Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

I'm officially pulling the trigger: the Eleven Assembled newsletter is now officially a go! Subscribers will receive a weekly write-up of eleven songs (nice round number): new, old, alternative, folk, whatever other genres sneak through my earholes and grab my attention—in short, whatever music I'm obsessing over that week. If you've gotten a mix CD from me in the last five years or heard the Sleight of Hand radio show when that was still a thing, you know what you're in for, and if not...well, it's free, so do as thou wilt, kind adventurer.

You can subscribe at the newsletter's signup page at http://tinyletter.com/ElevenAssembled. I plan to have the first email and the first eleven songs out on Wednesday. Hope to metaphorically see you there. (Note to gows: TinyLetter automatically archives everything. Score!)

Getting a feel for public interest before I sally forth:

I've been missing doing a radio show lately, especially because I've been accumulating stuff that I'm dying to introduce people to (as is my wont). Unfortunately my work schedule doesn't fit any of the available airtime slots at the Internet station I was on, and my blogging track record means an mp3 blog would probably crash and burn. However, I have an idea: a Spotify playlist, updated weekly, consisting of whatever songs I would be playing on a radio show if I had one, and accompanied by an opt-in email newsletter with liner notes for each song to stand in for DJ patter.

Does this sound like a viable plan? Would you be interested in subscribing to either playlist, newsletter or both if I went ahead with it? Thoughts?

Behold, I am Slug. Sleep was not in the cards for me last night as I was hanging with kids and grandkid in western MA, where there was a lack of needed air conditioning and a two-year-old with a fondness for kicking me in the ribs. I followed it up with a burrito for dinner that had some sort of personal vendetta with my GI tract that I don't have details on, and so yes, a Slug I am. rain_herself, meanwhile, is dealing with some horrible coughing thing that has decided to make her stop breathing from time to time, which she can battle with prescription medicines that work great at making her forget any and all problems due to sleeping through them. It's Jim Bob's House o' Slug, is what I'm saying. We're dealing by couch-forting it in the guest bedroom, lounging on pillows and keeping the Chips Ahoy within arm's reach.

Still, there is much to be happy about:

• I finally submitted a crossword to Will Shortz at the New York Times for the first time in years, and I just heard back: it's been accepted for publication. Cue the confetti and Dixieland jazz! I had walked away from crossword construction because I felt like I couldn't make it work, but this has gifted me with the will to carry on with the hobby a while longer. It's my first ever themeless sale, too, which was my main goal for the longest while. (Themeless puzzles have a lower word count maximum, 72 for a 15x15 grid as opposed to 78 for a themed one, which makes them a throbbing pain in the arse to complete well.) It'll be a Saturday run most likely, with a date to be determined closer to publication.


• Murder Ballads tech rehearsal with cluegirl went swimmingly. We both broke out the effects pedals to go with the amplification we were working with, and it was one of those rare moments when I actually felt like the rock star some people joke about me being. There's a song that's going to be on our next album called "The Call" (we do it in concert these days) that we did up with guitar and bass electric pedals and a rock drum loop that...just...yeah, lemme bottle that, would'ja?


• Speaking of Murder Ballads, we're confirmed for a performance at Arisia this January. Hope to catch you all there!


• Going back a few weeks, I went to karaoke here in Providence with felisdemens, we_happy_few, mianathema, and He Whose LJ Name I Don't Know But Who Requires Mention Because He Did NIN's "Closer" With a Hand Puppet. I did two, "A Girl Like You" by the Smithereens and "Flathead" by the Fratellis, and didn't lose consciousness once. I never expected to hear "Nessun Dorma" in a bar, much less hear it done well. A good night.

Back to work tomorrow, where we're still weathering the aftermath of the new post-merger reorganization charts. I still have a job, so...yay?

With any luck, I'll be done with this ask me anything deal just in time for St. Patrick's Day! So, forging ahead, fairytaleguise asked me the following:

The scariest film you've ever watched?

Unfortunately, I'm kind of the wrong person to ask this one, because as some readers of this will attest I don't really do horror. I have a standard answer as to why, but the more I ponder the question the more I realize that the actual answer isn't quite what I'd thought. For the longest time it broke down to two parts:

1) Being scared isn't fun for me. True that, but considering the number of "20 scariest scenes of all time" YouTube videos I've voluntarily watched over the years, I don't think this one is as true as I'd assumed. Yes, my hands might be over my eyes, but I'm doing the peer-between-my-fingers bit.

