last place of residence

i've never seen this picture before- just found it on ed's computer.

ah, remember when you had your own apartment. remember that weirdo red cabinet (in foreground) you found on the street with russell? what the hell was that cabinet intended for, anyway? i could never figure it out. now that i think about it, many objects in this scene are russell-related. he had this habit of finding things in his basement that i needed: the wheely chair, for example. one afternoon i told him i wanted a wheely chair and the next day he brought one over- on his BIKE, no less. i don't know how he carried it. another basement item was my super-cool torquoise 'hercules' bike that he brought over for my birthday after my last bike had been stolen. i got an orange armchair, too, but he didn't try to carry that one on his bike. we were also fond of rescueing things from the sidewalk- a huge potted tropical plant with one wonky..... frond, perhaps- no, stalk. a wonky stalk. trunk. i don't know, i think i put it back on the sidewalk when i moved; the red mystery-function cabinet; a couch, found in the snow (also left behind). one day he brought over a side of smoked salmon that i'm pretty sure came from a store and not his basement or sidewalk.

so here i am in my little school space on clark street- which, truth be known, i did very little school work in. notice the absense of books or polish-related materials (save for the "you forgot poland" bumper sticker on the wall- forgot about that little gem.)
ooooo, i can write in green. or red. purple?
well, this is turning out to be the most exciting post ever- a picture of me sitting and my delight in figuring out i can type in different colors. weeeee. ooo, justified rule, much better.

i haven't had my own place to live in over a year and i'm almost crazy. very near craziness. as evidenced by the lingering unconscious trauma of my most recent freak out "i think i'll move to new york, how stupid can i be" adventure. you have to be pretty stupid to not know how to change a light bulb. why's it take so many polaks to screw in a light bulb- cause they're so darn stupid! if i wasn't picking vegetables and eating them hours later i might actually be crazy by now, but working so much is keeping it at bay. which makes me wonder- what happens in november when i'm jobless again. i'll at least be well-fed with my preserved foods- i put up 12 pints of corn tonight. stocking up- and this time i promise to be around to eat the stock.

with headphones

the bose headphones are awesome and i can't take them off.

i woke up this morning from having a terrible dream about being in NYC and not being able to replace a lightbulb at someone's apartment. i kept shaking all of them to check whether they were ok but ended up breaking them in the process, then apologizing with no success for being so careless as to shake lightbulbs so vigorously. also, manhattan was on the other side of long island, so you looked east from brooklyn to see the skyline. what sort of psyhological damage could this represent?

i then went to the farm stand to find reorganization mayhem. our straw bale construction system was failing in a bad way (tables leaning and melons rolling off onto the ground) so we finally got new straw bales, but it's not like a truck full of straw bales is the first thing you want to deal with in the morning. how do people throw them? we also got new peaches this morning and they. are. delicious. they're the "glowing star" variety and, well, they're good. only two more weeks of peaches. woe. so i bought a bunch of kerr jars with the industrious attitute that i'll can some. tonight it's corn-freezing, sunday will be the great roasted chile project, and i don't know when i'll actually have the energy to can peaches, but i have jars, damn it.

cold front coming in tomorrow. high of 63 and rain all day, which means picking and washing is going to be ca-hold.

w poniedzialek rano

so you might have noticed funny looking words replacing the day and date heading before the posts- i've switched to polish! let's all (re)learn the days of the week and months together, shall we? the word for monday- poniedzialek (pronounced pony-jow-ek, sort of)- always reminds me of a song we learned about the days of the week. on monday morning (w poniedzialek rano) father goes out to cut the hay, then tuesday, i don't know- he dries it, then stacks it, then hauls it somewhere, then FINALLY on sunday he spends the day drinking, like a true polish catholic. this song was a serious earworm for about two weeks in poland. looks like it's going to be an earworm again..... be glad you don't know the tune.

other than that, there is nothing to report. except that i ate three peaches today. and picked lots of evil nightshade eggplant- little thorny stems! and.... ate fried green tomatoes for dinner.

such is the material i share after a long day. woke up at 5:30 and almost convinced myself that it was not necessary to get up. the milk was bad and destroyed my coffee, so i drove to lafayette to get coffee but the damn coffeeshop wasn't open at 6 like they said they'd be. fuckers. so i went to the farm sans coffee and made it known to benjamin (who is a self-proclaimed sufist journey fan- no, not a sufist fond of journeying to mecca or somewhere, but a guy that thinks he's muslim and likes the BAND journey. he also told me today, for no reason whatsoever, that early beastie boys had no use for him in his musical education, but that styx was much more influential. whatever.) anyway, i told ben, who at this point i had only talked to once before, that i was annoyed that the coffeeshop was closed and he proceeded to put his arms out as if to give me a hug. as though this was going to change the fact that i was denied caffeine! no! so i'm being hugged, with arms glued to my sides and disgruntled expression on my face, by some guy that turns out to be a journey fan and who later plagues me with a journey earworm by singing "don't you cry", or whatever fucking song that is. erg.

