ah, D2...

Somehow, I am now qualified to fight forest fires.

concrete makes your skin feel funny

Life Update:

Leaves in New Haven just starting to turn. Not really crunchy yet.

I got a postcard from Meg and Gavin a couple days ago, detailing their recent adventures complete with illustrations of bridge games and harbor seals and cars not going off cliffs. I think they're getting home tomorrow, though, so I suspect stories will be forthcoming...

Work's gotten more exciting--I spent the last three weeks driving up the CT coastline talking to people at marinas and yacht dealerships and bait & tackle shops. I'm in love with tackle shop owners. They are old and crusty and love to talk and offer me free sodas. Plus bait is fun to look at and poke the rubbery fake fish and laugh at the fly lures

Last week I saw an old Chinese junk (traditional sailboat) by the side of the road, which was incredible because (a) it was really really old and falling apart [wabi-sabi, supremely], (b) it had eyes painted on it, (c) what the hell was it doing in West Mystic, CT? I stopped and talked to a guy there and he told me all about the boat he's restoring, an oystering sailboat from 1884, and showed me some huge clams and oysters and we saved some tiny shrimp [clear, inch-long, flipping themselves all over frantically] that were out of water by mistake and talked about insects and he showed me a really cool seagull skull that he was keeping on his dashboard.

This week I'm more in the office doing paper-computer-xerox-work-zzzzzzz. But this weekend, outreach at the Hammonassett Festival, which is half environmental fair, half NE Indian pow-wow. Looking forward to it.

Last weekend I was up at Lake George for a work weekend--closing up the cottage for the winter and doing various repairs.
Low points: freezing fully clothed in my sleeping bag at night; overloading the wheelbarrow with gravel and then being unable to lift my arms above shoulder height for three days; listening to my cousin's war stories from Balad.
High points: impossibly clear bright air; singalong with a family friend (including "Henry David Thoreau" to the tune of "Johnny B. Goode"); fresh-squeezed orange juice; getting to know a cousin for the first time; not being the most off-key singer in the room during aforementioned singalong because aforementioned cousin was there; wading out into the lake and seeing the bottom clearly through water undisturbed by boats; LEARNING HOW TO MORTAR A STONE WALL!!

love

KWATHUMPPP!

...is the sound my head makes, exhaustedly hitting the desk, glancing off the keyboard, causing it to type something akin to vcxujm bi;g.

amazing weekend, with some very pleasant, unexpected visits.

I'll tell you all about it after I sleep for twenty-one days or something.

potential update

baltimore(201)
chilling out with my brother & co. making some music, mixing more, listening more than that. looking for jobs. restarted (again) deus ex. reading (finished everything is illuminated 2 nights ago). watching the wire. chilling.
~A

Hey everyone. Was working up at the farmhouse this past weekend, and the downstairs bathroom is now functional, clean and repainted. The exterior of the house is now repainted as well... The place is even more beautiful and you all need to come back up

OH MY GOD! (from xkcd)

that is all

How do you afford your rock and roll life style

Hey everybody. So my trip was a lot of fun, and it involved trying to fix a 35 year old motorcycle, a sweet brewhouse in Columbia, SC, and some plans for me to move to Chapel Hill in some months to a year. Re: the latter, we should all start a commune in Chapel Hill. I'm totally totally serious. But more on that later.

The primary point of this post is that my band, Maxwell's Demon, complete with new songs and new philosophies on live shows, is going to begin a sort of mini-tour soon. The idea is to get serious, a sort of "go big or go home" attitude, to get some recognition and raise some money for new equipment. We'll kick off with a show in New York City at Don Hill's in the village on Saturday August 25th. We've got the headlining spot, so if you're in the big apple come and show your love.
We're looking to set up shows in Baltimore, DC, Philly, New Haven, Middletown (represent) and Boston--we're already hard at work on it, but if y'all know of any sweet clubs, radio stations or cats who would dig a house-show, hit me up. (I'm very excited about all of this).

In other music news, Dugan is setting me up with this singer-songwriter guy who wants a blues lead player. This will hopefully lead to some fruitful local gigs, plus I'll get to play more blues (!) Also, Dav-Abrav just sent me an mp3 of a song he wrote that samples the guitar lines from an old song by my band ("purple", for those of you geeky enough to be fans of my band) and it sounds way more awesome than the original song! If he's OK with it, maybe I can post the mp3.

Anyway, that's all for now. At the risk of sounding like meg, much much much love!

And... I'm alive.

1200 miles, one volvo radiator, more than one hundred coffees, a few spent .22 caliber rounds, several bottles of sunscreen, twenty episodes of battlestar galactica and one detour to Baltimore later, I've returned from about three weeks in the carolinas and a week upstate before that.
For virtually all of that I was without internet access, and for about a third of it I was without cellphone coverage. So, in case you were wondering, I'm still alive.
And if you sent me an email, I probably didnt get it.

the battle of pirate hill

I dreamed about you last night!

