I hear it's your birthday..

It's my birthday, too.  Yeah.

Big things going on tonight.  Gipper's Sports Grill is hooking it up tonight and after 9pm all draft beers will be half price in honor of yours truly.  I'm kind of a big deal in this town.

And since I'm old as dirt here's a little throw back to my youth for you all..

A timeless classic, really.  Man, it was good to be in kindergarten.  There's no better time in a man's life than when you're young enough for it to still be socially acceptable to pull your pants all the way to your ankles at a urinal.  I may try that move one or twice during the course of the evening because, well, dammit it's MY DAY.  Cheers (and see you all tonight at Gip's..).

O, a PS for you:

I had the pleasure of hearing Eric Carle speak at my college graduation a few years back.  Tell me this guy isn't the man:

A spitting image of Burl Ives, isn't he?

Addition by subtraction..

"The time has come," the blogger said, "to type from memory,
"Of New York City, Auburn nights, and Manchester, Tennessee.."

The hardest thing I've found about not blogging for so long is my struggle to incorporate old business that really deserves discussion while I try not to fall behind on current events.  This past week alone I've been up well after 4am four out of seven nights (latest documented clock was 6:19am Friday evening/Saturday morning, jumped in a pool after 3am, drank 1000 beers (give or take a twelve pack..), hit up the Bruins' Stanley Cup Parade in Boston, bachelor partied for Jeffrey Sloat's upcoming nuptials , spotted Tim Thomas at Foxwoods and told him he was "the man" while forgetting to shake his hand (Yep, I didn't shake his hand.  Liam shook his hand.  I spotted him from afar and got all girly and wanted to take a picture while Liam threw out a handshake.  Liam got the handshake.  I got shot down by midget PR man.  Still, I'd rather shoot for the moon.  And my stand up to say "Tim Thomas!" put a nice, shit-eating grin on his face.  Shaking a guy's hand sounded better on thefacebook than making a guy smile.  So I lied.  Sue me.), got back to the gym on two CONSECUTIVE days, and many many more goofy shit.  AND THAT'S JUST ONE, rather average, WEEK.

I'd love love love to talk more about this past week and many weeks that have encompassed my leaving the 808 (doubtful this will ever happen..), my parents visiting the 808 (slightly more likely but still don't hold your breath..), my travels to San Fran (the post I wrote while in SF will likely have to do unless a tangent brings me back..) Burlington, New York, Boston (twice..), as well as more recent happenings in Greater L/A but first I must do my best to discuss the elephant that's been in the room since June 13, and likely well before since I had no preparatory lead-in...and that would be the Bonnaroo in Tennessee.

Main entrance early Friday afternoon, with the What stage in the background.  Pretty crafty shot, eh?

Yes, The Bonnaroo.  THE Bonnaroo.  And it will always be "The Bonnaroo," because The Boss Bruce Springsteen wouldn't stop calling it "The Bonnaroo" during his epic (to me..) three hour set two years ago at my first Bonnaroo.  Besides the Boss and his E Street Band, I've never heard anyone else throw "the" in front of Bonnaroo.  It's just "Bonnaroo."  Plus, it reminds me of Adam Sandler's Goat skit off of What The Hell Happened To Me when the goat wants to head down to the ragu festival to do some mosh pitting.  We encountered quite a few people down at the Bonnaroo who were not familiar with the Goat and his verbage.  I thought everyone was familiar with Adam Sandler's early-ish works but I guess that's not the case.  This actually proved mildly entertaining as J.Mac and I can crack ourselves up for hours with the same few jokes we tell every day and, for the people we hung out with at our tent, our material was entirely new and fresh and unlike anything they had ever heard before.

