an occasional feature

July

With the various people coming in and out of my house, and the weather, I have not been getting enough sleep. I took advantage of this tonight and took a quirky personality test from the Netherlands. Here are my results:

Try taking your own personality tests.

7/28/98

Have I whined and complained about the heat yet? I mostly write in this journal at night and the weather is more reasonable now, but when I was out today I peeked at the bank clock/thermometer and it said 101 degrees. I consider myself quite lucky that I have no reason to go out in this heat except to get more cold beverages. One of the benefits to living in a cave is that it stays a relatively constant temperature year round.

The sweltering awfulness did not, however, prevent me from getting my highest bowling score of all time: 174!

7/25/98

Today is the Ballard Seafood Fest featuring the lutefisk eating contest. In this contest, seven people and one pig compete to see who can eat two and a half pounds of lutefisk the fastest. I don't know much about lutefisk except that it smells nasty and seems even grosser than gefilte fish which I also haven't eaten. The winner of the lutefisk eating contest actually just picked up the lutefisk package and poured it down his throat, beating out those who chose the eat-in-with-a-fork approach. He won $150 which I hope was worth it.

7/24/98

You know that when the Jessacam hasn't been updated in nearly a day that I'm up to something... Actually, Jack is staying in the back room with my big computer and so I do a lot of my Internet activity on my bed with my laptop which means away from the camera and bad posture, but better cat access.

Yesterday was Jack's 30th birthday so we took drugs [sorry Mom n Dad] and wandered around Seattle, took the ferry and accumulated free beers which is easy if you're newly 30. Today I go give blood for cancer research.

[later...] I am at the library doing semiotics research for my friend who lives in Norway, so I am happily engaged at the library. I just wanted to share my favorite LC subject heading "Survivial After Airplace Accidents, Shipwrecks, etc."

7/22/98

Last night I packed up my futon and my boom box into the pickup truck and headed out to the Everett Drive-in to see Armageddon and Godzilla with my houseguest/husband. I am enamored of the drive-in for many reasons: the odd moon landscape of the facilities, the cross-section of humanity that I get to hobnob with, and the ability to watch a flashy Hollywood flick flat on my back under a blanket with the stars above me and a bowl of hummus on my stomach. And you get to talk through the whole thing if you want.

Tomorrow is Jacks's birthday.

7/19/98

Party was last night & it was a lot of fun, smaller than previous Odd Stocks but a bit more cozy.

I have been walking around for the past few days since I've gotten back thinking "Why in the hell are all these people staring at me and smiling, do I have a noodle on my face or something?" Today, Jack said "Well, it's Seattle, what were you expecting?" and I realized that it's only because I've been in New England for the past few weeks that I think people smiling at me is at all strange. I had no idea I'd become so quickly acclimated to the Right Coast, kinda creepy.

7/18/98

Quick note: Ryan decided not to move in, so the hippie mop boy position is still open.

7/17/98

So I got up in Vermont yesterday at 6 am [why? good question, I think it's the darned heat wave and the only time you can really get anything done is before it heats up to unreasonable levels], drove down to Boston, had lunch with my sister, checked email without having to pay for my phone call, schlepped my luggage to the airport via subway [two hours early cuz it was so damned hot I couldn't stand to do anything else], flew to Seattle, got in at midnight [keeping track? 3 am Vermont time.] where my husband and my truck were there to meet me and headed to Hattie's for a beer which was, of course, on the house. I missed my cat like crazy & my mail holds no suprises.

7/14/98

Today was the first big work day I've had since I got here. For anyone that knows my Dad, this does not surprise you. Basically, I got a free woodstove delivered to my place last night and today I scraped the whole thing down with a wire brush and painted it with stoveblack [which is flaking into my keyboard as I type, time to bathe] and now it's good as new. The picture here is a before picture... Now if I can only get some strong people to lift the damned thing into my house, I'll be set.

I'm heading back to Seattle the day after tomorrow and still don't feel ready to be back amongst the hustle and bustle of the city. I am going to be having a rather large party this Saturday, so I hope the total immersion approach works well and doesn't turn me against cities and city dwellers in perpetuity. Please come, as usual I am convinced no one is going to be there.

7/13/98

I'm not sure if I've talked much about my house. I think this is some kind of avoidance mechanism since once I start talking about it, I will have to acknowledge that I need to start doing some work here. Anyhow, here are some notable features of the place.

• it was built by lesbians in the 70's. One of them was named Pone [pronounced pony] and her girlfriend was a stonecutter so there are many misc pieces of granite lying around. Most of my doorstops are large cylinders of granite. The bathroom doorstop is a large geode.
• the guy I bought the house from was a voracious reader like myself; the place came with the last 25 years or so of the New Yorker as well as sizeable runs of Esquire, Z magazine, Vanity Fair, Harper's, Wired and the Atlantic. I am not much of a bathroom reader, so the magazines will have to wait until winter.
• there's a well in the back that supplies all the water via gravity so I have no annoying pump to deal with; it will presumably also supply water to the hot tub built into the porch once it's fixed. There's a clawfoot tub in the bathroom and no shower.
• the kitchen is funky [the estimator guy took off a coupla grand due to "non-standard kitchen" as well as the weird floor plan] and includes a top-loading dishawasher which I haven't attempted to use yet.
• there's still many places with exposed sheetrock and none of the doors except the front door close with any precision.
• the full address of this place is RD #2 box 73 West Topsham VT. I have no street address.

