setting in the (mid)west

this livejournal will be on hiatus for the summer. i will likely take it back up when i return to the midwest for a final semester. until then, please direct your voyeuristic eyes to:

http://risingintheeast.blogspot.com

see you there.

i don't have internet at home anymore. thus, the lack of posts despite the lack of responsibility (usually as school winds down, livejournal posts wind up). anyway, i'll do this backwards.

i'm currently enjoying:


high fidelity by nick hornby.

it's about a record store clerk and his tribulations with love. i'm borrowing it from quentin and hope to finish it tonight or tomorrow night. it's at once charming and sad and funny and clever and believable and enticing and great. needless to say, i'm really enjoying it. i'm about halfway through it and can't wait to finish it, even though i've seen the movie (which is also great). i have a feeling i'm going to want to buy both the book and the dvd very soon.

now for an update:

• i'm going to be an uncle! my sister is 9 weeks pregnant with her first child, and my niece- or nephew-to-be. i'm so happy for her and chad, her husband. the baby is due dec. 14, which is one day after my 22nd birthday, and two days before my first college graduation. i think somebody's already trying to steal my thunder. regardless, i'm excited!


• i've been working 6 days a week: 3 days at recycled sounds, 3 days at sunny bright landscaping services. i need to pick up the hours to save money to eat for the summer (a 40-hour per week internship for 2 months isn't very conducive to putting food on the table, or at least in the microfridge). i also landed a job for the 2 weeks between my return home to rhode island and the beginning of my internship. i'll be cleaning up baseball fields again with the lincoln parks and rec maintenance crew. man, i love that job.


• speaking of coming home, the trip begins friday. al dony will arrive in omaha thursday morning at 930a. i will pick him up, we will run errands and fill my car with stuff. we will hang out that night. we will leave the next morning for chicago, then saturday for cleveland (we have tickets to the pirates at cleveland saturday night!), then 12 hours on to providence/lincoln on sunday. the open road never looked so good.


• as for my internship, here's what I know: i will be living at boston university in this building:
  
  i will work 40 hours/week. I will have night class on tuesdays and thursdays from 7p-9p. i will move in on june 2 or 3 (probably 3). i will being work on tuesday, june 6.
  
  what i don't know: where i'm working, and who i'm living with. ugh. seriously, it's agony. i really, really want to know where i'm working. i still have my fingers crossed for the carr center for human rights policy at harvard. you should cross your fingers, too. failing that, at least physicians for human rights or amnesty international's boston office. seriously. i hope i hope.


• moseman already moved in for the summer, matt should move in soon. this means i have to pay little for the summer away from my house in lincoln. this is a very good thing.

there's this week's blurb. i'm shifting to a new blog for the summer. it's just about finished with the design, i'm just finalizing the url (hopefully). it will be posted here when it's finished / when i return home.

hasta.

before:



after:



or, more specifically, before:



after:

here is your hummus cat.



*edit: they're friends.

amnesty international has released a report about the use of the death penalty internationally in 2005. click the image to go to the site. each individual image on that site has rollover information about the number of executions and death sentences in that country last year. the image is great and the information is thorough, as usual.

this art is part of amnesty's "createCHANGE!" project. you can see more here.

and in response to john's response, details about SLAMcakes for peace are forthcoming.

this happened last night. it was AWESOME.

32 years ago today:










in honorarium, the braves were crushed by san francisco today, 12-6.

oh well. also, happy birthday mom :)

i was up really, really late last night (er... this morning) making a poster for my independent research project. i was among maybe 100 students presenting their research visually.



for a larger .pdf image, click here.

i'd like to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight.

that being said, in honor of opening day, i'd like to post photos of my trip to turner field in atlanta. it was the beginning of that horrible day, one that started off pretty rough (waking up at 6:30a, leaving krys at the airport [never easy]), made a very positive spike with the stadium visit, and took a decidedly horrible turn when i blew out a tire (see previous post).

anyway, this post needs little setup. i had left the airport feeling pretty down, lonely with about 700 miles of road ahead of me. it was early; i planned on making it to mizzou by, say, 8p with plenty of time to get some food and hang out with lindsay and her roommates and friends. passing a sign for the stadium, i figured i'd take some shots. i could be a little late to columbia. so i exited.

well, after a couple of pictures (...alright, maybe 20 pictures) i tried to get inside. not easy on a saturday at 9am. a woman told me there were guided tours beginning at 10a, but other than that i couldn't see the stadium other than the outside area.

after a half an hour of reading a newspaper in my car, i paid the $10 and stepped into what some have called baseball's newest theme park.

here's some proof.


this is a shot from the parking lot where atlanta/fulton county stadium used to stand. that ball is hank aaron's 715th home run ball. they love that ball down there in atlanta.


