I called Ian. It did not go well. Here’s how it went down.

Me: “Hey, Ian. Long time eh?”

Him: “That’s okay. So, there are some big changes coming up really soon.”

Me: “Yeah, I know. She’s due at the end of the month. It’s the final countdown.”

Him: “Huh? I was going to tell you about some changes with my job. I might be moving. What’s going on? Somebody’s due?”

Me: “Um, Lisa’s having a baby. Didn’t I tell you?”

Him: “You bastard. I’ll have to call you back.”

He hasn’t called me back yet.

Okay, first of all, I can’t believe I didn’t share the news with one of my very best friends. Second, I’m really surprised I haven’t talked to Ian in at least eight months. He usually calls me at least every two months if I don’t call first. At the very least I thought I’d left him a voice mail.

I’m a terrible friend. A real bastard.

More on the nursery…

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it has been a very weird week. last tuesday i took the red eye to nyc and met up with my family. we explored manhattan for a couple days. before we went i kept visualizing me, rushing on ahead, my mom right behind me, and my dad and sister, arm in arm, walking slowly and blocking the sidewalk, oblivious of the pace of new york. it wasn’t quite as cringe worthy as i’d feared, but the dynamic was definitely exactly what i’d anticipated. still, so nice to see family. nurturing despite the tensions that arise when a family of four, used to independence, ends up sharing a single hotel room. after manhattan we went up to white plains for my cousin’s wedding. it was ridiculously lavish, but truly lovely all the same and i had a wonderful time. there were a lot of emotional ups and downs over the week. my uncle j had a heart attack and had bypass surgery- of course, this was while the wedding craziness was going on and it was really strange to be pulled between the two. there was a good phone call during the wedding reception and my mom was finally able to relax for a couple hours. the aftermath has been her breaking the news to my gram and trying to figure out what the plan will be during my uncle’s recovery. i’m so grateful that he’s ok.

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now ill continue my bulletpoint list of my weekend.

