Farewell au B-town.

In the hustle and bustle of leaving B-town last week, I managed to leave bits and pieces of my life in a number of locations - necessitating a return trip to scavenge for the flotsam left behind. ... in order for it to become flotsam, it most likely had to be jetsam in the first place ... but I don't recall throwing anything overboard to test buoyancy.

And - I told a few souls that I would be swinging back through. mistake. because by few, I mean everyone. and by swinging, I really meant drive-through. so, invariably I missed seeing many, many people that deserved a fervent final farewell for formalities. If you send me your address, I will make it up to you in postcards! I can't really do justice to everyone, because I will miss someone who actually reads this - and remember everyone else somehow - but here goes:

a goodbye to those that I never really did the goodbye thing with, and were close enough that I could possibly have swung by - Laura, Cord, Ali, Kris, Kristin, John, Chelsea, Tito, George, Chris, Pete, Ryan, Davis, Jen, Colin, Nick, Lee, Dave, Tamara, Sean, Hannah, Andrew, Emily, Cortney, Kevin, Dara, Rahul, Sarah, Rob, Erin, Matt, Leigh, Tim, Liza, Clinton, David, Jeff, Todd, Rajani, Stephen. If you are a duplicate - i.e. there are four different 'Nick's that could qualify here - then just assume that I meant you. because I did. And really people ... I will be back in two months - I'm not leaving forever - at least I don't think so. hence - I will see you when I get back. calm down. jeez.

it keeps getting closer and closer to the final leaving date !! super exciting !! I am going to start getting everything in my personal duffel packed and ready for the checklist tomorrow ! woot woot !

on the drive today, besides almost falling asleep and forgetting to apply the breaks, and coming impolitely close to the rear bumper of a cement mixer ... who had been judiciously applying his own breaks to come to a complete stop at a red light ... the only thing of note otherwise is that I confused a few cars of college kids. They would pull up next to me (this was while I was proximal to Burlington), look at the two queen mattresses, bike, boxes, toaster, microwave, air conditioner, books, etc ... then look at me, then at the direction that I was driving, then back at the stuff in the truck ... then at me ... and you could tell that they were thinking, "should we tell him that he's driving AWAY from UVM?" or, "geez ... I wonder what classes he was taking?"

... an interesting sign on rt 7 says "Anti ques". which inspired the question ... just what are ques in the first place? cues are used for pool, or actors. queues let you know how long till you get to use the restroom. but ques? perhaps by analyzing everything in the store of this 'Anti' ques we can fine out what 'Pro' ques is ... let's see ... broken chairs ... old plates ... rusty tow plow head ... hmmm. a que must be something new, shiny, and relevant to today's society!

speaking of road signs ... one of the best ones that I have seen - in front of a mid-sized jewelry store: ''Come on in! We've got the rings! You just give us the finger!''

Idiomatic sayings.

11.5 idiomatic sayings to wonder at.

if 'no news is good news' ... then there is no good news. because if it exists, then it isn't good ... and in order for it to be good ... it would have to never be told. so, maybe this should be 'good news is kept a secret'.

if you are 'fit as a fiddle', does that mean that you can be played?

since 'talk is cheap', you would think that radio advertising would cost less than the newspaper.

interesting that if you were to take 'two peas in a pod', next to one another as in the whole friendship connotation, and split the pea open ... those two peas move to opposite sides ... the peas that stay together are the alternating ones ....

'by the skin of your teeth' ... first of all ... teeth skin. that's just gross. brush them. listerine. something. because if you have teeth skin, then you may very well be 'hanging by a thread' ... which would be bad ... unless you have tungsten thread ... which has a tensile strength of 100,000 - 500,000 psi at room temperature - and figuring that your common thread is 2 - 3 mm in diameter - lot's take the low side for safety's sake - 2mm diameter is 1 mm radius, squared that's still 1 ... you with me? times pi is 3.1415926535 which is in square millimeters, convert to square inches gives 0.004869478, then multiply that by 100,000 gives 487 pounds of potential. so ... you would actually be fine. the saying should be modified to exclude tungsten.

'elbow grease'. pertains neither to a liquid lubricant extracted from elbows, nor to a gel for the forearm ginglymus joint. surely 'finger fluid', or 'shoulder solvent' sounds just as unclear and foolish?

okay ... if 'every cloud has a silver lining' then why don't we go get some silver?? and if someone already has mined that treasure trove (think of the loot to be had in Seattle!) ... then the saying is void, and should be removed so as to not excite peoples' expectation.

strangely ... 'fat chance' and 'slim chance' mean the same thing!! how can this be?! the initial words in each idiom are opposites!

