Hi you!

I was thinking about how I hadn’t seen the blog in a while, so I was catching up on it instead of writing my paper about the cultural genocide of Native Americans and saw that people were posting stories! So I thought I’d send a funny story about life here. In the heart of America. Mmmm. Yum. It’s for you and Diane or the blog, whichever you choose. But do tell Diane and Susan (is she there yet?!!!) I say hi if you don’t feel like posting this! (Don’t feel obligated to do so!)

So, this past week I was really fairly sick. It was a cough and throat sickness for the most part, so when I coughed it sounded like a lung was coming up. It was super attractive, let me tell you. So Saturday night I worked on my art project for a while and then my friends and I went to the “Dance through the Decades”, where you were supposed to dress up as different periods (1920s through 2000s) and they played different types of music at different times. (I was the 1950s, Joannah was the 1960s, and Sara-Alicia was the 1980s). After we came back we stayed up a little bit more, and then went to our respective rooms to sleep. My roommate, Cate, rarely sleeps in the room (she’s dating a football player boy thing who lives on the other side of campus) so I got ready for bed and crawled in around 2:30 or 3am, super excited about sleeping for a while until I had to do my art project all day Sunday.

Around 4am, someone else waltzes into the doorway. It is DEFINITELY not my skinny, tall, beautiful roommate. It’s Farah, our “vertical roommate”, as we call him, since he and his roommate Nile live directly below us. Cate and I are on the third, and top, floor, so him and Nile are on the second floor. Farah’s looking around the (dark) room and is still standing in the doorway.

“Hey Farah. What’s up? Do you need something?” He looks down at me all curled up in my bed, steps back a little and goes “O MY GOD HILARY! I AM SO SORRY.” “Mmm. What happened?”

“I TOTALLY thought this was my room. This isn’t my room? Wait, am I on the third floor then? I definitely thought I was on the second floor. O my goodness.”

“No no, that’s totally fine. That’s hilarious.”

I’m obviously laughing my ass off.

How can you not when someone mistakes your room on the third floor for his room on the second floor?! As I’m laughing, I start coughing. And then the “lung-coming-out-of-chest” noise occurs. Which just starts Farah apologizing more.

“Hilary, oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. You’re sick! I woke you up and you’re sick! Go back to sleep.”

“Goodnight Farah! Hope you make it to your room!” Needless to say I was SO EXCITED about seeing him the next day. I started imagining the endless tormenting I would unleash upon him. Mwa haha.

So, the next day around dinnertime I’m in the Oberlin cafe (DeCafe) and I see Farah and his roommate Nile. And just start laughing. And he comes over and laughs a little bit, and then apologizes some more. “Hilary, oh man, that was crazy. I opened the door, and I was taking out my wallet from my pocket, ready to take off my pants and go to sleep, and I look around the room and I’m thinking ‘Hmm, Nile rearranged the room…’ and then I look a little more and I thought ‘And there’s a lot of pink on his side…’ and then you said something and… I’m just so sorry.”

Life is hilarious. My friend Sara-Alicia and I are preparing for sometime when we go downstairs and surprise him and Nile. It’ll be fabulous.

Miss you guys! Take care and I’ll see you SOOOOO SOOOOOOON!!!!! I get back around Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on several factors.

Other than my Farah story, life is good, in case you were wondering. Schooly school is nice. I have a bunch of essays to write as finals, but no exams, which is a real relief. I’d rather have a 10-15 page paper about Native Americans (I have two papers on Native Americans, one for my Native American Identity class and one for Human Rights) than have a test. No doubt. And I just had this HUGE art project due on Monday. I only had a week a half to do it, and I made a full body cast of my friend Joannah. Using plaster impregnated gauze. We did pieces of her at a time – top of leg, bottom of leg, back, chest, top of arms, bottom of arms, etc, etc. It took forever. And then my other best friend Sara-Alicia helped me put together all the pieces and cover the life-size creation in newspaper clippings and flyers from the School of the Americas protest. We set her up with her ankles (no feet) attached to cinderblocks, and she was pulling on cinderblocks with a rope as well. It was an endeavor for me and all my friends. I was at the art studio 10 hours Sunday, and Sara-Alicia was there for 8. I couldn’t have done it without her and Joannah and some friends who came over for a plastering party where we just plastered for about 3 hours. It was intense. But I love how it turned out, and my class seemed to like it a lot too, so that’s good.

