A Girl With a Sword

itripping at the gates of hell

So has anyone noticed those little cursor droppings on Gmail lately? This is something we should not have to put up with on computers. I'm not good with droppings.

I drove from Chattanooga to Charlotte and back over the weekend. Today Eb and I listened to M.I.A. and I discovered my car actually has decent bass. This will make cross-country driving a lot better. I'm really excited about how well my iTrip's been working. The radio station thing is a little tricky, but there are stations that are just crystal clear. 103.9 worked well from Chattanooga to Asheville, then we switched to 105.1 which worked all the way to Charlotte. I've been thinking someone (or some people) should put together a website that will tell which stations work best on the iTrip in a certain metropolitan area. I got Michael started on the idea and he's busy figuring things out with his paper and his computer right now. I'll get an opportunity to do a lot more research on the subject with all the driving still ahead of me.

important questions

When I called Cricket and told her I had a car, the first thing she asked was what color it was. When I told Tuggy, the first thing she asked was if I had named it yet. This is how I am about babies; I don't care how much it weighs or when it was born, just tell me its name. When they gave me the keys to the car at the dealership there was a tag attached that told the make, model, and year, and on the other side of that tag there was just one word: Hildebrand. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and I like it. Hildebrand--battle sword. Yes. I will. yes!

goodbye invisible flying car

I am eating hot rice pudding. It came from a can, looking like something from a Dickens story, or like that thing in Flight of the Navagator--"he's got a cold."

And for the first time in my life I own a car. Such a commitment, it's like having a child, except it won't be able to support me in my old age. But it is beautiful, a 2003 Hyundai Elantra. I described the color to Cricket and she came up with the term "dark dove" which really sounds like a cowboy movie. It's kind of a slightly purple gray. No bench seat in the front, which was my main goal in getting a car, but the seats are comfortable. And now I have real ultimate freedom (oh, and I can lock the windows from the driver's side door, yeah), so Hope, you can keep the invisible flying car.

train whistles, sweet clementine

I'm almost finished packing. I keep putting it off. I'm realizing I don't want to leave. I didn't think this would happen. I didn't think I felt so at home here. This reminds me of leaving college last year at this time, only then we were all leaving so it wasn't so hard. Tonight we went out for Tibetan food, and a last trip to Davis Square. I sat on a couch in Someday Cafe and thought about how there's so much here I haven't experienced well enough. I feel like I'm leaving something half finished and that bugs me. But there's more time. And Bjork is singing about blueberries dancing in line.

I fly out tomorrow morning, off to Chattanooga, where I'll hopefully buy a car--the real adventure. Then I'm popping around the country a bit before getting to North Dakota where I'll be doing a Linguistics program. I'm so excited, my brain is so excited. Finally, school and grades and affirmation and the fellowship of late night paper writing.

dusting mirrors

Listening to Kings of Convenience, "I Don't Know What I Can Save You From." There's something about the line "somebody for whom I wouldn't mind to put the kettle on" that is simultaneously poorly written and well put. I really miss making tea for people in my big tower room on Sunday afternoons.

I'm leaving Sunday. Right now I am so busy that the only time I have to actually contemplate this going are the down times at work, when I am writing "Winchester" and "Wellesley" on slips of paper and thinking about how I will never actually see these places. It's sad, leaving.

I did go to New York last weekend, hung out with Natalie and Ryan and the Covenant art students. Natalie took me to Prada and I now understand . . . okay, I don't know what I understand, but I feel like some kind of enlightenment took place there. We spent many hours on the subway and I realized that people in New York have really great shoes. Went to All Angels again, and remembered why I love my fellow Christians. In New York I also discovered that all Youth Hostels smell the same. I don't know how they do it.

scenes from a break-up

I was in New York this weekend and everywhere there was the poster for The Break-Up.

Now is it just me, or are they trying to allude to something here?

sometimes I want to be a married man

just so I can use the phrase "the wife and I."

Sorry about the lack of blogging, the new look of the bostonblogs page (i.e. empty all the time) is rather uninspiring. If anyone is wondering what's going on behind all that blankness there is this page. It's not pretty, but it's informative.