empty! full!

Sometimes I think I have a tapeworm, eating like I do. This weekend I helped cook a 5 lb. hunk of lamb, went out for BBQ at Blue Ribbon BBQ and wrapped it all up with a carne asada burrito. It was a delicious meaty weekend which is just what I tend to be looking for at about this time in February. The flip side to this is that I spent the rest of the weekend running up and down stairs carrying heavy objects.

My sister is moving in a few short weeks. I’m that friend who will always help you move. I’m not so great at being the second person hefting the hide-a-bed, but I’m really great at taking whatever shamehole you have been putting off dealing with and turning it into a few labeled boxfulls and a bag of trash. I’m often modest about most of my abilities but I think I excel at this. This weekend I helped deal with Mount Laundry, the Poison Closet, the dreadful Neglected Closet and a few other miscellaneous spaces. Each time I managed to empty something out — I put aside the ticking timer when Kate had a rather strong reaction to the ticking sound, I find its urgency a little motivating — I put a sticker on it as shown above. Apparently the stickers are a little tough to remove, sorry about that.

I drove home to Vermont today with a car full of stuff. One of the magical qualities of my car is that things placed into the back of it simply … disappear. This is good for people who need to get rid of clothes or old computers. This time my sisters’ disappearing stuff is actually mostly winding up in my house. I took home a few bags of clothes (seriously doubling the bulk of my everyday wardrobe), a fold up spare bed, a few things to eBay, a fruity teacup with my birth month on it, a typing table with a little lamp on it, some placemats, some bubblegum and a great big bookshelf. People keep talking about the recession and I know it’s true objectively, but it’s been a bountiful few months for me.

better!

So hey, I went to the doctor. I like living someplace where I can call the doc when I wake up and have an appointment scheduled for after lunch. The doc said my lungs sounded weird so he gave me some antibiotics which seemed to work. I spent some days resting and a weekend boyfriending and then I went to Toronto for the OLA Superconference on Wednesday and got back last night. I had incredible travel karma considering that I flew out of Burlingotn on a day when most flights were cancelled and Vermont got 18 inches of snow. I gave a talk about the digital divide and it went well. I saw a lot of librarians that I know and like from around and did some quality conferencing and couch surfing and meetupping. I also ate enough food to keep me nutrified for another few weeks, so it’s back into the pool tomorrow. I had the chili poutine in this photo, David had the bacon poutine, John had the pulled pork poutine. I like poutine, squeaky cheese and all.

As of now my roof at home appears watertight so I’ve moved out of the living room bed and back into my room. I have developed an attachment to sleeping in the living room — when I lived in the Odd Fellows Hall in Seattle it was my favorite place to sleep — so if you come to visit perhaps I can put you in the silver bed and I’ll sleep out here.

My current projects involve getting a mix CD out the door, trying to learn to use a drain snake, helping my sister move (happy story that, bug her for it if you don’t know it) and getting ready for a quick trip to San Francisco for a steering committee meeting later this month. I have a small flurry of tax forms to dig through real soon now (“a success snowstorm” as Richard Brautigan would say) I think 2008 may have been my most lucrative year ever which is a good news/bad news situation if I’ve ever heard one.

the hazy blur of the brand new day

Usually this space at about this time is the Mystery Hunt wrap up where I talk about all the stuff we did and how we still didn’t come in first place anyhow. This time is no different except I was less helpful than usual. For some reason — planetary alignment, bad juju, overconfidence — instead of being a rock-solid team member for the Codex gang, I was struck down early with “I don’t feel so good.” I headed back to my sister’s house on Saturday evening via a subway ride I barely remember. I helped her move some stuff around at her place (inhaling nasty attic gasses) and then headed speedily and feverishly back to Vermont Sunday evening in order to teach a few in-service classes at the high school on Monday. The puzzle hunt didn’t end until late late Sunday night/Monday morning. We came in second, again. It was not my best planned weekend. As 2009 goes, it’s certainly been the worst.

I taught two classes on Monday which went pretty well and then came home and crashed and have been sleeping pretty much on and off since then, watching my fever eke down from 100.9 to 99.2. It’s now Wednesday lunchtime. I’m mostly awake. At about 9:30 pm last night water started to come through the roof of my bedroom and puddle on the floor. I don’t quite understand the mechanics of ice dams except that they can be relied upon to inflict distress at the least convenient times. I called my landlady, moved my bedding into the living room, and went quickly from the “woe is me” outlook to the “this is so over the top it’s approaching comedy” perspective. As someone said as I was mentioning this in my facebook status “If a raccoon gets in your house, then you’ve got all three acts covered.” Indeed.

I slept through the Inaguration and all of the attendant hubub, though I managed to read Obama’s speech and a lot of running Twitter commentary. I know he’s the president, the rest is details. I know many people are having a worse January than I am. I can feel the dull thuds of the guy knocking the ice off the roof and I’m thinking now might be the time to go down to the post office and see what else has been happening in the world outside of my rainy treehouse.

the secret is not to breathe

One of my pseudo-resolutions was not really to update this any more than I generally do. Once a week, maybe more if something big is happening. And yet, I feel that I’m really trying to avoid BIG things to the extent that I can. Last night it snowed. This morning I was out on the porch getting birdseed and noticed the snowflakes were big, and all their little points were visible. Neat! Grab the camera!

