29nov01 ...at the risk of being dull

It's a good night when the crazy pierced cashier at the co-op gives you a discount without even asking "are you a member of any co-op?" because, you suspect, she's seen you careening down the aisles of the bulk foods with an alcohol-induced lilt to your step and when you show up, at 11:55 on a Wednesday evening, right as they say "last call" into the PA system., with a beet, a box of rice milk and some safflower mayonaise, she knows you fit solidly into the Freak category and so, instead, all she says is "so, you've been in the glitter?" [in the body care aisle, tester section, big fun] and you nod and smile like a child of the revolution and see her key in some secret code which you know, in your heart if not in your mind, means "freak discount" and you wonder how you can ever make it to this plateau again....

Yeah, so then I walked home twenty blocks in the pissing rain with that thought keeping me warm. Then the cat attacked me while I was trying to feed him and I felt the rare sensation of blood running down the front of my face and dripping off my chin. Before I had left the house [special memo: never leave the house!] I had gotten a smallish php based mail form working and so am invincible to attacks, cat and otherwise. Thanks to Daniel who was the instigator of all this.

From now on, I will make soups and you will visit and eat soups. Okay?

23nov01 ...veggie thanksgiving

Eleven blankets on the guest bed makes this place the Best Guesthouse Ever. Which is good because the oven broke yesterday. Which is fine because we were only going to use it to cook squash anyhow. Squash cooks well on the stovetop. Which still worked somehow. I am no stranger to broken ovens, but I am still always hesitant to put my hand on a cold burner as if it might suddenly blaze into life at the touch of my hand and scald me into tomorrow. We had a Three Squash and Corn Soup, a gourmet beet salad, some bread, some cheese and some juice. After the big meal, I wasn't comatose like usual. What a concept.

This was my first no-turkey Thanksgiving, and today is my fourth buying nothing Buy Nothing Day. Tip: buying nothing isn't too tough if you don't leave the house.

21nov01 ...corporate interface

The people at Discover sent me a new credit card with a big old American flag all over the front of it. As I'm sure you know, I love the country but am no flag-waver. I called Discover and talked to a rep who said that I had no choice but to use it [and like it, they implied]. I said I would either cancel my account or they could send me a card with just the standard company logo on it. It's not like the United Way really needs any more support from me at this point, and I guess I have issue with the relentless fundraising that has been going on lately. Lack of accountability is always something we should be concerned with. Do you know how your donations were spent? I am fairly certain the blood I donated was thrown out. American Airlines, after their second disaster, is now being extremely pokey about refunding the cash for my September 11th plane ticket that never got used.

Don't get me wrong, I know I don't have real problems, but they seem real to me. I just need more soup this winter. I think we all do.

18nov01 ...in style

If you need a ride south for Thanksgiving, I encourage you to get in touch with me. Driving a car all the way to Medford Oregon, while cheaper than bussing or flying, is still a bad waste of resources for only one person.

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day dredging out the kitchen with my roomate. We are both horribly acquisitive and pathologically cluttered [serious book readers almost always are] and the house had become a maze of outdoor gear, books, tea, cat hair and DSL wiring. Then we went our separate ways.

I warmed up a big pot of stew and my friends and I sat around my triaged kitchen eating stew, bread and snacks. Then we all went out to Snoqualmie -- me and Damon, Amanda, and Sean -- to catch meteors. Drove for about an hour, turned onto a forest road and headed uphill. Drove past a tower, said "this must be the top" and parked it. It was strange driving on a road that would normally be totally abandoned at midnight and seeing lots of people in warm clothes carrying thermoses pulled off to the side of the road hanging out. Like some bizarre progressive dinner on a mountain. We got to a good parking place and hunkered down. Mercy of mercies, Amanda had a convertible so all we had to do was take the top down and look straight up. No freezing butt, no sleeping bags, no stiff neck. The meteors were impressive, shooting all over the place with more frequency than I'd ever seen. I was asleep for the ride back mostly. I half expected to be carried inside when we got home.

