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jazzfishI am sitting in my parents' beach house. (Which website, I now learn, only works in IE. Sigh.) It's about ten miles north of Duck, or just south of Corolla (kuh-RAWL-uh).
I am cursing my carelessness and the selfishness of the bastard who has had my Curious George bag (containing UKL's Tao te Ching and Holmes Welch's commentary on same, a well-used 3" clear acrylic ball, and oh yeah Dana) for over a month now, since the computer desk in this house was designed to be as unusable as possible. Do not attempt to use the keyboard for any longer than about fifteen minutes; you will develop rather harsh RSI. (If you are already prone to RSI I'm sure you can imagine what comes next.)
But I'm in my parents' beach house.
I wisely installed Firefox on my USB drive before leaving, so that I don't have to use IE. I foolishly forgot to copy my profile over. Whoops. No bookmarks for me.
The drive was more or less uneventful. (Seven hours from B'burg.) I came up 460 instead of taking 64; according to Some Guy Who Went To Tech that Dad knows, taking 64 will save me about an hour. I am more likely to take 64 in the future because there's about a 2.5-hour stretch (Appomattox to Pitaburg[1]) that is utterly devoid of sustenance. Gas stations and three restaurants (one of which advertises 'Air Conditioning' on a billboard), but if you're looking for a quick bite you are sadly out of luck. I plan on writing HERE THERE BE DRAGONS on my maps so that I remember to never go that way again.
Other interesting bits of the journey: a fleet of golf carts surrounding a USED CARS sign; a five-minute torrential downpour with sunlight at both ends; observing the average price of gas jump twenty cents as I cross into NC; a three-mile bridge; Dad forgetting that the road I need to turn on to get here is about a mile and a half further up highway 12 than he thought.
It's all mildly creepy, in the same way that Nairobi was mildly creepy in The Constant Gardner. It's an attempt to replicate a landscape (in this case, Suburbia) that simply shouldn't exist, and expending ridiculous amounts of effort to do so. It's the lawns that are really getting to me. That and the bright paint.
The ginormous houses are a bit much, too. This one has four bedrooms plus a couple sleeper sofas, and feels Big. Across the street are several designed to hold I think Dad said around twenty-five people. I am unable to conceive of any situation in which I'd want to spend a week with twenty-four of my closest friends, and Gob forbid I get trapped with relatives.
Hurricane flags are still up so no ocean-swimming for me. Beach-walking, though, and probably hot-tubbing. Also deck-staining once Dad figures out how he's going to stain the outside edges of the second-floor deck with the screened-in porch.
If and when I get to the point where I can reasonably rip music again without it jittering horribly, I'm going to try another Xmas mix. This one will consist of songs that I feel like this year. It will almost certainly open with Cake's "The Distance," and include "Life for Rent" and "Mark Rothko Song." (Speaking of which, anyone who's heard Dido's "My Lover's Gone" and can explain to me what it is I find so appealing about it will win, um, a copy of the Xmas mix. The best I've been able to get is 'it reminds me of "The Mummers' Dance"' which is sort of right but not at all true.)
I think Mom and some family friends arrive tomorrow, and some more family friends arrive Friday evening. I'm a bit unclear on the timing of it all. Dad sometimes has that effect on me.
Heigh-ho. RSI becoming unbearable; off to bed or read or something.
[1] Town south of Richmond. So Justin pronounced its name after working there for a summer.
I am cursing my carelessness and the selfishness of the bastard who has had my Curious George bag (containing UKL's Tao te Ching and Holmes Welch's commentary on same, a well-used 3" clear acrylic ball, and oh yeah Dana) for over a month now, since the computer desk in this house was designed to be as unusable as possible. Do not attempt to use the keyboard for any longer than about fifteen minutes; you will develop rather harsh RSI. (If you are already prone to RSI I'm sure you can imagine what comes next.)
But I'm in my parents' beach house.
I wisely installed Firefox on my USB drive before leaving, so that I don't have to use IE. I foolishly forgot to copy my profile over. Whoops. No bookmarks for me.
The drive was more or less uneventful. (Seven hours from B'burg.) I came up 460 instead of taking 64; according to Some Guy Who Went To Tech that Dad knows, taking 64 will save me about an hour. I am more likely to take 64 in the future because there's about a 2.5-hour stretch (Appomattox to Pitaburg[1]) that is utterly devoid of sustenance. Gas stations and three restaurants (one of which advertises 'Air Conditioning' on a billboard), but if you're looking for a quick bite you are sadly out of luck. I plan on writing HERE THERE BE DRAGONS on my maps so that I remember to never go that way again.
Other interesting bits of the journey: a fleet of golf carts surrounding a USED CARS sign; a five-minute torrential downpour with sunlight at both ends; observing the average price of gas jump twenty cents as I cross into NC; a three-mile bridge; Dad forgetting that the road I need to turn on to get here is about a mile and a half further up highway 12 than he thought.
It's all mildly creepy, in the same way that Nairobi was mildly creepy in The Constant Gardner. It's an attempt to replicate a landscape (in this case, Suburbia) that simply shouldn't exist, and expending ridiculous amounts of effort to do so. It's the lawns that are really getting to me. That and the bright paint.
The ginormous houses are a bit much, too. This one has four bedrooms plus a couple sleeper sofas, and feels Big. Across the street are several designed to hold I think Dad said around twenty-five people. I am unable to conceive of any situation in which I'd want to spend a week with twenty-four of my closest friends, and Gob forbid I get trapped with relatives.
Hurricane flags are still up so no ocean-swimming for me. Beach-walking, though, and probably hot-tubbing. Also deck-staining once Dad figures out how he's going to stain the outside edges of the second-floor deck with the screened-in porch.
If and when I get to the point where I can reasonably rip music again without it jittering horribly, I'm going to try another Xmas mix. This one will consist of songs that I feel like this year. It will almost certainly open with Cake's "The Distance," and include "Life for Rent" and "Mark Rothko Song." (Speaking of which, anyone who's heard Dido's "My Lover's Gone" and can explain to me what it is I find so appealing about it will win, um, a copy of the Xmas mix. The best I've been able to get is 'it reminds me of "The Mummers' Dance"' which is sort of right but not at all true.)
I think Mom and some family friends arrive tomorrow, and some more family friends arrive Friday evening. I'm a bit unclear on the timing of it all. Dad sometimes has that effect on me.
Heigh-ho. RSI becoming unbearable; off to bed or read or something.
[1] Town south of Richmond. So Justin pronounced its name after working there for a summer.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-21 03:09 pm (UTC)