debaucherous wine room

went out last saturday night with my cube-neighbor friend from work, and his girlfriend from the legal department. i had a seafood feast of a swordfish steak, calamari, clams, etc, in marinara sauce... it was nice but the service was exceptionally slow, and i complained to the manager after dinner, and he gave us 50% of the bill in gift certificates... which was nice.

sunday we went to a formal part at a dining hall/country club for my wife's great aunt's 80th b-day. they had some excellent food, including wonderful shrimp. there were oysters but i passed. i had a little too much to drink, and crashed when we got home. i should have shoveled slushy snow that had been accumulating on the driveway alll day in stead of goign to this part and getting ripped. it all turned to ice and now it will be there all winter.

but at the dining hall they had this amazing subteranian basement room, like a wine tasting room. (i wandered there while walking the baby around)... it was all dark with lots of stone and wrought iron and dimly lit with flickering organe fake-candle chandliers. with old carved wood shairs with bright red upholstry, all set up in a row with the big, ornate chair in the middle. i sat the baby down in it an stepped back and he looked like a little prince. and all of these cool dusty old bottles of wine everywhere in the walls. behind this gate was this old, carved table set with old fashioned metal platesm goblets, and stuff. it was like right out of a midevil paining. i magined having a debaucherous wine and cheese party there. it was like heaven.

album cover art

silo man

last night i had a dream that i saw on a cruise ship with bono from U2. it was like a 9/11 cruise ship dream. boats were racing everywhere in an attempt to avoid various terrorists who were trying to crash into cruise liners and yacths with their own boats and planes. we crashed into another boat. i was disoriented and i almost lost sight of and got separated form my wife and son, but i grabbed onto the back of their rescue boat and held on before it sped away.

rip your heart out

some people can write music that just rips your heart out. they somehow tap into that cosmic jungian stream of basic, raw human emotion, and channel it into words and music. i don't think it's a skill. i thint it's like lightning, it just happens.

waiting in the closet

on the way home from vacation in the western carribian i left my favorite old dirty faded nj nets hat on the plane. i realized this while claiming our baggage at the airport, and announced it out loud. my mother-in-law said "yay!". i guess it was time to retire that old hat. i have a new one waiting in the closet.

thought

i miss spending significant amounts of time sitting in cafes/diners- drinking coffee and reading, even if it was for school. a simple pleasure, long gone. lately, we've been very very busy- but hypothetically, yes, i could skip out at night after the baby and my wife are asleep and go to a starbucks and order a latte and read john fante. but right now, it feels as if it's a lost art from a dead, forgotten age

snack warrior

so i went to the snack machine and got a pack of M&M's. i poured the content onto my desk, so i could pick through them and eat each color in succession (obsessive-compulsive, i know). first blue (my least favorite), then green, red, yellow, and orange; i left brown for last. when i had finished all the other colors, the remaining nine brown M&M's formed the unmistakable pattern of the constellation orion on my desk. what does this mean? is aurora warning me to beware of scorpions? or is it just a sign that winter is beginning?

hot milk

i'm pretty sure that, in heaven, after making the long journey up the tunnel with the light at the end, trudging through acres of knee-deep snow through the rolling hills of limbo, you are beckoned and finally greeted inside the pearly gates by the angels with hot milk and raspberry cookies.

(man-lo day memories, of frolicking drunk in the snow, drinking jd by the boat, and coming back inside to "hot milk" and cookies.)

doors and all

ah, so i took yesterday off from work... we had movers move all the big stuff from our condo to the house. i was helping a lot because they were paid by the hour- so now i'm sore here and there, especially my back. have you ever taken a apart and put together a fridge, doors and all? it's fun, fun, fun! but really, everything went quite well. i did have to rip the moldings off the basement door to get my desk into the house. thank goodness, it fits in the low-ceiling basement office. and the fridge fot too! i was there late last night again after dinner, moving furniture into its likely final resting places. it was exciting to feel like it was really coming together! it feels like a home finally, not just an empty shell or whetever. we're still not moved in- staying at my in-laws tonight. technically its ready to move into, but with the baby we want to wait until it's really 100% ready. as long as one or the other set of grandparents is willing to take us in, we'll keep goin'. more work to do the next few nights after work, but it's coming along. ...i met the mailman yesterday, he seems nice.

movin' out

i came to the computer to post a song title in my song blog and i figured i'd post here as well and say that i'm abotu to move out of this place, and therefore i soon have to pack up this computer and stuff. what a pain in the ass moving is... especially when it's a blizzard outside. anyway, off i go!

sunny sunday

so we closed on the deal for our new house, and i spent most of my thanksgiving weekend painting and scraping and sanding and stuff. on sunday, as i was working on one of the windows in my son's new bedroom, i saw him and my wife out in the front yard. she was talking to our new neighbors, who are also a young couple with a 1-year old. my son and the other kid were walking around in circles on the lawn in their cute little winter coats with fur-fringed hoods. it was a brief moment of levity in an otherwise monotonous day of house-prep work.

breakfast part II

this morning:

* coffee
* granola bar
* lightly toasted "dreaming of ithaca"
* a bit of "celery and syrup"
* a fresh slice of "she's dressed nicely today"

and now i am enjoying a long-lasting "yo-yo ma cello suites" lozenge

this morning i had for breakfast

2 cups of coffee
one granola bar
one heaping spoonful of 'when she turns gold into gold'
a sprinkle of 'blue skulls'
and small glass of 'ecuador'

i had a dream that i was in a room full of people who were listening to and discussing my music. on vinyl nonetheless a dream, indeed.