• sunday was fairly uneventful, though we did take a boat cruise in the afternoon around the thimble islands. there is a big part of me that loves the idea of living on an island. as in, maybe 2 or 3 acres, with my house being the only one on there. most of the thimble islands have no electricity, which is even cooler. they do use solar a fair amount and i figure that if i could generate enough solar to power a couple of machines and i would be happy.
• sunday night was spent eating dinner with all the families at ‘the place’ which was a super cool outside grill place. you sit on stumps and get kebobs. tasty, unique and fun.
• dinner was followed by ice cream, which was followed by the graphic design house party. i had a conversation with a fine fellow named eric through the ice cream and party. he and i debated the merits of not drinking and the pros and cons of abiding to a strict ruleset for living life. as i am sure some of you are aware, i played the whole ’straight edge’ (or whatever label you prefer to give it) card for several (many?) years. casting this off of myself as well as finding moderation has been a great back and forth for me, so it was fun to debate it back and forth with someone who, in this respect, is where i put myself 10 or 15 years ago. (though eric, it turns out, is actually a year older than i am, which made the debate all the more interesting.)
• this conversation with eric led into one about his thesis work and my thesis work, where we found we overlapped. much like keren, eric does not like his photo taken. however, his entire thesis was about taking portraits of his classmates and documenting them all at this intersection in their lives. he tried to sell me on this contradiction by speaking about the tension it created. i played devil’s advocate and told him that tension like this can only go so far, because once you play that card once or twice, you have no way to escalate or move your work forward. i believe this and thinking that immersion is a far more interesting path to explore. so we discussed memory, documentation and how the very idea of experience is changing due to technology.
• i spoke to a guy named jayson, who lives in brooklyn. and directs the dog the bounty hunter tv show. talking about that was fun but it was completely sidetracked by:
• a couple from texas (the wife being the sister of a graduate) who love love love dawg. that conversation led to one about immigration. and that led to politics. entertaining this was perhaps my biggest mistake of the weekend, as i stood in the kitchen for at least an hour debating with them. it turns out he is a libertarian, which, as i have previously discovered, usually does not match well with my socialist tendencies. the conversation bounced all around, but generally came back to me wanting basic care and rights for all citizens, while he wants to provide nothing for anyone. oh and he wants a wall built between mexico and the us. this argument was nonsensical — he spoke about how other countries had walls, how walls somehow were some sort of defensive measure (though he never explained the logic in linking terrorist attacks to illegal mexican immigrants) and because ‘the vatican has walls’. it wasn’t a debate at all, because he never linked his points logically, he merely shot off bullet points that, while perhaps true, were completely unconnected to the point he was trying to make. he focused on the truths of ‘a’ and ‘b’ but could never link them together. one of the best was discussing the war, a back and forth so mind-numbingly stupid it deserves its own bullet point:
• i mention i think the war was a mistake. he, of course, disagrees. i don’t recall now what bullshit argument he used to justify the invasion, but he tries to convince me that leaving is not an option. that, back in ww1 and ww2, we fought for victory. and that is what we have to do now. i ask him how we deliver victory. his response? ‘kill everyone who attacks us.’ i attempt to explain that his suggestion is logical (and probably true) but that it doesn’t actually mean anything. how does that get us victory? how does that do anything, actually? he goes on to tell me that 1. the rules of engagement over there are skewed — we can’t attack people unless they attack us first. i attempt to point out that this is exactly what he just suggested. he backpedals and disagrees. i can only assume what he really means is that we should be on the offense then, killing anyone we can. who knows though? 2. he tells me that it isn’t our place to know the strategy for victory but he is confident someone knows it. i disagree again. and explain that it is our right to know, that knowing would inspire confidence in our leaders. he counters by saying that if he knew, he could call up the insurgents and tell them so they could be ready for us. seriously. i can’t believe i’m even typing this. i can’t believe i stood there to listen. i think i believed i could make a dent in his system, that i could make some small difference. i point out that strategy and battle plans are quite different. 3. he then launches into how all muslims are homosexual. this is where i had enough. he keeps going, explaining that muslims and eastern europeans and russians use rape to dominate soldiers and keep men in line. i am debating now between walking away and just letting loose on this guy. his wife appears then and untangles us. good timing. he wanders away and i talk to her.
• of course, this conversation revolves around two things: 1. that her marriage was rough for the first 3 years. until she went to church. and prayed. and learned that a wife’s place was to be submissive to her husband. that if she put her husband in a leadership role, he would excel. carter walked by at this point and actually thought she was kidding. she wasn’t. while i think it is fine for couples to work out some form of dominance between them, i think it is crazy to base these roles purely on gender — and purely on how gender relations are displayed in the bible. oh, and she is a phd. 2. she is upset that ‘every mexican immigrant who comes over here and has a baby on our soil costs us $10,000.’ i try the ‘what is the issue with someone trying to create a better life for themselves’ argument but it doesn’t fly. i point out that, at best, she pays pennies a year for these children. she concedes she had never thought about it like that. a small victory. her husband returns and we get swept up into a debate about the budget. then she chases him off again. i play card #3: ‘didn’t jesus show compassion in taking care of lepers and those less fortunate?’ she totally concedes again and says that i am totally right. i point out that paying pennies a year for this is just another form of tithing, which she has already said she does. i don’t know what i actually made a difference, as half her arguments were the ones her husband used on me earlier, but i like to believe that perhaps she will think a little more objectively in the future.
• that was totally draining to transcribe, but so dense that i wanted to get it down for posterity.
• then we danced and went home. it was 3am.
• monday was graduation, which was nice but a little anti-climatic, as most are. speeches, gowns, clapping, photos, names and more names, food and more pictures.
• more packing. from about 1pm until 9pm. ouch.
• asleep at 10 to get up at 3.30am to drive to jfk from new haven. as i said previously, this was really, to my body, the same as sleeping from 7-midnight and then getting up for the day.
• the plane from jfk was screwed up so after we boarded, we had to switch planes. the fun side of things was that the guy sitting next to me was reading graham greene, who i didn’t know until recently. and mike corrected this by getting me several of graham greene’s books for my birthday.
• somewhere in the weekend, i bought a lottery scratch ticket. won a dollar. used it to get another ticket. won 2 dollars. go 2 tickets. both lost.

