on the fate of the kayack

my dad almost threw it out, but i saved it. worse comes to worse, we will give it a viking funeral next summer. but it's also priceless and should be preserved... it just won't live inside the lake house any more...

Yes, it should be persevered. As a testmeant to teenage alcoholism

but for the same reason it should fulfill its destiny as a symbol of fleeting, reckless youth by being burned in a blaze of glory, alcohol, and fireworks, and entombed at the bottom of the lake. or doused with beer, trampled by arron, and smashed onstage during a show.

Indeed. like a Lake-person ceremony. Put candles in it...we all kayak around it...then submerge it into the lake forever. Then chris falls off the canoe into the lake

maybe it'll be new year's, and we'll put it out on the ice and we'll light it and then sink into the hole, the grave, it melts/digs for itself with burning bacardi 151. as we salute it with whisky screams, our frosty breath sending smoke signals to potsam in the ionosphere...

my weekend

friday: hung out with e.w., errands, hung shelves. friday night, my wife and i go out to dinner while my parents house-sit and e.w. sleeps. my wife and i spend much-needed alone-time together.

saturday: exausting yard work, with lots of help from my dad, including: clearing out the gutters, moving large flower pots, trucking loads of heavy wet leaves, tying and untying knots with a big rope. night - home cooked meal from my mother in law. but not much relaxation, necessarily.

sunday: more yard work, including breaking stuff with a sledge hammer. i hung our "wedding contract" in a frame in our kitchen/diningroom. QT with e.w., including some guitar time, play dough, and general hands-on stuff. home-cooked dinner by my wife & my mom. later, wine-drowsy, i fell alseep reading the instructions to a carbon monoxide detector that i bought last year but never installed.

gentle people here

so i have only 16 minutes left on my internet cafe account, so there will be a lot of typos... my meeting ended early today and i have the afternoon off. so B. (my partner, a foreign M.D. and scientist) and i went to eat thai food (again!) and then i went up to the hotel to get changed. then i went to the concierge and asked what can i do in one afternoon to see SF. why not, who knows when/if i ever come back? (maybe as soon as a few weeks!? maybe never?) anywho, so the trolley thing starts right by my hotel, so i got on it there and saw the sceenic route through the very hilly town of SF. lots of colorful, quirky houses. through chinatown. past the very windy road thing you always see in movies, down to the hyde street pier. it was a fun ride. the man who was working the breaks on the back of the trolley car was an old man, grey whiskers, who would give everyone sarcastic answers to people's questions. he told me a ticket was $100 dollars. it was funny (you had to be there). so then i walked along the hyde street pier and looked at old boats and read about them from these nice lamintaed displays. then i walked over and put a quarter in one of those telescope things and looked at alcatraz, and the golden gate bridge. then i walked across the state park, up to the giradelli chocolate factory and museum. i got a free piece of chocolate. yum. my wife would love that place. there was a 10 pound bar of chocolate for $40.00.

so now, i am here. later on, i suppose i will see the cannery, and maybe the fisherman's museum? tonight, i plan to have dinner in the music/club district where i hope to eat amazing sidewalk-cafe food and then see some live jazz. it was supposed to rain, but it didn't. if it had, i would be in the modern art museum, but since then the sun broke and it's pretty mild out, i'm out here seeing the sights. also, i keep seeing kids and missing e.w.; but of course, i also don't envy these people who are pushing these strollers all around these hilly streets. anyway, that's that.

in the netherlands, part 2

i'm at this hotel in the netherlands and i just had an amazing panini sandwich with cream of mushroom soup, and dutch beer. the food and drink here is a delight. but also i miss home, i wish i could see the boy most of all... ideally, i should be there every day: all day every day, every minute. so it's tough sometimes. soon i'll be home for a few days, which i will spend primarily with him, and try to give my wife a break from 24-hour mommying... and then i get on another god damn plane!!!

in the netherlands, part 1

i am in Oss, the Netherlands. I just got back from an evening of local beer, wine, salmon, shrimp, and discussing politics, the atlantic divide, electoral politics, and the war on terrorism with a dude form the netherlands who lived in newark for 4 years and cried when the towers fell even though his beautiful twin girls were just born, and he thinks we (americans and europeans) have more in common than we realize and he hopes we can figure out how to put aside egos on both sides and work together on commmon goals like fixing iraq at all costs. i also met this guy from japan who worries that kerry will be weak on terrorists.