Not to get too distracted and off topic but a lot of nonsense gets talked when J.Mac and I roll together.  He's turned me on to some of his old college clan's catchphrases and buzzwords, and I have done the same with the goofy shit we used to talk about back in the day in A-Town.  AT THE SAME TIME, our more-or-less everyday debauchery in the 808 provided us with ample opportunity of goof-talk material.  It's tough to describe in no other way than to say we've succeeded in setting Webster's English language back a couple few hundred years.  It's a tight rope across a fine line and the line gets crossed many, many times a day but only in the name of fun and humor.  A couple few years back, I think around the summer of 2009 I was told my life is, more or less, a walking "that's what she said.." joke.  Most every sentence spoken, and oftentimes just a single word, can elicit a follow up goofy song lyric, movie quote, joke, story, you name it.  And for me one of the better parts of my day is, well, just free flowing all of this shit that I think in my head.  So, Noah, while you say you want to kick it this summer I must prepare you for things being decidedly worse than a couple of years ago.  I hope you understand that I do it to entertain myself and others, not to bother you. 

So, on to Bonnaroo.  First time around was, for the most part, orchestrated to a T.  Either Mr. Lawler or myself had quite a few bands we were passionate about and wanted to see and we made every effort to see as many acts as we could.  And the music was awesome.  Just, flat out, awesome.  Even being completely worn out for the last two days due to a weeklong bender that traveled down the east coast, we never missed a show we had set our minds on seeing.  And it was a blast.  But the focus was on the music and the music alone. 

Not that Mr. Lawler had planned a lot in advance, but things were certainly more haphazard in preparations for round two.  Obviously some of this was simply due to the fact I had been before and knew, for the most part, what to expect, but at the same time this was much more of an impulse purchase than last time.  There were many acts that caught my interest this time around but I had very little familiarity with most of them.  Not having a car for my time in Hawaii didn't let me prepare in the same manner I did before, buying used CD's at Bull Moose to investigate newer acts.  I had no car so I had no motivation to buy CD's.  Pandora or any internet radio was never an option because we pirated wireless and our ground floor apartment had a swollen prostate or something so we could only produce a weak stream of "internet" with varying consistency.  My iPod ALSO finally shit out on me sometime around March or so after close to six good years of service and, well, I just decided not to buy another one as it's not too bad to listen to the sounds of your surroundings.  It seems my internal monologue entertains me now more than ever, and I'm ok with that.

But, damn it, again I'm stretching slightly off topic.  What I'm trying to say is there were very few acts I went into feeling like I HAD to see.  This time around was a much more take-things-as-they-come.  And it worked out equally as well, though very, very different from the first go-round.  Temperatures were HOT HOT HOT this time.  Upper 90's every day with no cloud cover whatsoever.  By the end of the week Centeroo (Bonnaroo proper, where the stages and tents and other goofy shit were located) was a virtual old west dust bowl.  Last time is was middle 80's at most, clouds rolled through on the regular, and serious (SERIOUS.  The hardest rain I've ever seen in my life was on I-24 headed east from Nashville to Manchester.  Tornado warnings were all over the radio.  I was going 25 on the highway with my wipers flailing and I couldn't see beyond the hood.  And this is another aside...Can someone explain to me "past" and "passed" usage again.  I can't figure it out for the life of me.  Time passed, half past.  I get that.  But I'm almost never confident I use the correct one.  Really grinds my gears.  That's why I just used "beyond."  I think I could use "past," but I'm just not sure...HELP!) rain fell Thursday morning and Thursday night, creating some mud pockets but eliminating dust.  Dust had never crossed my mind as green grass was everywhere last time around.  To put it mildly, the dust was miserable.  My throat is still burning after being back home from a week (Some may say my body's got some sickness from the seven week bender I've been on that has continued well, let me get back to you tomorrow as chances are good I'll have a couple of pops somewhere...but I still blame the dust.

My Jesus Feets on Sunday afternoon. It's not mud.  It's...crud..

Cold War Kids set on Sunday.  But you could tell that through the...dust.............

