All of the stuff is in the new house. About 39 percent of it has been sorted and settled. The living room and kitchen are basically opened for business, but still a bit cluttered. The bedroom is unboxed. The basement has come together nicely. The home offices, the dining room and the library are still to come. But, at least, there are some parts of the floor plan where you don’t have to shuffle sideways, trip or take comically big steps over things. That’s a nice change of pace after the last week.
So, naturally, with that sort of progress under our belt, we went to pick up the cats on Sunday. They’ve been staying with The Yankee’s parents the last few weeks, and that, in retrospect, was a great move for everyone. She’d also taken a load of things we wouldn’t want to put on a moving truck. So we took care of that yesterday. Rented an over-sized car (for the stuff) and drove the three hours north for the reunion. That trip is now much shorter than it used to be.
We had a short visit and had an early dinner. We loaded up the rental with everything we’d sent ahead. We had room for almost everything, except the cats. Aside from a half hour of complaining about it, though, they handled the trip like champs.
It was dark when they got to their new home, their third place in the last few weeks, but despite Phoebe’s judgmental look here, they’ll adjust quickly.
Poseidon is going to be very interested, aggressively interested, in everything. Here he is, trying to figure out the basement.
(Yes, I need to get a door sweep there.)
And they are already enjoying their new views.
It is always a bit unnerving when they do the same thing at the same time.
This made us feel better. We found a nearby grocery store on Friday evening, and it was hopping. This place just opened, it turns out, and it is pretty amazing. But more on that, I’m sure, later.
So we’ll continue the process of putting the house together when we’re not enjoying the summer.
And you’re more than welcome to come help me unpack books in the coming days.
Here’s the thing. This has been in the works for a while — and we’ll get into that later this week, I’m sure. Talks have been going on even longer. None of this is a surprise. And, happily, our new employer is paying for our packers.
Oh, they talked a good game on the phone. Walked them through the house verbally, they estimated the boxes. The guy that was going to be leading the actual work wanted to do a visual check via Facetime. That turned into a drop in visit on Wednesday or so. He looked at everything, thought the people on the phone in the office were about right. Said he’d be here with his crew on Friday to whip all of our things into boxes in a few hours.
So, you see, while none of this is a surprise, we’ve spent a few months just hanging out, thinking, Maybe we should be doing something?
Nahhh, we’ve got packers.
And they were scheduled to come at about 4 p.m. on Friday.
I bet you can tell where this is going.
On Friday at the end of the day I loaded my car with the last of my things from my on-campus office. Said goodbye to … well, no one, really, but I got a nice Slack message … and drove to the house. My lovely bride’s car was the only one in the drive.
These guys are fast!
I pulled in the garage, slid out the boxes from my office and stacked them in the fledgling pile of stuff we’ve actually put in the garage and walked inside, expecting a forest of boxes. Columns of cardboard, a feat of fort-making.
And there’s my lovely bride, packing a box.
Where, I asked, are the packers?
She gave me the smile that isn’t a smile, but is a smile, but really isn’t. The packers hadn’t turned up.
And so I joined her. She’d already made a frantic dash out to pick up a few boxes from stores and then hit the U-Haul and bought every packing supply they had in stock, and we got to work.
There was some back and forth with the no-show packers. They weren’t coming until so and so. And then they didn’t come. And then they didn’t come on Saturday. After which, we started demanding our money back. And some of it has been refunded. The next call, because we have time for this nonsense right now, is going to go like this: All of my money back, right now. Otherwise, you’re going to have two media professionals who have an embarrassing, embarrassing, array of media contacts and two months with nothing better to do than talk about you.
(Update: They fully refunded the charge.)
So we packed all night Friday. We packed all day Saturday, until about 8 p.m., when there was a small going away party held in our honor with The Yankee’s triathlon team. We packed all day Sunday. At one point yesterday I was packing some particular box and got sidetracked to help with another packing chore, but was then sidetracked by still two more packing tasks. It was ridiculous. We have packed all day today. (I spent most of that time doing some real work in the garage.) We’ll be packing still tomorrow.
