First, woo hoo for four comments on “Brief Interlude.” Now I see why people do the whole reposting thing – it’s exciting to get other people reading what you write. Thanks to Mark for posting his pics; Thanks to Kate, who doesn’t have any idea who I am and is perhaps my first real visitor to the site [Kate, I played at Oberlin college in Ohio, I now go to the University of Oregon and play with a club team, Denial. I sure do know Bucky, I captained her freshman year!]; Thanks to Erica for promising to call, I’m looking forward to hearing your summer adventures and smiling at serendipity.
Which I need to do because I’ve been on a downward slope since leaving Vermont (for the visit, not since June). I’ll start with the story of Vermont, because it’s far more fun than the saga since.
Warning: This is a long post
THE STORY
I arrived after a long, but quite pleasant day of travel to find Seth waiting for me at the train station – a lovely surprise and much better than climbing the steep mile to his house with my two heavy bags. We got back to the house, watched a bit of Deadwood, and made a lasagna in a cast iron skillet while Stefan mowed the lawn and Colin went out to find Mark N. The evening was relatively quiet, preparing for the yardsale; Jeff joined us midway with freshly baked pies, and Colin stayed out at the bars all evening after finding the house empty during one of our errands.
We woke up early Saturday morning and went through the familiar ritual of bringing out everything to sell, and then trying to convince people that they’d want to buy the things that had been stored in the less than lovely shed all summer long. Towards the afternoon we went to the little league field to play a few rounds of double disc court, for which I had an uninterrupted loosing streak. Post DDC, we began grilling and partying, which as previously stated went smashingly well in the majority, with my usually gloomy iPod actually serving up a good deal of the dance party.
Sunday morning I had my pleasant brief interlude at the computer, went to Mocha Joe’s with Noah, then went back with the whole crowd of folks that had stayed at South Main. As the day progressed, folks floated away, until we drove Andy down to Springfield to catch his train. We ate pizza at the Red Rose, a Springfield institution, then headed to Amherst to watch The Illusionist, then grabbed drinks first at the Amherst Brewing Company, then at the Moan and Dove. Having lived close to there for a year, it was great to finally get to the Moan and Dove, which has very expensive imports of all sorts. I had a yummy Belgian Farmhouse beer, and in the process of deciding, tried a beer that tasted like white wine. Very nice to sit around the table with the boys drinking tasty drinks, never want that sort of moment to end.
But it does, and other good moments come. After some house clean up Monday morning, I visited Building Green for Monday staff lunch, where I picked up my new copy of Your Green Home, the book that Alex was writing while I worked there. It’s beautiful, and at least on preliminary glance looked to be chock full of good stuff. All the hard work I did on the bibliography will soon be up online, and the Islandwood case study is about to be posted. The office was full of energy and late summer sunlight. I stayed so long that I had to hurry down the hill to catch up with Tori, my former housemate. I picked up my mail and toured her new gardens, and then we went up to Pisgah, where we climbed up for the view to Monadnock, then down for a chilly skinny dip in Kilburn Pond.
Tuesday we loaded up a truck full of furniture and carted it to Leyden, Mass, the idyllic town where Colin’s parents live. Then Colin and Stefan and I went to the strawbale house Colin worked on this summer and got the first layer of plaster done in all the places it was still missing. The homeowners came back about a third of the way through our time there, and David, the husband/father came out and worked with us. I didn’t get to see Stefan’s strawbale, but it was cool to see how confident and knowledgable they both are about building these days. They’re applying to the Yestermorrow internship for this winter, and I personally think they’d both do very well there. We headed home, watched some Youtube, including my favorite video, Chris Bliss juggling to the end of Abbey Road. Noah came just as we were watching it to pick me up for bowling, which was great fun. The two of us shared a lane next to the whole Putney crowd, and I actually bowled very well, with two games in the 130’s and one 181! After bowling I went to the rennovated Weathervane with Mariah and Emyli for a drink, and then went home and crashed, exhausted.
Wednesday I finally got around to business, after another trip to Leyden. I arranged my hotel for Albany, closed my bank account, withdrew my shares from the coop, mailed myself some of the stuff I acquired on the trip, picked up a couple of cute new shirts, and visited Karamo. At the end of my errands I went to Mocha Joe’s and ran into Mark B, and we got to talk for a half hour before the boys came by. Then the four of us headed to Top of the Hill Grill, the local gourmet grill shack, for a tasty dinner, since the South Main kitchen was stored in Leyden. We hurried back to the house afterwards just in time for George to pick me up to go to Albany in his Prius.
There’s your extended summary of my fantastic Vermont trip, the kind of trip that makes you just really want to stay where you are. And this is where the Story turns into the Saga.
THE SAGA
When I checked into the Howard Johnson, late at night and a little befuddled, I scheduled my cab for the morning, headed out to my room, and got ready for bed. Early Thursday morning I awoke, got ready, checked out and caught my cab. But, I didn’t catch my plane, because I had scheduled my cab an hour late in my readiness for bed the night before. I saw it leave from the gate, turned, and wondered what to do. Luckily, Southwest is awesome and immediately rescheduled my flight through BWI, then Salt Lake, to Portland. So I called Herman to tell him of the change, forgetting that it was 4:00 AM in Portland.
So I had perhaps the longest day of travel in the whole trip, during which I caught a cold, lost my very expensive sunglasses, and had my luggage delayed. Boy was I glad to see Ruth and eat some of Herman’s tasty spinach pies that night.
The next morning when I picked up my luggage I got caught in accident traffic, but then got to Eugene before two. I immediately started to move and look for furniture. I headed to Springfield at three, and headed home by 4:30 having bought a mattress.
Saturday morning I continued moving, hit up about 15 yard sales, and had no luck finding reasonable furniture for my room. The queen sized mattress took up almost the whole room, and I just wanted cheap, repaintable furniture. I felt sick and alone – my computer couldn’t access the internet at my new house (we just got it going tonight), my phone had gone dead and I realized the charger was in Vermont. So I went to Best Buy, Target (where I squished my finger in the bathroom door), World Market, several “real” furniture stores, and finally home, without having made any progress. I searched online, ate a pitiful dinner, and went to bed.
This morning I went to the Flea Market, then went back to World Market and Target, again mostly unsuccessfully. So I spent a lot of money on organic groceries, went home, and got down to work on the IKEA website. After I meticulously found a set of furniture that would outfit my room for $250, all of which was available online and which matched reasonably well, I checked out, just to find that the shipping and handling would cost another $250. So, I decided that I’d be heading to the Seattle IKEA tomorrow.
So, now I’ll go to sleep since I’ll be driving 4.5 hours up and back to Seattle tomorrow, and shopping til I drop in between. But then, hopefully everything will be better when I return some order to my life, so I think it will be worth it…