This may also be a good time to say I took no pictures last time.  Everything I mention about 2009's Bonnaroo is just my [sometimes mis-]remembrances.  I hope to stay accurate, but I'm really not sure.  Memories come and go and twist and return sometimes.  Should have taken better notes last time.

Sorry.  It's nearing 3am and I must go to bed.  What I plan to elaborate on further (and re-read this to correct grammatical mistakes.....) tomorrow...nah forget it I won't ruin it.  Pretend your a single-digit kid and it's the night before your birthday and you didn't snoop for presents...nervous anticipation!  Just listen to The Goat and laugh your ass off.

Cheers (and plenty more to come...and go back and re-read my Lewis Carroll twist.  It's genius. A fine example of the reason YOU WANT ME ON THIS PAGE.  YOU NEED ME ON THIS PAGE.  And...scene.

Also just realized I had still been posting as of Hawaiian Standard Time.  It was, in fact, the lug nut.  And, yes.  I fixed it.).

O BABAY

Productive day?  LOOKING THAT WAY. 

Made it to bed before 2am?  CHECK. 

Up before 8am?  CHECK. 

Heading to the gym?  CHECK. 

Heading into the sunshine post-swolesession?  CHECK.

Sippits in the sunshine?  Yeah, most likely.

Thursday evening at Gipper's?  I'D BE A FOOL NOT TO.

Boston for the weekend?  SOUNDS LIKE FUN, EVEN FOR A small kine HOCKEY FAN.

So much for backing off of the bender...this is rapidly approaching two months.  I'd say I'm getting too old for this but, hell, it's [Thursday], I ain't got no job, and I ain't got shit to do.  Cheers.

Sweet T[N].

To begin:

Never toast bread for a sangwich, then not immediately eat the sangwich.  It just tastes like you're eating stale, day old bread.  I don't like stale, day old bread.  If you like stale, day old bread I may have just handed you the secret to a happy life.  Thank me later.

I set out with some delicious chicken salad to make a tasty dinner and it certainly was prepared by yours truly with love, the real key to making delicious meals.  And, c'mon, toasted bread, ESPECIALLY marble rye toasted, is a perfect vessel for chicken salad consumption.  Unfortunately, post-sangwich-making I got distracted and my chicken salad sangwich sat on its plate for quite some time and, upon my return, the bread was no longer warm and crispy but room temperature, rather dry, and somewhat chewy.  To sum: my dinner was average at best this evening.  Ho hum.

ANYWAYS I've been on quite a vacation these past three or so weeks.  Today, as I sit in my home office I feel a weary, east coast traveler.  I can say east coast because this past week I made it within a stone's throw of Atlanta and thus well below the line that bears Mason Dixon's name.  In fact, I was behind the wheel when we passed into Maryland and I saw the "Mason Dixon Line" sign on whatever interstate we were on at  the time and I felt pretty special.  I don't remember ever seeing one of those signs before.  Unfortunately it caught me by surprise and I was the only one awake at the time so no picture was able to be taken.

Let's call this foreshadowing.  I need to get to sleep.  I'm attempting to force myself back into a normal sleep schedule.  I didn't realize it was 5am until Papa Skip called when he got up to make sure I'd be home with his car so he could go to work.  Nothing says shenanigans like getting home after 5am on a Wednesday morning and saying, "Hi, parents." while they're readying for work.  Good thing I'm on vacation for the rest of the week...Cheers (And more, much more to come.  This I promise you, written in pen.  Not pencil..).

Haters gonna...hate?

Yes.  It's true.  All I've done for the past couple of months is apologize for my lack of posting.  But, hell.  It is what it is.  And that cliche phrase means that sometimes other business takes precedence.  And for the last 10 weeks that's meant: Marie & Skip coming to Maui for some days.  My last days of work.  My last days (for now...?) on Maui.  San Fransisco for a few days.  Maine for ten or so days, which was surprisingly new and decidedly different than any other Maine experiences to date.  A couple of Portland trips, the latter leading to an evening in Burlington and a suddenly-booked flight to NYC, where i currently sit on a couch at 5:30am and my innerworkings are forcing me to blog right now because I do, actually, enjoy this goofiness.

