My carefully constructed poem about the lack of true content

/deep breath

Appalled
Shocked and Loathing
Lost, Down in Wonderment
Empty and Poor
Aghast.

Damn. That’s worth what, five chings? Oh wait, I need like fifty of those. Guess I need to start typing and posting. If only more thought was put into my content. If only I… wait, wait wait…

Cheap Whore
Bottom feeding
Recognition Facade
Creative Air
Vacant.

Those are even written in proper 2, 4, 6, 4, 2 format, what is that, a cinquain? No no, that's not it. It's something! A Quatrain? No, that's sets of fours. Well, some real poet could inform me I hope. Either one of them. Damn baby. Lick that plate clean.

At 2 p.m. EST today Braunbeck and I shall be wed in giddy matrimony in a teeny-tiny private ceremony in a chapel in Worthington, OH.

This wedding has been a while coming, but I kept dithering about what kind of a wedding we should have and when, etc. I was not one of those little girls who dreamed lots about white weddings, so when people ask me what kind of wedding I always wanted, I rather draw a complete blank because I never gave it much thought. Or didn't until this summer, when I was Maid of Honor at /jen's wedding earlier this month. /jen's wedding was lovely and comparatively modest but left me boggled at the amount of work that people (mainly her mom and aunt) put into bringing it off.

Since neither of us has a mom or any aunts to handle the details of a wedding of any size, we sort of thought we might go the justice of the peace route and make our living-happily-together selves legal and respectable. But somehow that didn't seem quite festive enough, so we'd go back to talking about what to do and when and then get entirely distracted from the subject for months.

But last week I finally landed a full-time job with magical fantastical health insurance. If you've been keeping up with our trials and tribulations on the sickness and injury front, you know that being able to have both of us on a decent plan would be freaking awesome. Since Ohio doesn't believe in domestic partnerships (Edit: Most of Ohio, as cbustapeck tells me Cleveland Heights does legally recognize the arrangement) we decided this week to launch our little loveboat from the cozy harbor of committed cohabitation into the wide mainstream of marriage.

It's really very easy to get married in Ohio; go down to the county courthouse to spend 15 minutes so getting your good-for-60-days marriage license, then get a judge or clergyperson to solemnize the marriage. Kind of silly you can't do it all in one fell swoop, but I suppose there needs to be a margin for cold feet.

We had originally planned to get married in October; the plan now is to have some kind of more public (though perhaps not more formal) wedding celebration then. A Halloween costume party strikes my fancy, but I am still in dither mode and really easily swayed.

So, if any local noders want to come to our little celebration-to-be announced, let me know. If you have creatively cool alternate suggestions to a Halloween party, also let me know.


3:14 p.m. update: Whee! We're married, we're married!

*bounce*bounce*bounce*

We went by the Jewish temple where Gary works, and they all got us a very nice gift certificate for the Cameron Mitchell restaurant chain, which means we can get dinner at one of my favorite restaurants I haven't been to in years.

And some friends of our overnighted lillies! Pretty.

The cats are a little freaked out, though. They know something happened, but can't quite put their paws on what.

Hi everybody! I hope you’re doing good and had a great summer! I know I did, I came back from New York City where I got to see my sisters, went to the Statue of Liberty, went to a wax museum and saw a play called 42nd Street. New York is really big and I wish we could have stayed longer. Next year, I hope my dad takes me because he grew up there and knows lots of other places to go.

I started 4th grade this week and was kind of nervous about going back to school but I think everything will be ok though.

My dad asked me to do a little exercise and describe some of the things in our living room and write it down. Here is what I saw. I call it “In My Living Room”.

I sit in my living room and I see an abstract picture that hangs on the wall and I remember when we hung it there. I sit in my living room and I see an old bear blanket of dancing bears. I remember when I was little sleeping on a bed made from pillows with the blanket wrapped around me to protect me from the monsters of the night. “The bears will scare the monsters”, I whispered. I sit in my living room and I see the penny jar. I have no idea how old it is and how many pennies are in it. It reminds me of an old water bottle. I sit in my living room and I see my soccer trophy. I remember that season as though I have played it over and over. I sit in my living room and I see an old coffee table. I remember my favorite game when I pretended I was a bird and jumped off it into a nest made from pillows. As I sit in my living room, I remember the stories of the picture, the blanket, the penny jar and the old coffee table I just smile and think of the future these parts of my life might have.
Bye!