2) I have a low tolerance for gore. Also true, rather more of an issue, and the principle I use when asking friends if I should go see X movie, but there's a general assumption that my gore tolerance threshold is a lot lower than it actually is. Blood, for instance, doesn't bug me in the slightest (Kill Bill Vol. I, which single-handedly kept the squib business in the black for years after, was a breeze for me). Viscera are much more hit-or-miss in terms of being able to deal, but if that sort of thing pops up unexpectedly I either cringe hard or just close my eyes, then keep going—I made it all the way through Shaun of the Dead with no issues, and even after the one scene I found excessive for my tastes, my reaction at worst was, "EWW! That was excessive!" Similarly, the cat scene from Dogtooth made me wince, but the rewatch went fine. Aside from a few hard-limit squicks like cannibalism, I have the feeling blaming my horror aversion entirely on gore is missing the mark a bit.

Which brings us to the only-recently-realized 3) Torture and excessive cruelty will drive me out of the room. Not that people are injured and dying, but that they're injured, dying, and terrified, and it's met by sadism or (worse) indifference. This is the bit that I cannot get around, and it's the one that annoys me no end, because it not only keeps me from most if not all horror, but a bunch of other stuff as well. It's why I haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth or more than the first three minutes of Slumdog Millionaire or even flippin' Deadpool. It's why I'm the only person in my office who'll have nothing to do with Game of Thrones. As a film lover, knowing that there are whole swaths of great films that I'll never see because of this one bit of crawliness bugs the living pudding out of me.

Okay, so after all that blather, I never did answer the original question. I do occasionally watch horror if it's interesting-looking and not torture porn or notoriously nasty, and whether I find it especially frightening is largely context-dependent; take, for example, my attempt to watch The Shining at midnight alone with the lights off. (I didn't make it.) In that capacity, I think the winner is Aliens, because during the scene where Ripley and Newt are trapped in the closed lab with the alien spawn scuttling about somewhere unseen, my then-wife Kristi decided to affectionately brush the back of my neck with her fingernails. I full expect that her continued non-murdered breathing existence earns me at least a year off of purgatory.

Also, I really want to see The Witch. Just putting that out there.

Want to ask me something? By my guest!

Look at the clock calendar! It's time to start answering questions from the "ask me anything" post of two weeks ago! meowmensteen asked me this:

Do you have any awkward childhood photos you can share?

Hoo boy. Okay, first of all, by "awkward childhood photos," you mean "childhood photos," because I was a goober of epic proportions for a desperately long time. And yes, of course there are photos out there, but nothing in digital format; I do have a few photo albums that go all the way back, but they're packed up and not easily accessible at the moment. So I'm left with Facebook photos posted by others, which only go back to high school but which, I think, illustrate the problem a little too well:



This was taken at the wedding of my friend Tanya, seen here with me and our pal Aaron. I'm the middle school LINUX programmer/serial killer on the left, the one with the half-assed Ohio Congressman hair part, the waffle-sized glasses and that borrowed freedom-of-speech test case of a tie. I was 19, people. I was nineteen years old when this picture was taken, an age when I was a legal adult and really should have known better. The fact that I had any friends at all to take the photo with in the first place is a testament to the eternal human something or other, because my first reaction on seeing me back this is always "...oh, you poor thing...."

So, there you have it. I like to think I do a little better nowadays. Perhaps not better enough.

More answers to follow. Also, I'm still taking questions! Hit me up!

What will you forgive yourself for today?

mcmurphy79 has leveled the dare, and as I am at the moment bored off my tuchus, I say what the hell. Cutting and pasting from her post:

"I've been pretty shit at LJ. So........... Ask me any question(s), however many you want, and I'll answer them in subsequent entries. I'll let this run for a few days or a week, so ask me as many questions as you want about anything you want."

(My additions: Replies are screened. I will answer all questions, but I reserve the right to filter said answer if I feel said question is not for public consumption.)

My feet are planted and my loins girded. Have at me.

So it would appear that I'm dealing with a bout of depression. Swell.