And...yes.  As far as the internet goes, I've still got it.  Don't believe me?  Scope this!!!!!!!

It looks as though moose is a dog  A dog that looks like a piece of run over shit, but apparently it's a dog all the same.  This person takes pictures of his moose in precarious situations, then posts them to an online photo site.  Moose seems like a pretty cool dude.  Click on "moose on stuff" on the page to see his two page and twelve or so pictures of perfect art.  Well played, sir or madam.  And read the bio.  Moose is a god-damned rock star.

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I have the hiccups.  Hiccups are fucking lame.  Carry on.

Square one, my slate is clear..

Aloha.  In case you forgot, my name is Matt and I used to be a pretty serious blogger up until a couple of months ago.  Then, it appears, I quit cold turkey.  Let me see if I can get back into things over the next couple of weeks and months; Lord knows I don't think I'll have anything better to do.

This post finds me in San Francisco staying in Big Black Eric's apartment while Eric is in New Orleans.  Pretty silly, I know.  I like San Francisco.  I've been here since midday on Tuesday and I'd love to spend a few more days here but with Mother's Day on Sunday I've decided to keep my red eye flight Friday evening.  I love you, Ma.  Something tells me I'll be looking to make it back out this way later on in the summertime, though.  There's a three day music festival in Golden Gate Park around the middle of August which has caught my eye.  Attendance will be determined based on how motivated I am following Bonnaroo.  I have a hunch I'll be pretty fired up to continue touring and the lineups are different enough that it should prove more than entertaining if I can make things work.

I spent most of Wednesday wandering the northern half of the city on foot, and for a city of a million people it seemed surprisingly clean and well, relatively safe.  The weather has been tremendous, too.  I had no idea what to expect as the city is located in Northern California but it's been close to 80 the three days I've been here and tomorrow sounds no different.  The sun isn't quite as strong as on the Valley Isle but it still felt nice wandering around in shorts and sandals for half a day.  I made it to the corner of Haight and Asbury as part of a little hippy self-exploration but was pretty bummed to find a Ben & Jerry's scoop shop there.  Normally New England-based companies popping up far away put a smile on my face, but this seemed a little to contrived.  O well, that's capitalism for you.

Don't Hate.  Haight...get it?  Didn't think so..

I spent awhile walking into all of the goofy head shops looking for a replacement for my old Grateful Dead shirt from back in '96 but had no luck.  Seems to be a trend, I've never seen another shirt like it.  I don't have a picture of it but there's not much left of it anymore.  Many, many holes.  It has to be my favorite shirt, though I don't wear it often because it's destroyed and most everyone finds it inappropriate to wear in most public settings.  Some day I'll find a new one and hopefully take better care of it - dryers are the enemy.

From here?  Back to Maine.  Hopefully getting some hiking in right off the bat.  Put some air in my bike tries and get rolling around town.  I'm quite certain I won't be buying a car in the near future; fuck gas prices.  Truth be told I'm a little nervous about heading back to town.  I haven't been away for very long but at the same I feel like I'm going to grow tired quite quickly of discussing my motivations for moving back.  I DON'T KNOW WHY I DID.  Heh, heh.  Felt right at the time, so going to make sure it's right.

One of the first things I'm going to do when I get home is wash my hair.  Without the ocean to freshen up the mop the last couple days I'm already feeling unhappy with its present state and I can only foresee things getting worse.  That, and I've got some natty dreads forming in the back and I feel like those are an all or nothing kind of a hairstyle until I end up a homeless vagrant.  Which I hope doesn't occur anytime soon.  I hope Cindy at Taboo can still work her magic because I'm not sure I've got a home remedy up my sleeve to completely solve this problem.  That and I feel like the first time you wash your hair in a given year should be a special event, especially considering we're five months into the year.  Oops, guess I just kept forgetting.

