this morning as I topped Capitol Hill on my way to pick up Karel and Tod, my clutch finally gave up the ghost at the corner of Mercer and Federal.
After some cell phone scrambling, I brought the car to berth in a quick turnaround transmission shop downtown. The car should be ready tonight.
UPDATE: All toold, this will be something along the lines of an $800 commute. Yesterday I was joking with Viv about buying a 1980’s Volvo we saw on Aurora for $575. Maybe I’m not joking so much now.
Viv and I are driving the last load from our apartment to the house as I thumb this into the Treo.
I loaded the car with fragile things, paper sculptures and the like before our final meal as Capitol Hill residents, at the reliably delicious, and reliably overpriced, Coastal Kitchen.
We picked up a few replacements for things gone AWOL in the move (scissors and scotch tape and the like) on 15th before we got in the car to head north.
Once we started driving, without thinking, Viv adjusted her seat, audibly crushing part of a paper four foot scale model of the Space Needle I’d carefully stowed behind the driver’s seat. I didn’t flip out, I’m happy to report. But that accident is a perfect metaphor for my dissatisfaction with the move and the house.
The Seattle I built for myself in dreams has been crushed. I don’t feel connected to this new phase of my life by desire or joy, only obligation and economic realities that I can never control. Life out past the end of the sidewalks was exactly what I had as a child, and I hated it, and I hate it still.
UPDATE: Upon unloading the car, the Needle and the damage done turned out to be, unsurprisingly, mostly in my imagination. I retain the right to excercise that gloomy entity.
UPDATE THE SECOND: Burn ban cancelled, there’s a fire in the hearth. Finally.
Today’s the day we move the rest of the stuff. We rent the truck in about an hour.
Chez Slog, Charles Mudede notes a recent SIFFblog post.
As a new homeowner with a fireplace, I have need to know the URL of a Burn Ban status page. I wonder if someone’s scraped an RSS feed of this together, as I’m itching to gaze into the embers.
I surprised Viv with a Christmas tree this evening, telling her I was running back to the apartment to shift another load.
Chez Siffblog,
ESF encackled me this evening. I found this piece hilarious and interesting.
Alas, I am so busy, Dear Internet, that I must confess that while I think of you all the time, it is only now that I can spare a moment to write. Of course, I have nothing much to say, my time filled with the empty clock-calories of modernity.
Ever wonder how that value-priced gasoline brand can price a dime under everyone else? They only allow ATM cards and tack on 45 cents, which doesn’t sound too bad until you find that the pump you’re using has poor flow and no pump-lock, so you’re forced to squeeze it with all your carpal-tunnel might until it turns off and won’t restart at 5 gallons, for a nice 9 cent tack-on to the stated price of X minus 10 cents per gallon.
Speaking of which, my relatively well-maintained (pay no mind to the fender there, kiddo, move along now why doncha) 1993 Toyota Camry gives fine, 30-some-miles to the gallon driving. That’s been just about a fill up every other week since I started driving to work. Now that a) we’re in the new location, well to the north of my old apartment and b) still moving and therefore driving back and forth betwixt job, apartment, and house several times a day, today was the first time i ever had to try to fill the car up due to an empty tank the day after I had filled the car up due to an empty tank.
For some reason, my interim internet solution at the new location disallows https: connections, a distinct inconvenience during the holiday season.
No tree yet, but tomorrow, I think, we’ll get one.
The aprons of the new property appear to consist of pure Mississippi gumbo, cleverly disguised as oil-stained gravel admixed with cedar needles.
Simon is still in deep hiding, having crawled inside an unsealed wall and then commenced to howling. He was coaxed out.
No first fire in the fireplace yet. But this night I did succeed in crafting a Martini. Some sort of lounging device must assuredly await.
ITEM:
Last night was the first we spent in the new home. Of the cats, Chloe’s adjusting well, Simon not so much. I’m with Simon, to date. I keep myself sane by reading Bart’s blog. What ever storms I’m dealing with in my heart and in my mind, there’s no possible grounds for me to express even the slightest grumpiness, which of course doesn’t stop me at all.
ITEM:
In today’s Seattle Times, Eric Scigliano rips the not-quite-new main building for the Seattle Public Library a new one, bemoaning the fact that no-one bitchslapped the place on opening. Begging to differ on this point, I’d like to note that my status as a critic of the SPL includes the building as well as predates it. Alas, I could not find the piece online using the paper’s search tools. It appears in the paper’s “‘Focus” section, which does not appear in the navigation that I could see.
ITEM:
NYT runs love letter to Rocketboom, features still frame from episode featuring PF’s poppa. Coincidence, or conspiracy? You decide. Also, what’s up with the pf.org redirect to the Progressive Policy Institute website?
As I started work this morning I was alerted via email that some of the live recordings from the recent all-Indiana convocation of independent musicians of the past three generations known as Musical Family Tree Fest had been posted to the Musical Family Tree site.
Browsing the site I happily discovered that my old pal John Terrill‘s mid-nineties four-track wonder “Frowny Frown” has been made available in full, a treat for me as I had never had a chance to sample this incarnation of John’s sonic madness.
Of special interest and appreciation for me were a reworked, county-tinged version of my favorite of John’s songs, Angeline, the new to me and quite amusing Chuch Bus Blues, the agreeably downbeat Blind, and the deliciously psychedelic Stoney Mansions.
UPDATE:
Terrill appears to have also contributed the Rosebloods records, Dragon in the Field and Under the Apple Tree, which saves me the trouble of digitizing them myself, by God! Huzzah!