this is a statue of ty cobb that stands in front of the stadium. there are other statues of former players (warren spahn, phil niekro, and hank aaron's 715th home run swing, plus a bust of aaron, coming up soon), but this picture came out the best. maybe a more realistic statue would have had cobb spiking the fielder in the face.


this is me next to a bust of hank aaron, the greatest home run hitter of all time (and, as far as i know, he wasn't using steroids). i'm on the left.


here is turner field, being fixed up for opening day (then only a few weeks away), as seen from the coca-cola sky field pavillion. it's denoted by a bunch of coke-bottle cannons and a giant bottle made out of recycled cans and baseball equipment.


this is said coke bottle. pretty sweet.


here's some more detail about the bottle. from here you can see the gloves, jerseys, bases, and thousands of baseballs that comprise the gigantic bottle. impressive.


when i was in the press box, i tried to get a little artsy. this is not exactly a perfect shot, but i like it.


i made it to the velvet rope that cordons off the locker room. we couldn't go in, but we could take pictures. i saw andruw jones' locker and i immediately became 12 years old.


here i'm sitting in the braves' home dugout. it's as if i finally found my way home.


an umpire's view of the third base line of turner field. beautiful.


this is a seat in center field. all stadium seats bear the logo and the ballplayer. suffice it to say, they built this place right down to the last detail.


turner field from behind the wall in center. quite the landscape.


in the "museum" section of the stadium, where the tour ended, sits lots of great old memorabilia. this is the ball that home run hero hank aaron sent over the wall for the 715th time in his career, and the bat with which he hit it.


and here's a (blurry) shot of the 1995 world series trophy, also proudly displayed in the museum.


this was on a bathroom stall somewhere inside the stadium. this is why i love baseball.


on my way out there was a table with a bit of braves merchandise next to a ticket window. the official clubhouse was closed, since it was saturday and pre-season, but i was still able to pick one of these up:


it's got tim hudson's name and number on the back.

the tour ticket may have been the best ten bucks i've ever spent.

this is going to be chronologically out of order. my trip back was such a rollercoaster - with so many long stories - that it would be too much for me to publish in one post, and too much for you to read in one sitting.

so i'm breaking it up into three parts that do not follow a timeline. as i've written two consecutive image-intensive posts, this one will contain no photos, but maybe the most interesting story of the entire trip. elitist northerners beware.

a week ago this minute, i was driving on an interstate highway somewhere in the middle of kentucky. i had planned to be deep into missouri by then - maybe even almost finished with a long day of driving. by the trip's standards, though, i'd just begun. i had about 6 1/2 hours of open road in front of me.

certainly i hadn't planned for this.

and i hadn't. i was about 4 1/2 hours behind an updated schedule. the morning started with a 6:30a alarm (after getting to bed around 1:30a)and a half-hour drive to the airport. after dropping krys off with a tearful goodbye, i planned to make a bee-line for mizzou and arrive somewhere around 8:30 or 9pm to treat my good friends lindsay and her roommate natalie to dinner, as i owed them each a meal.

i turned off the highway in a moment of inner-child-inspired anonymity and decided to photograph turner field, home of my favorite atlanta braves. the next post will chronicle my trip to and through the stadium.

i justified this trip with some convincing rationale: 1) when would i be in atlanta again? with free time? and a camera?; and 2) my friends are party animals (er... so to speak, no offense intended linds) and it's a saturday. there's no harm in rolling into a college town at 11pm. there will be plenty to do.

so after the stadium trip, around 11:30am in atlanta (10:30a in columbia, mo, my destination), i hit the road, a new t-shirt in my back seat, 60 new pictures on my (roommate's) camera, unforgettable images in my mind, and wearing a smile spanning my entire face. i felt amazing.

about 50 miles down the road, my car started wobbling. wobbling is unsettling at 80mph, to say the least. i slowed a bit and hoped it was just too fast for the car. it wasn't. the wobbling persisted, even got worse. i blinkered over to the right lane, slowing now to about 45-50mph. wobble, wobble. cue the hazard lights as the 18-wheeler behind me passes on the left. i pulled off into the breakdown lane and shut the car off. upon inspection, it was the confirmation of what i'd feared.

a flat tire.

in rural northern georgia.

alone.

luckily, i'm a member of trusty aaa. surely they'd rescue me quickly and i'd be on the road in no time. i called them up, found the nearest mile marker (maybe 1/4 mile up the road) and declared my location to the operator. she assured me she'd get someone to the scene as soon as she could. i called lindsay. broken down, i said, no big deal, but i'd be later than i thought. i'd call when i got back on the road. this was about 12:30p.