On that lovely thought I must be going to bed.  I'm wheels up in less than 24 hours and I've still got the Golden Gate Bridge to try to check out.  I did make it to the pretty Queen Anne Victoria's across from Alamo Square.  And it now appears there were a couple of babes in bikini tops so that wasn't bad, either and provided me an opportunity to take a good, albeit sketchy to some, picture from the top of the greenspace.  Heeeeeeeeeey, aqualung..

And as I'm a sucker for a sunset..

...I took this while I was attending my first ever Bates alumni event.  It was at a yacht club down close to Marina Green, clearly right on the water.  Eric made me wear shoes and a collared shirt; I was unimpressed and upon arrival deemed it completely unnecessary though moot because I brought neither tshirt nor sandals to the event.  I stepped outside with a glass of wine and a snack for 20 or so minutes to take it all in.  It was a nice middle to my Wednesday.  Every now and again Bates proves its worth, and I found this to be one of those times.  Free wine and sunsets: That's what this guy does.

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I watched music videos for the first time tonight in forever.  I happened to flip to either Fuse or Palladia (can't remember which..) And Grace and the Nocturnals' video for their song Paris came on.  Pretty quality video; Grace and Catherine look sexy and they brought in some Moulin Rouge-style dancers in braziers and panties and feathers and shit.  Oo la la, indeed.  But I found this new Beastie Boys video to be even more impressive:

Pay attention to the cast of characters, it's pretty silly.

Catch you back on the east coast.  Cheers (And I think I've finally figured out how to upload pictures from my old-school cellular telephone onto thefacebook.  So, stay tuned for that tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the next day.  Exciting shit, I know..).

It's April, fools..

..and apparently New England is getting hammered with snow today...and there's nothing very funny about that. It's April; it's time to cut that snow shit. If I can't hit the links at Fairlawn immediately when I get back to the 207 then I'm going to be pretty bummed out. Well, not really, but shit, it's April. I've heard enough about snow until next year.

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I had the last two days off from work and that was tremendous. I can't make up my mind as to whether or not I enjoy non-traditional weekends. It's weird for me to have my workweek start on a Friday and end on a Tuesday, as it has for the last couple of months. Weeks still start on Monday so I tend to get confused as to what day it is quite a bit. But at the same time it's pretty nice having a business day off to go to the bank or the post office when the need arises and not feel like I need to scramble around to fit it in on a normal workday. I've been meaning to make a dentist appointment for about nine months now and I still haven't quite squeezed that into my schedule so hopefully I'll be able to get on that on of these days, too. My pearly whites could use a little scrub from a friendly dental hygienist. It's been, well, a little while.

As Thursday happened to be my “Sunday,” I watched some Celtics on the television and the start of the baseball season while I cleaned the house. A cleaning was long overdue and the young gentleman who had been sleeping on an air mattress behind the living room couch for the last four months headed back east Thursday, so I figured the timing was right. Washed dishes. Laundered. Picked up the trash and returnables and recycling that had been slowly accumulating for quite some time in various places around our home. Then took out the trash and returnables and recycling and placed them in their appropriate receptacles. Vacuumed  (And, as our vacuum is a piece of shit and gets clogged every 30 or 45 seconds, this required me to fix the vacuum three times before our carpets were returned to pristine condition..). Heavy duty wipe-downs of the kitchen table, coffee table, sink, stove, and kitchen counters. Ya, there was a lot to be done. So while it was a struggle to get myself out of the house before six this evening to get myself down to the local farmer's market in time to score a half-priced tofu and avocado sangwich, it felt like a fairly productive day for not really leaving the house. Score one for me, as this will be the last time I do anything to clean up until it's time for us to move out at the end of the month. I think I've done my part for a good while.

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I drank close to nine liters of water today. I think I've peed more than twenty times. I guess you could say it was a good day. Here's to April getting off to a good start. Cheers.