(All words courtesy of borgette, formatting, spelling help and links, courtesy of borgo)…

Bhí mé ag an Spar (siopa) inniu, agus bhí piscín treigthe ann. Tá fhios ag na freastalaí go bhfuil daimh agam leis na hainmhithe, agus chuir iad strus orm an piscín a ghlacadh. Níor mhaith liom an piscín a ghlacadh mar tá ainmhithe go leor agam (madadh agus trí alpaca agam), ach shocraigh mé an piscín a choinneáil ar feadh aon oíche amháin, agus í a thógáil go dtí an shelter amarach.

Bhí eagla orm nach dtaithníonn sí le Dougal (mo mhadadh). Ach i gceann cupla bomaite, bhí sé ag ní a haighaidh. Is docha go bhfuil muid í a coinneáil. Dhéan Dougal an cinneadh.

Anois cat ag mo madadh. Taisce an Sparra is ainm di.

An experimental bi-lingal post. Move your mouse over a word to find out what it means. If this writeup gets a lot of negative votes, I will assume it's another British plot to suppress the Irish language. So if you hate daylogs, just move along, nothing to see here. And thank you everyone who gave me feedback on this experiment.

I am an idiot. I was so excited today about installing a cold air intake on my Ford Focus. I was going to do it all by myself and prove that I had at least some mechanical aptitude. I never even got as far as opening the box. I removed the strut tower bar, then removed the decorative battery cover and unhooked the battery. When reattaching the strut tower bar (in retrospect, I'm not sure why I reattached it at all), I sheared off a bolt. These bolts are what holds the MacPherson strut to the body, and are quite important (if, that is, you like having all four wheels on the ground).

In the course of getting this fixed, I discovered that my Geo Metro suffered some horrible abuse when it was on loan to my sister recently. It now makes horrible noises at anything over 30 miles per hour (louder and worse than the noises it makes just by virtue of being a Geo). The service department of my local FoMoCo dealership assures me that the Focus is safe to drive for the time being. The suspension will be fixed on Monday, along with my 3,000-mile oil change (sob, the car was so young!). I had hoped to attend my first autocross on Sunday.

Today's moral is this: always use a torque wrench. Ratchets are not for torquing things.

                       \     /
                   \    0 ^ 0    /
                     \ (     ) /
          ____________(#######)____________
         (     /   /  )#######(  \   \     )

         (___/___/__/           \__\___\___)
            (     /  /(#######)\  \     )
             (__/___/ (#######) \___\__)
                     /(       )\
                   /   (#####)   \
                        (###)
                          !

At 0900PDT, four new coordinates appeared on ilovebees.com. One was in Portland in the afternoon. I left the house to scout the area, meet with another Beekeeper, and receive the transmission that would occur.

As I near the site, I notice at the corner of Glisen and 22ND a building that seems uncommonly familiar. I stop, and it takes me a while to decide that it isn't a deja vu, but an actual memory. I stare at the blocky melted mushroom of a structure whose basement corners the sidewalk with what used perhaps be a storefront, and the two story large house above. And then it strikes me, I stayed two nights in that basement on a visit to Portland years ago. It was where the one-eared chef whom Lacy was dating had lived, with his terrarium full of walkingstick insects and vintage Playboy-centerfold jigsaw puzzles hung in the bathroom. It must be because it isn't raining that I couldn't identify the building.

Θ       Θ       Θ

I find the block of NW 23RD between Glisen and Hoyt. From Terraserver, I am expecting to find a parking lot and, hopefully, a payphone, but on the east side of the street is a rather new looking building that houses a cafe and an import gallery, with offices for lease above. In front of this urban monstrosity there is a man bucking with a guitar. He is located exactly where Terraserver pinned the coordinates. I know that there is a possibility of error as great as 100 feet. But this is odd, and there are only four coordinates today. I pace the block at 180 feet, and then case the storefronts from the opposite side of the street. Then I walk into the cafe to see if they have a pay phone. They don't, but the barista is cute and helpful, and refers me to the Plaid Pantry at the corner.