I also haven’t done the booklist update yet, I’m still in a bit of denial about the precipitous decline of my book reading last year. The swim update got eaten by the hard drive crash, but I’m swimming more at a maintenance level than a “get across the lake” level and that’s okay by me. I went to a MetaFilter meetup in Barre last night and checked out a cool brewery only to learn that it was closing that evening. I haven’t been out to see a band that wasn’t Jim’s in a long time.

This coming weekend is the Mystery Hunt and my massive team is slated to win. I have complicated matters by signing up to teach an in-service day in Vermont on MLK Day which is not a good start to what I’m hoping will be a less-complicated 2009. Then I have a weekend off. Then I go to Toronto where my MeFi couch surf got disrupted by my friend’s landlord selling his place. Know anyone with a comfy guestroom in Toronto? This is a money-solveable problem, so I’m not in a jam, but it would be nice to stay with humans not with hospitality corporations.

my year in cities and towns, 2008

Places I stayed in 2008. Again, I’m heading in an upward direction. I think this will change this year. However I said that last year. Here’s a picture and a list. Hereâ€™s the list for 2007 of places I stayed that were not my house. As before, stars indicate multiple visits to the exact same place. Numbers indicate number of distinct guestrooms at each location. I started adding the photos to the map, but I sort of gave up. Seems a little weird to geolocate my friends’ houses and it’s a LOT of places. Back of the envelope calculations are 106 or so nights away from home, though many of them happened the month or so when I was moving. 2007, 2006, 2005

Bethel, VT (early 2008 home)
Randolph, VT (late 2008 home)

Manchester, NH *
Somerville, MA (2) *
San Francisco, CA (2)
Boxboro, MA *
Montreal, QC
Austin, TX
East Lansing, MI
Amherst, MA *
Regina, SK
Latham, NY
Saratoga Springs, NY
Burlington, VT (2)
Lacrosse, WI
Randolph, VT
Westport, MA *
Farmington, CT
Los Angeles, CA
Anaheim, CA (2)
Portland, OR
Washington DC
Ballson, VA
Braintree, VT
Belmont, MA *
Kittery, ME
Hoboken, NJ
East Village, NY
Canton, NY
Sacramento, CA
Marquette, MI (2)
Damariscotta, ME
North Chelmsford, MA
Lawrence, KS
Overland Park, KS
Hayesville, KS
Manitou Springs, CO
Denver, CO
Albany, NY

what 2009 means to me

A day late and a few words short. I was snowshoeing. New Years wrap-ups will be late this year. I do have a few resolutions which can be summed up easily.

1. The internet neither smells nor tastes like anything. Make up for this by making the rest of the world smell and taste awesome [this is a nice way of saying cook at home more and get in the shower more and make sure the kitchen doesn’t smell like compost and the bedroom doesn’t smell like socks]
2. Have people over more often, otherwise there’s no point in a nice apartment because I’d be just as happy in a box under a bridge most days.
3. Save receipts, don’t become an IRS statistic. Otherwise travel more, charge more, be more awesome
4. You like that boyfriend, make an effort to keep him around, Rainman.

What’s your New Year bringing you?

how to make an introvert

This is a picture of me and my good friend Sharyn at my Mom’s house over holidaytimes. I just got back from a week away which is pretty much the longest I’ve been anywhere in the past few years except Australia. I’m not really an introvert as people who know me pretty much know. I get energized by hanging out with people, I like to talk, I have a lot of friends and acquaintances. That said, I also live alone and have a lot of routines and subroutines that involve long periods of silence, stillness or solitude. Everyone’s routines get disrupted when they travel, see family and/or get outside their little home oasis and mine are not an exception.

I was happy to see my sister and her (about to be sold, omg) house. I liked getting to spend sort of lazy hang-out and walk around time with my Mom and the house I grew up in. I enjoyed spending some holidaytime with my boyfriend and his family and their full house of people who have known each other forever. I got to bring my friend Sharyn into the wilds of Boxboro and introduce her to my family and friends and spend more than a day with her for the first time in our decade+ long friendship. I had a cat or dog on hand at all times. I nearly poisoned myself with amazing food and lack of exercise. I stayed up late and slept in like I was a teenager.

Yesterday I drove home after driving in to Boston to drop Sharyn off at the train. I got lost and wound up meandering all over hellandgone to figure out how to get no 93 (yes I KNOW it’s right there, no I couldn’t find it). At some point I figured it out and started pointing the car approximately northwards, but the whole bumbadabumbada no-particular-place-to-go meandering around was something that is part of my daily life up here and was no part of my if-this-is-Sunday-this-must-be-brunch last week of time.

I haven’t spoken to another person since I said “thanks” to the lady who sold me a cookie on my way home last night. The phone hasn’t rung, as it usually doesn’t. I’ve got dinner plans but a wide open calendar today with one To Do item “get stuff out of car.” I think I’m up to it.