Intruding thoughts..

I walked into my room last night from the kitchen with all of the lights in the house off and stumbled around for a short while as I tried to find the lamp on my nightstand to turn on that would provide my room with some illumination in the wee hours of the morn. Since December we've had a guy sleeping in our living room on an air mattress so I try to be quasi-considerate when I'm awake and he's asleep. I mean, clearly I'm still kind of an asshole because I'll stay up surfing the wave that is the “internet” in the kitchen while he's trying to sleep, but at least I do it with the lights off. But, shit, when I get home from work gmail and facebook status updates can't wait.  And we can only pirate "internet" in our kitchen so being an asshole is kind of my only option, or I'd have a frowny face on while I try to go to bed, and I try to never go to sleep with a frown on my face.

Wow, anyways I went to flip the button that turns the light on my nightstand on and I think, “What the hell would I do if, when this light turns on and fills the room, there's someone else besides me in there?” Wouldn't that be a pretty fucked up situation? It would blow my mind. Like, wouldn't that just ruin the rest of your life?There are few things that leave people scarred for life and I think that would be one of them (Another would be rape but rape's fucked up and I don't want to talk about it and all rapists should die so let's just move on..). I mean, even if the person in my room that wasn't me wasn't doing anything. Or if they were asleep. It doesn't matter – my schema of safety and security within my house would be irreparably shattered. Yeah, SHATTERED.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd do if something happened to me like what happened to Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men when he gets into his car, starts driving, looks into his rearview mirror and homeboy's chilling in his back seat. WHAT THE SHIT?! I go through this scenario a lot late at night when I'm getting to my car. I make sure to check the back seat before I get in – I ain't no fool.

It's kind of like whatshername, Helen Hunt, maybe? in Pay It Forward, when she comes home and homeless people are kicking it in her kitchen having sangwiches because the kid who sees dead people decided it would be appropriate to invite them home for sangwiches, because, well, because the kid believes sangwiches taste better under a roof than by a trashcan fire. But, holy shit.

This would be a good teaching moment for a parent, however. “Listen, son (or daughter, but we'll stick to son because the kid who saw dead people was framed as having a penis and self-identifying as a stereotypical “male,” as defined by western culture..). Have you ever heard the saying, 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime?' You have? Great. So, next time you think to yourself, 'I'd like to feed the homeless,' DON'T FUCKING BRING THEM HOME.”

Yeah, it would go something like that.

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In other news Coach Roach commented on an old photo album I had thrown up long ago from early college summers in the A-Town and it brought me back to what thefacebook used to be like before it became facebook and half of the planet became a member. Back in the good old days when it was a network for college students to stalk people whom they were too shy or, for whatever reason, unable to actually communicate with face-to-face. And, just now, this makes me wonder why poking has become so taboo these days. Or, was it always taboo? I don't think it was taboo, and I don't think it's taboo now. I'm still a poker and I'm not afraid or ashamed to admit it. Pokes make me feel good, and they should make you feel good, too. Poke: the best conversation starter since, well, saying hello.

Thefacebook back in the day seemed so much cooler because it was kind of an exclusive club. “Oh, you're still in high school? GETTHEFUCKOUTTAHERE.” “Oh, you're old? GETHEFUCKOUTTAHERE.” Now everyone and their mother (literally) is on thefacebook. No, I take that back. Everyone's on facebook. But, for the lucky ones, we can harken back to the days when pokes, posts, and pictures could only be seen by your goofy-ass, college-enrolled friends on the[original]facebook. Or, are we actually unlucky as we long ago lost this debaucherous sanctuary? Quite the brain buster, if you ask me..

Light weight.  Cheers.

Ides of March cometh and goeth..

And I'm without intelligent words of wisdom.  So, I'll just post a good tune for your listening pleasure and I'll try things again tomorrow.  I now say, "Goodnight;" though, I expect for most of you this will greet you as a, "Good morning."