The weird part is that I didn't even really notice until recently. My past bouts with the D-word were of the all-encompassing, flesh-eating variety that we all know and fail to love. The last truly serious one lasted for about a year, and only ended with some superhuman patience from those close to me and the most literal force of will I have ever applied to my emotional state. This round looks nothing at all like that one did, or the one after my last divorce, or the one back in high school; my lows just don't seem to get that low anymore. But when you notice that you're not talking to people or doing things, which you've been blaming on being too tired from your long commutes except that now your self-awareness Clippy icon is pointing out that you haven't typed "Hi!" in that friend's chat window because you're afraid of hello...well. Shit. Wasn't counting on that one.

So yes, I'm working on improving things, and yes, there will be a therapist, and yes, I'm keepin' on keepin' on, and as stated, no, it's not even close to as bad as it could be; my main response to the discovery has been, "...huh. That 'splains some things...." I just wanted to pop in here and raise my banner for reckoning's sake, in the hopes on creating some sort of inertia. Also, I missed my 14-year LJversary last week, which I shall file under the heading of "a drag, man" and carry on

Also also, apologies for my sporadic presence over the last month. What'd I miss?

Lately I've been trying to step up my clothing game, way later than I should have. Up until recently my personal style has been similar to how I wear my hair, i.e. "whatever requires the least amount of time and resources" (not incidentally, my last trip to a hair salon was during the Bush administration). So we're talking a lot of T-shirts and jeans, maybe a casual ill-fitting button-down or a pullover of some sort if it's cold. Those who know me know what I'm talking about; those who have dated me are probably shaking their heads sadly, thinking, "Gods, if only I could have helped that poor man...." Then Prince died, which was my wake-up call that life is far, far too short not to let one's colors fly, as it were. O Purple One, may we ensure that you have not died in vain.

So there's been some mild-to-moderate experimentation with my work attire. Nothing too blingy or too Vegas: a jaunty vest here, a blazer over a Dresden Dolls T-shirt there, variations on stuff that I'd worn for special occasions but not for casual office-squatting. I even put on a tie or two voluntarily, which I promise you is like a feral cat bringing you a leash in its jaws, begging you to tie it up so it can't chase the mousies. But yesterday was more of a terra incognita: I wore suspenders. Black ones, nothin' schmancy, over a lavender shirt with the sleeves rolled just so, holding up black khakis. They looked good, but I rapidly learned that suspenders are a lot more physically and emotionally complicated than I'd considered. For instance:

1) They're harder to get into than they look. There's a bit of a civil engineering problem involved in clipping them into place, and one where you can't see and can barely reach at least half of the operation.

2) I keep forgetting that suspenders aren't neckties, in that they have an actual purpose. This was the first time in recent memory that my pants didn't migrate from my actual according-to-Hoyle waist to somewhere around my pubic bone over the course of the morning.

3) I also discovered that the placement of those clips is verrrry important, especially in the front. At first I had them set in too close to the middle, and although it was reasonably comfortable it looked...well, wrong, in a way I couldn't put my finger on. Moving each of the two front clips three inches further out toward the pockets pretty much fixed it; it was the difference between looking like a jaunty but confident mature adult, and looking like the banjo player for a band called something like Stubby McGee & the Dusty Bottom Chicken Pickers.

4) The big thing I realized is that unlike some clothing choices (like jeans, say, or Converse sneakers, or even the aforementioned necktie), the meaning and value of suspenders changes according to the physical characteristics of the person wearing them. Suspenders on a thin man mean something different than suspenders on someone who's not. Same for young man vs. old man, or for man vs. woman for that matter. All these meanings are valid, but you can't help but notice the disparities if you're just learning how to dress yourself with care and discover your own style. When I was a strapping young buck [read: acne-plagued teen with a ground shrew's metabolism], I would occasionally wear them and find them charming and quirky and snappy. Now, though, I'm 45 years old, 240 pounds, and have a full beard that's greying at the edges—not the same story at all. When I got to work yesterday morning, I had the image of 19-year-old Adam in my head, and it was completely at odds with the guy in the men's room mirror, who looked like he should be the evil sheriff in a '70's exploitation flick with a muscle car on the poster.