what's there to do when you're waiting for a tow truck? i sat on the green grass next to my car and read my complimentary copy of "chop talk," the braves' monthly magazine that my tour guide had given me. after finishing as much as i could of the sub-par writing and hoaky stories (marcus giles may be a hell of a second baseman, but he's no writer), i moved on to a book on accountability for atrocities in international human rights law (i know... but we can't all have the exciting life that i live). all the while i was either looking over my shoulder or standing up, hoping to see a tow truck turn that familiar bend around i-75 north. alas, no luck, and back to the book.

while i was waiting, two different people pulled over to help. one man, in a semi that had more wheels than it's poor driver had teeth, stopped and asked if everything was alright. i assured him aaa was on the way - i had called about a half an hour before - and thanked him. another guy, this one more my age, pulled over and offered me a hand. i thanked him and told him everything would probably be alright, that i'd called aaa. that was about an hour after the first driver had stopped.

about two hours after i had spoken with my friendly aaa representative, and after two calls from the local garage that was apparently closed, it being a saturday and all, my tow guy arrived. a round-faced, red-headed georgian, he asked me what i wanted to do. he told me his shop didn't have my size of tires (itty-bitty 13-inch tires on a '92 honda civic), but suggested i go up to wal-mart up the street. my aaa towing only covered me for 5 miles, and wal-mart was at least 7. i asked him to put my donut on the car and i'd drive the 7mi myself. he was quick (it's very annoying to wait 2 hours for something that takes 10 minutes) and wished me well.

i drove into town toward where the man had told me wal-mart would be. i passed a goodyear tire and decided to turn around, to ask them if they could help. surely goodyear tire would have my size tire. turns out they didn't ("but," one of the employees told me, "we could have it for you by monday"). i turned tail and headed back toward the hated wal-mart.

i pulled into the back parking lot, right next to the tire and lube center, and walked into the garage. a young girl spoke with me, very smiley, and sent me inside. there i spoke with someone who i would come to know rather well over the next 2 hours, at least i'd feel familiar around her. she was a very nice middle-aged woman who handled my inquiry. as she determined that they did, in fact, have the sized tires that i needed, she also suggested that there was a 2-hour wait.

it was already 2:30.

i told her i couldn't wait that long, that i needed to be in missouri that night. she spoke to her boss and assured me that they would get to it as quickly as they could.

so i had nothing to do for a while. i wandered around wal-mart. i talked to quentin on the phone a bit (he was already leaving columbia on the 5-hour trip back to lincoln so he would be the coming snow. more on that in future posts). in my time waiting in the wal-mart in calhoun, ga., i:

• perused car cleaning/maintenance products


• watched two different motivational speakers tell me what was wrong with my life, and how to fix it (only one of them mentioned a deity explicitly)


• observed a conversation between a man and a woman in the waiting room. i still don't think the man uttered even one comprehensible word, but the woman seemed to understand him fine. i'm glad he didn't look toward me while he was grunting, because i would have returned his probably friendly gesture with a blank stare.


• had one of the mechanics tell me, "ah lahke yer hay-yer," [translation: "i find the style you wear your hair to be intriguing."] and go on to tell me that he has a hat with dreads in it (a "reefer hat," as he referred to it), that a friend of his had given it to him, and that when he saw my hair, he thought immediately of that hat. i don't even remember my response.


• tried to shut out the surrounding conversations and television noise and read about international human rights law. to little avail.

finally, around 4pm, my car made its way to the lifts and the tires were changed (another frustrating 90-minute wait for a 10-minute job). one tire was rotated to the back, as it was fine, but one of my back tires was wearing pretty thin, the mechanic told me. whatever you need to do, i said, and thought about how glorious it would be to get back on the road. soon, i thought, soon.

a half an hour later i had paid my bill and cut out of there. i hit the open road as if nothing had happened - foolishly driving just as fast as i had originally - but it didn't cost me. i drove the requisite 10 hours into mizzou, the last 2 hours of which i was so tired that i felt either drunk or at least heavily drugged, and i wondered if i could be ticketed. i called lindsay from her backyard at 2:39am and she let me in. i was asleep by 3 and didn't wake up until 12:30p on sunday.

i'd like to say that my biggest regret was that i didn't have time to stop in chattanooga to see the historic choo-choo. not true. while i guess it's not really a regret of mine that i got a flat in georgia (hey, at least it wasn't an engine problem or a valve or something), it's something of a nightmare come true.

some final words to the state of georgia: you're lucky the braves decided to move to atlanta back in 1966, there would be no reason for me to like you. at all.*




*exceptions are cyndi, melanie, morgan and, of course, charlie.

after that ridiculous trip and some wonderful cuban food, krys and i needed a full night's sleep. we headed back to kat's and rested up, preparing for the week ahead of us, hoping it would be as relaxing, exciting, and fun as we wanted it to be. needless to say, it didn't disappoint.