At times, it looks like we’ve made a dent and the spirits are high. Progress! At times you can stand in the same spot and see not the momentum, but all of the things still to do, and you can see how this will never be over. Despair.
At every moment there is something to trip on. Sometimes there is something to trip on, and then you land in something else to stumble over.
Fortunately, we’ve been alternating the emotions between us, so someone is always on an upswing and lifting the other along.
These rotten packers.
The movers, a different company, show up tomorrow morning.
Music is doing us a lot of good right now. There’s been a curious sort of traffic pattern throughout the house. For a while, for some reason, The Yankee will work on something upstairs and I will work on something downstairs. And then she moves downstairs and I drift upstairs. I can’t say it is effortless, because everything is a huge effort right now, but it’s an easy flow. And there’s always some song or another as we pack. And usually two. So here’s some more Indigo Girls from their recent show at The Ryman.
Now, sure, you think, The Ryman. The Mother Church of Country Music, and here’s an Americana band, a folk band, a rock band. And all of that is true. But this song features, from left to right, a fiddle, a mandolin, an acoustic guitar, a resonator and a banjo.
Also there are two Loretta Lynn references in “Second Time Around.” This more country than anything Nashville churns out these days.
I love that lyric about compromise.
Here’s what I find about compromise
Don’t do it if it hurts inside
Cause either way you’re screwed
And eventually you’ll find
That you may as well feel good
You may as well have some pride
This is one of those songs where I find myself thinking about the narrator versus the performer, because Amy Ray has an earlier line about how she doesn’t want to sing again, it has a catchy little meter, but is probably the farthest line possible from the performer. Throughout her career she has talked over and over and over about how she has to do these things, sing and play, like it’s in her and she has to get it out, because from the first time she ever played cover songs with Emily Saliers, when they were kids, that this was what she wanted to do, make these noises with her friend. And here we are 40 years later and there’s no way that woman won’t sing her soul out because it feels right. So it must, then, be the narrator. And anyway, that line about compromise is a good concept and maybe one that should be applied a little bit more.
Point is, there’s a lot of time for your mind to wander while you’re trying to find the right angle to get all of these things to go in boxes. And why do I have this many things anyway?
The good news is that late last evening I got to the place where I am ready to shove it all into boxes, or study the insurance policy about fire. It was easy to get into that last bit of gallows humor when the tornado warnings fired up yesterday. This could solve a few problems at once!
Tomorrow, the movers.
If you ain’t go nothin’ good to say
Don’t say nothin’ at all
I feel like I should be doing something. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Ah, well, you know how it is in the summertime. Things come along when they come along. Ideas too! And sometimes activity, as well. I’m sure it’ll come to me, or catch up to me, at some point.
I had to go into the office for a few minutes on Saturday. The tree outside my window looked pretty nice that afternoon.
We’ve had some pretty nice light lately, which is a thing you find yourself saying from time to time in these parts, even in the sunny part of the year. These are the woods behind our house, this evening.
That photo is timestamped 9 p.m., which is a magical thing, to be sure. Look how much light there still is in the sky! We’re just now approaching sunset. For my money, the late hours of daytime in the summer is the best part about this place.
Also, the cats. We didn’t check in with them last week, and site traffic no doubt suffered, as the weekly updates on the kitties are the site’s most popular feature. Just ask Poseidon who, I am sure, will tell you all about it.
Recently, we paused a bike race we were watching so we could watch a car chase. Which is to say, we paused a bike race so Poe could watch a car chase. He was invested.
He knew this particular chase wasn’t going to last much longer. There’s no tire on the front of that car. At the conclusion, he was trying to give the driver a few helpful tips. Get out of the car, lay down and listen to the officers’ instructions.
Poseidon would not be a good wheelman, I think.
For her part, Phoebe did not watch the car chase. I think she knew the inevitable outcome, or was embarrassed that her brother would assume the position.