The real problem, of course, is that this is all stuff I should have started thinking about 25 years earlier. I could have created a style that could evolve along with me, growing and mutating over time instead of being Scotch-taped together out of some misplaced fear-of-death panic flail mode. Then again, it's all a blank canvas and nothing is truly off limits, so I have the fun that comes with infinite possibilities. Whatever. I still have some thinking to do about the suspenders (not that I haven't already overthought them), but I'm pretty sure I'll wear them again. And yes, I'll get a photo next time.

Here's something to make longtime readers of this LJ blanch over lost time: last Friday, Abbey graduated from high school. No, I don't know what happened. I certainly don't recall ever consenting to be the father of a high school graduate, but there you have it. When I started this blog, she was five, feisty and falling in crush over an Elvis impersonator, and now she's 19, feisty, and falling in crush with non-Elvis impersonators, and more's the pity. The ceremony was basically every graduation ceremony since time immemorial, and yes, I did get a lump in my throat despite my belief that I was immune; she had more than a few obstacles getting here, but by gods she made it. She waited until after the marching was over and the hugs began to start crying. I whispered, "You can do this" as I pulled her in tight, because now comes the really hard part. My one glimmer of hope is that she at least knows that. I'm trying not to be scared for her. I'll do a full catchup on the young'uns soon, but for now join me in wishing her luck.

After the tassel-flip and the photo opportunities, I headed straight to Troy for a Murder Ballads rehearsal-and-business weekend. The rehearsal part was perhaps a bit lighter than usual (although we as per usual ended up adding stuff to our repertoire despite vehement insistence that we weren't going to do that), but glory of glories, I think we can at long last say our second album is at least provisionally under way. Our weekend accomplishments include:

• finally deciding on a title for the thing, The Ash Grove, continuing our tradition of naming albums after murder ballads we don't actually play


• hammering down a target 13-song track list, with a handful left over for a couple of promotional EPs


• having our first meeting with Joel, our producer, and playing the aforementioned songs for him for the first time, with arrangement concepts


• spitballing ideas for the crowdfunding campaign to make it happen (yes, we're doing another Indiegogo; yes, I'll be shilling hard again)


• conceptualizing a Murder Ballads songbook (watch this space)


• eating Buffalo wings and dark chocolate (not simultaneously) because creative process

With any luck, we'll have this thing out long enough before the Apocalypse to actually sell a couple of copies. Given that the two-hour drive between her place and mine has become a three-hour drive, we make no promises.

Well, it's official: I did something to my back. I don't know what, and I don't know how, but ever since that last post on the subject I've felt like if I were to lift my shirt you'd see the hoofprints of the donkey who punted me in my sleep. It's...just...ow. Since rain_herself also has an ongoing lower back malaise thingy, we are for now the Sacred House of the Lumbar Pain Fandango. Trust me, this is not the sort of shared experience you want to have with your significant other. As I've mentioned, Andrea has surplus Flexeril, whose name comes from the Latin for "your alarm clock is not up to the job, Sparky." Even though I'd been trying to avoid chemical comas I gave in and took another one last night, which is why I didn't manage to drag my mortal flesh out of bed until 11 hours later, around the time I was supposed to be at work starting my second cup of complimentary coffee. I anticipated this for once by bringing my work laptop home so I could get work done without endangering lives with my barely-controlled vehicle. Yay, salaried positions that allow for remote labor! (I have my first-ever chiropractor appointment on Monday. The place came well-reviewed, but the smile the doctor is wearing on his webpage photo hints that he might enjoy his job a little too much. Wish me luck.)

EDIT: So apparently one of the side effects of Flexeril is overly compund sentences and two-dollar vocabulary. Oh, yay, I've discovered William Faulkner in pill form.

To celebrate the five bucks I just dropped to LJ to get my icons back along with access to the polling function, I'm dusting off the catch-up poll I do every now and again, mostly again. (I actually haven't done this in over a year, but it feels too soon because it's only a page back in my posting history. Ehh, c'est la fromage.) If you have a moment and are inclined to cotton to my ongoing nosiness, please feel free:


Thanks. Hope everyone's having a magnificent day.

First off, hello and a flappy hand-wave to everyone here from belenen's friending frenzy! I have to say, that post has achieved the miraculous: it got me to spend more time in LJ in two days than I've spent in any given two months since 2014 or so. I've got that lobe of my brain back that scours experiences for stuff to write about, something I've rather missed.

