute read
September 2, 2012, 8:39 PM
For the last few years, I have been involved in a Facebook group called “Remembering Shenandoah Acres“. This group is built around discussing memories of times spent at the Shenandoah Acres resort in Stuarts Draft that closed after the 2004 season, but most discussions anymore center around complaining about the state that the property is now in.
For those not familiar, Shenandoah Acres was a facility that billed itself as “America’s Finest Inland Beach”, owned and operated by the Blacka family for many years. It had a campground, there were cabins, and a motel building on the property. The facility also had tennis courts, trail rides on horseback, and miniature golf. However, the centerpiece of the facility was a manmade lake with a beach around it, playground equipment in the water (including one slide about two or three stories high), and a large tower in the center that offered a zip line ride. The facility was a popular tourist attraction, and the lake was also very popular with locals during the summer season.
In the years that I’ve been familiar with the facility, one of the merry go rounds in the water was replaced in 1995 by “Clyde the Slyde”, which was a small slide built inside a dinosaur sculpture, and the zip lines were dismantled in the late 1990s or early 2000s and replaced with the “Pink Zipper” water slide. Additionally, the roof of the original beach house collapsed due to excessive snowfall in 1997, and was replaced with a new structure slightly to the northeast of the original. The facility closed after the 2004 season because, according to the owner at the time, whom my family went to church with, the cost of insurance finally became too much to bear. My family went to Shenandoah Acres from 1993 until about 1996.
Categories: Shenandoah Acres, Stuarts Draft
Day tripping it to Stuarts Draft…
6 minute read
May 29, 2012, 8:46 PM
I certainly had fun on Monday! I went with Isis and Cubby to Stuarts Draft and surrounding areas. First I picked them up, and then we headed down to Augusta County, Virginia.
Our first stop was the old DeJarnette Center in Staunton. For those not familiar, DeJarnette Center was constructed in 1932 as a privately funded mental institution named for Dr. Joseph DeJarnette. The facility became a state-operated children’s mental institution in 1975, and was abandoned in 1996 when the DeJarnette Center moved to a new facility across Route 250 from the original. The facility was renamed the “Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents” in 2001 due to Joseph DeJarnette’s strong support of eugenics. The facility was boarded up in 2009.
On our visit, we stopped the car nearby, and then took a walk around the outside of the building. We didn’t go inside for a few reasons. First, due to the board-up, there was no light inside. Second, asbestos. And lastly, snakes. I’m told that the building is infested with snakes on all levels of the building. And snakes creep me out. Speaking of snakes, while walking around the grounds, we found a snake, laying on the ground partly in our path as we walked behind the building. It was a long black snake. It wasn’t interested in us, but still, snakes creep me out, especially so when Cubby indicated that it could either be a black king snake (not poisonous), or a cottonmouth (very poisonous). In any case, I didn’t really want to find out for sure which one it was.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Blue Ridge Parkway, Charlottesville, Friends, Recreation/Exercise, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Urban exploration, Waynesboro
My trip to Stuarts Draft… via Amtrak!
5 minute read
September 27, 2011, 10:41 PM
So this is actually a Video Journal entry. And here it is:
Categories: Amtrak, Cell phone, Family, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Video Journal, Waynesboro, WMATA
And the photos are in…
10 minute read
May 21, 2011, 9:26 PM
I certainly had fun on my vacation week! I went swimming on Monday, sat around like a bum on Tuesday, headed to Stuarts Draft on Wednesday, photographed on Afton Mountain on Thursday, and then went to Kings Dominion and Potomac Mills on Friday. Plus I finished the Plungefest 2011 photo set in Photography across a few days’ time.
When I went down to Stuarts Draft, I headed down via US 29 through Charlottesville. Technically speaking, on my route, you just nick the top of the city itself, but spend a lot of time in the Charlottesville metropolitan area. I think the total time spent within the city limits is about two minutes, depending on whether or not the traffic lights like you. Arriving in Stuarts Draft, I first stopped at Stuarts Draft Middle School, where I attended middle school and where Mom now teaches eighth grade. Checking in at the office, I noticed that they had the cover off the master clock, due to the need to manually sound the tones because of SOL testing. So I got a photo:
Categories: Afton Mountain, Family, Recreation/Exercise, Retail, Stuarts Draft, Urban exploration, Vintage business
This is what vacations are good for…
3 minute read
May 18, 2011, 11:34 PM
Vacations are great for Schumin Web. Usually, every time I take a vacation, I manage to finish a photo set. This time, it’s Plungefest 2011. Normally this wouldn’t be notable, except that I ran out of time to finish this “in-studio”. See, I normally do all my photo sets at home, on my real computer. However, I ran out of time on Tuesday night, and I had planned a trip to Stuarts Draft from Wednesday to Friday. So first of all, hello from my parents’ house in Stuarts Draft. Thankfully, I was able to complete enough of the set on Tuesday night that I could do the rest of the work on the road from the netbook. So I did all the captions on my parents’ couch, and then pulled the covers off the menu entry, and then voila! Done.
