Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Does this have to do with teabagging?

Right now there is a latino-looking man using a weed whacker around some of the trees next door, and he's wearing one of those black, long-sleeved shirts with what appears to be a white, embossed skeleton torso on it, a la the Cobra Kai halloween costumes. Anyway, that doesn't have much to do with anything, I just happened to look out the window and that's what I saw and it made me think of the Cobra Kai.

Fear does not exist in this dojo.

Not too much going on today. I'm off work, and after doing some dishes and Ipod updating, I'm now going to spend the rest of the morning and probably a good portion of the afternoon pulling nails out of the floor of the back bedroom. We gots to take the floorboards up to try and level the joists underneath so we can then put down some hardwood on top and not feel like we're listing to the starboard side.

Perhaps I shall have a tasty egg-based breakfast before beginning.

Right now I'm listening to a CD that was sent to me by the U2 fan club (don't laugh at me), and it consists of duets that the band has done over the years. Right now I'm listening to a live duet with Mick Jagger on "Stuck in a Moment" that makes my perineum hurt. And not in a good way.

I finished The Pale King. It's strange to say, but it's about 550 pages long and it feels like it's maybe the first 20% of a novel. When it's published as "unfinished," it makes me think that maybe it lacks an ending or it needs to be polished or something, but that really is not the case in this instance. It was good, and I enjoyed reading it, but it really was just the beginning of something that, if DFW had been around to continue it, would have been gargantuan. It really reminds me of, like, finding a dinosaur bone or something. We've got like one tiny leg bone here, and the real ferocious, massive beast that one day was born and lived and ate and died will have to be a lost thing that exists only in the imagination.

I think I definitely will have eggs, and then it's off to pull nails. If I get done early, I might play a little Civ III.

p.s. The title of this post (or something like it, I can't remember exactly what Jeannie told me I said) is something that I said to Jeannie while I was sleeping 2 nights ago and she pulled the sheet up to cover me a little better.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Dick Tricks and Poop Crunches

Happy Easter! Or as I like to call it, Greaseter.

The Jeanners and I busted our respective asses this weekend. Well, actually this Friday and Saturday because I had to work today. But anyway, Friday and Saturday we busted our asses. Got some drywall hung in our future bedroom and also our future mancave/unconceived potential future child's room. And because I'm a sucker for before and after pictures, I give you before:



And after:



There is a guy who has been coming to the store for the whole time I've worked there, pretty regularly, and he works for the local symphony orchestra. He is actually the librarian for the symphony, and he's a 100% classical music expert. Like, seriously. An expert. A super smart guy, always rumpled, bespectacled, balding with whisps of hair on the top that are always sticking up and waving around with the lightest of breezes, and totally and completely depressed. He is completely devoted to the arts and is watching interest in and support for the arts grow smaller and smaller every day. Especially his branch of the arts. And bsically, he looks around at the world and it seems like the complete opposite of the type of place he'd like to be, and it seems to be moving in the wrong direction, and he always seemed to be terribly lonely and isolated and basically I have always just been waiting for the day when he stopped coming in and I could safely assume that he had finally committed suicide. Well, he came in today and I was asking him how things at the symphony are going, and we had a variation of a conversation that we've had many times where he tells me that things at the symphony are going shittily, and things at symphonies around the country are going shittily, and that people aren't supporting the arts anymore, and that the arts "save us from ourselves," and that without art and literature and music, what do we become? I said "robots" but the correct answer was "shit." He actually started crying as he was talking with me about this. And I felt really bad, because I have total respect for the guy and I agree with him quite a bit and I can empathize with his rationally suicidal outlook on life. And so we finished up with that conversation and I figured it was just another typical conversation with Mr. K, but then he told me that he had a girlfriend (which is big news because one of the things that he was always lonely and suicidal about was the fact that he always seemed to be interested in one woman or another be they were never interest in him), and they had gone to high school together and had crushes on each other, but never acted on them, and then she got married and moved to Texas and had a son, then divorced, etc. etc. Anway, she'd been in Texas, and really lonely, and had been doing that thing where you pray for "a sign," and somehow she was visiting Baltimore and on a bus, and the bus lurched to a stop and Mr. K, who was also on the bus, bumped into her. And they chatted and then Mr. K sent her a message on classmates.com and she's been coming up to visit and stuff and now there is talk of new girlfriend possibly moving to Baltimore and moving in with Mr. K. So he said (today) that he had to run because he had to seriously clean up his house.

