The Big Green House

Down in the flood

Well, this has been a fun day. My body apparently wants to be on both vacation schedule and work schedule. Yesterday I woke up at 7:30 AM, just as I did all vacation. I did not get to sleep until 3:30 this morning, yet I still awoke at 9:30. Even counting the 20 minute nap I took yesterday afternoon and the 45 minutes today, that makes for a lot of wakey time. Not very good for the psyche.

Neither is the news from New Orleans. Aside from all the general misery going on down there, I have an online acquaintance with whom I’ve swapped a couple of discs who lives in the area. He and his immediate family are safe, but his wife’s family in Mississippi can’t be reached. Most likely they’re fine, as they were headed for higher ground when last heard from, but still… most of them have lost their homes, at the very least. Also, Science Girl's best childhood friend lives in New Orleans. She and her family are safe with her in-laws in Arkansas. Their biggest fear now is that when they're finally allowed to go home again, there won't be anything to return to. As is the case with countless thousands of others. Our thoughts go out to those of you affected in any way by the hurricane and/or flooding.

Blog posts don’t really fix things of this nature, I’ve found. So, in a vain attempt to lighten the mood somewhat, I’ll pick up a meme that was apparently going around while we were out of town and post the first ten songs that came up this morning when I started iTunes on shuffle. (Well, not the songs themselves. You know what I mean. Don’t start with me; I’m tired.)

“Blue Devil Blues” – Walter Page & His Blue Devils

“The Patriot Game”- The Dubliners    

“Say Something New” - The Concretes    

“Selling My Pork Chops”- Memphis Minnie

“The Lyre Of Orpheus” - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds    

“Wouldn't It Be Nice” [Original Stereo Version] - The Beach Boys    

“Give It up or Turnit a Loose” - James Brown                  

“Pussy Foot the Duke” - Comets On Fire    

“Waiting for a Train” - Jimmie Rodgers    

“Dilaudid” - The Mountain Goats                  

“Supernaturally” - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds    

Not sure how we ended up with two Nick Cave songs, but I guess that’s the nature of shuffling, eh?

Vacation slides? Oh boy!

OK, so here are some of the pictures from our trip. I imagine I'll be putting some in a Photo Album on the sidebar later on, but this'll get you started.

Home again home again jiggedy jig

Vacation is over. I am sad. Not devastatingly so, since my everyday life is generally pretty cool, but leaving La Push is always difficult for me to do.

Beach, boy

As of midnight tonight, I am on vacation. And not a moment too soon. I’m running a cumulative sleep deficit that’s really messing with my head, man. (For example: I actually thought that sentence was funny.) Being able to go to bed at a normal time like an actual human will no doubt do wonders for my disposition, which right now is somewhere between that of a fussy toddler and a tweaker on a week-long mission. I’m tired and grumpy and I’d much rather be home with a cocktail and some nice music playing than sitting here at work, watching the clock tick down to V-hour. This deferred gratification thing is the shits.

Soon, however, I’ll be watching the pelicans flying in formation over First Beach as the sun sets behind James Island, with the roar of the surf and the wild scent of salt air washing my feeble brain clean again.

Just not soon enough.

I'll be back on the 29th, unless I drift out to sea.

All hands on the bad one

OK, I promised to post the picture I had taken with Sleater-Kinney. We just got the film back from the developer, and I have to say that it’s pretty breathtaking. So, without further ado…

It's a tropical hatewave

Hot, ain’t it?

You know what’s nice when it’s hot? A tall, cool glass of Haterade. There’s nothing like it in the world. And you’re in luck, my friend, because Dana is serving it up fresh this week. Bottoms up!

Please please please let me get what I want

Sorry for the lapse there, kids. Things are afoot these days, and not all of ‘em are good. SG and I are gearing up for our week in La Push – that’s definitely good. And it looks as if work on the deck will finally wrap up tomorrow or Wednesday – that’s very good. And the other stuff… will resolve itself eventually, but right now it’s not happy-making. That’s about all’s I can say about it at the moment, really.

My point is that I’ve got a lot of things going on at the moment. Some of them are demanding my focus, such as it is, so that’s why there hasn’t been much here of late, and why there may not be much here for awhile. I hope to get things back to normal soon, but it’s hard to say at this point. Bear with me.