Cheers.

Beginning semi-introspective writing...now:

Instead of spending time writing I've been doing my best to finish a couple of books over the last week or so. I enjoy reading immensely so I find it to be kind of a bummer when I don't find time to read. When I had a flat bike tire it was easy to find time because most mornings I'd take the bus down to work so I'd have time to read on the bus and more time to read before my shift started, but I'd lose time in the evenings because instead of only needing fifteen minutes to get home on the saddle I was at the mercy of the thumb gods. It's not easy hitchhiking after dark, especially with my goofy mustache, but more often than not something worked out before I got too far north. This, however, lead to two situations where I was without food to eat for a couple of days at a time because, by ten o'clock, I wasn't asking to get dropped off at the supermarket when I'd need to find another lift home from there. A pain in my ass, if you ask me, but no one asked me so I just made it work.

Anywhoo I've been able to read two books that I got myself for Christmastime. Just today I finished up Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory, more or less a biography of Pat Tillman, a former NFL player who enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and was killed by friendly fire while on patrol in Afganistan. It was a pretty good read, well-researched and well-written. And, ironically, prior to this I took a leisurely stroll through Acid Dreams - The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond. This contained sort of a who's who of big name people from the fifties, sixties, and seventies and their experiences turning on. Beat writers, artists, politicians, millionaires, scientists, musicians, all were dabbling in psychedelics, many of which were developed and tested by the CIA and other government organizations in an effort to develop a truth serum to be used during the Cold War. Interesting read, all the same, sprinkled with excellent quotes from many different characters. Caused me to add a few titles to my “To Read” list and also brought my attention to some music I hadn't listened to in a little bit. The 13^th Floor Elevators always put a smile on my face.

Instead of reading and writing, though, most evenings have been spent with leafy greens and the television on, which makes me feel even more lazy than usual. As I indicated a few days ago, Stop Making Sense has been on more or less repeat recently at 25 Heather Lane, Apt #115. And, really, I can think of few better ways to spend an evening than pressing play, getting in a Talking Heads trance for about 90 minutes and then coming to “Once in a Lifetime” and literally wondering “Well, how did [we] get here?” I don't have time to delve into great detail about my Stop Making Sense experiences, but, I'm a fan, and I find it remarkable how each song on the DVD is at once similar and entirely different from each of the other songs. I appreciate the band, the DVD, and their commitment to creativity more with each viewing. It continues, and probably will always, boggle my mind in one way or another.

Another evening last week found me reuniting with The Big Lebowski. This was glorious. Sometime during my shuffle of things in July (I think.It might have been October...my memory isn't that good..) my copy of Lebowski disappeared and it's yet to surface. I'm not sure if I left it somewhere at home, if I loaned it to someone (I don't think this is the case. I'd like to think I'd be better at keeping tabs on one of the THREE dvd's I have, well, had out here. Now I'm down to just Wayne's World and Stop Making Sense. That's really all I need, I guess. Also, I found it funny but when I was typing dvd's I missed the 's' key and hit the 'a' key. I don't care who you are: that's funny.) or it just got left behind one of the places I stayed in between. So it had been a good few months since The Dude and I had a chance to kick back together and it was especially nice to have that time to reconnect. So, yes, “The Dude time” is more important than “The 'Pad time.” My apologies to those affected.

This all leads me to ponder whether six weeks is an incredibly long amount of time or an incredibly short amount of time. I've got about six more weeks here and this is causing me to go in many directions about where I'm at in life. I think I'm taking my job too seriously, which is kind of silly considering I wipe down dirty tables for a living. And, for whatever reason, I'm choosing to leave this pretty good job, in a pretty nice climate, with pretty good weather, and pretty good scenery, and pretty pretty girls to...move back in with my parents, unemployed? What the fuck is wrong with me? I don't know. I'm finding myself bored out here, and I'm quite certain that working in a restaurant, especially a restaurant six thousand or so miles from my hometown, is not something I'm be interested in doing for even a minor portion of my future. But, holy shit, it's going to be tricky to extricate myself from this place.

