chickens are stupid

I had to stop short for a chicken on my drive home from work this evening.  Any other day it would’ve cracked me up, but I was having a bad day today so it just pissed me off instead.  I’d seen this chicken and a few others hanging out in someone’s front yard which faces Erwin Rd., which is a pretty country road that bumps and winds through Durham and Chapel Hill.  The speed limit is 45.  I’ve thought, “I hope those damn chickens don’t walk out in the road.  What is their owner thinking?” at least 5 times.

Well today, of all days, one of the chickens decided it would just be a perfect time to take a stroll out into the middle of the road and then just chill.  I didn’t realize there was a chicken in the middle of the road until the SUV in front of me just barely didn’t kill it because it is an SUV and has about 3 feet of clearance for no reason.  That chicken wouldn’t have been so lucky if I weren’t so quick on my feet.  The Yaris would’ve knocked that chicken right the fuck out.  But I was able to stop short about 3 feet from the chicken and honk at it for a full minute before the people behind me were able to scoot around me and give me enough space to back up and drive around the chicken, who decided that was probably the best time to get out of the road.

Like I said, I’d had a pretty bad day, so when I picked Osiris up in the neighborhood and took him to the bank, he imitated the chicken dancing to Notorious Thugs, which made me laugh.  It involved flipping the bird.  A lot.

Monongahela

This past long weekend my parents, brother and I hung out in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia.  The parents had been there since Monday and Erich since Thursday, but I drove the 6 hours there on Friday morning.  It made me love my car even more than I already did.  I felt like a low horsepower James Bond whipping around those mountain curves!  Except for when there were any other cars on the road, in which cases I was a total nerve case.

On Friday, we just hung around the house and ate food and played DUROK – kind of like Russian HORSE but with cards and not basketballs – and just relaxed.  I drank a couple of vodka-orangina mixed drinks.  You know, the usual.

On Saturday, we took the drive to Dolly Sods.  About 17 or so years ago, we tried to do the same thing.  My dad hadn’t done enough preparation and set out without a plan or good directions.  What resulted was a bumpy, twisty road and 6 kids between the ages of 7 and 11 barfing.  Scratch that:  5 kids.  I was the only one who didn’t barf because I’m tough.  Needless to say, we never made it to Dolly Sods or went hiking.  Which is too bad, because when my dad successfully drove us there on Saturday, it looked like this:

We went hiking through the Boreal Forest, not quite far enough to get a view of Canaan Valley, but far enough to dip my feet into some mud and see a beautiful trail.  Then we went and had some pizza, came home, built a fire in the outdoor fire pit, sat out there for about a half hour until it started raining, then went inside and played some more DUROK and drank some more before bed.

On Sunday morning, I drove the 6.5 hours home – I went a different route which, in addition to having fewer mountains and more traffic, took longer – and managed to roll into Chapel Hill like 3 minutes after Osiris arrived back from his trip to Virginia.  Perfect.

party & bullshit

After MJ’s death last week, apparently everyone was in the mood to party (!).  On Saturday we attended three separate parties, two that included pools, and all of them were last minute.  It was great.  We swam in a new pool carved into the side of a hill, with dudes doing seriously impressive dives off the board and greatly amusing some babies.  We went to Matt and Carol’s new house and played Rock Band and I took an essential nap.  Then we went to the Ghost Pool from the previous weekend and ate pizza and did cartwheels off the edge into the deep end.  There was a variety of friends and general good summertime feelings.  I got bit by a couple of horseflies, but even that was no big deal.

Sunday was a day of rest after 12 hours of partying the previous day, but we did see The Hangover.  I wish I’d seen it at the dollar theater with Osiris and Janel; I would’ve liked it more that way.  As it stands, it was funny in most parts.  I’m basically just witholding all my movie enthusiasm until Harry Potter comes out.  Nerds.

Next weekend I will be in the mountains in West Virginia with my parents and brother and dog.  I’m looking forward to it.  I’m going to sleep so hard!

things that make summer

I love summer.  My first couple of days of the summer have been a little bumpy, but overall things feel good and I’ve been in the water and in the sun frequently, when it’s not raining, and so hopefully this summer will rival excellent summers of the past.