'flat as a pancake' should be changed to 'flat as a crepe'. if you are going to hyperbole with a food analogy - you might as well go all the way.

and lastly - 'here's food for thought'. it's not food ... it's a thought, or a question. and you can't eat it. you are supposed to think about it ... but at your leisure. So ... really ... unless your mind eats questions ... which is weird ... the phrase should be 'here's thought for tedium'. not quite as catchy perhaps ...

------> use one of these cool and refreshing idiomatic based discrepancies at your next party to wow your guests, bring life to dull and flat hair, purify your water, or when acting smart to make up for your inability to win at beirut or castle pong!

Teeth Cleaning ...

As you might have ascertained from the title, today I got my teeth cleaned. If you have the means and are in the Manchester, VT area I highly recommend DDS PC Richard Heilemann's office (802) 362 1099. ... just putting that out there. friendly. professional. excellent work. everything that you could ask for - and they give you a new toothbrush and floss and stuff when you're done! you even get to choose between waxed (read : slippery and hard) or woven (read : precision engineered) - what fun!

We began with a relaxing head and neck massage - while I sipped fluoride and pretended that I was reclining on an ocean liner in the south pacific islands - made significantly easier, as they have a tropical fish mobile (brightly colored caricatures) hanging in the very room! Another cool thing that took me a second to gain cognizance of, is that they don't have doors on the cleaning rooms. huge windows, not shut in at all, pictures and mobiles ... but all in a very starkly clean environ. crafty.

Then the routine xrays, crevice check (hey - teeth - gutter mind), space check, general buffing, scraping (this is where they get the metal pick and your teeth to make that distinctive blood curdling, small child paralyzing, fingernail scraping noise), and final polishing. I was commended for brushing at pseudo-regular intervals, and for saying that I keep a floss pack in both my med kit and my bathroom kit. I only claimed to have used floss when 'overcome with enough guilt to convince myself to' - and let me tell you, those two times were memorable enough to assuage any further flossings!

In the meantime - if you can think of any way to get about three duffel bags worth of stuff that I want to bring on the road trip down to the 1 that we each agreed on - that would be most helpful. 'bigger duffel', 'shrink wrap', 'spandex', and 'tankinis' are options that have all been nixed already. thanks.

If you think Copacetic is fine and satisfactory - break up and swap the two words - Acetic Cop! Bitter acid police officer - nothing okay about that!

He Split it in Twain!

So - yet again I decided to do firewood instead of biking. Mind you, this tends to happen when I'm back in the ol' homestead; since the 'rents need firewood, it's actually rather fun, and ... my bike is still up in Burlington so I would have to ride the old Schwinn. A good touring bike actually - but not nearly as well geared - and we have something peculiar here that apparently they don't have on 'tours' ... hills. and lots of them. You can ride approximately 2 miles left from our house, or 1/2 mile right, on a relatively flat route ... making a 5 mile loop total if you were to overlap both pieces. kind of boring to loop the same 5 miles over and over. kind of a pain in the arse to go up an 8-12 grade 'hill'... even if you do get to fly back down the other side like a tightly garbed gladiator on a fiery aluminum chariot.

firewood. good times. went through about four tanks of gas in the chainsaws, didn't even dent the huge logpile left from the loggers. Split most of the wood that I cut as small lengths for Gram's stove. nearly four hours and a half gallon of sweat later, I decided that I could take the day off from biking.

the sudden obsession, compulsion, or modest interest in bicycling? Well - it began as a way to justify having brought my mountain bike around to every new apartment since college - but not ever really riding it! A few times to work, once or twice down to North Beach ... mostly to save money on parking. So, inspired in no small part by a friend of mine from childhood who does triathlons, and having peaked at the highest body weight that I never want to read off of a scale again, I decided to get back on the road - two wheel style.

I started at 5 miles a day. Upgraded to 10 miles in an stretch. a couple of 15's later, I did the waterfront tour with at roommate of mine - and we heroically sprinted out the 500 ft elevation gain during the last 4 miles on our return loop. considering that it was 90 degrees out, I hadn't had anything to eat, only brought a half liter of water, and didn't drink any of it, I should have expected to overheat! But it was fun none-the-less! Made me realize that I could really do some nice loops and not even feel it the next day.