Anyway, it was cute and funny and he seemed a little less suicidal.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Untitled.

Today, I think, was the first time that I ever took a poop which I described to myself as "woolly."

Friday, April 15, 2011

The Heel

I have worked some long days this week, which means I have been on my feet more than usual, which means my legs and feet have been hurting more than usual. Perhaps time to get new insoles.

Yesterday at work I saw a medical book that was called, like, "Treating Minor Emergencies," or something like that, and it had a drawing of a cross-section of ear with a bug in it on the cover, and inside it had treatments for things ranging from sunburn to removing a lemon (or jar) from somebody's ass. Also had some pictures of some pretty gnarly-looking skin ailments.

Lots of smallish jobs to get done today.

Monday, April 11, 2011

4 Score

The jeanners and I had a fantastic weekend trip up to Katie's farm outside Gettysburg. Well, it's actually outside Arendsville (or something like that) which is outside Biglerville. The farm itself may or may not be located in Ortanna. Anyway, we drove up in a leisurely fashion on Saturday afternoon, stopped and bought some pottery at a place where a co-worker of Jeannie takes pottery classes, and arrived in the late afternoon/early evening. Took a tour of the area and headed over to Katie's sister's (Anna's) house for a tasty meal and socializin' and game playing. Good, good time. It was really nice to just hang out with people that I feel fairly comfortable with. They're good folks.

Sunday we had a slow morning and a big breakfast and then explored the area a bit. I got car sick and ate mexican food. I had three cokes.

It was definitely a battery-recharging trip. It would be nice to be able to head up there on a regular basis. It's really not too far away (about an hour forty-five), and it's an easy drive.

It was back to work for me today, which was uneventful, and the Jeanners had the day off, which meant that she got to work on a plan for the future kitchen, and do a little garden work. We just finished watching a little Thirtysomething, which was a bit of a weeper.

I'm about halfway through The Pale King. Right now it feels more like a collection of stories than a novel. Understandably, I guess, considering it's unfinished. But it's good. Every time I pick it up it makes my stomach hurt.

Last night the J-Dog and I were in laying in bed and talking, and it felt kinda like the talks that people have who are just starting to date and who stay on the phone for hours talking and learning all about each other, and it's the kind of talk that makes you fall in love with the other person and makes you realize how wonderful it is to really "connect" with another person. It makes you realize why people use the word "connect" to describe that phenomenon. Anyway, it's the type of conversation that you have fewer of when you've been together awhile, but it was nice to know that they still happen every now and again.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Death and Taxes

I bought the new DFW book yesterday and started it. I'm liking it so far. Not quite as off-putting as IJ was at the beginning of the first read, but it's not exactly a page turner, either. But it's good, so far. Reading it makes my stomach feel very empty and very heavy at the same time.

It's been a weird week so far, kind of. Every day I feel like I should really be doing a lot of work, but every day there just isn't time to be doing a lot of work. Dishes have to be done, dinner has to be made, we need to go shopping and pick up a few things, etc. So it's weird because I've been busy but not felt busy enough. Ugh. Plus, I've been feeling very empty lately. Like, existentially empty. As though there are no thoughts or feelings inside that have any relation or meaning in the outside world. Or even the inside world. And that's the real pisser. I've had not really many thoughts or feelings that even I've found interesting. Of course, this is a little more dramatic-sounding than it actually is, becuase it really just feels...empty. Neither good nor bad. Like listening to the noise of a fan. A constant 5 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Still been exercising and trying to diet, although haven't been real crazy with either. I will tell you this, though - if I ate felafel every day I would get fat. Probably has something to do with the deep-frying.

There's a stack of dishes that I need to attend to. This weekend we are planning on heading up to Gettysburg to visit Katie the North American Wanderer's farm. Looking forward to that, as we're hoping to make a leisurely, scenic trip up there, and then when we get there there will mostly likely be game playing and good times and such.

