Everything that didn’t fit anywhere else.
excerpt from one of the sweetest achewood’s ever:
story line starts here with ray discovering the blue toilet bowl cleaner he left in the toilet the night before.
but you also have to know that roast beef used to be living with molly in the trailer behind his abusive grandma’s house, but was afraid to commit, so they broke up. and she’s been having a rough time in food service lately.
thursday got to happy hour pretty late, which enabled us to stay longer, closing down karaoke (it seemed) before heading home after 1am. which was interesting in and of itself, as i drove my car over and almost into the 5 foot deep ditch running along old pittsboro on either side of robin’s driveway.
jane got out to check and saw that the back right wheel was hovering over several feet of air. it could have been much worse, but things were still pretty grim, as it was raining and nothing happened after i got out to push. asked robin’s sister to give us a hand, but jane realized that the parking break had been on, so finally i was able to push all four wheels of my car onto solid ground while jane drove.
friday installed wordpress on my webserver.
saturday i lazed around with jane, did some work on this wordpress plugin i’ve been coding (more on that later). eventually made it out of the house to see the kids at the ocsc, where they were enjoying life in advance of settling into their last semesters at sils.
sunday jane and i meant to go hiking, but wanted to do an errand at the mall and stop by rei to look at some trail runners first. somehow the mall trip absorbed the entire afternoon, not even giving us 5 minutes to visit rei before it closed. so hiking was a wash, but at least i found a nice shirt at banana republic. then we hopped on 40 and went down to see jackie and ryan who cooked us a lovely pork loin dinner with an apple tart for dessert. and we watched a strange movie called the dreamers.
monday though people kept saying the university would be closed on monday, sometimes that only means classes are cancelled. and no one at work on friday mentioned anything about a three day weekend. so it’s noon right now. i’m in bed on the laptop, probably going to do some house chores, laundry, who knows.
strong’s was a laidback coffee shop on franklin street with good music, decent sandwiches, and wireless internet from campus that reached into the front half of the building. i spent countless hours there during grad school, people-watching and computer hacking. however it went out of business months ago (all i’ve heard is that they weren’t making enough money), and now it’s being remodeled and renamed the jack sprat cafe.
tonight, after visiting the bickett gallery in raleigh with jane, i was doing some proactive reminiscing, thinking about the wireless internet cafe i would create. and i realized i was creating something largely based on my memories of strong’s (both positive and negative):
my mattress sits on 14 wood slats that are attached to a central “spine.” except the spine has been separating from its “ribs” because some cheap stapled-in screw threads were pulling out of the wood.
so i went to lowe’s to buy some hardware. figured i’d need some bolts, washers, and nuts. or maybe wingnuts. i was a tad unprepared my first trip–i returned with bolts that were too short. but they were the perfect diameter (1/4″) for the old holes.
on my second trip to lowe’s i paid more attention to the variety of bolts they had available. since the head of the bolt would be up against the underside of the mattress, i wanted something rounded. and i found just the thing: a carriage bolt, which also had a wider head (so i didn’t need a second washer) and a square neck (so i didn’t need a wrench in order to tighten it).
i removed all the crappy hardware that came with the bed and made sure every rib slat was conneced to the spine–which required some hole drilling and a third trip to lowe’s. but at least now my platform bed seems as solid as a rock.
it felt so satisfying fixing something, without any kind of directions or outside instruction. not only fixing it but making it better. and the whole time i was working on it i felt like such a kid, wondering what my dad would think.
i pressed snooze many times. it seemed like the alarm was going off every 5 minutes. i got up around 10am and showered. i brought my cd player upstairs to listen to the modest mouse cd while i shaved. i turned it up so i could hear it over the shaver.
i put on an extra jacket in case the weather stayed cold. i felt like i looked good, with my collar poking out over my jacket.
my computer at work wouldn’t boot. so i started working on my laptop, first a creative project and then some financial stuff. the sql queries that i had written were saved on the crashed computer, so i tried to recreate them with varying success. i did most of my work sitting with my laptop in the common area by the windows at the back of the building. i had my headphones on, and i listened to the music i’ve recently been downloading.
i called patrick to see if he wanted to go mountain biking or roller hockeying. i grabbed two more cds at cd alley and put one on when i got home. patrick came over and we roller hockeyed until it got too dark to see the ball.
patrick wanted to take me to get pissed. we went to the spotted dog and had dinner and many many many pints. we manged to watch poker and nearly a whole yankees-red sox baseball game. hours later we wandered back and (with luck) patrick drove himself home safely. i think we got much more than pissed. patrick, thanks.
i’m listening to the new iron and wine cd as i type this. many of the people who have reviewed the cd said the songs made them cry. i wonder if any song i’ve listened to has made me cry. i bought it on an impulse. it’s the kind of music i would rock a baby to.