the beaches
we spent time on two different beaches, visiting each of them twice. they both had their particular perks, and each was nice in its own respect.

south beach
south beach (also known as "miami beach," or "south miami beach," i believe) was the traditional spring break destination spot. it was very touristy and jam-packed with teenagers and twenty-somethings partying, swimming, drinking, laughing, and making out. this didn't take away from the coastline's beauty (though i'm sure it's looking quite trashed right now, as many of its patrons did just a week ago).

only enhancing the experience at south beach was ocean drive/art deco drive/insert other names here drive. the building fronts before the coast are all wonderful old-style art deco, with lots of muted pastel colors and some great architecture. the hotels - likely hundreds of dollars a night - lined the blocks across the street from the beach, as did t-shirt salesmen and barely-clad beach-goers. it was quite the hotspot, as we saw, during the day.

south beach shots:


this was toward the end of the day on thursday. much of the crowd had left and things were quieting down.


caught a little bit of a skyline in this one. and a dude checking out the fly hunnies.


the real fly hunnies (the topless girl sunbathing on the left doesn't count, though all present saw her goodies at one time or another).


we're smiling because the water behind us felt just as good as it looks.


park central hotel, one of the many art deco facades on south beach.


the colony hotel on art deco.


this was a great car parked right in front of the avalon hotel at south beach. i have a feeling it's there permanently, to add to the atmosphere. a nice addition, i'd suggest.

crandon beach, key biscayne
key biscayne's beautiful beach, known as crandon park, was probably my favorite of the two. krys and i arrived there on tuesday a couple of hours before kat and sharon came by (the beauty of driving down there was that we had our own wheels, so kat didn't have to chaffeur us around everywhere, and we could essentially come and go as we pleased, which was a nice liberty to have), and we got friendly with the area. we took a nice walk out into the water, maybe 100-150 yards or so. there were sand bars everywhere, and the water only deepened gradually, so even 300 feet out we were still up to our waists in warm ocean water.

my favorite part about crandon/biscayne was that it appeared to be such a well-kept secret. there were people there, no doubt - at one point we counted, i think, 11 kite surfers, which was totally sweet - but maybe 1/100 of the south beach crowd in view. it wasn't deserted, but we still felt like we had it all to ourselves at times. it was a wonderfully secluded little spot of paradise.

we also earned a bit of a sunburn on key biscayne, too. we arrived early enough that we soaked up some of the sun's most direct rays, and turned out a little red. we're good italian kids, though, with a fair amount of melanin, so those burns turned to tans (with the help of some aloe spray) within a day or so.

key biscayne photos:

maybe the sassiest picture you could find. especially one involving palm trees.


insert hippie joke here.


this is easily one of my favorites from the trip. i love this photo.


we were so happy that i had to take a picture of it.


we're so cool that i had to take a picture of it.


krys made a new friend in miami. it's an ibis.


glamour shots photo #1.


glamour shots photo #2.


just dippin' the toes.


a shot of the key as we're leaving on the rickenbacker causeway.


the food
after the sun set, it was time to get out of the sand and grab some grub. thankfully, since we were staying with locals, we were able to forego all of the chain restaurants and really kitschy touristy places. eating dinner five nights while in miami, we enjoyed two home-cooked meals and three nights eating out. all meals were thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated.

kat graciously cooked us (occasionally with our assistance) some delicious pasta, one night with a thai peanut sauce that came out amazing, despite doubts. the other three nights we ate at places that required that we order in spanish. twice we had cuban food (i already mentioned my "cubano regular" in the former post) and once we had mexican, in which case i had to specify that my taco not come with chicken, and then get charged for an extra taco when my meal came with a chicken taco. not a big deal... i was just glad to get some use out of my spanish training (though it didn't seem to work too well, evidently). but i'm not bitter, because the food was delicious, cheap, and wonderfully authentic. the types of places we would have never found and would have never enjoyed if not for our excellent guide.

the nightlife
i'm not one for clubbing, and, being that i don't drink, i'm not really a bar-scene guy, either. but we went out somewhere different for four nights straight, and i loved it.

the first night, just the three of us (kat, krys and i) spent some time in coconut grove at the green street outdoor lounge and restaurant. we sat on a couch and enjoyed fruity frozen drinks and each other's company. kat and i caught up while kat and krys got to know each other better, as conversations drifted from old friends to the week's plans. i even got a drink: a delicious pina colada. virgin, of course.


pardon the slight blurriness - we were working without a flash, and it was a surprise that this picture took at all.

the next night we headed out to the sand bar, a popular dancy bar in coconut grove that brings in pounds and pounds of beach sand on tuesday nights - just the night we happened to be there, in fact. we were told that our table was on the dance floor, that it would be moved later on when more patrons arrived. that was fine, we thought. we'd get to dance.