My roomate, on the other hand, went to town in his own way at the Filson Sale. Once a year this outdoor outfitter has a blowout seconds sale. Invitation only. They are what LL Bean's used to be. Solid as hell gear, lifetime guarantee. My friends decided to arrive early and make a party of it. The doors opened at seven. They got to the sidewalk at nine pm. No one was there. They went away to get a few beers and came back to find two guys from Wenatchee already in line. So, they set up shop with their van seats and their industrial propane heaters and their BMX bikes and more and more beer. My roomate -- the packrat, remember -- came home this morning with more clothes and belts and socks and whatnot than he already owns. He swears it was all cheap. More holiday-style bounty without all the holiday hassle. Clothes that are guaranteed not to fall apart seem like a good investment to me.

Speaking of -- Buy Nothing Day is November 23rd. I am going for my third straight year of making no purchases on [at least] the day after Thanksgiving. If at this point you are tempted to call me a pinko, I can now claim with a straight face that it is for the war effort. Shop less, live more. Thank you. [thanks for the reminder Caterina]

16nov01 ...big tall trees

Jane has a blow by blow of our trip. I got back to an insane deluge but was happy there wasn't snow. Highlights of the trip included cats -- Ribbet and Lucy -- the Oklahoma City memorial [despite scary tourists], Greg, and the black widow spider we found in the room we were staying at in Denver. I had never seen a black widow before.

I've spent the past few days reaquainting myself with my human roomate, my animal roomates, beer drinking, high speed internet and my new room. I am only now unpacking some stuff that has been in boxes since March. It's like Christmas only without horrible family obligations and bad music. It's such a strange switch to go from nothing to do outside and everything to do at home, to the exact opposite.

I'll be bowling with some on- and offline folks on Monday night at Sunset Bowl and looking for a job in between now and then. Today I made a big pot of corn and tomato stew and think I'll sit inside, watch the clouds and read magazines until my eyes glaze over.

Oh yeah, and a big mirror fell on my head and broke yesterday. Watch this space for impending bad luck.

10nov01 ...failed to mention

I spent last night sleeping in the bottom bunk of a set of bunk beds in an Air Force base in Oklahoma City. Oh yeah, I'm on the road again. Tonight we go to Denver. Then Salt Lake City. Then, with some luck, home to Seattle. I'm travelling with Jen and her two cats and it's not as tough as I thought it would be. The weather's been great and being on the road is more fun when you're not always frantically tuning the radio to see if something really awful has happened in this country. Of course, the reason this is true is because really awful stuff is happening in other countries at our behest. It feels a bit bad to be happy about this.

02nov01 ...returning to the familiar

It's hard to know where to begin. When I started the Postcard Project it was mostly a way for me to detatch myself from my keyboard and, more importantly, from my habit of maintaining a running narrative of my life -- as I was living it -- for later public pseudojournal fodder. Then things got weird and I didn't want to talk to anyone at all, including myself. I've finally gotten a bit back into the running narrative thing, but without the time to dictate it. This is, I think, the best of all possible worlds. Here's the bulleted list of what the last few days have brought me:

• Sunday/Monday: I moved 3,500 pounds of wood, stacking it in the milking shed and sloughing off a lot of pent up anxiety borne of inactivity and pending travel plans
• Tuesday: me and Kate and a crack team of smartypantses took second place in a bar trivia competition in Somerville MA. Do you know which direction bats always fly when they leave a cave? We did.
• Wednesday: my mom and I moved some of my old childhood furniture -- some of which was also my mother's childhood furniture -- up to my place and get the bedroom looking really cozy just in time for me to leave it behind.
• Thursday: Mom and I move stuff and take a walk around a local lake and I buy bags of hardwood kindling from the clothespin factory.
• Friday: I take a hammer to the concrete that is keeping my barn doors from closing and develop an entirely new appreciation for stoneworkers. Also make some brackets to keep the door shut and marvel at how I managed to live here all summer with out my drill.

A few more illustrative pictures are here.