Outside the cafe, the busking musician is tuning, so I take the opportunity to chat with him. He is on the older end of middle aged, and sitting right on top of my coordinates. As there was no information from the two locations that should have rang earlier today, I begin to wonder at the possibility that today is not telephones, and maybe, in Portland, it's him.
How are you today? he notices me and is in first with a greeting.
Not bad, yourself?
Alright.
Say, you wouldn't happen to have any idea when this building was built, would you?
No, I can't say I do. But maybe the same time as the one across the street.
I look up at the imprint in the adobe colored concrete of the facade of the building across the street: MCMXCVII. Nineteen ninety-seven? I suppose it could be.
Are you meeting someone here? He smiles.
Not quite, I was expecting to find a payphone here.
Is this a game, like a scavenger hunt? And did he smile as he asked?
Yeah. Have you heard of geocaching? It's like that. He smiles in response, so I think that he might be a geocacher. Do you know it, geocaching?
No. His smile was a false positive?
In geocaching, someone posts a set of coordinates online, and you try to find that location. Once you're there, you look around and try to find hints to a next location, and, eventually, a small cache. The game I'm in is like that, only the map I looked at showed a parking lot, and I expected to find a payphone there. He seems to take this all in.
There's a parking lot behind that building across the street. Maybe a phone there too. Or not.
Thanks. I'll check that out. You don't happen to know any songs about bees, do you? One last salvo to check if he's my contact.
Bees? No. I'm sure there are some in my songbook, but I don't know any. Genuine confusion, I'm topic-hopping too fast and flail.
Are you going to be here all afternoon?
I hope so.
Maybe I'll be back.
You know, this is one of those conversations that I think would make a lot more sense if I were high.
I smile back at him and drop a dollar in his guitar case. I laugh at myself as I head up the street to check out the Plaid Pantry.

At 1508PDT, a payphone rang. SpaceBass hooked up an induction microphone to the receiver and started recording, I picked it up. A voice from a reality that intersects ours asked me for her nickname. I identified her correctly, and a new audio file was posted on ilovebees.com. Information as to the current state-of-game is available at ilb.extrasonic.com/index.php/Main_Page.

It was my older brother's bands first time playing at a festival. Something they've been wanting to do for a long time. After being booked in the show, they were asked to sell 20 tickets. I'm not sure what would have happened had they not. Thankfully, they never needed to ask. That's one thing about LTC that you have to love, they've got alot of friends and support, and they are so willing to share anything they have with you. It's like one big family.

Most of our group arrived at around 2 p.m. Friday afternoon, with a few stragglers and out of towners that showed up as late as 8 or 9. I was pretty suprised to see it when we got there. It seemed alot more organized than I had originally anticipated. There were a whole slew of vendors and trinketeers to make our consuming selves feel comfortablly at home. There weren't many people there, but we were early, so the crowds still had alot of time to show up.

My role in our campsite quickly became man of the fire, since I was going to be the only one living off hotdogs for the next few days. No one seemed to have much energy or will to do anything, anyway. After gathering some firewood from the near by woods, it was time to build the fire. I went with the old log cabin technique. Never fails! A few big logs stacked like a log cabin with a little cardboard from the trash in the middle and some dry twigs on top to burn until the big stuff burns.

After the fire was going pretty good, it was time to find a hotdog stick. My first attempt was a single-pronger. I spent over an hour carving it to perfection making finger grips and everything, but all I really did was over-carve. After successfully cooking 2 hotdogs, it snapped. I tried to shove the handle into the ground for ease of relocation, but it was more than it could stand. My second attempt was far more practical and a far greater success. A thick two-pronger that could take a bit of a pounding. It cooked a great many dogs before it met it's inevitable demise. It's a wood stake that gets thrusted into a campfire for extended peroids of time. It can't last forever!

After my fill and then some, I and my two cameras (one with color film and one with black & white) went off to discover what this fest truely had to offer.