Which makes it unfortunate that I spent my holiday weekend doing precisely fuck-all, plus or minus a laundry load or two. Equally unfortunately, my three days of slack took the form of lounging/bent double against my stately imperial cushion wad in the guest bedroom, alternately doing the aforementioned LJ stuff and wondering what the Hades they've done to Kingdom of Loathing in my absence, which means my lower back is no longer speaking to me. I took matters in my own hands and asked rain_herself for one of her Flexeril tablets, a handy tool for both alleviating body pain and inducing drooling stares into the middle distance. This is great and all, but I realized I might have made a mistake when I remembered that I was also breaking out into hives due to the heat. Usually I treat those with allergy meds. Usually.

rain_herself spotted the problem, too. "Oooh, what happens if you take Benadryl after a dose of Flexeril?" she asked, a little too enthusiastically. "Would you ever wake up? Or would you just, like, sleep until you die? Or...OR...would they cancel each other out and leave you hypermanic all night, and if they do CAN I VIDEOTAPE IT?" My wife, ladies and gentlemen. To have and hold and all that.

And having typed that, the Flesklorillllmrfl (as people call it once it's kicked in) is now doing its thing, so I shall surrender the keyboard for the night. Happy hunting, comrades. Also, mrrrflglrmblrf.

So! Iceland! My procrastination has effectively scrubbed any sort of narrative through-line of the trip from my brain, so I'm going to try something different, i.e. a Lessons Learned sort of affair, presented in multiple parts because holy gravy boats is this going to be long. Here goes:

Overnight flights are cheaper! You do, however, pay with your soul.
Our flight on WOW Airlines (yes, it's the actual no-frills Icelandic carrier, and no, we didn't die, even though our plane was named Freyja) was leaving in the evening, and arriving at 4 a.m. local time five hours later. No problem, thought we! We can nap on the flight and be only somewhat sleep-deprived for our first day! Yeahhh, about that: sleep on the flight was not so much, thanks to adrenaline and the fact that our flight skirted far enough above the Arctic Circle that night didn't actually happen. This meant that Narcolepto Boy and Vague Unfocused Stare Girl arrived at the hotel before our room was ready and the complimentary breakfast was even fully served, so out we went to stagger around the streets and hills of Reykjavik, which we only experienced subliminally. We finally ended up flopping on a bench near the hotel front desk and leaned against each other slipping in and out of consciousness, being told that our room wouldn't be ready for another 3 hours. I finally went up to ask if in the name of the gods there was some way we could hurry things along.
"I'm sorry," I was told, "I know you're tired, but because you're only staying for one night we can't really move anyone else around."
I blinked at her. "We're here for a week."
She blinked back. "Oh. What's your name again?"
I told her.
"OH! Yes, your room's been ready for a while now. Here's your keys! Sorry about that!"
The subsequent shared coma proceeded according to plan.

Location, location, location.
We stayed in the annex of the Hotel Leifur Eiríksson on Skólavörðustígur (that's easy for you to say) in the heart of Reykjavik. The room was smaller than my college dorm room, the shower was just a shower with a curtain and a drain in the floor of the bathroom (more on the shower situation later), but man, did we love our hotel—partly because of the daily free breakfast, but mostly because when we walked out the main entrance, this was the view:

That massive hunk of Freudian symbolism is Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavik's one big recognizable Statue of Liberty-level landmark, and we could have thrown Frisbees at it from where we were staying. We were also two blocks from the nearest coffeehouse, five from the bars, and an easy stroll to just about everywhere we wanted to go. We couldn't have picked it any better, so a solid high-five to you, Travelocity folks, and we even forgive you for originally trying to corral us next to Keflavik Airport for the week. (The one problem with the room: no blackout curtains, which is an issue when dusk isn't until the late-night talk shows would be kicking in back home. A sleep mask will be your best friend.)

They know you're coming.
You may have noticed that Iceland has crossed over the Hip Tourist Destination tipping point, and for better or worse they are fully aware of that fact. By gods, they want your tourist dollar, especially in the aftermath of the economic collapse of a few years ago, so here, enjoy this decorative object emblazoned with a puffin, fine sir or madam! As I mentioned, Skólavörðustígur is a street that cuts through the center of everything, and it's loaded with shops and cafés and other groovy places to stop in, but they're definitely angling for the out-of-towners, with mostly-English signage and self-consciously local offerings. Expensive, of course, but we went to the regular Saturday flea market down by the harbor, where the volcanic stone necklaces are $15 a pop and not $150.

