Something like eleven hours later we're finally in. Sunburnt, tired, dirty, and anxious to start. The line exploded to huge size in the last hour. I had to buy an umbrella even. People have turned from white to pinks and reds.

-Davidtext

Eek!

Campin'! In Ashville, North Carolina to see the Smashing Pumpkins.

This guy here was taking advantage of our tent, probably getting warm.

I'm employed! You're talking to BestWay's new Ass. System Administator. Vacation is over.,

- David

It's A Record!

The first communal item purchased for Apartment Portsmouth was a record player from Target (the second being a coffee pot). Mr. Spinny's first playmate was a Tom Waits record of live performances of nearly all my favorite songs. His second and third amigos are Decemberists (brand new) and the Smashing Pumpkins (hand-me down).

Records are surprisingly cheap. Decemberists consists of two two-sided records, a full color booklet with lyrics and glossy pics, and five songs not previously released. Price: $20. Still in the plastic! And records are huge! CDs are the suck.

Anywho, today I had some downtime (no job, napping Kasey, sleeping pugs) so I muted the Devil's Instrument and popped in side D of Decemberists and watched the vinyl go round and round.

Then it came to me: I could share the strangely simple and newly discovered joy of watching a record play with the awesomeness of my favorite songs via teh Internets. So I setup my laptop precariously on a cigar ashtray stand and captured my two faves for you, my dear sexy intelligent funny well-liked and virile readers.

Constantinople

Bandit Queen

Both of these are awesome, and it's hard to pick between the two, but Bandit Queen is adorable and gets stuck in my head most often. So there you go.

Okay, peanut butter cookies are being made and I need to help put the dough into my mouth... er... oven.

Peace!

- David

New Pictorz!!1!

I just uploaded a bunch of new photos to my Flickah account, click the image to checks them out if you got the time.

droppedcamera.jpg, originally uploaded by BodhiDave.

This one here happened when I accidentally dropped the camera. I don't even remember hitting the button, I think it went off when it hit the ground.

I walked about four miles today, and I'll probably do another one with the pugs before I go to bed. Walking is good. More people should do it.

Nighty!

- David

Virginia = Suicide

Well, at least in the early 1600s:

Healthy, new colonists were constantly dispatched from England to early America, but they perished almost as fast as they could be replaced. Between December 1606 and February 1625, Virginia received 7, 289 immigrants and buried 6,040 of them. Most barely had time to settle in. All but 500 of the 3,500 immigrants who arrived in the three years of 1619-1621 were dead by the end of the period. To go to Virginia was effectively to commit suicide.

From a site I found on Reddit.com, which is an awesome site to get news and such. It learns what you like based on ratings you give and spits out stuff it thinks you'd want.

I should be hearing about that job today or tomorrow. The guy told me "frankly" that I'm the top runner, pending my background check. I'm hoping my assassination career and all of those drug-running arrests don't show up.

In other news, Three-Hundredth post! Woo! I should do something special... Hmm. Maybe a picture?

I did not take this picture. Kasey did.

And another one just for fun:

I did take this one, so there.

Adios!

- David

Noteworthy News Article - Kids Walkin'

Teh Article

The contrast between Edward and George's childhoods is highlighted in a report which warns that the mental health of 21st-century children is at risk because they are missing out on the exposure to the natural world enjoyed by past generations...

The report's author, Dr William Bird, the health adviser to Natural England and the organizer of a conference on nature and health on Monday, believes children's long-term mental health is at risk.

He has compiled evidence that people are healthier and better adjusted if they get out into the countryside, parks or gardens.

Stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces, he says. Even filling a home with flowers and plants can improve concentration and lower stress.

"If children haven't had contact with nature, they never develop a relationship with natural environment and they are unable to use it to cope with stress," he said.

"Studies have shown that people deprived of contact with nature were at greater risk of depression and anxiety. Children are getting less and less unsupervised time in the natural environment.

It's short and interesting. Get outside!

- David

Fiwa Works!

There was a big to-do this weekend called Harbor Fest, with lots of boats and people and blah blah blah. We saw some cool stuff, I had to talk to a cop to get into my own parking garage, and I heard one of the loudest things in my entire life.


Long Pretty Fireworks Video Thing

If you don't watch the whole thing, at least watch near the end. They (three different barges) go like nuts with a bunch of colored fireworks, then comes these bright-ass bursts of sound and light that turns the smoke into a lightening storm.

In other news, I've started a journal and a new book, and I'll be fasting for a week starting tomorrow. Monday I should be hearing back about a job I interviewed over an hour for. He told me flat out that he's interested. I'm hopeful. Again.

- David

Naro You Worry

In Ghent, waiting to buy cash-only tickets for the only movie that's been playing for weeks.

Some torpid woman behind us asks her greyed and rounded husband, 'What's The Fountain?' What indeed! He says it's an art film and that she wouldn't like it. They can both rot in retarded sequel boobs-bombs-babes plotless movie hell.

Mm, theatre butter. Peace out.

- Davidtext

Cigar and Rain

From the Red Notebook

Cigar and rain. The cigar is old & harsh, despite my best efforts to keep it alive & young; it's dry. Pre-smoked, you see. Kasey's left-over. I picked out a more mild collection of tobaccos for her, hoping she'd be able to enjoy and finally finish one, but alas, she has not found the taste. Oh well, maybe in time.

The rain is sporadic, has been for three days now. Sat & Sun were gray days that threatened a few times to turn my dog walk into a Wet T-Shirt Contest. Sitting in my 13th floor living room, the sky-lined shore of downtown Norfolk not half a mile away suddenly disappears entirely in gray mist and round drops. Drops that bead amazingly on the brown edge of my balcony, all fat and impossibly independent and round, full of white bubbled light. I blow across them and they vibrate excitedly like tiny pets.

The dogs and I walked nearly two miles today in the heat and occasional breeze. We rested in my favorite curved park, always empty when we visit in our jobless existence, and they investigated all the plant life and traces of other animals, invisible to me. I sat on the large flat concrete portion of some sort of three-walled area and they took drinks of rain water collected in a discarded plastic monstrosity perhaps once belonging to a pond template or a kiddy-pool.

Maudie & Riley both initially resisted my half-energetic orders to get back on the leash and staged a protest by panting uninterestedly at me from prone postions in the shady grass. Feeling generous (and lazy) I decided to let them win this little battler, for a time.

But the pull of a waiting girlfriend in a cool apartment with clean water for the troops soon won out and I got them to submit to their color-coded leashes, tied them to my belt loops on either side, and headed on a route to some possible geocache locations, and then home.

- David

Reading about Henry David Thoreau has renewed my energy to write/journal. Wee!

So Lazy, So Very Very Laz...

Today has gone by in like five minutes. I wrote this enormous blog post that was worded awesomely and such, but then couldn't finish it. In mid-sentence. I did a load of laundry. I made cereal. Messed around in PhotoShop. Broke in the couch. That's about it.

So... pictures!

Rawr!

Don't feed the panhandlers!

Boat. Big boat.

And my favorite, which is from balcony corner to balcony corner and sloppily put together:

Oooh, magic.

- LazyDave