I have to go now, since Sara-Alicia and I are going to the viewing of 5 minute movies made my a cinema class. Much much much love! I’ll take pictures of my art project FOR SURE and send them to you, since it was quite a task.

Love you! Take care of yourselves! See you soon!

HilB

My painting of the kitchen was going along swimmingly, and the walls that were finished looked good, if I do say so myself. We had just had new Silestone counters, oak cabinets, lights, and a new window put in, and except for the unpainted walls, everything was fresh and bright. Each workday morning I would get up a half hour early and paint about 50 square feet. I had been doing this for a week, and cleaning up completely afterwards before Beth rose. Then one morning at breakfast, Beth suddenly noticed. “That wall looks better than the other one”, she remarked over her coffee, “Have you been painting?” I admitted the sneaky deed, and pointed out the one wall and part of the ceiling that I needed to do. 

The next morning, I got up early as usual, and went down to the kitchen. Not planning to surprise Beth anymore, I had left the half-full gallon of paint on the counter, where it sat with its lid on, resting on a couple of sheets of newspaper. I spread some newspapers out on the floor and counters under the part of the ceiling I was going to paint that morning. Rather than stir up the paint, I decided to turn the can upside down and let it mix by itself while I toasted a bagel. I flipped over the can, and had just barely leaned over towards the toaster oven, when I realized the paint can’s lid wasn’t seated in the can. Paint was gushing out from under the can onto the newspaper, and waves of paint were now streaming towards the bare parts of the counter, aiming for the floor. Our new, precious oak floor! I envisioned creamy latex paint all over the oak, flowing in under the stove and the refrigerator, where it would take days to clean it out.

“Beth will kill me”, I thought. as I grabbed for the now almost empty can and managed to set it upright, while staunching the flows with newspapers from other parts of the counter.

Beth chose that moment to pad blearily into the kitchen. I shouted, “Newspaper! More newspaper!”. Like Florence Nightingale throwing a tourniquet on a war casualty, Beth jumped into the fray. Working together we absorbed the half gallon of spreading paint with bunches of newspaper, flopping them into the kitchen trash can. It took about a half hour to clean up the counter, but, thanks to a week’s worth of the Washington Post, we had managed to confine the flow to a few horizontal square feet, and somehow none of of the half gallon dripped on the floor. 

And Beth didn’t kill me. In fact she was very nice about the whole thing, and didn’t make me grovel or hire a competent painter.

–rakkity

Adam

All our houses make certain noises uniquely theirs. Over time, we learn some of them; learn they do not herald axe-murderers entering through basement windows or dangerous new species (or ravenous prehistoric creatures) born spontaneously out of forgotten relics in the attic. The occasional branch bouncing off the roof or especially enthusiastic duct cooling may still bring me cold-sober-awake at 3 a.m. wondering WHAT the heck I’d just heard, but even some new noises can be glibly attributed – our new refrigerator has such a repertoire that any aspiring axe-murderer need only bring along a defunct concertina and ride in on a unicycle with a playing card in the spokes and we’ll just think, “Oh, that must be the frig … “.

But a noise I’m not sure I’d ever heard before I.D.’d itself with sudden and alarming clarity on the dusty gravel roads leading away from Enchanted Pond this year.

Enchanted Pond. En-chan-ted … If ever “too good to be true” were embodied in a Maine lake, this was it. We knew from topo maps and Google Earth that no roads led all the way to its shores. Which was part of the allure – like the trice-attempted Rainbow of yore, which finally took a float plane to reach, Enchanted’s remove (despite otherwise relative proximity), drew us to what we imagined to be well-earned isolation, quiet waters and dark skies. And it had a good name for our website. But all 3 of our crossed-fingers routes had ended in the dreaded impasses we’d imagined – the first petering out in a tangled clearcut; the second washed away in the miniscule trickles of a stream no canoe – nor even paper boat – could navigate; and this, the last, a road which skirted its southwestern boundaries, from which we hoped we might find a trail in.