that didn't happen.

instead, we witnessed what i thought might be a very entertaining event. and it was entertaining, i suppose. but it was also maybe the most disturbing, certainly the most degrading thing i observed the entire trip. there was a rectangle inflatable pool in the middle of the sandy floor, and around midnight two men began pouring tubs of chocolate pudding into it, mixing it with a little bit of water. the dj/mc called for volunteer contestants.

that's right. pudding wrestling.

krys and i took kat's camera (we never figured out the flash on the camera that dave lent me, but it never caused any problems) and made our way up front. we had nobody between us and the pool, and krys actually managed to get splashed with a bit of pudding on her leg. we made it up on the tv screens a few times, as a female employee of the sand bar was filming the crowd and the wrestling for those who weren't so fortunate as us to get the front-row perspective (the woman was filming as if she were a horny man though - zooming in on the breasts of girls wearing low-cut shirts, zooming in on the crotch of a girl sitting in a lifeguard chair in a short skirt, etc.).

but were we prepared for it? more specifically, was sharon ready for it?



looks like she was ready for just about anything :)

i guess you could say it didn't disappoint:







we left the sand bar awe-struck and ready to sleep. i guess that was too much for us, as we didn't hang around to see the second set of scantily-clad ladies get whooped and hollered at.

on wednesday night, we went out to a really unique-styled club down by south beach called buck 15. it was upstairs in what looked like a warehouse, but it was relatively small and furnished like a living room. lots of couches, lots of comfy chairs. but there were sexy murals on the walls and a huge love roulette wheel to be spun on one wall. as it turned out, we were overdressed; the majority of the patrons were in pajamas and underwear. girls dancing on tables and the backs of couches were in nighties and hotpants. we had found humps wednesday:



the music was alright, with a mix of hip-hop, a little rock (rage!), and a healthy mix of salsa. we danced a bit and cut out around 2:30 to call it a night.

the last night was maybe the coolest for clubbing. we started out trying to get into metropolis, one of the largest clubs in the country (about 35,000 square feet), for free (free before midnight that thursday, i guess), but the line was too long and the cover would have been $20 a piece. so we left there and drove around town looking for the district, and we found it. it had a velvet rope that kept us out for a stupid amount of time (seriously, there weren't even that many people inside yet...), but once we got in we enjoyed ourselves. they had about 4 rooms with all different types of music, one for contemporary hip-hop/rock/pop, one for more of an r&b groove, one for salsa, etc. we hung around the contemporary room all night, mainly because it had a bar which was well-lit with deep blue backlighting.

some musical highlights included kanye west's "gold digger," the violent femmes' "blister in the sun," and a remix of the postal service's "the district sleeps alone tonight." i drove us home in kat's car (ever the dd) and krys and i prepared for about a 5-hour nap before we had to get on the road.

thus ended our amazing stay in coral gables/miami, florida. we enjoyed spending time with kat and sharon, as well as kat's roommates, mike, mike, and felipe. we had great food, great music, great company, and great weather. honestly, we couldn't have asked for a better trip.

the ride back, well, that's another story....

the trip down was great. really no problems or snags at all. it was the kind of trip for which i'd hoped, probably even better than i could have expected.

friday, march 10
the trip started out late, as may be expected. i had lots of things to get done, not the least of which were my taxes (though i forgot to mail them before i left. more on that later). oh, right, and packing. i had been up until 6:30a the night before burning upwards of 50 cds for the trip (still no word on the mp3 player... *sigh*). so, after running errands and finishing up what needed to be done, i finally got on the road about 4:30 or so.

the first leg was tougher than i had expected. the 4 1/2 hour drive down to mizzou had me nearly falling asleep at least once. i piped back up, though, and turned the music up. i rolled in to lindsay's house around 9pm and we promptly headed downtown for some dinner.

we met up with her good friend mike, about whom i'd heard much but never met. we headed over to heidelberg's and had some delicious burgers. mike footed the bill, for which i thank him (thanks, mike!). [side note: it seems every time i get together with lindsay, someone else buys my food. this would be remedied during road trip part II, to be posted later.]

i was up late talking with lindsay and her roommates, who are totally sweet. i managed maybe 6 hour of sleep, but probably closer to 5. up in the morning, showered, and on the road to atlanta.

saturday, march 11
i left mizzou around 8am on saturday after filling up on gas and frappaccino. within a couple of hours i had made it to st. louis, and decided to stick the camera out the window (the strap safely wrapped around my wrist, of course) and started taking pictures at about 80mph.



i made it through missouri with no problems. i cruised right into illinois, where the majority of the action the first day occured (before the highlight of picking krys up at the airport, of course). about an hour into the state, i looked in my rear view mirror to find the first of what i immediately hoped would be many reminders of where i was, or at least where i was heading (this desire fizzled during the second road trip, where i was constantly reminded where i was, and it made my stomach hurt). as i passed an 18-wheeler, i noticed something peculiar about its grill. i spent the next 20 minutes slowing down and letting the truck catch up to me, as i needed a photo.