Phoebe, I think, might be the better driver of a getaway car of the two. Whereas Poe would be like, “Hey, what’s up? Is this fun? This looks fun. Can this be fun?” Phoebe is always looking for a way to get out of any room, juuuust in case.
Smart girl, that one.
I had a brisk 34-mile ride on Saturday. I set no Strava PRs, and so that part was disappointing. But I did chase this guy down from a long way back, so there’s that.
He was a bit surprised when he looked over his shoulder and saw me. Maybe it was the huffing and/or the puffing.
Since we saw The Indigo Girls at The Ryman last weekend I’ve been doling out a few songs. That’s going to continue on for a while, because this was a great concert. This is the first track from their eighth studio album, 2002’s “Become You,” it sets the tone for the record, and it holds up like all of the best of their catalog. “Moment of Forgiveness” has a great set of lyrics, a wonderful refrain and a keyboard sound that doesn’t really come across here, but the spirit of the song, and more of Amy Ray’s spirit, does.
Speaking of the spirit of music …
More music! The Re-Listening project, to be specific. I’m playing all of my old CDs in the car, in the order I acquired the CDs. And right now we’re in 1999, listening to a double-live CD which was released in 1997, from a series of concerts in 1996.
Everybody got that?
This is Lilith Fair, which I didn’t see live, the timing and location never worked out, but I’m certain that, if I had, I would have been duly impressed.
The first track is from Paula Cole, who I did see at a different festival about that time. She had a cold, she said. She was afraid her voice would crack. She stole the the show.
There’s this cool song from Autour de Lucie, a French pop band I’d never heard of. Quite captivating, really.
In its first summer, Lilith easily outpaced the then-fading Lollapolooza festival, in both audience size and ticket sales. It returned for two more summers and went on to become the top-grossing music festival of the late 1990s, racking up $60 million in ticket sales over its three-year run.
Indigo Girls, Joan Osborne and and Victoria Williams were among the other headliners. Then there was the incomparable Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple and Natalie Merchant. It’s an amazing, embarrassing catalog of star power. The stage was full of huge and important musical acts, like Suzanne Vega.
But I’m betting the Songbird herself often stole the show. How could she not?
For my money, the best song on the double CD is this rendition of “Water is Wide” by the Indigo Girls, Jewel and Sara McLachlan. I listen to this over and over, just for the goosebumps.
Got a bit of back lockup syndrome. I’ve been fighting shoulder aches and muscle spasms for about two weeks. It’s been the try a different way to sleep sort of thing. A get a household massage every other day sort of thing. A take a muscle relaxer and try to sleep it off sort of thing. Only, now, moving things around the house, it’s become a sit very still sort of thing.
It’ll pass in good time.
Fortunately, I can still do this. A little. For a time.
We had a nice ride on Saturday. The first 18 miles were great!
But after that first hour, my shoulder started sending the familiar signals. And then my back started sending new information to the brain, too. And so I found myself slowing down.
This year, a new bit of information has been passing through the ol’ central nervous system. It involves the tip of the middle toe on my right foot. It’s a contact thing.
I googled this on all of the cycling sites. They suggest my equipment might be getting old, but there’s only 3,500 miles on these Specialized Torches, which I purchased in February of last year. (But do you see the big paint scrapes on that pedal arm? I may need a new bike.) They also suggested my shoes might be too tight, but I checked them before this Saturday ride, and they are not.
There’s not a clever punchline or wrap up to that story, which, I’m sure, means it comes down to technique.
We saw The Indigo Girls at the Union Gospel Tabernacle, the mother church of country music. The former home of the Opry. The Ryman Auditorium.
Somehow, this was my first time at The Ryman. And I have video. I’m going to stretch this out for a while. So, for today, here’s the opening act, Aaron Lee Tasjan and his band.
Some New York writer once said Aaron Lee Tasjan had a unique take on what the author called “indie folk grit.”
I don’t know what that means.
But I did see Arlo Guthrie in this performance. You will, too. And if you caught the whole act, there’s a modern day John Prine emerging in that act, too.