Talked to my brother on the phone yesterday. He sounded stressed and tired.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Truck, Car, Susquehanna

There is a guy that comes into the store who is kinda dumb, usually pretty drunk, and fairly religious-seeming. He has a bit of a Pete Rose-meets-Moses mane of hair, and I once saw him on the sidewalk outside of our store with a lawnmower (the push kind, not the riding kind), and a case of beer on the lawnmower. Yesterday he came into the store looking for the Def Leppard song, "Animal," which he says has the line "Car...Truck...Susquehanna!" in it (a little subsequent internet research has revealed that the song does not have the line in it, but whatever). He then proceeded to tell a story about riding his bike to Ocean City from Baltimore (southeast, about a 3.5 hour drive) and being near the Susquehanna River Bridge (north, in Pennsylvania), when a huge storm rolled in, "bigger than any storm you've ever seen." Apparently, the storm included "balls of lightning" that fell from the sky, and a "blue grid of electricity," that was later explained to him to be St. Elmo's fire (he also wanted to order the soundtrack to St. Elmo's Fire), and so he "stood up on his pedals" to get some momentum going and outrun the storm. Eventually, he says, the storm did subside, but now it was nighttime, and he had come to the Susquehanna River Bridge. He said he got about a quarter mile onto the bridge when a car and truck started to come onto the bridge "in tandem." At this point in the story I interjected that he must have had to throw his bike off the bridge and then jump in after it, but that's not what happened. He actually only had to throw his bike over the median (I didn't realize that it was a four-lane bridge) and then jump over it. He then flagged down a car and asked to be driven over the rest of the bridge ("it's always important to ask for help.") The moral of the story was that the storm somehow saved his life, because he had pedaled faster to get out of the storm, and then he ended up on the bridge at a time when the car/truck tandem did not kill him. I'm not exactly sure how that all works out, because in my mind it was the storm that put him on that bridge exactly when the car/truck tandem happened to be coming across, but whatever. He told the story much better than how I just wrote it, and he was actually able to end it with revealing the fact that the Def Leppard song, "Animal," has the line "Car...Truck...Susquehanna!", so the line ended up as some sort of climax or punchline to the story. Which made it kind of exciting. I'm kinda sad that the line isn't in the song.

It is Saturday morning. This is what Saturday morning means to me:

1. Wake up when Jeannie leaves for yoga or pilates or whatever it is.
2. Internet checking. Pooping.
3. Car Talk
4. Big Breakfast.
5. Jeannie returns
6. Start the day's projects.


Which today involves work in the back bedroom. Some masonry work, some wiring, some furring strips, maybe even some drywall. Eventually (maybe tomorrow?), some AC duct work. On wednesday we had a meeting with a guy from the company that did our energy audit and who is arrainging all of the insulation work that's going to be done, and he did a blower-door test on the house, which was pretty exciting. A blower-door test is where they put a big fan in your door blowing outward, which lowers the air pressure inside your house, and then they see how much air rushes in and where the air is rushing in from. Basically, it's a where to see how leaky your house is and where it's leaking. It looked like this:



The dude's name was Paul and he was very nice. He reminded me vaguely of Stinky Steinmetz.

Last weekend the Jeanners and I took a day off and headed down to DC to hit some museums and walk around. It turned out to be a pretty nice day and some of the trees were blooming and it was a good day to be out and about. we started out at the National Gallery (of art), which is probably my favorite museum, and then we headed over to the Building Museum, which I had never been to but was one of the coolest buildings I've ever been in. The main atrium looks like this:



They also had a really great exhibit on the woman who designed a lot of famous murals and mosiac works, including some of the mosaics in the dome at the St. Louis New Cathedral. It was pretty amazing to see the process for how shit like that is done. Also amazing to see pictures of the workshops in what must have been the 30's or 40's (I don't read too closely, I guess), where rows of guys are sitting at tables working on tiny portions of these huge mosaics. Does shit like that get done anymore?

It is almost time to make breakfast and listen to Car Talk, so I will bid you a fond adieu. To you and you and you-oo.

p.s. I've gotten some sort of swamp bug bites from somewhere. Itchin'.