A couple of days later - I got a message from my dear cousin, telling of her plans for the upcoming summer. A bike tour running from east coast to west coast, building houses for communities along the way - and the cut-off age is 25. I had just gone home for a week to query what to do with my life ... did I need a bigger sign? Immediately, I started filling out the paperwork, making calls, getting motivated for this cross country adventure!

The organization is bike and build - and since I have to raise $4000 dollars total by next summer, I will be shamelessly asking for any small amount of tax deductible, charitable, good natured, character building donation that you may be able to part with. A biking jersey alone costs $50 ... two small donations of $25 even would make it so that I could get up in the morning and put on a new shirt, instead of wringing the sweat out from the 70-100 mile ride across the arid plains of Nebraska the day before, and squeezing into the salt stained pungent polymer packaging. Needless to say, I will be singing your praises for days on end. My travel mates will as well, I am sure. Checks can be made payable to Eli Schwartz, with 'Bike and Build Donation' in the memo line - or, when I have the full material from them (publishing/mailing dates are mid September) I should be able to have the option of checks sent to B&B direct deposited into my account ... either way - October is the end of the government fiscal year ... maybe someone you know needs another deductible?

In preparation for this undertaking - I have endeavored to get in a good 10+ miles every day; working on flat stretches, gradual hills (which actually kill you more than the quick steep ones because you lose all you momentum, motivation, and have to pull out reserve energy to keep going), and a few big-trucks-and-fire-engines-go-around-because-they-are-so-steep-and-curvy routes ... because this is training for a cross country trip. gotta be ready for anything! Of course, I am using a 35 pound mountain bike, with disc breaks, steel pedals, bar handles, and shocks. Needless to say - when I raise enough money, I will immediately get the new road bike to start training with! Before I leave for the real thing, I want to be able to do a Burlington - Jamaica run, in one day; along route 7, without needing to be picked up by emergency vehicles, and feel confident that I could manage a return trip within the next few days. 120 miles each way. VT hills. I just may be entirely crazy.

makes four hours of cutting and splitting firewood seem not at all that bad.

I have some artsy wood chopping pics ... that I have been trying for the past hour to upload ... but this is dial-up ... I was going to set the camera up to show me chopping with our enormous maul, possibly flexing without a shirt, muscles bulging and body gleaming in the harsh streaks of sunlight as the wedge of steel whistles through the late summer heat ... but realized how narcissistic that would be, so decided against it. Plus by the time I had it all set up, the perfect light was gone, and I was covered in birch chips. tawdry woodsman glamour shoot = sawdust yeti scruff documentary. not quite the same.

If you take the first D in Dunkin Donuts and put it with the second D you get Unkind Donuts ...

Adjectives, Gerunds, and Webster

It is not okay to make descriptive adjectives by simply applying a 'y' to the end of a word. conversation in point, overheard at an Old Navy:
'omg, look at this shirt, what do you think?'
'hmm, it's a little too pinky for me, but it could work for you.'
perhaps they were not aware that 'pink' is an adjective ... as it stands? or that pinky is taken already ... and acts as a noun that either allows us differentiation betwixt fingers, or for you nautical folk as a small sailing vessel with a sharply narrowed stern and an overhanging transom. the possibility stands though, that they even honestly believe that pinky is being used in an acceptable, conversational fashion ...

However - enough is enough. We simply cannot sit idly by while the pretense that Americans speak English goes to rot. There are lots of options for suffixes, attachments, even hyphenated addendums that create acceptable adjective conversion.

I was in an art critique with a sculptor who made a huge bugle out of cardboard. The comment from one girl was that it 'looks great. really horny.' instead of the possibly confusion ... how about horn-ish? not as catchy perhaps ...

now if it had been a huge corn. you wouldn't want to say corny (...), or cornish ... unless of course you can actually observe different sociocultural anomalies in horn shape. perhaps corn-esque. corn-like. characterized by a similarity to corn. of or containing the identifying elements to be labeled as corn. with physical attributes reminiscent of corn, the sum of which may lessen the whole but not negate the association.

have we lost the ability not only to think of an appropriate adjective, but to modify our limited vocabulary in an educated fashion to make up for our deficits?

Similarly gerunds have cropped up ... verbs simply by a composite interaction with an 'ing', or contextual reference. 'beer me' - on first glance, you might think that they were asking to be turned into a frosty cold one. 'MacGyvering' - is not just acting like the legendary R.D.A., but using duct tape, a paperclip, and two apples to make a radio.