all in all, not a bad trip out east, though i know my entire family wished that the free time we could have had was spent packing my sister’s apartment. i do feel a little vindicated, as i have been made fun of for years for doing the same thing in 2002 when i finished at vcu, before moving to la. this totally evens us out now which makes me feel a bit smug.

this was the first weekend, the first trip i have taken in a long time, where i was fairly relaxed. i spent last week doing odd tasks and cleaning and it really seems to have paid off in terms of my peace of mind. by the end of this weekend, i might just feel like my life has reassembled itself. i cannot stress to you how amazing this is to believe. my goal was to arrive in this space by summer. and it will certainly happen.

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chris rightfully chastised me for glossing over the bocci nazi, so i will rewind.

we sat at the end of one of the bocci courts and watched people play. this pair of girls were playing a couple. it quickly became clear that, to the guy half of the couple, this was no game. this was very very serious.

we started talking to the girls when they came down to our end, mainly to make fun of this guy. the girls had never played before, a fact lost on this guy. there were several points during the game where he actually grabbed the ruler to see whose ball was closer because he wasn’t willing to concede.

chris made up a german voice for him. i can’t do that accent, so i adopted a robot voice. (meg had asked me to see ‘grandma’s boy’ (which, by the by, is bad like ‘dude where’s my car?’) and that movie has a character who does a robot voice. i just saw it the day before, so it was fresh in my head.) we laughed at this guy’s expense for the entirity of the game, something like 30 minutes.

and then he lost to these girls. we laughed our asses off.

and then the girls were tired of playing and chris and i took over for them. and then we promptly lost.

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‘vacation’ almost over.

i flew out east for carter’s graduation and spent friday in nyc before training it up to new haven on saturday. three days there and now i am sitting in the jet blue terminal to head back home. ill spend today/tonight with jason, andrea and finley. i never switched my computer time to east coast…it currently reads 3:30am. carter drove us to the airport — we got up at 3.30am. east coast time. translated, i went to sleep at 7pm and got up at midnight. yeah, i’m going to be screwed up.

a lot to think about over the last 5 days since i last posted. the reason for a lack of updates revolves around the fact that new haven has very little in terms of wi-fi. or the internet, it seems. so a lot of writing in my notebook this weekend. ill see what i can do here in talking about the highlights:

• new york, as always, was great. (and as i type those words, miles davis comes onto my ipod, which seems somehow perfect.) friday was spent in this order: breakfast at good enough to eat with rachael’s family, a walk through central park where:
• we met tyghe jogging around the reservoir. seriously, i can’t go into the city anymore without randomly running into someone i know. it’s actually a really awesome thing but it happens enough now to freak me out.
• a quick taxi ride down to satellite records. we hadn’t been record shopping in a while and it seemed like a good way to spend the afternoon. it turned out though that we arrived at almost the exact moment dj culture, true electronic dj culture, died in new york. satellite sells mostly hardware now, out of their front room. the back room, the record room, the room that should be packed with djs looking for white labels when you are in there at 2pm on a friday afternoon was empty. there was 1 other person there. the shelves were about half empty and what was hanging up was motley at best. i didn’t think i would see the day that the klf’s ’shag times’ was hanging in a top spot there. i picked up 1 record, a house remix of ‘welcome to the jungle’. considering my great love for ‘appetite for destruction’, it seemed fitting it would be my last record from my one-time favorite record store. chris and i were shaken.
• so we found a bar in the village with 2 for 1 margaritas. of course, it turned out the happy hour was full of inane rules (like the special was only good at the bar and we couldn’t take the drinks out on their patio) and the owner seemed to be an asshole. but whatever. margaritas in the village, esp 2 for 1 ones is just the way to do things.
• we headed back to brooklyn and ate dinner and ended up at united, a pretty sweet bar — decorated like an old british study/library with several bocce ball lanes in the back. chris and i made friends with a couple of girls (who were there with their boyfriends) and then tyghe joined us for more beer and then we headed back to chris’ where i fell asleep.
• saturday was spent by having brunch across from chris’ place, training it to new haven and having dinner at carter’s friend bethany’s apartment.
• but everyone went home around 11 and i was still awake. so i decided to head out by myself and look for some adventure. and behold, adventure was found. i ended up finding the strip of clubs and bars near the new haven green. wandered into one of them, for 2 reasons: 1. no cover, 2. they were playing ’sweet home alabama’. got a beer and ended up next to a small group. the place was packed and one of the girls was looking for somewhere to put her gum. i offered the bottom of my beer glass, but it was too wet. so i found a receipt in my pocket. this led to some talking, some more talking and when they asked who i was drinking with, i said i was by myself. so they adopted me.
• there was a couple, josh and keri (the same girl who was trying to get rid of her gum), in this bigger group. i didn’t talk much to the other people, but josh, keri and i hung out the rest of the night. we all skipped to another bar, where we danced and took some random pictures:
  
• josh finds a receipt at the atm that lists someone’s checking account balance as $52,744.18. who does this? i mean, other than someone who doesn’t understand how things like interest and investing work.
• last call, josh buys all three of us a drink, keri, drunk, flashes us and we are off to an after-hours club. except on the way, keri (drunk remember?) says some things that, unsurprisingly, upset josh. the evening goes into a tailspin of sorts, after public urination in new haven green and keri mooning us. the two of them bicker. we trade email addresses, josh’s pals appear, tell me i should probably leave as the couple is ‘unstable right now’ and then eventually drive them home. i hang out long enough to make sure there is no drunk driving going on.
• i wander back towards carter’s, stopping at louis’ lunch and listen to some guy tell the best story: he is dating a girl, a nice girl. they drive 30 miles to new haven for dinner/drinks/pool at rudy’s. he sends the girl up with some money to the bar to buy them drinks. she takes the money. and then keeps walking through the door, gets into her car and leaves. this poor guy is left with no money, no ride and is 30 miles from home. it is also almost 3am now. he said a taxi would be 70 bucks and i was only eavesdropping on the conversation, so i wasn’t sure what i could do to help. (i had 10 bucks and my id, as carter convinced me to leave my wallet at home in case i got mugged.)
• i left and walked back. a couple of blocks later, there is a car alarm going off. i walk and walk towards it. and then realize there is someone in the car, with the alarm going off. then the alarm stops. then the car stops. i am up on it now and it pulls up to a stoplight about 30 feet from where it was parked. i keep staring, finding this all very odd. the driver notices me staring and i try to quickly memorize the license plate. the light turns and he pulls through it and then immediately over to the side of the street. i turn the corner and duck into the first alley and then walk through, coming out around the corner from where i went in. the car was gone. i call 911 and report a suspicious incident. the dispatcher tells me i dont need to stay, so i dont. its 3.30am.
• i’m also fairly certain i saw a bike get stolen. a guy is getting on a bike from a bike rack and as i walk up, was fiddling with chains. he couldn’t get some off of a different bike and i could swear he said to me ‘i’m going to come back and get that one.’ this actually happened before the car thing and, for some reason, made me laugh a little. though i suppose it isn’t actually funny.

i’ve been typing for 45 minutes now…and gotten through 2 days. the rest isn’t exciting, but it will have to wait a while. you’ll live.

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The enchanted trees and fluffy forest creatures are ready to watch over my baby…

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