The world's forgotten boy

Science Girl just called me to let me know that DEVO have dropped out of Bumbershoot this year. Taking their place: Iggy & The Stooges.

I am requesting that night off as a religious holiday.

I’ve seen Mr. Osterberg perform twice in the past, opening for The Pretenders (two shows on the same tour). This would have been about 1988, I think. I was floored, both times, by the sheer (raw) power and energy emanating from the stage. I also saw him last year, on Letterman, looking as if he hadn’t lost so much as a step from 17 years ago. Science Girl has yet to bask in the glory of the Ig, so this will be a double treat.

Man ya gotta move oh man ya gotta move oh man

I’m finding myself intrigued by Can, these days. Still sort of exploring, but so far I quite enjoy what I’ve heard. I picked up Ege Bamyasi on the advice of Chris Martin, and while it doesn’t all work for me, a lot of it does. The rhythms are really strong, which is not something I’ve often seen in European art rock. (Which is something of an understatement.) Holger Czukay (bass) and Jaki Leibezeit (drums) keep things interesting, Leibezeit’s solid jazz drumming especially. And then there’s the charm of Damo Suzuki’s vocals – he’s all over the place, but never inappropriately so. Plus you’ve got a native Japanese vocalist singing heavily-accented English over German art rock. What’s not to love?

My copy of Tago Mago came in today’s mail. I haven’t had the chance to listen to all of it yet, so I’ll reserve comment other than to say that so far it’s better than I’d been led to believe it would be. Next up will probably be Monster Movie, if for no other reason than I want to hear the original version of “Yoo Doo Right” at long last. I’ve heard both Thin White Rope and the Geraldine Fibbers cover it, and as much as I really like the song (which is a fair amount) I’ve never heard Can’s version. On some level, that just ain’t right.

Well I went to school in Olympia

We’re back. Obviously. It was a nice, if entirely too short, three-day weekend. Highlights included:

• Watching the tide roll in and out of Oakland Bay. No, really. It’s a fairly narrow, shallow bay, so the change is pretty dramatic. The cabin we rented was down near the end of the bay, (opposite that green lump projecting out into the bay – it’s actually a golf course) which became an enormous (and thankfully not too fragrant) mudflat when the tide was out. One of the houses across the bay had a sailboat anchored in front of it; the tide receded enough to leave it completely beached, about 15 feet from the low tide mark. When the tide returned, it partially flooded a small wetland area adjacent to the golf course. Maybe this makes me a dork (maybe?), but I truly dig witnessing things like that – the awesome power of nature in the everyday miracle and blah blah blah.
• Waking up early enough to watch the mist creeping in over the cedars across the bay from us. Watercolors really were invented to portray the Northwest.
• Watching Lucy swimming. Well, not so much swimming as wading, but still. She really enjoys doing it, and it is fun watching her (as long as she doesn’t try to drink the sea water).
• Science Girl’s oyster rescue service. Yeah, she eats ‘em, but she’ll also return them to the water if she finds them stranded by low tide.
• Having Science Girl show me around the Evergreen campus. SG spent the early part of her college career there, until she finally decided that it wasn’t really the right place for her. It’s just as she described it to me: while the campus itself is quite beautiful, all lush native greenery and such, the architecture is the hideous concrete-box crap that was so popular in the early 70s. You know the stuff. It always looks like a “futuristic” prison set from some cheesy Sci-Fi flick. So it was an interesting juxtaposition of the natural and the manufactured, with Mama Nature coming out miles ahead. As usual.
• Having my picture taken with Sleater-Kinney. Yes. I’ll post it as soon as the film comes back from the developers.

Less fun:

• The fish and chips lunch that just didn’t sit well Saturday afternoon. I’ll spare you the gory details, but I will mention the white-knuckle drive back to the cabin just in the knick of time. Yeesh.
• Being stuck in traffic from Olympia all the way to the other side of Tacoma. Rough estimate for that 35 mile trip on I-5 yesterday – 1 ½ - 2 hours. In 90 degree weather. Science Girl said her eyeballs felt hot, which really disturbed me in a way I don’t think I can accurately describe.

Mostly, though, it was a quiet weekend away from town (and the horrors of Seafair), so in that sense it was a huge success. And, in a mere thirteen days, we’ll be heading off for La Push again. Yay!