cold feet

nothing helps cold feet on a chilly late fall morning like a pair of thick fuzzy socks.

last night i had a dream that i was driving up the overpass onto route 287 north, but i had to stop at the top of the ramp, becuase someone had put a shopping cart night in the middle of the road. i had to get out of the car to move it out of the way. i rolled it over to the side of the road, where there were two other shopping carts. later on in the dream, i was back in high school- and i was wearing a fleece vest that my mother in law got for me in whistler, colorado. for some reason i was apprehensive about wearing it. some archtypal football-player tough-guy who was wearing the same kind of vest, came over to me and gave me a compliment on it... i have no idea what this dream is about, or how the two parts are related.

i had a F'd up dream last night. i was going to a party at my friend brian's parents house in the town where i grew up. brian, after going to california and pursuing life as a rock star for a few years, was returning home to see everyone before he went away to join the army. as i walked onto the front steps of his house i noticed two things: 1) several children, next-door neighbors i presume, playing nearby on the grass; 2) a full needle & syringe, presumably filled with heroin. my initial thought was that of shock... why is there a needle here? so close to these kids? i think i picked up the youngest of the children who was playing close to the steps, in order to prevent him from getting too close- and because i didn't want to have to touch the needle to move it out of the way. just then, a fellow who must have been walking up with me (an acquaintance of mine from work), picked up the syringe. he started sticking himself with it, shooting himself up in his face. i told him that he was crazy, and that it could be diseased. he didn't care. and then he stuck the needle in my head. i though to myself- shit, now i'm going to get whatever he gets... but then i started to feel high and i didn't care. i went around the back of the house, to the party. brian was in an officer's uniform, with thick boots, with metal strips on the bottom. he was kicking, digging his heels into the ground, making a deep hole. that's it.

sharing an omlette

yesterday my wife went out for an afternoon with one of her girlfriends, and i watched the baby. i took him to the center of the town to which we are about to relocate. although i am familiar with the town, i wanted to get out on foot and look around. besides, it was a nice day anyway. i parked and put my son in the stroller, and walked to a deli/diner resturant. i ordered an omlette and a turkey sandwich. my son was hungry and ate most of the omlette. i finished only 1/2 of the turkey sadwich, but i finished off the omlette. the leftover 1/2 sandwich went into a to-go box, and went under the stroller in the stoage thingy. then we walked around town, into a few stores, but mostly just looking around and taking stock of what was there. as usual, my son enjoy watching all the people and cars go by. i also sang to him while we walked. i went to all the little quircky memorial parks, and read all of the commemorative plaques. there was one plaque, for the rotary club, that was obscured by plant growth and fallen leaves. i brushed them aside with my foot an read it aloud, like the others, but with a little more satisfaction. after a while, we had covered the whole area and made it back to the car, and packed up and drove away. my son fell asleep right before we pulled in front of the house. i ran inside and got a can of soda and the new york times magazine, and came back out and sat on the curb and read, while listening for my son, still sleeping in his car seat. the sun was nice and warm. i though about how nice it would be to have regular father-son afternoons every weekend in our new town, now and in the future- always starting out at the same resturant, ordering the same thing, talking, and then going to the playground or something. then again, if i start going to get my master's degree, maybe i won't have the time... but then again, why make time for anything before that? he slept for about 20 minutes; half-way into and article on linguistics i heard him whimpering, and i got him and brought him inside.

last night i had yet another "9/11 dream". i was on the street in a nondescript large suburban town, like morristown maybe. i saw something large diving down through the sky, leaving a trail of black smoke. it looked like a very large plane. it disappeared over the top of some nearby buildings, and there was a large explosion. i dove on the sidewalk by a bus stop and tried to cover and brace myself for debris. i was showered with suffocating ash, and i immediately got up to my knees, and then onto my feet, and retreated under an overhang of a nearby building. vaguely, i remember something about there being another person nearby, a woman, who was also ducking for cover- but it wasn't my wife or anyone i knew. -that's it.

house mix

so today we're going to officially be putting in an offer on a house. i signed all the papers on saturday- something like 50 pages of signatures and initials for me and my wife. it's almost as if they drag it out just to prolong the anxiety of the transaction. of course, it's not really a transaction until the seller comes back with an acceptance. we'll see how that goes.

it's worth noting, that the house we're going with is not the same house as i mentioned in my last blog. the first house was: a little further away from where we want to be, a little more expensive (both price and taxes), in need of a little more work (esp. in respect to bathrooms); but it also had a bigger yard, and more room inside. the new house is in a nicer neighborhood, further from busy roads, and with more families around. i can see many swing sets in neighbors' back yards. that's important. it does have lower ceilings, which is a little annoying but still OK.

on top of that, we saw one last house this weekend, in a nearby town. it was a similar price but with lower taxes. the land was nice, and the neighborhood was OK. the biggest problem was that it's basement was not finished off, but rather, it was filled with crap and it looks like it had water problems. that and they had just way to much clutter and crap to really get a feel for what the place would be like (for us). it's so much nicer to look at a place when it's empty. oh, and they had an annoying little dog that would not stop barking. in the end, the experience of seeing this one last place served to reinforce our feelings about the place on which we're making an offer... which we needed.