ironically enough, that would be the first and last noticeable confederate reference on the entire ride down to miami, ironic because i was still in illinois, often referred to as the "land of lincoln."

content with my rear-view photography skills, my gas gauge was nearing "e" and i needed to pull over for a pit stop. somehow, i managed to pull into the coolest town in southern illinois. after a short talk with the women behind the counter (and after realizing i was obviously very near the kentucky border, as i overheard a lady storm out of the store saying something like "(you'd better stay with her) 'cuz you ain't gut me no mo're!" [translation: do enjoy your time with that other lady, as i no longer care to be your romantic companion."), the women directed me to where i wanted to go, and a friendly sign welcomed me to a place i'd only read about.



about 2 miles from this billboard was just what those nice ladies at the gas station had helped me find. behind the metropolis city hall stood a giant statue of the one and only:







after leaving the statue, thinking i was completely content with my visit to metropolis, il., it actually improved. remember those tax returns that i hadn't mailed yet? the whole trip i'd been keeping my eyes open for a mailbox or post office or something. well, i was leaving town and passed the metropolis post office. i took a quick left, turned into the drive-up mailboxes, and dropped in a bunch of amnesty letters, a letter to my mom and my tax forms. there's something really satisfying about knowing that you've sent your tax returns from the same mailbox from which superman sent his. (though evidently the u.s. postal service isn't quite "faster than a speeding bullet" - my mom didn't receive her letter until the following saturday.)

leaving town, i passed the metropolis planet, a reference to the daily planet, where clark kent worked. i'm not a comic book enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination, but i had a blast in metropolis. i got a real kick out of it.

the rest of the drive to HOTlanta was uneventful by comparison. it included drives through nashville:


and chattanooga:


i cruised into atlanta around 8:00p or so, an hour before krys was scheduled to land. she had called earlier, though, and her flight was an hour behind schedule. i was glad to be there on time, though, and it was nice to just sit in the airport transferring the days photos over to my laptop. about 10pm she came through the gate and we shared one of the most satisfying hugs i can remember.

after telephone problems (my phone died and we didn't really have any way to get a hold of our hostess, melanie, for the night), melanie finally found me skulking around her apartment complex looking for an electrical outlet to use to charge my phone, and, thankfully, she didn't even seem creeped out. we crashed for the night - hard - and set the alarm for early early sunday. we had another 11-hour drive ahead of us.

sunday, march 12
we started out with breakfast at a place i'd only heard about. we had passed this prominent southern chain already a number of times, at least i had in tennessee and kentucky, not to mention georgia. we figured, as the cliche goes, "when in rome...."

so we ate at waffle house.



just to make sure we didn't lose our new england roots, we made sure to stock up on dunkin' donuts coffee for the trip, just for good measure. unfortunately, they didn't make krys' coffee right, and she didn't finish much of it. they just don't know how to do coffee outside of new england, i'm telling you. i have ample examples, but that's for another post.

the drive down the middle of florida rendered us elated:



and sneerful:



krys made herself comfy, as she usually does:



and we were reminded why this is the greatest country in the history of time. at least, that's what i assume this driver was getting at:



and on the way in we caught a beautiful sunset:





we arrived at kat's house in miami (well, really, coral gables, but it's surrounded by miami) around 9:30p. we promptly went out for cuban food at la carreta on calle ocho. i got a "cubano regular" and some fried plantains. i had been craving that food all day, even though we had stopped shortly for burger king.

it was quite the satisfying meal, after quite the satisfying trip. we were in miami. and we were happy.

after an amazing spring break trip, i'm back home (well... at school). friday i woke up in 80-degree heat on the southern tip of florida. today i don't have school because of all the snow we're forecast to get.

i'm going to start a short series of posts about my trip. they'll be in chapters, and here's the tentative schedule:

-road trip part I: the ride down
-in miami: the vacation
-road trip part II: the ride back
-road trip part II(a): a tour of turner field
-the music
-observations

i'm hoping to have the first of these up this afternoon, as i don't have class today. i plan on studying though, i swear.

i'm ready to go for my trip. i have clean clothes, towels, bathing suit, toiletries, money, and, most important of all (mmm.. maybe second to money), i have music.

for a trip estimated to take 54 hours and 37 minutes (round trip, that is), i burned 50 cds - 51 after my roommate gave me a quick mix of his to use. i can't imagine being bored.

here's the playlist, in no particular order:

Jurassic 5 – Power in Numbers
Deerhoof – The Runner’s Four
The Bad Plus – Suspicious Activity?
Godspeed, You Black Emperor! – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy
Jaga Jazzist – A Livingroom Hush / The Stix
Jaga Jazzist – What We Must
R.E.M. – Automatic for the People
Feist – Let it Die
Frou Frou – Details
Ladytron – Witching Hour
Broken Spindles – Fulfilled/Complete
MC5 – Back in the USA
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
Squarepusher – Music Is Rotted One Note
Elliot Smith – XO
Elliot Smith – Figure 8
Common – Resurrection
Minus the Bear – This is What I Know About Being Gigantic / Menos el Oso
Sage Francis & Gruvis Malt – Dead Poet Live Album
Kaiser Chiefs – Employment
Bad Brains – self-titled
Secret Chiefs 3 – First Grand Constitution and Bylaws
DangerDoom – Be Afraid…. Be Very Afraid
The Dresden Dolls – Yes, Virginia
Saul Williams – self-titled
Mr. Bungle – self-titled
Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine
Do Make Say Think - & Yet & Yet
Drive-By Truckers – The Dirty South
The Police - Synchronicity
My Morning Jacket – It Still Moves
Kaddisfly – Buy Our Intention, We’ll Buy You a Unicorn
Amon Tobin – Solid Steel
Explosions in the Sky – The Earth is Not a Dead Cold Place
Sound Tribe Sector 9 – Offered Schematics Suggesting Peace
The Mercury Program – A Data Learn the Language
Andrew Bird – The Mysterious Production of Eggs
The Strokes – First Impressions of Earth
The Velvet Underground & Nico – self-titled
Zero 7 – Simple Things
Kraftwerk – Die Mensch Machine
Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking
Sex Pistols – Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
Ozomatli – Coming Up / Live at the Fillmore
Ozomatli – Ya llego!
Mellowdrone – Box
TV on the Radio – OK Calculator
Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 (disc 1)
Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 (disc 2)

mizzou, here i come. then hotlanta. then miami.

man, this is gonna be sweet.

tomorrow morning i'll be calling up the digital mind corporation to make sure they can mail my mp3 player back to me before friday. they've had it for about a month now. i understood they might have it for a couple of weeks, tops. what seemed to be a minor problem is now freaking me out. i just want my xclef back!


in absentia

however, i'm preparing for the worst. assuming i don't get all of my music back (about 7,000 songs), i'll have to make due. i copied some of my music over to my laptop's harddrive before sending the player in for repair, but that was only maybe 20 artists, maybe 2 or 3 albums a piece. not enough for a road trip, i'll assure you.

so, i'm thinking of artists that i need to burn to cd, if i don't already have it on disc, and whether i already have the music in digital form or not. here a preliminary list:

• minus the bear
  
• art tatum
  
• keith jarrett
  
• r.e.m.
  
• !!!
  
• the roots
  
• jurassic 5
  
• porcupine tree
  
• bela fleck and the flecktones
  
• the dresden dolls
  
• the faint
  
• broken spindles
  
• broken social scene
  
• lou reed/velvet underground
  
• portishead
  
• 2 skinnee j's
  
• cypress hill
  
• saul williams
  
• jazzyfatnastees
  
• jem
  
• common
  
• led zeppelin
  

i need more. i especially need more warm-weather suggestions (krys suggested sublime, which i thought was a great pick). so please, post in the comments suggestions of music to bring. even if i get my mp3 player back in time, i need some new music to explore, particularly on the four days (total) that i'll be driving by myself, but also including the times i'm driving with krys.

so post up those comments, people! expand my horizons, already.

*UPDATE: i just received this email from dmc:

"Your player has been received and we are waiting for parts to repair it.
You will be advised when repairs have been completed.

DMC Staff"

damn damn damn!

how long can it take for parts like that to come in? after that, how long will it take to repair? the problem was that i was losing sound in the left (and, eventually, the right) channels. and the backlight wasn't working.

however, on the bright side, this implies that my warantee hasn't run out, or at least they haven't noticed that it has. unless i get my player back with a big fat bill attached to it, at which point i will move and change my phone number.

let's hope it doesn't come to that.

if i've been boring and quiet over the past week or so, my apologies. every now and then i fall into a rut and don't update for a few days or however long. i'm working really hard on not doing that. and there's lots to talk about.

mainly, the coming spring break.

i haven't yet done anything incredibly spring break-ish in my time in college. my first two i went home and spent time with friends, family, girlfriend and dog, and last year krys and i flew down to sarasota florida so she could meet my dad (and so i could see him). while they've all been great, they haven't been the sort of fun vacation one might think of when "spring break" comes up.

now, i'm no stereotypical partier. i wouldn't support girls gone wild, and tend to resent men who take advantage of drunk women, video camera or not (gives the rest of us a bad name). that said, i do enjoy the beach and warm weather. and if i could take a trip to a warm climate, spend time with krys and some friends of mine/ours, and do it on a relatively cheap budget, well, i'm FOR it.

that trip is happening.


but can my car handle it?

here's the rundown: a friend of mine who graduated from unl last may is attending graduate school at the university of miami (fl). she was one of my best friends when she was here and she has maintained that, should any of us get the urge to travel to miami, we'd have a place to stay. we took her up on it.

the plan

• friday march 10: leave lincoln by myself in the late morning. drive approx. 5 hours to columbia, mo. stay with friends at mizzou. buy them beer or something.
  