Much about our abilities, common sense and judgment has been shown to be suspect, but we can read maps well. We’d read the fine print here enough to know there was scant hope of this dead-end road getting us near enough to our goal, but we’d traveled it to its end, parked, and gotten out with optimistic spirits. Split up into search parties and beat the bushes for that secret, unmarked, old-Indian-legend pathway of untrampled leaves that would take us to the glittering waters. But hopes waned after an hour or so of reconnoitering yielded nothing that got us down to the shore we sensed was tantalizingly nearby. Never mind easily enough to portage our kitchen sink … Nope. Zip.

Mark’s new GPS told us to within 21` of accuracy that we HAD read the map and followed the unmarked roads correctly and were right where we thought we were – somewhere close – but that’s about it. No secret old-Indian-legend paths hidden in its databases. So we did another thing at which we are adept – had lunch. Years of experience have taught us to pack the coolers (and the folding chairs) last so that they’d be easily accessible from the tailgate, and I set about preparing the repast we’d certainly earned in tilting enthusiastically after this landlocked windmill. Truth be told, it had been most of the day since leaving the passing strange porch of “The Ritz of the Carabasset” early that morning, and lunch was overdue.

With a bite or two tucked into his cheeks like a chipmunk, Mike did what he does best – wandered off again – and in between bites of our own, Mark and I agreed to one last sweep of the area for clues. But there were precious few, and it was growing late — we had to be somewhere by dusk, and this wouldn’t do. When Mike returned, we huddled around the hood of his truck to review on the map the Plans B & C I’d concocted back at home — and opted for an impromptu Plan D: Misery Pond, whose name seemed a more fitting fallback plan than the “safeties” I’d posited. We ruefully acknowledged defeat, made our peace with Plan D, and headed back up the road. A sad enough feeling at the end of a trip, but particularly wistful on Day One.

But about 5 miles into the 16 miles of return roads, I heard The Noise. We’d just turned off the loop road around Shutdown Mountain and were rejoining Upper Enchanted Road, an “intersection” marked by a little erosion gully we were crossing, when a clanking kind of ka-thunk sent my heart splashing down into my rising stomach. I KNEW what that sound was, however improbable the instant recognition. Though I wouldn’t let my mind paint the picture I knew my eyes would soon be relaying, I coasted to a stop, slid the truck into park, and named my terror. No way, said my passengers. We got out to see if I was right.

Yup. Left the tailgate open …

The next few minutes are pretty predictable. Kicking oneself in disbelief, guessing at what’s fallen out. Trying to remember how we forgot to close up. Trying not to assign blame. Trying not to imagine what it means that both coolers are gone … Dawdling in denial. Then the panic sets in; for me, anyway. I desperately needed to burn up the gravel and get back to clean up the traces of our lunatic idiocy lest anyone possessed of a functional cerebrum eyeball the incontrovertible evidence of our lack of a right to oxygen. And with the horseless barn belatedly closed up, spray gravel I did, all but four-wheel drifting around corners, racing an imaginary clock to beat some imagined-avoidable shame. As if this stain could be washed out …

A mile or so back we come to the first cooler. Amazingly, upright, but be not of good cheer – many of its contents lay scattered about nonetheless. Still, not the disaster it could have been. What would probably have been mighty tasty focaccia sandwiches have been liberally seasoned with chalky white gravel (Mike tries one anyway, deferential nod to the wasted efforts of an absent Ginger). And much ice is gone, but the rest, while dirty, is intact. We wipe it off and repack. Never mind finesse – more evidence awaits. With this errant burden back in the fold, we’re off again.