Everything you've heard about the showers is true, and for that, I'm sorry.
So about those showers: yes, they really are nasty. If you haven't heard this bit, Iceland is structured around geothermal everything, which is why heating is the only thing on the island that isn't wincingly expensive. Unfortunately, while the drinking water is exquisite and pure, their hot water is taken from the ground fully heated and passed on directly to you, heavy sulfur content and all, which means you're basically showering in what smells like a bowl of leftover hard-boiled eggs just farted on you. You do get used to it in time, but there's still that moment of hesitation when you try to decide if maybe you can just live with your own flop sweat for another day or two. (On the other hand? My hair has never felt more luxurious and my face cleared up for the first time in 35 years. We picked up some sulfur soap when we got back. It smells like adventure!)

There's some amazing Icelandic music out there, but you have to look for it.
The first song I heard in public once we'd landed in Keflavik was "Fisherman's Blues" by the Waterboys. That's what the incidental soundtrack for the rest of the trip was like: Roxy Music, Guns and Roses (I heard "Sweet Child o' Mine in two different bars ten minutes apart), loads of 80's pop in both American and British flavors. All that said, Iceland has an amazing music scene if you're willing to go hunting for it. My advice: run, don't walk, to 12 Tónar, a record shop with an associated record label on the oft-aforementioned Skólavörðustígur, with listening stations, comfy couches, and a generous selection of Icelandic bands to test-drive:

That's me (photo by rain_herself), listening to Mammut's CD Komdu Til Min Svarta Systir, which I ended up taking home. Give it a listen if you have the means.
(Incidentally, we also took in some Icelandic TV during a bit of downtime, which was much the same: subtitled American sitcoms from the '90's and British sporting events, with the occasional Serious Icelandic Political Talk Show. Also, they don't believe in organizing their cable channels coherently, which is the only reason I can figure why Hustler TV was sandwiched between Nick Jr. and the Disney Channel on the dial.)

Coming up in Vol II: The food.

I emphatically approve.



friending frenzy: active LJ friends!

We went to Iceland. We came back from Iceland. And ye gods, do I want to tell you all about Iceland, because dude, Iceland.

I seem to lack the capacity, which is seriously cheesing me off.

I mean, I can do the teal-deer version—REYKJAVIK COOL, WATERFALLS PRETTY, FOOD EXPENSIVE, HALLGRIMSKIRKJA TALL, SHOWERS SMELL FUNNY, DID ME MENTION REYKJAVIK WAY COOL—but we're talking about my first voyage outside the US (I've never even been to Canada), and it's to this land of aching alien beauty. It needs something more, and I can't seem to do it. Part of that's the fault of my brittle tissue-paper-thin attention span, but I think it's more a matter of how does one even tell this kind of story? There's not really much of a narrative thru-line so much as a series of random adventures with a southern coast side trip centerpiece, so there's not much sense in trying to put it all in novelette order. This leaves me with doing another frickin' list, which seems to be the only format I'm capable of writing in these days. Seriously, looking back at my last several posts, you'd think I was getting BuzzFeed royalties. Blessed Zeus, save me from myself.

So here I am, composing the most molar-grindingly boring-ass blog post of all, the "I'll write more soon" placeholder (is that ever anything other than the author lying through an orifice to be named later?) until I figure out how to do this. What do you think? Another damn list? What?

In the meantime, Reykjavik cool! Waterfalls pretty! All that other stuff!

After much cussing and many post-box-lugging ibuprofen tablets, the move from Worcester to Providence took place this Saturday just passed, and as per usual there are too many things to write about. So pardon me while I spitball my feelings about the new place and its surrounding environs:

1) Let's start with the important stuff: we now have a dishwasher.
2) And a gas stove.
3) And a claw-foot tub. People, I can't even.
4) Tangential to bullet point 3: shower curtain feng shui for a clawfoot tub is an interesting challenge. If you're not careful about side-blow, you can end up feeling like you're trapped within the nethers of a vinyl she-giant.
5) Man, Rhode Island weather doesn't kid around.
6) I still work in Lexington, so everyone asks about the commute first and the house second. To answer your questions, yes, it's a long drive, but not that much longer than it was from Worcester, unless there's weather (see #5).
7) From a two-room quasi-efficiency with a kitchen the size of an ironing board to the first floor of a house with three bedrooms and basement storage for the same rent and no extra parking fees, and we found it on the first try. I feel like we spent all our good karma at once.
8) Big Tony's: "Home of the Gangster Wrap." Yup.
9) #8 not to be confused with Uncle Tony's, which is "Home of the Plumpy." A good rule of thumb is never order a menu item that sounds like an Urban Dictionary sex practice.
10) I don't think I'll ever reach a point where turning a corner and seeing a gigantic dome doesn't freak me out a little.
11) Not only is there a Whole Foods, it's the local grocery. Never have blessing and curse fallen so closely together.
12) Totally gonna host a game night. Or a song circle. Or best yet, both.
13) We got in just before the late snow, so we now know well the Song of the Steam Radiators. I shall sing it for you now: FFFSHHHKXCHFFRXX SCREEEEEEE FWRRRSHHHHH
14) We've named the place Intermezzo, because we found the utterly perfect name for a home but because it's a little too perfect we don't want to use it until we buy a house someday. Intermezzo is a good name for Home for Now.
15) No, I'm not going to tell you the perfect name. I don't want to get fingerprints on it.
16) Because of #14, our first in-house entertainment was 1939's Intermezzo: A Love Story. It has one fantastic scene, cinematography by Gregg Toland, a very young Ingrid Bergman, and a lot of moments where you wish they'd just get over themselves.
17) We finally got a better mattress, and now need a footstool to get into bed.
18) We've also instituted a new "no electronics in the bedroom" rule in an attempt to unfuck our sleep cycles. This includes phones, so if you intend to call us up at two in the a.m., tough noogies.
19) The rule mentioned in #18 means we can't use our phone alarms, so we tried out the windup alarm clock we've had around, and promptly became so traumatized by its apocalyptic death knell that we started waking up 45 minutes early and refusing to go back to sleep because the alarm bell was going to pounce on us and devour our flesh. (We've rectified the situation.)
20) Found a can of St. Jude Thaddeus Spray in the basement. I'm guessing it's there to give your laundry that fresh Aramaic scent.
21) One of the three bedrooms is the master bedroom, one is the guest room, and one is going to be a yoga studio because we're tired of positions like Sparrow Slamming Knuckles into Coffee Table.
22) When Rhode Island's interstate highways want you to turn, by gods they will frickin' tell you.
23) Three packages claimed to have been delivered, and no sign of any of them. So much for leaving stuff on the porch.
24) Well, no, correction, the spice rack rain_herself's mom got us will be arriving on Saturday.
25) Already looked up the two best open mics in town, and they're both on Tuesdays. COORDINATE, people.
26) This will be the first weekend I've had off in roughly two months. I shall join the ranks of the Proud, the Unpantsed, and the Gratuitously Horizontal!

So! Come visit us! Seriously! An hour from Boston! Near many fine eating establishments! We're fun to be around!

Also? It's home. Grace be unto us all, it's home.

It's a weekend with the kids, which these days means an ongoing battle against torpor and inertia, especially where nearly-16-year-old Nik is concerned. To illustrate, I give you the following exchange from my last kid weekend:

Me: [standing in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal]
Nik: [entering] I'm hungry.
Me: [gestures around the kitchen] There's food.
Nik: But I don't know what to have.
Me: Well, you could have cereal.
Nik: But there are no clean bowls.
Me: ...riiiiight, and what precisely do we do about that?
Nik: I don't feel like washing a bowl.
Me: And whose issue is that, pray tell?
Nik: Can I use your bowl when you're done with it?
Me: Sure, but you're still going to have to wash it.
Nik: But you're having the same thing. I don't have to wash it AGAIN.
Me: [slowly and deliberately licks the entire inner rim of the bowl]
Nik: ...you did that on purpose.
Me: Yes. Yes, I did.

This morning, he texted me at 5:30 a.m. because he couldn't sleep—same as his sister did at 10 p.m. last night. I do not accept your "new normal," Universe.