7/12/98

My Cuban beans and rice is cooking up on the stove as I type this. I am hungry and a bit tired. My friends left this afternoon to go back to Boston after lengthy lamentations about not wanting to leave. I adore my friends but it was weird to have people around after five days of very little human contact. We went to the largest monument granite quarry in the world and took some pictures while I regaled my friends with stories of anarchist stonecutters at the turn of the century. Then we drove around looking for covered bridges and found none. Now I'm back on the couch with my book and a water powered rocket to remind me that this place was once bustling with people. My Dad arrives tomorrow with his fiancee and I'm hoping I can get them to motivate me to do some of the niggling household projects I have been putting off.

7/11/98

I have guests! My pals from Boston, Tex and Dave, and their pal Nicole came up to grill some food with me and sit in my nutty living room. We travelled to some nearby cemetaries [including one where everyone was named Bixby] and visited the food coop in Montpelier where I found a dollar in the street, and shot water rockets into the six foot high grass in the backyard [not pictured, this is my kitchen].

I also dug into the new couch that Jack and Pete got. In it, I found: two barrettes, a phillips head screwdriver, a baby's chew toy, a black magic marker, a plastic knife, a quarter, and a pin that says "Once is Forever." What the hell does that mean.

7/10/98

Have I mentioned that I have been driving around an awful lot? My days go something like this: wake up slowly, have some coffee, check email, read for an hour or so & then get into the car and drive around uncharted [for me anyhow] territory for a few hours, usually stopping to get lunch somewhere. Return home, do some housework -- the phone often rings in this interval -- read some more, check email, get online & do some research, have a homebrew or two [now serving: Prometheus Pale Ale], read some more & go to sleep.

Here is a list of things the street signs tell me to watch out for as I am driving: falling rocks, moose, deer, snowmobiles, farmers/tractors, children, blind people, hidden drives [I have many of those myself], school and trolls [no joke]. Here's what I have seen in the road as I have been driving. One rabbit and a german shepard who chased me quite a ways down the street before I finally lost it -- no sign warned me against that.

7/9/98

Here's a picture of some radishes from the garden at my place. I will not pretend for a minute that I have any gardening aptitude, but it was radish time and I was here so here they are. Unfortunately, all I know how to do with radishes is make them into those little rosettes and I'm not even sure if you're supposed to eat them. I think I will make them into a bunch of shrunken heads. I found a shedded snakeskin outside too, maybe I can make some sort of mojo hand with the skin, my radishes and the still-dead woodpecker.

Today I went to three more libraries: Plainfield, St. Johnsbury and Groton, my local library. I took pictures of all of them but realized that photographing libraries is kinda like listening to a sunset, it lacks some of the awesomeness of the thing. I did get a library card at the Groton library [#307] and chatted up all the librarians. The St. J. library was having a booksale and I snagged a copy of Smillas Sense of Snow for a quarter which I am now reading, having finished Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Don't tell me how it ends.

7/8/98

It's raining like crazy here which sounds kinda cool on the metal roof. I may have lucked into a free woodstove and am trying to make friends with the voracious groundhog that has been haunting my front yard today. In the past few days I have been visiting libraries, among other things. I've been to the Barre public library, the Montpelier public library, the Vermont College library and the Vermont Historical Society library. They are all teeny, very few have computers [in fact, I could get to my email from exactly one of them and it took about eleven steps and a grand force of will] and I would work at any one of them in a second, especially the historical society.

Two people so far have used the word dreamy when emailing me, this must be catching...

7/7/98

Here's a recounting of the fauna I have seen today, including noteworthy insects: dead woodpecker, living woodpecker, mating ladybugs, dead porcupine, street-crossing rabbit, too many living birds to name including the rare baby pigeon, garter snake or two and a zillion tiny slugs. I am keeping my eyes peeled for moose. The twilight lasts a really long time out here [today it seemed to last all day] so I try to go for a walk in the evening which can be a chore due to the neck-high grass in the back. Those Seattle baggy pants don't do too well in the high stepping steppe.

Today I had a mostly fruitless trip to the big capital city of Montpelier looking for woodstoves, which are quite spendy if you want a new one with a golden door... I also spent a lot of time in the library of the VT Historical Society looking for any proof that this place exits, I found none.

7/6/98

After a 3 1/2 hour drive, I am at my place in Vermont. The New Hampshire license plates still say "Live Free or Die" but I've heard now it's optional. Also, someone up here puts red nose stickers on the deer crossing signs, making them look like Rudolph Crossing signs.

Anyone anywhere near Vermont who'd like to visit in the next ten days can email me or call here at West Odd 802-439-6031. I'm going to go lie in the grass to get the bugs in my hair that everyone thinks I have anyway.

7/5/98

I am in Somerville, MA. Last night I was in Boxboro and the night before I was in Finksburg, MD. It's interesting how people see a traveller passing through as an opportunity to give away some of their posessions. Here's what I've gotten so far [not counting detritus from the conference]: knee high Doc Martens, a purple sweater, a voodoo doll, some stickers, a book on how to learn Spanish, a Howard Zinn book, two shirts -- one long & one short sleeved, a sign advertising for light house keeping, a rosary ring and a piece of luggage to keep it all in. I should be pushing one of those ragpicker carts, I reckon.

I spent the 4th BBQ-ing veggie burgers and watching the fireworks from a distance with friends of my sister's. It was the first time I have seen two other people with dreadlocks who weren't Rastafarians since I left Seattle.

7/3/98

Well, I haven't had access to a graphical web browser for more than a few minutes in almost a week. Sorry for so much text. I flew from Baltimore to Providence today, got to see my Dad's new house then borrowed his car to drive to Boxboro, to see my Mom where I am now. She's watching the evening news, I am not. We are a bit different. I should be in Vermont by Sunday and can give this journal a proper updating.