Things are already pretty adventurous, for me anyway, since I’m not naturally a very adventurous person.  We hopped a fence into a fancy pool in Chatham County and we raced squeaky ducks down the little manmade river that runs through the American Tobacco Campus.  This was my team:

I will relish in the liberal use of colorful language.  We booked our tickets to Chicago for July 17-20 and hopefully it will give us a chance to not only camp out with Doug and his sister and several Madison rollergirls, but also to reconnect with family and dear friends that live up there.  If you live in Chicago and would like to hang out, give me a call.  We might even day trip to Milwaukee so Osiris can have a reaction to beer fumes and I can drink a Schlitz in its natural habitat.

i don’t even think

We went swimming in a secret bourgeois pool with two waterslides and a diving board and an island.  We drank José Cuervo and did loud cannonballs.  I did a turtle.  We didn’t get caught.  Then we went dancing.

It is the summer solstice and my body, predictably, felt the need to tell me so.  Lady business never gets easier.

thumbs up

Virginia offered us a really busy and fun weekend.  Now that I’m home, though, all I care about is the new Basement Jaxx album coming out in a couple weeks.

Parental warning:  Boobies.

Seriously though, it was an awesome weekend.  I keep trying to describe it with words other than “intense” but it’s difficult.  There was a lot of past around and family and friends that we haven’t seen in far too long.  We spent some quality time and some insufficient time.  We went to Busch Gardens and Osiris had his special birthday dinner at the smokehouse in France, where the same bee warrior we saw last year was sweeping the ground.  We saw about every possible shape for a human body and miles upon miles of unflattering and inappropriate clothing.  We rode bikes on the boardwalk.  We saw a mom with her husband and young son walking down Atlantic Ave. in only a bikini with BITCH written across the ass in rainbow colored letters, at night.  Comedy.

I did not set foot on sand or dunk my face in the ocean.  I will make time for that soon, though.

elements of song

If you were to build a song for me, include any (or all!) of the following and you are near-guaranteed I will like it.

• Body noises
  • Hand claps
  • Snaps
  • Whistles
• Four on the floor
• Really complicated percussion tracks
• Surprise steel drums
• All horns but sax
• Emotionally wrought string parts
• Toys used as instruments

• Idiosyncratic vocals
• Extremely agile vocals
• Proper grammar

• Songs that don’t really end, but just stop
• Songs that get to the point
• Songs that sound like they are from the past/future
• Concept albums

• Lyrical content:
  • Transportation
    • Airplanes
    • Trains
    • Boats
  • Food
  • Dance moves
    • Lists
    • How-to
    • Commands
  • School subjects/nerd stuff
    • Canonical literature
    • History
    • Obscure scientific facts
  • Animal fights
  • Pride
  • Dee-dee-dees, la-la-las, ooh-wa-oohs

preparation

I was going to make a small youtube mix tape for you, but literally none of the songs I wanted to put on it had videos on youtube (other than live versions from people’s crappy digital cameras and that’s just lame and stupid) so I scrapped the idea.  Instead, here is a video from Efterklang from a couple years ago that is cute:

Osiris is turing 30 on Sunday.  We’re going to Virginia to see some family and far-flung friends who will be in town for a separate but equally celebratory event.  Hopefully we’ll see you there if you live there.  If not, come down and visit.

vacation

My birthday is July 22.  I’ll be 26!  Starting on my birthday, Merge Records is also celebrating their birthday with a festival in Carrboro.  Tickets are already sold out because Cat’s Cradle holds basically 5 people, so I haven’t gotten one.  I’m certain though that there will be auxiliary shows all over town for that week.  I’ve taken the whole week off work.  I think you should come down and hang out that week and watch some tunes with me.  I think that would be really fun!

a list

Things I know about myself:

• I am terrible at waiting to give presents.  I like to think I’ll be able to wait but then as soon as I buy a present or get it in the mail I have an extreme urge to give it right away instead of waiting for whatever its intended special occasion is.  Maybe I’m afraid I’ll forget?  It’s likely, because:
• I am terrible at the mail.  I currently have two packages (one for Doug and one for Mika) that need to be sent sitting on my desk, waiting for me to take them to the post office.  They’ve been there for about a month.  I’ll send them, I know, because:
• I get things done in my own time.  At least the self-paced things and major life decisions.  Otherwise I’m a hyper-punctual bundle of nerves.  Which basically means:
• It may take me more years than seems reasonable to move into my own place, but I will show up to your party at the exact time the invitation states.  Maybe even 30 minutes early.