All of you!

The lot of us, plus Lucas S-B for reasons that will become apparent, were hanging out in a barn on a mountain in NY state and it was great. Which pretty much already happened. And we had guns, which also already happened. But they were real guns! Also an airplane! And we got bored so we divided into two armies and started having a battle. My side had Evan and Lucas and Micah and Meg and Steve, and we holed up in the barn and took shots at the airplane as it buzzed us at twilight. After a while I started to worry a little bit that this was a dangerous pasttime for friends, but we had no way to communicate that to the folks in the airplane (you were merciless!) so I had to keep shooting and was running out of ammunition and then looked down and my gun had turned into a sawed-off shotgun with a cork tied to the muzzle with twine, and when I pulled the trigger it shot out water. But it didn't shoot straight because of the cork. And then the battle was over.

There was something about winter coats, too, and drawing on the walls of a cabin.

Thanks for not shooting me, guys.

new news

Hi folks,

I miss all of you so much! This is an I just got a job post and a holy moly I have to move to New York City post! I am going to work as an editorial assistant for a college text book publisher and I am so excited (but also nervous about moving). I need somewhere to live! If anyone has a cool friend who needs a roommate in Brooklyn starting in August...or even a couch that is crashable for a week or so while I get on my feet, I would much appreciate any leads. (Seriously, email me, mklinger at wes and save my life)

In other news, I saw Meg yesterday! We went to Cockaponset/Pattaconk, mostly just for the names, went for a hike and a swim and saw some chipmunks and a swimming hotdog dog. We went panning for gold in a pretty and somewhat oily lake using our bare hands and got covered in a brown oily scum, the prospector's curse!

What are you all up to?

I hope you all post updates soon and I hope that all is well with everything!

A guy from a high school group of friends that I've mostly lost touch with passed away suddenly this week. At the wake today, I saw all of his friends huddled around, looking just awful. I can only imagine what they're going through right now. Since then, I've been thinking about my own friends and how much I care about all of you, and how devastated I - and everyone - would be if anything happened to you. So, if you'll excuse an Evan moment here, I just wanted to say that I love you all. Take care of yourselves.

Perspective

It is 4am and I have been trying to unclog a toilet for about an hour and a half.

At this precise moment, you are all doing better than me.

Croquet in America

During the 1860s croquet swept across the Atlantic into America, where it was immediately embraced by most as a truly elegant and fasioinable sport and, above all, a great civilizer. The New York periodical Galaxy declared in 1867 that "croquet is an essentially social game, provocative of good humour, wit and fellowship, one in which old men foreget their gout, young ones their bills unpaid; in which old ladies trip gayly across the sod in the chase of an 'enemy'...in which the young ones blend duty and enjoyment so evenly that health blooms in their cheeks, lustre in their eyes, and renewed life throbs in every elastic step." One manual of croquet went even further, claiming that croquet was "a protection from evil influences by keeping all members in the household ranks ... [since] with rational amusements at home, no-one will be inclined to seek irrational ones abroad." Yet not all were so enamoured. In 1878, the American Christian Review listed the inevtable disasterous consequences of social activities such as croquet (see diagram). In 1867, the Commissioners of New York's Central Park made a generous exception to their normal prohibition of active adult sports. Splendidly, they allowed young girls to play croquet in secluded areas--away from main thoroughfares--on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.


a social party
social & party play
croquet party
picnic & croquet party
picnic, croquet, & dance
absence from church
imprudent or immoral conduct
exclusion from the church
a runaway match
poverty & discontent
shame & disgrace
ruin


- Ben Schott, Schott's Sporting, Gaming, and Idling Miscellany

Let's see, let's see.

If you read between the lines of Evan's last post you may conclude that Silver Bay is the best place in the world. This is good, because it's the truth. I like convincing other people of this. Maybe you should stop by when I'm there in August, huh?

My brain is all funny. I keep getting all teary-eyed at emotional-but-not-sad things. And I had horrible dreams last night! The delightful sanatorium of the farmhouse turned into an enormous luxury hotel with metal and marble, but also a real sanatorium in which people were dying and we all sat around watching the news. And then some of you were in a bumper-car pileup and needed rescuing. Oh hormones. I'm going to be such a neurotic mom.
But yesterday I finally ordered a bridesmaid's dress and shoes for my cousin's wedding. Both on sale but unmarked so it was a surprise! Happy happy. Strappy happy shoes. I am already thinking of ways to alter the dress after the wedding so it looks less I-do-y and more cocktail-y.
Next week I get to see my old roommate Cory and then my mom, and after that.... well, New Orleans, hopefully, but we're still working on that.