on the other hand, i got to hear the story of how farmer dan got high with peewee herman once in hawaii (pre-incident). apparently paul reubens has a credit card issued to peewee herman. awesome.

one potato peeler is enough

in response to 'notafinga!':

my recent increase in request for gifts A) has proven successful (huck finn book), and B) is designed to prevent future weird and otherwise unwanted gifts from arriving in the mail. two examples of how weird gift prevention tactics could come in handy follow:

example #1:
christmas, 2003. my sister receives a potato peeler with a potato-shaped handle, "to add to your collection," from our aunt, who, the previous summer, had sent her niece three vegetable-shaped veggie scrubbers as a birthday present. she thought it was pretty funny- so funny that she tried to sneak it into my suitcase when i left, but it was quickly discovered and placed back in her utensil drawer (waaaay back so as not to be found for awhile.)

thus began the great potato peeler exchange tradition.

january 2004. alas, the potato peeler is found in the waaay back of the drawer before i can make my escape to champaign. i found it in my luggage three months later when i was packing to go to the workshop in OK.

and here's where it's been since to the best of my recollection):

• i put it in the linen drawer at grand street where it stayed for a week; she put it back in my suitcase on my way back through town after spring break.
• i hide it somewhere at grand street and leave for poland, expecting to find it while unpacking in krakow, but no; she put it underneath the folded-down backseat of my car and, being that i usually kept the saab in truck-like readiness with the back seats inoperational, i didn't find it until a few months later when i had some backseat passengers.
• i stick it in a purse that matt gave her for christmas and it surprises her christmas morning; she leaves it in the bottom of my yarn basket to be found weeks later when rummaging around for red yarn.
• i make an emergency trip back to springfield and, while there, get some books on tape from the library for the drive back to champaign. i send the tapes back to grand street for jenny to return them to the library and mail the peeler along with them; she.... i can't remember how i got it back that time, cause-
• next time i'm in springfield i stick it in the garden so that when she starts digging in the spring she'll find it, wa ha ha. but she doesn't plant a garden till late that year and i get impatient and practically have to show her where it is to put the peeler back in play
• she lazily puts it in my purse as i'm leaving for colorado. i find it a block away from the house and we stop by the news-leader, where i leave it in a sealed envelope at the front desk. she calls ten minutes later LIVID.
• and gets her revenge on my next birthday. she visits in colorado, leaves, and i spend the next week looking through my scant belongings at my dad's condo to find the peeler. no peeler. a few weeks later, ed goes to springfield for something and returns with some 'extra' birthday present she 'forgot' to give me. i get: measuring cups, a little elsey statue, and a necklace box, oooooo, she got me JEWELRY, how NICE- but no, it's the peeler.
• i go to england, taking the peeler with me. plans for it are unknown.
• jenny visits england and i FORGET to give it to her. i had a great scheme of leaving it in a museum, part of the collection at the british museum....
• but instead i wait till her wedding shower and sneak it in with some utensils given by my dad.

and now..... she has possession. she says i'll find it when i establish residence somewhere, which means it's in a box or... somewhere.



example #2:
yesterday i received a notice in the mailbox that we'd received a package, come get it from the manager's office. but drat, the office was closed, so i spent the whole day in quiet anticipation of what the package might be. just had a birthday... just sent out a request for surprise packages.... who sent me what?? oh, the possibilities! so i get home from work, head straight to the manager's office with note in hand and, hoorah! it's for me! could've been for ed, he just had a b-day, too. but no! it's for me! i open it to find.... "grow a birthday cake", one of 24 in a series of, that's right, "grow your own" toys. not exactly what comes to mind in a grow your own series. it's a little cake-shaped pellet that you put in water and, yee-haw, 3 days later, expands 600%. then it's.... nothing. a big, spongy, fake birthday cake. i guess she thought it was cute, but i much prefer real cake that wasn't made in china.

guess i just kicked the gift horse in the mouth and, as karma will have it, am doomed to receive nothing for a long time. my aunt has sent useful things, as well- for example, an authentic alaskan chopping... thing. it has a name but i can't think of it. it looks truly dangerous but will surely come in handy once i get it out of storage and into my kitchen.

perv trackers in action!

here they are, hard at work. notice f-stop second from the left.
(i stole from the denver post)

perv tracker team

people get paid to sit around all day and wait for a van to drive by that may or may not have an insane, didn't-do-it, ramsey confessor inside. of course, the van's windows are tinted, so no one knows who's inside- could be empty.

people get paid considerably less to harvest delicious vegetables that can be consumed and provide energy to a person. consuming television shots of a van provides nothing.

grump.


today i visited one of the last remaining original-use buildings of downtown denver- the rocky mountain seed company. it will soon be razed to be replaced by some highrise monstrosity (with a view of the mountains) and downtowners will no longer walk past the daily reminder that food has a source in nature, not in mcdonalds. the walls inside were lined with nice wooden cabinets and oversized card catalog-style drawers to hold seeds, which i liked. they're taking the old school cabinets with them to their new location in suburbia, though. apparently it's the most oft-asked question about their coming move- "what's gonna happen to the cabinets?" ...reminds me that i'd always planned on stealing an abadoned card catalog cabinet from the UIUC library. there were several in the ghostly hall that led to the history library- must go back.... ok, to any chambana people that might be reading this, consider this an official "suggestion" (read: imperative) for your next late night quad outting. mentos explosion was a good one, but theft is better! also, inspired by the recent success with getting a gift i'd jokingly asked for, i would like everyone to know that i've always wanted a wall-mounted pencil sharpener, like the kind in elementary school. nice sharp pencils.