And now Webster has added ginormous to the dictionary; along with unibrow, soul patch, bling, google (as a verb), himbo, crunk, and smackdown, as of this current 2007 edition. (most of these, and a surprising number of justifiably valid words show up as red underlines with even the newest internet browser auto spellcheck) ..... new possibilities for 2008 ? :
forizzle - an expression verifying honest or truthful intent.
teh - the most common typo found in typewritten documents.
bushism - a word composed of a noun, usually modified by 'ify', used as a verb. see 'communify', 'structurify', 'enhancify', 'speechify', 'nuclearify'.
pugglitious - diminutive adjective for the beagle and pug mixed breed.
fugly - very ugly.
wikipedia - to look up on an online database or encyclopedia compendium.
... any other good ones you find?

luckily the Official Word List for Scrabble tournament and competition play only gets updated every dozen or so years ... since a word has to show up in at least 3 different unabridged current lexicons in order to be considered.

on a side note.
you can be nonplussed ... are you ever plussed?
my shirt has interwoven threads ... are there outerwoven ones?
if I were to unravel them ... could they be raveled back together?
if unhinged means to have gone slightly crazy ... would you tell someone who has it all together that they are really hinged?
we've all seen people dumbfounded ... will they ever get to be smartfounded?

these are things that I think about on a daily basis.

more tomorrow. perhaps a biking update. and for goodness sake people - in the meantime - watch those 'y' adjective modifiers! it's making me flustery...

A moving parable.

It occurred to me, oh valiant reader, that I had somehow been moving form apt to apt over the past few years, and the composition of the move has morphed dramatically ... but many of the mainstays have remained.

Senior year college. Moving into University Terrace. The essential necessities for the first load in to the new place. several cases of Ramen, knives, 18 Volt toolkit complete with circular saw, some clothes, some shoes, a couple nice dress shirts, a futon, frozen juice, trunk of booze, several cases of books, art materials, film cameras, too many pillows, lockpick set, computer(s), box o' electronics, more books, boules set, and several boxes that just said 'kitchen'. Somehow, there were two carloads of this ... and more furniture slowly accumulated over the year.

This move. Second move in two months - long story about the landlords ... maybe if I get a big enough comment reaction I will tell it sometime ... but suffice it to say - I had sent most of the big stuff home to a storage unit, and was left - yet again - with the essential survival mix. 5 bags of shoes, an entire backseat of clothes - half of which were laid out on hangers, 2 huge boxes of food and knives, frozen fillet mignon, boxes of books and binders, computer, duffel bag full of electronics, film cameras, two pillows, boules set, croquette, toolbox, ironing board, and a box of glass seashells.

There are more details, of course, but I am not Joyce. I will spare you the discussion of how the style and cut, even occasionally brand, of groin undergarment has changed over the years. Or an accounting of all of those shoes, and the tantalizing validity of their purchase at the time. Even, just what I need all those cables and hardware for - or what possesses me to carry around well over a thousand dollars worth of it in a duffel. Should I detail the many suits that I now travel with, and the name-brand accoutrements that accompany them? do I count the suits with pants that need to be fitted? Or the ones that desperately deserve dry-cleaning? does it emasculate me to discuss the desire to dry-clean my clothes, or that I can't seem to get in touch with a good inexpensive tailor ... or just the shoes from the beginning?

yeah, I thought so.

I have more in the storage unit.

And more clothes.

The difficult part of it is that I could get rid of it all, willingly, and without really feeling too remorseful (get rid of - read: sell, gift, storage) but I would just buy it all back! I refused to bring up those extra shoes and clothes and books and gear. And what was the first thing that I bought? new shoes at the mall, JC Penny clothing binge, sale annex at Barnes and Noble (such good deals ... how can anyone resist?), and new gear.

Not that I am lamenting per se - I did, after all, have the means to do it all without pain. But does this relatively new obsession with consumerism contraband have to continue? I hope not. It's to the point where I need something new to emphasize any new change. Taken up rock climbing again? -- new pair of shoes (and no, these count as gear technically, and were not included in the aforementioned shoes), chalk bag, chalk ball. Biking longer distances? -- Garmin 305 Edge gps, with heart monitor, and cadence sensor ... no new shoes yet ... but I did allocate one pair of sneakers to be just biking now - then there are the indoor sneakers - then there are the comfy sneaks for walking around - and the leather sneakers for casual dress - damn ... is there a help group for this? does it meet at TJ Max? because that's where I keep going.

take from this what you will - but this move feels much more organized, structured, consolidated, and grown up. Still packed a lot in milk crates (surely not any illegal milk crates borrowed from back alleys on Pine st in the night), plenty of ziplock and plastic bags, and an item or two that got packed and had to be fished out to be used before being re-packed again. maybe the clothes were folded and put into a huge f-leather suitcase, or kept piled together on hangers, instead of thrown into white trashbags and crammed into the trunk. Instead of Ramen and corn and three spice mixes, there was wheat linguine and jasmine tea (I'm not a hippy. this is just one small sampling. I eat confined, tortured, dismembered animals weekly. they taste good) and dozens of herbs in little glass jars. So, I'm not really worried that I've started being too grown up. No leather couches. No huge TV. And I don't have a burning desire to bring my appliances from home to home. The only thing that is starting to worry me ... is that I have gotten a little too good at building impromptu shoe racks.