The pond was my first stop, as it should be. It was fishable and swimable, though I wouldn't recommend either of the two... especially at the same time. The pond couldn't have been bigger than half a football field and equally as symmetrical if it weren't for the creek leading off the eastern corner. It had rickety old lifeguard chair and a floating dock near the center, like a scene from a horror movie. A line of trees surrounded over half the pond. The remaining area was host to the game room, a pavilion, and a few playground items. Don't let me fool you into thinking that there was a real playground. There were a few slides and swings scattered in the most random places and this giant cone shaped merry go round next to the water. It stood a good 9 to 10 feet tall, and every time you spun it around the whole thing shook and groaned rather violently. I was actually questioning my safety soon after I hopped on. It seemed to be hinting to me that it was about to reach escape velocity with the noises that screamed out of it, but that didn't stop me from having more than my share of fun with it. It was too rare of a find to pass up.

The game room reminded me of something I'd seen on a summercamp movie as a child (strange, 2nd movie memory reference!?). The ping-pong table was just a piece of plywood painted white with a net in the middle. That's all you really need, I guess, but it was a bit warped and not very appealing. The foosball table was in pretty bad shape too, but at least neither side had a true advantage. There was one broken piece for both sides, and the drop in didn't seem to be very bias, a rarity that I didn't expect to find on such a beat up table. It was a classic foosball table. It had the slanted corners, and the goalie row only had one guy. A perfect combination that more than made up for it's flaws. The pool table was the most difficult to use. The cue sticks didn't even have an end to them, let alone chalk to apply. It was still playable, but it took alot of work.

The main stage was interesting, to say the least. It consisted of a semi trailor with one side removed, and a few pieces of wood to the left and right of center stage to simulate a "backstage" area. It was rather well decorated for a semi trailor. They had a few "All Fall Down" banners hanging up that looked actually pretty good, and a couple plants and candles here and there. There was also a small flat bed trailor near our campsite that they called the second stage, but it was hardly a stage. More like a broken trailor that someone couldn't get moved and just started mowing around. Now to see what kind of music we were getting into.

Friday was host to some fantastic music. Sense, Rootbound and LTC all rocked the house. LTC Played the 8:30 - 10:30 slot, prime time! Shitty thing is no one had really showed up yet. There was probably 40 or so people in the audience, which is more than nothing, but not nearly the 500 that were expected. No one seemed to mind, though. The lighting on stage was still not yet perfected, and the only one lit on stage was the lead guitarist, and he was pretty fucked up looking. Half way through LTC's set, someone in checkered red and green pants being held up by bungie chords with no shirt on walked up to the stage and placed a small pocket light on the stage and angled it another band member's face just to balance it all a little better. It was a nice gesture. After they introduced their ex-basist up to stage to play a few old songs, I grabbed a djembe and hopped on stage with them and just started drumming away. I wasn't invited up or anything, but I knew no one would mind. After about 45 or so minutes of drumming, the pain in my hands pulled me out of my own little world and back into this one. I opened my eyes and noticed that 8 or 9 other people had gotten on stage from other bands and were playing various percussive and/or melodic instruments. It was so much fun, exactly what music should be. Everyone was having such a good time, and they were doing it together!

After LTC's set, I headed back to the campsite. It was obvious that most of our campsite, myself included, may have over done it with the mind altering substances. At one point, someone I didn't even know showed up all fucked up...

"You guys wanna see something sick?"

I was rather hesitant, though my morbid curiosity was definitely screaming to know. Just then, someone else showed up.

"Hey, you wanna see something fucked up?" he asked to the newcomer.

"Sure, bring it on"

"Hoooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrffffffff..... HHHUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He stuck his finger down his throat, but he didn't really puke that much. He just let out one of the most guttural bellows I'd heard in my 25 years. It echoed through the whole place, leaving an almost uncomfortable calm in its wake which I took as my cue to leave.