• saturday march 11: leave mizzou early in the morning, say around 8:30a. drive approx. 11 1/2 hours to atlanta, ga. pick up krys at hartsfield international airport at 9pm.
  
• drive from the airport to newnan, ga, approx. 20-30 minutes. stay with a friend of columnist cyndi waite. buy her beer or something.
  
• sunday march 12: leave newnan, ga, very early in the morning, probably about 8:30a. drive approx. 11 hours from atlanta to miami. arrive at kat's house in miami in time to participate in a cuban street party in little havana. buy kat beer or wine or something.
  
• stay in miami for 4 days, 5 nights. activities may include: clubbing; sailing; a camping excursion to a small, unmapped island; spending ridiculous amounts of time at south beach; eating home-cooked meals; getting some sort of tan.
  
• friday march 17: leave miami early in the morning, probably around 8:30 or 9. drive approx. 11 hours to newnan, ga, and stay with the same friend of cyndi's. buy her beer or something.
  
• saturday march 18: drop krys off at hartsfield international airport in atlanta for a 8:49a flight(probably about 7:30a). drive from atlanta to columbia, mo, approx. 11 1/2 hours. stay at mizzou with good friends. buy them beer or something.
  
• sunday march 19: leave columbia later in the morning. drive about 5 hours back to lincoln. sleep for the next week.
  

some things to note:

• i will be driving from lincoln to atlanta alone. that means i'll be driving by myself through the south (albeit not quite the deep south). missouri, kentucky, and tennessee. i have an anti-swastika bumper sticker on my car and my hair in dreads. in the next two weeks, i will try my hardest to learn how to get 600 miles out of a tank of gas. therefore, there will be no need to stop. at all. ever.
  
• i must make it to atlanta by 9pm. otherwise, krys will be in the airport, by herself, with luggage, and nobody around that she knows. i don't think she'd be terrified, but she wouldn't be very comfortable. i'll have to leave early. really, really early.
  
• my mp3 player has not yet been mailed back to me. i sent it in to dmc 3 1/2 weeks ago for maintenance and repair under my warrantee (which may or may not have run out by now). i need that for the trip. to reiterate: i NEED that for the trip.
  
• my research hours have not yet been turned in. hopefully if i turn them in tomorrow i will receive those funds in my checking account by the time i depart. i suppose we'll have to cross our collective fingers (we meaning me and whoever is reading this. please, do cross your fingers that i have money for this trip. you know. just in case.)
  
• this has the makings of a classic adventure that is spoken about for years to come. suffice it to say: i'll post pictures.
  

i'ma go brush up on my cuban. 'til next time.

as promised, a visual description of (some of) krys' trip last weekend. we didn't get any shots of our night out at misty's steakhouse, followed by the vagina monologues at the rococo theatre, nor did we get shots of us enjoying a midnight breakfast at ihop, but i'm not disappointed. these will do nicely.


our lunch date with mr. allen ratliff. i'm not entirely sure, but i think he was hitting on both of us at one time or another.


me at work. this is my best "i'm a pretentious record store clerk who doesn't have time for you to ask me if we have any bossanova. it's in the jazz section, loser" face. i'm still working on it.


here, i'm demonstrating to krys what q and i (and often dave) do when it's past midnight and we just don't feel like going to bed. one of us will balance ourselves on the purple tortureball while the other tosses the football to him. if you fall off, you lose, i guess. we lose a lot.*


adorable photo no. 1.


adorable photo no. 2.


adorable photo no. 3.


proof that i have wicked cool roommates, and that we all really like each other. i think this may be the only photo of the three of us that's been taken in this house yet. and, i don't think any such photo was taken last year.


*note: it's very fun to get dave or quentin to play this game - as the ball-sitter/receiver - when they're drunk. very, very fun.

it was 67 and sunny on tuesday.

it was wonderful. pictures to come.

diagnosis: sick. not stuffed up or anything, and no runny nose to speak of, but a headache, lethargy, and loss of appetite.

prescription: pajamas ("jim jams"), vegetable beef soup, ginger ale and orange juice (known as a "daybrightener"), the simpsons season 6 dvd, and a full night's sleep. it's foolproof.