now, go forth and acquire scholastic relics for me!

farmer dan

here's what it looks like when i drive home after the rain.


so i met farmer dan today. an okie hippie. we went out to pick two bins of melons and ended up with five, not through some over-achieving maneuver to get more melons than really needed, but because i couldn't get dan out of the melon patch, even though it was 6:30 and we were clearly tired and ready to GO HOME. noooo, dan's a talker and talked his way up and down each melon row telling me about golden gophers (no, not a trophy prize for gopher sports, but a particularly shitty type of melon that wyatt has planted for two years in a row) and full slip and half slip and clowns at the farmer's market. every other melon he picked was overripe, so he would lift it above his head and throw it (with an un-hippie sort of violent zeal) on the ground so it would bust and not be mistaken for a good melon again. i took over melon-busting duty to try to hurry him up, but it didn't work and we ended up with five bins of melons. which is fine. just... come on, dan, 6:30.

i then made the mistake of getting in dan's car, "the sooby", for a ride back to my truck so i could get the hell off the field and back to the farm stand to drop off the melons. farmer dan's subaru might be farmer dan's home. we put the melons bins on top of what appeared to be a nesty sleeping space in the back then climbed into the front, which was some kind of farm trash repository covered in some serious grime. and then a miracle of conversation occurred: in the span of no less than four minutes we went from discussing how the melons smelled really good (a big improvement over the usual smell of his car, said HE, not me) to how he pissed his pants once in a traffic accident. i'm not sure how the transition went down from melon to involuntary pissing, but it did, and just as he admitted this embarassing truth we arrived at my truck, so i had to get out of the soob, unload my melons, and bid dan a farewell, hope you don't piss yourself on the way home.

birthday

it's been the coldest birthday ever. august 26th is traditionally a very hot, cloudless day, no matter where in the country i am. not today. i wore a sweater. unprecentented! i was outside all day in the cloudy cool, taking special pleasure in roasting (and eating) chiles because it provided some warmth. the owner of the new pizza place in the shopping center brought us about eight slices of pizza, i think because he felt sorry for the poor girls sitting out in the cold at the farm stand, and i slapped a chile on a piece and ignored a customer who was bitching about the price of organic peaches. this was the extent to which i spoiled myself on my birthday and am consequentially very tired and unable to write much more in sentence form. switch to bullets:

how the fuck do i use bullets, there's no formtting option using safari..... erg. fine.

jenny got me the edition of huckleberry finn illustrated by thomas hart benton. i called her one day from the bistro after buckels mentioned that such a book existed to tell her, mostly in jest, "if you're ever stuck for a present to get me, here's a cool idea." i didn't think she actually remembered. that jenny.

i also got a pair of high quality bose HEADPHONES from ed.

without headphones

i have made ye grand purchase of a magical cable that connects my computer to the stereo, thus rendering my need for headphones ob-so-lete. no more. i will now be out of my head and back to the world of speaker sound. it feels kind of lonely- the ear-cupped sound was comforting somehow. until.... my trusty pair of headphones died a horrible death my last day in the berkshires and, after contemplating drastic measures involving electrical tape and whatever utensil i could find in the house that would serve as a wire stripper (no tools to be found!), i decided to throw them away and be without my little headphone sanctuary until i got to colorado. my suitcase also broke- poor fucking design made the wheel collapse on malcolm x blvd, so i had to pull/drag the thing 10 more blocks, refusing to get a cab on some unknown principle that only resulted in me being exhausted when i arrived at my friend's apartment. why i was walking through harlem is also unknown. something about it not seeming as far as it was- until, of course, my luggage failed me. note the metaphor for my coming sea change.....

so now i'm listening to my music on real speakers. not my speakers- those are being babysat by piotr and i might never see them again- but hey, we can't have everything at once. stereo sound is a good first step.

toward. something.

the blogginess begins tonight, on the eve of my 29th birthday. a couple of christmasses ago i was given a challenge by my aunt- to write in a journal everyday of the year for a full year. she borrowed the idea from her grandfather, who accepted the challenge from his sister and kept to it with proper german diligence, even if he only wrote one word. "snow." my aunt gave me a nice journal which i faithfully wrote in three or four times before getting annoyed at the fact that i can't write as fast as i can type and abandoning it in the bottom of my bookbag. for my 29th year (or is it my 30th year- that always confused me.... i think it's my 30th year, oh god). for my 30th year i'm going to try to tap into that ancestral discipline and write something every damn day using this oh-so-modern medium (with an oh-so-stupid name. blog. i feel like i should stick my tongue out while saying it aloud. blah. blahg.)

ya. here we go.