On that last part, that was kind of interesting. Before I left the house, I put the menu entries in and then commented them out. Kind of reminds me of when banks change names, which, as you know, happens on a fairly regular basis anymore. They change the signs ahead of time, and then put a cover over the new sign with the old logo on it. I believe Wachovia is in this process right now, with their eventual change to the Wells Fargo nameplate. Then when the time comes, they just yank the cover off and the name is changed. Same here. I just removed the comment tags, and boom – the menu item is revealed.
Of course, this kind of stuff will all change when I eventually convert the site to WordPress. Then I’ll be able to do all of the site from anywhere, rather than the current situation of being restricted to my home computer for some parts and being partially mobile for others. I’m looking forward to that, but it’s going to be a long time still before that happens.
Categories: Charlottesville, Driving, Schumin Web meta, Stuarts Draft
“Oh, it’s terrible! The King has been transformed! Please find the Magic Wand so we can change him back.”
8 minute read
November 27, 2010, 4:31 PM
First of all, I admit – the title doesn’t mean much in relation to this entry, except that it perhaps reflects that I’ve been playing too much Super Mario Bros. 3 on my Super Nintendo lately. Regardless, this Journal entry has been a long time in coming, since this is about a trip I took to Stuarts Draft two weeks ago. All I have to say is, hey, I’ve been busy. But it’s also somewhat fitting that I post this entry this weekend, since this was “Thanksgiving” with the parents a couple of weeks ahead of the holiday. Traffic is a real pain, you see, and this obviates the need to mess with it. Have you ever driven US 29 in Virginia on Thanksgiving weekend? It’s no walk in the park.
On Friday the 12th, after driving perhaps a shade too fast the whole way down, I arrived at Stuarts Draft Middle School. After all, Mom was there, and I hadn’t seen her new classroom yet. Mom was recently switched from sixth to eighth grade, and so she moved rooms as a result, from Room 24 to Room 1. And here it is:
Categories: Katie, Language, Middle school, Retail, Security, Staunton, Staunton Mall, Stuarts Draft, Video games, Walmart
“And every Friday, he calls me a bastard!”
2 minute read
July 9, 2010, 9:23 AM
And he will again, because… it’s Friday, ya bastards!
Of course, yesterday is what really felt like Friday for me, because I took the day off today. See, I’m going down to Stuarts Draft today, because then on Saturday, Mom and I are going to Buena Vista for my friend Patrick Jarrett’s wedding. Pretty cool, if you ask me. I’ve known Patrick for around ten years, and I’m really excited and happy for him that he’s getting married. And of all the places for Anna (his bride) to be from, she’s from Stuarts Draft! How cool is that.
Of course, that means I have to drive down, which I’m not particularly looking forward to. It’s just a dull drive is all. I try to alternate taking I-81 and US 29 down and back, and so since I took 29 down and 81 up last time, I’m taking 81 down and 29 back this time. So I get to deal with a sea of tractor-trailers early on this time, and then deal with traffic lights on the way back.
Categories: Friends, Stuarts Draft
The parking lot known as Interstate 66…
4 minute read
November 25, 2009, 10:07 PM
First of all, greetings from Stuarts Draft, where I’ve not been in six months. I’m here until Sunday, and left straight from work, which was interesting.
I tried something new this time around. I drove into work, worked a half day, and then left for Stuarts Draft straight from the office. For that, I took 16th Street from P Street to K Street, and then took K Street to I-66. Then I took 66 to the end, where I caught I-81 down to Staunton, and then from there, moseyed around a few back roads to Stuarts Draft and my parents’ house.
Driving into work and then leaving straight from work certainly has its ups and downs. On one hand, I can load up in the morning and then go, and not have to go back home to pick up the car, i.e. go north from the office back to Maryland just to immediately turn south again to go to Virginia. Then the drop-at-Vienna-the-night-before bit is a shade complicated. Recall that the drop-at-Vienna method involves positioning the car with most of the luggage in Virginia the night before, taking Metro and a bus back to Maryland, and then going to work like normal the next day. Then after work, take Metro to Vienna rather than Glenmont, grab the car, and zing off to Stuarts Draft. The idea there was to avoid the inside-the-beltway traffic by putting the car ahead of that and taking Metro to meet the car, but it’s just a bit too much trouble, and involves a lot of advance planning and coordination of what needs to be where. Plus it’s weird stashing the car and one’s luggage in another state for a night.
The whole idea is dealing with the traffic most effciently when there’s a workday involved. See, going into work precludes use of the Beltway for the trip out, since work is in Dupont Circle, near downtown Washington. One would think that it would have been less congested, but I-66 was slow all the way to Vienna. Seriously, I was on the phone with Mom part of the way, and was like, “I’m going eight miles per hour. Oh, wait, now ten. Wait… five.” Yeah, that slow. On the freeway. At least I had people on the phone, plus Randi Rhodes when I didn’t have anyone on the phone.
Categories: Driving, Harrisonburg, Stuarts Draft, Thanksgiving, Walmart