The guy at the computer behind me is snoring. It mixes with the whirring of the microfiche machines and the clicking of people typing and the occasional giggle from everyone else around and the intermittant snick...snick...snick... of the librarian's stapler.

Traveling was great. As always, spending time with Laura was wonderful, and it gives me consolation to know that her extended family is as semi-logically nit-picky towards her as she is towards me--in the cosmic scheme, she gets what she gives. The two-days-and-change that I spent up at Silver Bay involved much hiking, attempts at water-skiing, a nighttime kayak-run (one of my favorite things to do in the world), some pell-mell post-midnight back-country driving, a solo stay at the Simko/Bednarski Farmhouse for a night (spooky), and meeting/re-meeting some of laura's extended family, who are all absolutely fantastic people. I was thrilled to be among them.

The pell-mell back-country driving finally did-in a wounded intake hose on the volvo, however, and though it drives it does so slowly and it hiccups occasionally. This lead to my missing my dentist appointment in NJ this morning, and will cost me time and money to repair... I think it's too far gone to patch it up with JB weld again. so, alas, cant get back up to silver bay before laura leaves.

That said, I want to go hiking nearby (up on the Hudson) some time this weekend. Maybe Sunday? everyone is invited... Please please please comment on this post if you'd be interested in making that happen. Also, in a few days when the parts come, anyone wanna get greasy and wrench around the Volvo with me?

Love
-E

oregon bike trail

here's a link to the Blog for Shira and Jessalee's bike trip blog
http://oregonbiketrail.blogspot.com/
{ev, maybe you could post that over to the right, i dont think i have permission}
also i heard gabe got snowed on a few days ago, and aaron is heading to chicago in a few days

living the dream

Well, I got a job. For a week. But i'm living the dream...
First, I'm working for a guild. This tickled Gabe's tiddlywinks, and maybe yours too {esp. if you are at all familiar with fantasy rpgs}.
But also the wesleyan dream - the guild i am working for is the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, specifically for the Baltimore Sun {where my dad works} section; they are in the middle of negotiations with the Tribune company that owns the paper. So today I, among other things, made some signs for a rally we are having tomorrow outside the paper.* I'm working for a union, organizing shit, helping out where neccessary. Right now we are waiting for a bulliten to get finished so we can print a bunch of them, package, and distribute. yea! it's only for a week, but this is hopefully the final week of negotiations, setting things early-like so no one gets too jumpy or ramps up too much effort in preparation for a possible strike. Anyway, at least for a few days i'll be living the wesleyan dream. speaking of gabe, i talked to him the other day, said it snowed on him the day before. ha ha (ha ha (haha)). but seriously im just killing time now, my boss?/coworker? is checking out news items, like how much CEOs are getting paid [salary+bonus+stockoptions=fuckingridiculous] so im going to stop typing before i ramble on too long.
I'm still in b-more, just chillin, hanging with my bro, etc.
~A

*note that in my time at wesleyan, i attended one protest, in greenwich, protesting bush at some fundraising dinner.

Traveling

So on Sunday (maybe Saturday night) I fire up the volvo again and head upstate. Plan is to stay a night at the farmhouse, then see Laura at lake george, hopefully swing over to Micah's, also coax Gavin out of hiding... If anyone wants a ride upstate, will be around, or can lend a radar detector, let me know.

My news: I don't have tuberculosis! But now I'm on an antibiotic that kills, among other things (such as syphillis and "skin"--this one concerns me), legionella and mycoplasma, which is what Evan had. My doctor sounds like Ben Stein and thinks I'm "stoic."

So now that it's less hypocritical for me to say so: Yo, those of you who are still coughing. Get thee to a physic.


Miss you all.

What Evan didn't mention is that we had a beer while listening to an hour and a half of the best karaoke that Secaucus, NJ had to offer ("Before He Cheats", "Baby Got Back", "Stayin' Alive" by a woman in a full-body pink snakeskin outfit).
My update is that I am still in New Jersey. Today we were shephered through Port Authority and on the 7 train on the way to a Mets game in a pretty embarassing group of thirty 20-year-olds in matching "Buck Consultants University" tee shirts. Earlier, we spent a lot of time going over the results of a personality test I rushed through while sitting in the minivan in Cooperstown. Turns out I'm high in "blue".
I miss you guys. What have you all been up to?

Just had a beer with Meg. She's in Secaucus at a convention center, being trained as an actuary. I don't know what actuaries do. I assume they actuate. which makes the actuators. which is awesome. Meg is learning how to be a mechanical device for moving or controlling a mechanism or system.
After that I came home and watched more of the Battlestar Galactica that I ganked from the network before graduation.
Other highlights of this Monday include discussing my financial future with my parents over a(n earlier) beer.

goddamn my sleep cycle is off.