Opened in 1892, the Ryman was famously the home of the Grand Ole Opry from the 1940s to the 1970s. It was, by then, a building showing it’s age. The performers didn’t like it. The audiences were hard on the venue. And so the Opry moved to the amusement park. Roy Acuff, who had a big stake in Opryland, wanted to raze The Ryman. He probably imagined his hand on the plunger. A big public effort, though, kept the building alive. It got exterior renovations in 1989, the interior was lovingly improved in the early 1990s. In the late 90s the Opry came back for special events and for an early-winter schedule. (They’re still doing the legendary old show over at Opry Mills, even though the amusement park itself is now long gone.) More work was done on The Ryman in the teens. Last year they opened a Rock ‘n’ Roll wing, and so all of this is fitting, to me.
I think I can get about two weeks of videos out of what I recorded at this show. It was great. But we’ll get into that.
Here’s a very quick installment from the Re-Listening project. Regular readers know I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. We’re in 1999 right now. This is a soundtrack, and to a show I never watched or liked. If I say I’ve watched five complete episodes of South Park I’ve come in high. But the Chef songs were, at the time, kind of funny.
Problem is, what was kind of funny to me then is sub-sophomoric now. This thing went four-times platinum in Australia, and was also certified platinum in New Zealand, Canada, the UK and here in the States. It ended 1999 at number 65 on the year-end U.S. Billboard 200, so I’m willing to accept I have the minority opinion. You’ll just have to accept that I’m correct.
The songs that aren’t dated and insincere comedy, by and large, just don’t appeal to me. This is the only song I looked forward to.
Tomorrow, there’s no Re-Listening project. We’re all caught up! But there will be a great Indigo Girls song and some other almost equally amazing content. Also, my back will feel better.
Since we were away visiting last Monday we didn’t have our regular feature — the site’s most popular feature, mind you — of checking in with the kitties. And they have been sure to remind me of that omission continually. So let’s dive in.
Phoebe has thoughts on all of these notions of travel. She is not a fan.
She would much rather I stay here and admire her stretching abilities. And also give her belly rubs.
Poseidon, meanwhile, was a little more chill about it — and that’s a phrase I never thought I could use with him. Here, he’s just snoozing a day away on the top of the sofa.
He was, however, none too pleased with our spending part of Sunday afternoon on the back deck without him.
The cats, in other words, are doing just fine.
We went for a bike ride on Saturday morning. Up and away before it got too warm. We finished and it was about 80 degrees and I was once again amazed at the difference in the last moments of a ride and the first moments after you dismount. Nothing ever seems so hot as those few seconds where I am turning my bike computer off, taking off the bike shoes and trying to get inside to cooler air.
We did about 27 miles. I was ahead of her by just a few seconds when I took that photo, somewhere in mile 11 or so. She would catch up with me in the 14th mile, we stayed together for a few more miles, and then I dropped her. So, nice guy that I am, trying to demonstrate good bike date etiquette, I waited for her. Then, after mile 17 she recovered, just as I predicted, and shot herself out of a cannon.
I did not see her again on Saturday morning until the odometer read 26.59. And, even then, she was but a colorful dot way up the road.
Today, it was just me. I put in 29 more miles, basically the same route, with a slight change at the end. It was harder, I was faster, and now I’m trying to keep my shoulders from cramping up. But there’s video!
Today’s ride made this year my fourth-best in terms of miles. By the end of this week 2023 should be in third place. It’ll take some time to crack the top two, however.
Sunday scenes. This is the big beautiful maple tree in the backyard. It dominates one half of the view from the deck. It’s a good view.
And it has been a long time since I noticed this, but the way the house is oriented, and because of the features around us, we don’t see the best sunsets here. But if you look around at the right time you get a nice sliver of light coming through the front door.
The light is pointing east. So was I, more or less, when I shot that photo of the maple tree. The photo of The Yankee on her bike? I’m facing the west. The two shots of Poe? He’s pointing east-ish. Phoebe? East, then west. What does it all mean? Not the first thing.