I spent the rest of Friday night in quiet contemplation of the last few months of my life, with Rootbound playing in the background. They were pretty good, but I was wanting to hear a new Ani Difranco tape I recently bought so that my brother's car tape player could get some good use. Right as I was about to put the tape in, Rootbound started playing a song from that very same tape! They even followed it up with a medley of several ween songs that I had been singing to myself earlier that day. I felt like they were playing the concert for me, and it filled me with an overwhelming sense of joy as I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, I awoke to the campsite cut in half, with everyone who hadn't left yet wanting to go home and bathe and sleep in their own beds. I think they all overdid themselves. I fought to get the whole weekend off work to attend the festival. I spend way too much time sitting in this house to want to leave an outdoor festival to be here and doing nothing. About 2 hours after I woke up, our campsite slimmed down even further to about 5. And soon after that, it was down to 2. It was me and franky (neither of us drove, either). We were the only survivors of our group from Friday night.

After I revived the fire and had my fill of dogs, I worked my way over to the "second stage". The lead singer of Rootbound was setting up to play a solo set with his acoustic guitar. They had done such a good job the night before that I felt I owed it to him to be in the audience. Besides, there wasn't anyone else watching. I walked up and sat in the grass. I was the only audience member for a good half hour before a few passers by stopped to see what was going on, only for the set to end shortly after.

The franticly differing patterns of grey and white clouds culminating from three different directions in the sky foreshadowed a rough night ahead, and alot of people packed up and left. Franky and I held our ground. There was word that a person or two would be coming back later, so we didn't panic about how we would be getting home. After the afternoon heat started to fade, the thunder and lightning started rolling in, causeing what little people that were left at the fest to thinned out even further. By the time the rains came, Rootbound was fighting through the second power loss of the weekend to play their (unshcedualed) second set. I didn't even know they were playing. I just made my way to the main stage and popped a squat in the rain and saw them setting up. Now, for the second time that day, I was the only audience member to hear them play. After applauding their first song, the drummer stood up and said "Thank you..." and pointed right at me. Priceless! Again, after about an hour, a few people sharted showing up. After the rains gave and the moon shown it's near fullness, a few more people made their presence known.

It felt good to still be there, fighting through the rain and still enjoying myself. It's funny how little comfort most of us are willing to sacrafice and still be ok. The people that were left were either too fucked up to leave, or invested too much into the fest to just walk away. I was proud to still be there with them, though I'm not sure what catagory I fell into.

After rootbound's set, I went to find franky. I heard he wasn't doing so well and I wanted to make sure he was ok. When I found him, he was curled up in the back of someone's truck, tweaked out on an eight of mushrooms. He looked like he needed some company to keep him close to reality. He was pretty out there, talking about some little white dude that kept running up and down his arm. The only thing that brought him back was the raffle.

Everyone who bought a ticket was entered in the raffle. Franky heard them announcing it in the background and was certain that he was gonna win. The few people that were left all had a pretty good chance of winning. They drew the first number and it wasn't Frank's. Actually, it wasn't anyones who was there, so they called another. They called out probably 6 or 7 numbers with no winner, sounding more and more desparate each time. "Is there anyone actually here?" one of the announcers exclaimed! "I AM! I AM!" I yelled from afar, but I don't think they could hear me. The next number that they called out was 156! Shitty! I was 157 and franky was 158. "I'm 157!" I screamed from the truck, hoping that they would give the prize to me just to get it over with and end the tourmenting realization that the weekend took a violent crash into the pit of the failed festivals. They kept trudging on until they finally drew a winner. I don't even know what the prize was, but it didn't matter. We were all just fighting to be recognized as survivors.

Sunday morning was when the few leftover people were finally shooed away, like flies on a rotting corpse, though not nearly as rancid. A suprise, given the fact that I, nor most of the others still there, hadn't showered in days. Everything was pretty damp, myself included. The fire that was still somehow smoldering after a night of torrential rains filled me with a sense of pride. Proof that I had done my job, and I had done it well. Our group, now four of us, packed up and headed home. I walked away with a more positive outlook on life in general. Life is all in your perspective. I had always known that, but could never truely apply that knowledge to my own life until this weekend. I could have gotten all pissy when the rains came, but instead I chose to enjoy it. It's just that simple. But, as usual, when the winds came they all fell down.

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