As a young bride in the mid 1980’s, I moved to the North Carolina coast and discovered something amazing: There was a real-life, genuine movie studio in Wilmington.
I was immediately star-struck. This was the closest I’d ever been to Hollywood.
In 1976, Italian filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis relocated to the U.S., created a film studio and [...]

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Reminiscing again. Maybe it’s the cooler weather…chili on the stove…fire in the fireplace. Whatever it is, this former DJ has tunes in his head that are revolving around hearth and home.
I remember working at a “free-form” radio station many years ago. “Free-form,” I think, meant the jocks worked for “free” snacks and concert tickets but [...]

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What is your favorite time of the year?  The months of November and December are mine. In the Triangle area we have so many great things to enjoy.
Even though college football season begins to wind down in November, things are only just starting to get exciting!

Last Saturday, one of our state’s greatest football rivalries played [...]

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In 2001 (when I was 19 and my boyfriend was 22), we decided to buy a home together. We were tired of paying rent on our small one-bedroom apartments and living across town. This was supposed to be a five-year starter home. Now 10 years, a marriage and one child later, we are bursting at [...]

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I am a man of many loves: family, friends, finance, and Florida Gators. But those who know me well also know I am a lover of fine wines – an oenophile (EE-no-FIL-e), to be precise.
The term oenophile was first coined in 1977, when New York restauranteur Shirley Copperman dubbed her new BYOB eatery “Oenophilia”. That [...]

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It starts with passion for the game and then for the gathering of friends and clients.  It turns out that, win or lose, the tailgate is often the main event!
For me it started as a young man and my two or three pilgrimages a year to South Bend to see tailgating up close and personal.  [...]

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I was a step back in time and a whole new personality last week when I boarded the R.M.S. Titanic as Mrs. Dickson H. Bishop, a 19-year-old traveling home to Michigan from an extended honeymoon in Egypt, Italy, Spain and France.
At the end of the night, I learned the fate of my alter ego and [...]

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I so admire anyone that has the discipline, commitment and stamina to complete a marathon.  It is not something on my bucket list, but it is either growing in popularity in North Carolina or I have just been paying more attention.
Just a few weeks ago I learned that Genevieve Jooste (our social media coordinator) is [...]

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When I was younger, I played games any chance I could get. If I couldn’t find a board game or a deck of cards, I would create games for myself to play and enjoy. At the drop of a hat, I imagined up rules, scenarios and even different worlds for my games to take place [...]

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There’s a saying in my family that routinely brings a chuckle (or three) out of everyone except my mother. The reason is that those chuckles are at her expense but deep down she knows that my father, sister and I do it out of love. Definitely not out of amusement.
While the latter half of the [...]

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