Round one curve I slow down and lean out the open driver door to scoop from the road polo-style a blaze orange hat. Then another mile, another cooler. This one on its side, a wet stain in the dust the only evidence there once was ice, most of a dozen eggs in oozing ruin, more scattered containers of condiments. Takes a little more time to corral, spoils kicked to the side of the road out of sight, and we’re off again, perhaps a little less hurried — the worst sights have been seen, and no one has seen us. We’re not even sure what else there might be; the chairs, at the least.

We stop maybe three more times, once for broken gallons of water, the last time yards from where we’d scouted for trails never found, where the chairs and a campfire grill lie almost within sight of each other. The first things went early. But then, amazingly, the other items hung on for a mile or more on the bouncy gravel roads before succumbing to the inevitable forces of inertia and gravity, finally yielding to ignominy. As we drove away the first time, nothing niggled at what passes for our minds; nothing troubled us but our failure to reach Enchanted. Until we heard that sound.

Ice and water is purchased in stores back at the main road, and we always have leftovers no matter how many courses we serve; the fallen won’t be missed. All was replaceable or irrelevant – save for our pride. At first we decided that What Happens at Misery Stays at Misery would be good policy, that none need know of our absent-minded gaffe. As if anyone would see it as mortifyingly as we did — alas, just some such moronic lapse is almost expected … No, in the end we go out there to look ourselves in the face in some small part, and stuffing this stupidity into a mental attic trunk would only leave us stupid. Better we ‘fess up, I think.

So there you have it. Large Life Lessons Learned is not the title of this tale, you’ll note, just a somewhat bashful confessional. Misery Pond, from roadside campsite to Guiness and pool while taking refuge from a gale, was the most anomalous of all our trips so far, and while it could be said to be along a discernible arc of a downward trajectory, and this debacle but punctuation in a run-on sentence describing dunces, I will always relish our ability to speak of such things, to walk up to an honest mirror and make of our reflection what we can. We can take it. Heck, at least we heard The Sound, and knew it for what it was. There are other sounds I recognize instantly, too, and one is good friends laughing. Usually at ourselves.

“We were loading a floor through the second floor windows. Like the one’s above your deck, those dualies, except there wasn’t a roof with skylights below. Just the first floor. The carpenter wouldn’t get out of the way. We told him to move and he said, ‘I’ve got my work to do and you have yours.’ He was laying flooring.

Frank was operating the boom and he moved the stack of drywall, maybe forty sheets, what’s that a ton, up to the window, but the whole load shifted and rolled off. It went through the window frame, through the wall under the window, through the floor and landed right on top of the guy. The collapsed framing created a small pocket that saved his life.

He came walking out of there like nothing had happened. But I knew it was bad when he looked down at his wrist and asked, ‘Where’s the Mickey Mouse watch my son gave me.?’ He said that and crumpled. He had two broken legs, a broken wrist and a split pelvis. Frank was in therapy for a year after that. I was fucked-up for two months. That drywall went through that house like the walls were made of paper mache’. And to think we almost killed someone.”

Mike, for your triple monitor: Apollo 17 Panorama

(Mike took the challenge and captured this image from his triple monitor set-up.)

And the guy who made that gigapixel picture wasn’t first. (As he sort of admitted by qualifying his picture as the first earth-based one.) You can download any of several hundred 23,000 x 23,000 pixel images (1.2 gigapixel) fromhere

Mike,

You’ll need a bigger monitor (40,784 x 26,800 pixels), or a bunch of monitors, to see this picture all at once.

Ed

Elon University in North Carolina

Elon University in North Carolina

Me : I was talking to a woman I was building a deck for, and watching her stack her wood. I said, “My friend Travis wouldn’t allow you to stack your wood that far away from your house.” She kinda agreed.

Travis: My parents have a pile by the garage, from which they replenish a pile on the porch from which they replenish a basket by the fireplace. I’d just fill the living room.

The begining of our traditional meal at Daniela’s Cantina.

Therefore, when Jeffro told me he’d rented a Manlift to work on his chimney (and I see he also helped his neighbor), I had high hopes of another good blog story.