A random trip through my synapses as I stretch out sybaritically in bed like Caesar Augustus in a Dresden Dolls T-shirt and gunmetal gray knit boxers:

• This thing where I wake up at 4 a.m. and then don't fall back to sleep has lost its allure. (I'd not be surprised if its allure got wrested from it at gunpoint in a dark alley.)


• I just got a refund check for 2¢. Mailed in an envelope with a 42¢ stamp, natch. Look, I'm not going to cash it, folks, so if you need to balance your books that badly, have your intern Steve chuck a couple of pennies in the little cup by the register at the Stop 'n' Go and we'll call it even.


• Strawberry Darrell Lea Soft Eating Licorice, man. Your life will change.


• Poor rain_herself is currently drowning in her own mucus right now. She is not happy. Earl Gray tea with a shot of Jameson, stat.


• Rehearsal weekend with cluegirl in Troy this weekend: a chance to remind ourselves of some things we may have forgotten. Like, y'know, guitars are the things with the strings and the big hole in the middle, right? (It may have been a while.)


• We caught the Oscars with theloriest, blank ballots and a coffee table full of snacks. I managed to see roughly 6.3 of the Best Picture nominees in advance this year, and although I would have loved to have seen Room walk away with it, I wasn't disappointed with how things turned out, even if I did and still do want to punt Sasha Baron Cohen squarely in his smugness gland.


• The living room contains many boxen. Tonight, the boxen are empty. Soon, they will be full. The circle of life begins anew.

Aaaaand that'll do. The pillow beneath my unkempt head swallows my resolve and my desire to continue looking at stuff. Catch you on the flipside.

So it's official: this April, we will be moving to Providence, Rhode Island. We've been talking about escaping our Worcester apartment for some time now; the apartment itself is fine, but the surrounding building and rental management company have each been doing their own special version of slow-motion implosion, marked by decrepit everything and surcharged everything else. Last straw came a week and a half ago, when the city cheerfully slapped "WARNING! DANGER!" signs on the doors of two of the quaint [read: old] elevators to our 10th floor abode, leaving one poor asthmatic elevator to do the work of three, which it does with the sort of sound effects you usually hear when trying to winch a stump out of the ground with a chain and an '89 Ford.

Meanwhile, in the midst of our discussions, rain_herself got offered a sweet two-year consortium internship in Providence, which took away our sole reason for staying in Worcester, so away we go. I still work in Lexington, and it might have been nice to get something in that area, but there's no way on any coil mortal or otherwise that we'd be able to afford it without resorting to a dice-roll roommate situation, so we started looking in and around Providence, a town we fell for last autumn during a restaurant crawl. Luckily, Andrea's Google-fu hit the jackpot: first floor of a house, three bedrooms, gas stove, clawfoot tub, on-site laundry, all for less than we're paying for the powder room-size alleged one-bedroom we're in now. There's gonna be a guest room. There's gonna be a library. If it sounds like I'm panting as I type this, it's because I am. Even better, even with its status as an ex-crack house from 20 years ago, it's only questionable-neighborhood-adjacent now, as opposed to our current actual questionable-neighborhood-entrenched situation in MA. (There was a stabbing in our lobby last autumn. Police tape and a cleaning crew. We're leaving now.)

Moving is not among my 98,000 favorite pastimes, but this time out I'm more than willing. Our landlord is an easy-rollin' kinda guy, the sort of private landlord trait that can go either way in the long haul, but at the moment is spectacular in that he's willing to buy the paint if we're willing to provide the labor. This has sent us into full-bore Decorator Mode, going all Christmas-catalog on the Sherwin Williams website picking colors. Andrea has more stamina for abstract design pondering than I do, but I must admit it's been fun playing the "Which do you like better for the bedroom, Jackfruit Sorbet or Bonobo Splendor?" game, at least until she hit the dreaded "Nothing looks good, I think we need to pick a different sofa" juncture, at which point I threw the couch cushions at her. We have pretty similar design tastes, though, and in the end I think we made some good choices. At least until tomorrow, when OMIGOD EVERYTHING IS HIDEOUS WE HAVE TO START OVER. Not sure which of us that'll be.

Anyway, yes, it's yet another State of the Union on our return labels, but it's not really any further from Boston than Worcester is, and they have more restaurants per capita than any other U.S. city. Plus we'll have actual, y'know, space. Anyone wanna come to a housewarming party in a few months?