I'm at a point now, where, more or less, I know I want to get busy living very soon, I'm just not quite certain I know what I want to do to get busy living. Living out here for well over a year has kind of put me into a holding pattern: I know I'd like to take another step in life, I'm just not sure in what direction I should be stepping. Compiling this angst is the very place I'm heading back to is where I felt stalled out and trapped before I...moved out here. I've resigned myself to the fact I may go home and be somewhat miserable and I'm okay with this, just the simple act of moving home for a summer to pursue activities I've been wanting to do for a little while now while I was working makes me wonder if, while not working, I'll actually feel in a position to spend money to goof off when I've become kind of terrible at spending money.

How, for example, am I going to be able to go on hikes and travel places unless I buy a car? Guess I have to buy a car. F. My problem with savings is, well, I see it as savings. Not spendings. So, once money enters my savings account it has a tendency to stay there. I'm pretty sure I'd surprise quite a few people with the total, considering the goof-off things I've done for the past couple of years, but am I saving to the point where it is negatively impacting my everyday life? I don't know...or should I, instead of using a savings account, be looking to deposit some funds in a tax shelthered IRA or some other kind of retirement account? I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO SOMEONE WHO'S A FINANCIAL PLANNER PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO DO ASAP.

Savings is good, I suppose, but shit, I've saved this money so I can take time off and have fun, didn't I?! Or do I just save it to save it? The world may never know...until I get home and I get started.

I'd really like to buy a road bike this summer but I'm already hesitant to because Ma-dukes is no longer working for Leon Leonwood's sporting goods and outdoor gear company. I'm not sure if I'll be able to pony up full price for something like that. I'd love a kayak, too. And I'm not sure yet but I might be in the market for a new hike stove and I'm considering trading in my tent for a slightly larger model. But, F, full price for all of this hoopla? And maybe new boots, too?! And then I'd need racks for the kayak and potentially the bike, too. This is a sticky situation. Hell, maybe I should just try to get a job there working a couple of days a week for a couple of months. That's actually not a terrible idea, come to think of it.............

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Returning to car talk for a minute, right now I'm torn between getting an old Volvo 240 wagon when I get home or getting a little bit newer, little bit nicer pickup truck, for the purpose of capping the bed and having it act, more or less, like a wagon. I could sleep in the back of either, not that I'm planning anything like that......

But what are some thoughts on this? I've already done the Volvo thing once to mixed reviews from myself. While I had it the Blue Bird was a dream to drive and cost very little to keep on the road, but at the same time she started to fall apart not long after we became partners. So, the whole age-factor could unnerve me a little bit, and I'm not sure how many Volvo wagons were made with manual transmissions. The last thing I want in a new-to-me car is an automatic. That's just amateur hour. But, see? More questions that I'm asking myself. And I won't be doing anything with these thoughts for close to two months? Why the shit am I fixated on them now? Maybe I'm a worrier. Fretting over things gives me something to do to pass the time and this fretting allows me to actually feel like life is somewhat difficult, when most things out here are skewed more towards the easy living, joke kind of lifestyle. In a sense, the easy living lifestyle I enjoy so much out here is motivating me to search for a career more up my alley, as I know I can easily not think, blink, and have been out here for another few years and wonder, “Well, how did I get here?” And, no, Ma, while I find Pat Tillman inspiring for the choices he made, a four or five year commitment is something that doesn't really do it for me.

All this is probably just fluff to cover the fact that by this time next year I'll be a farmer on a quiet spread, tending to my crops like they did in the old days. Or, maybe not.

Cheers.

NEWSFLASH:

Nothing crazy happened.  Had to stop watching the video from Japan, that was some sad stuff.

More to come later.  Carry on.

Cheers.