A boxing we will go!

Well, this must be the harbinger of the end of summer ... the moving out of smelly subletters, and the moving in of the college folk. Oh, wait, I was the subletter. damn. Not that smelly, I hope.

And, I would rather enjoy driving around town and seeing the new crop of co-eds and parent gaggles and strange vehicles piled with pieces of furniture - that if they had read the move-in manual would have found out are actually provided by the University - and small children with heads precariously wrenched out of open windows, in the hope against hope that a sign passing too close, or a stray mailbox will end the torture of the drive up, the move in, and then the eventual morose drive back to Bumblefizz, Colorado. And why didn't we fly?

That is to say, I would enjoy that. If it were possible to drive. Needless to say, there are a few new crumbs in town that don't understand that this is a whole cookie. With lots more crumbs that would like to get to work, or go home, or just get a few pieces of food from the local corporate distributer - and even though you seem to think that it would be okay to go back up the one-way-only street in reverse, because 'technically we are facing the right direction' - it's really not. Because I am behind you. And curiously enough, I want to go forward along this road.

But maybe that was silly of me. I should have taken Main street, where I could creep up the 6-11 % grade hill, feathering my clutch, and waiting for the precariously balanced futon to come rumbling free of it's seat, bringing with it a hail of Ramen and #2 pencils. Or, should I feel like taking my life into my hands, make the loop onto the highway to bypass the city altogether. There encountering persons from state(s) whose plate begins with 'New', surely meaning the recency of their having been licensed to drive. As I passed, in the right lane, because some people don't realize that it is called the passing lane due to the common action of 'passing other cars', not 'passing time', the second hippy with dreadlocks driving an Escalade, I believe a small amount of bile escaped my liver attempting to reach to digest the rancid meat it thought I had just transfered to my duodenum from my stomach, but as the sphincter of Oddi was still closed, it just mosied on over to the ol' gallbladder for a spell. Did I get too detailed all of a sudden?

On that note - I'm going to return to packing. I will have more stories of horror and insanity to impart, as this is indeed 'move-up week'. Do not go near Walmart, Staples, Price Chopper, or even attempt to enter the Verizon parking lot ... they share that with Staples.

Thus it Begins ...

Well now. There was a time that I considered the word blog to be an anagram of glob that renders an invalid Scrabble play. But as those times have obviously passed, and since you are now curious about anagrams and word etymology, I will elucidate you on the finer points of said blog.

Many people, inclusive of the wild propagation of bloggers, believe that blog is a crude and inglorious word for the online publications of their lives and thoughts. And it is. You mention your blog at a formal dinner with new acquaintances, and it is easy to be suddenly seen as someone who sits at home rambling about inconsequential, without purpose. Not so, people of the world. For example, you are about to learn something right now. The word blog actually stems from a much more academic and socially respected root: weblog. Interestingly enough, you can put a space at the b and get 'web log' - the root separated - or at the e and get 'we blog' - the action we take. So, in the future, mention in polite conversation that you have a 'weblog' of your recent activities, or perhaps an 'online journal' of personal musings. But in writing this, I decided to check Wikipedia, and found out more than I was actually going to write here ... I was even going to use the word portmanteau ... damn you Wiki! There is something not in there though - Joe Bloggs is the English equivalent of our Joe Blow, or John Doe, for any hypothetical person.

Yep.

You feel smart now.

But really, this is supposed to be about me - so apparently I like teaching people, and words, and discussions. Brilliant!

Well, if you are reading this, I presuppose that you already know me well enough to forgo any lengthy foundational introduction. Plus, this was supposed to be a weblog containing tales of adventure! Personal insights! Graham cracker crusts! And, considering that the much awaited 6 week cross country road-trip is soon approaching, I wanted to get this here log started! I will endeavor to flesh out the page and details at my convenience later this week.

Stay tuned. Excitement and vivification awaits!