Life at Home

In the interest of keeping my brain from atrophy, I'm going to focus the SlajTrip (TM) on my current, more stationary journey. The Malibu is still in motion, mostly between here and Waterbury but sometimes to such exciting towns as Seymour and Middlebury. Oooh. Let's begin.
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My neighborhood is one of cars. Each family has at least two, often more, but the driveways next to our cube houses are only long enough for a couple, and no one uses his garage for vehicles. So the pickups and sedans spill out into the streets, line the sidewalks.
The houses here were built all together, an Industrial Age development for the workers in the big brick mill downtown. Once a shoe factory, now an apartment complex. I've never been inside, but I hear they have a pool.
My neighborhood is the development. All the houses looked the same, once, but over 90 years porches have been added, and then enclosed, new wings have appeared along with fences and pools. They still mostly do look the same, all square boxes with tiny front lawns and flag poles. The bigger ones along one road, they were the bosses' houses.
Trees have grown and some have fallen, but for the most part the neighborhood is wide open. We're all in each others' views.
I haven't known the neighbors since my kickball-in-the-street days. Children don't have games like that now. Do their parents think it's too dangerous, to play in the road with cars speeding around corners and through stop signs? Maybe. But a few of the children here have turned to guns instead.
BB guns. The little boy across the street and the littler boy who lives behind us stalk around, rifles slung over their shoulders, shooting stop signs and squirrels and playing war games. The one across the street, I know his dad has a whole rack full of real guns. It's all a little unsettling.
The other house behind us, it's two adults and a yippy miniature Doberman named Rocky. They have a jambox that hangs from a hook on the wall. They play this jambox on Saturday and Sunday mornings while they garden and set up windchimes and other whimsical crap around the yard. They've chosen, apparently permanently, the worst radio station in the state.
But right now, it's quiet. The sky is overcast, which always seems to absorb sound. Recess is over, so you can't hear the kids screaming on the playground. No one's around to work on their houses or yell at their kids. The dogs are inside, their barking muffled. It'll get louder later.
That's all for now.

Connecticut, week one.

I've been stationary way too long. I'm like a fucking shark, man. Can't stop moving.
And -- conveniently enough -- this week has been Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Coincidence? Sign from the divine? Me losing capacity for rational thought?
Well, America ... you decide!

Home again, home again.

Here I am, at my parents' computer in my summer-lovely hometown. I flew in today after saying goodbye to Eleni -- she leaves tomorrow for Greece for many months-- and I'll be here for the forseeable future. Plans, some definite and others possible:
A couple weeks counseling at a YMCA camp in the Berkshires, provided I can convince the directors I don't hate children.
A few days in Long Island with my dear Sarin.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in New York.
Jen's graduation from massage therapy school. (Holla!)
A Boston visit.
Rented bikes in northwestern Connecticut.
Lots and lots of fiction writing.
And, you know, maybe a job or something. For now, to a barbecue. Avast!

Merry Land

I've been spending the the last week here in Maryland with the Himaras clan. It's basically been seven days of alternate feasting and binge drinking. Oh, the parties and bars and plethora of crabmeat.
And two boxers and two pomeranians. It's a good time all around.
I'll be back home Tuesday, to either start my job hunt or put it off by visiting anyone within 100 or so miles. And auditioning for Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Answer: Me.

Coyote face!

One more thing. A vendor at Greyfox had an open trunk, filled with furry things and marked, "Coyote faces. $5."
I call mine Susan.

From the 28th state ...

... this summer. Not bad, eh?
I'm in Maryland, spending a week with Eleni & Co. before she leaves for Greece. We should be going to Ocean City later this afternoon, or I'll be heading to D.C. to meet up with Mama and Mini Slaj, who are looking at colleges there. I keep telling Mini Slaj not to go to college. She doesn't listen.
Kids today ...
So where did I leave off? We spent Wednesday morning in (or, I guess, just outside) Nashville, looking for the Grand Ole Opry. It's hidden so far within a Gaylord convention center that we had to take a break from looking so we could eat breakfast at Cracker Barrel. We eventually found it -- across the street from an Old Navy -- and just did a drive-by, we were so disgusted.
It's a legend, and it's part of a goddamn strip mall. Oh, America.
We drove through the rest of the day and all night to get to Connecticut. Through Kentucky, through West Virginia (which, surprisingly enough after all the hick jokes I've made and heard, looks a lot like New England), through Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. We crossed the West Virginia border three times.
Delirium set in after 12 or so hours. A conversation:
"They took our jobs!"
A semi truck passes. On the back is a headshot of an extraordinarily creepy man.
"He looks like a serial killer."
"Like he killed someone and is wearing their face."
"He took our face!"
"He took our face!"
"He took our face!"
And so on.
But we made it, and Thursday afternoon drove a merciful two hours to Great Barrington, Mass., where our friend Cait works at a YMCA camp. We spent the night drinking Jack in a state park before passing out on her cabin floor.
She wants me to come work at camp for a couple weeks next month. I don't know how to handle kids, I've never been to camp, I'm not especially crafty ... but I'm sure none of that's a problem. We'll see.
And then to Greyfox, a bluegrass festival in Ancramdale, N.Y. We went and camped with the IT-type guy from the newspaper, a middle-aged guy who's been taking is family and all his friends to the festival for many, many years. They gave us food, alcohol, and access to their campsite (just a minute walk from the main stage) and their chairs (in the second and third row).
Charmed life.
Now that was a good time. It's up in the Berkshires, so it's beautiful. There are 4,000 campers (compared to Bonnaroo's 80,000), they don't search your bag or your car, and for days you hear nothing but banjos, mandolins, guitars, basses and cellos.
The people we stayed with are at least 25 years our senior, and they drank us under the fucking table. The first day I drank endless beers, a few shots of blueberry and vodka, a shot of Patron and ate a fistful of moonshine-soaked cherries.
I puked all night. I did not drink the next day.
Whoops.
But the bands we saw on stage, and the random jam sessions that went on throughout camp all night, made up for it. We saw Crooked Still, Dry Branch Fire Squad, Stringdusters, and Red Stick Ramblers, among others, and they were all amazing.
Red Stick Ramblers played at the dance pavillion Saturday night. Eleni and I danced for hours. There was much kicking and down-hoing. And not nearly enough plaid.
And let's see ... that's about all I feel like sharing for now. Oh, and I bought HP yesterday. In true nerd form, finished it today. Eleni sent me into another room when I kept gasping and getting so shocked I had to stand up and spin around.
Pretty good ending though, until the super-cheesy epilogue. That J.K. Rowling, she's a crafty one she is.
More soon. I'm sure a night or two drinking in Ocean City will yield more stories, if not appropriate blog fodder.

And she is over.

Clocked in at $1,696 and 8,074.6 miles.
Now to the Greyfox bluegrass festival in Ancrandale, N.Y. Ahoy!