Camera: Fed 2
Lens: Jupiter 8
Film: Fuji Neopan 1600
Settings: f2.8, 1/60
Chemical influence: Caffiene, Sugar

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Whoa. That was a long lull. I would explain to you why it’s been like 40 days since I made a proper post, but that would just be boring, so I won’t.

Actually, it wouldn’t be boring at all. I have several semi-secret projects in the works, which I’m not quite ready to talk about until they’ve fully reached fruition. Rest assured, you’ll be hearing about them soon, ad nauseum. Until then, here’s some silly updates.

Situation Comedy
Really, I do. No, seriously I … I … oh, crap.

Christa insisted that I at least try to watch at least one episode of MTV’s newest smash-sensation reality program, Jersey Shore. This is unprecedented, because she knows how much I only enjoy watching things that are utterly fake. The faker the better. Cylons? Yes, please. I’ve often said that I’d like to take a month off of work to drink bourbon and watch Dyanasty. I know that reality TV isn’t real, but I have no other way to put this — I love fiction, and I hate most of the reality offerings that have come along since the creation of that genre.

Nonetheless, I gave in and watched one episode. Five minutes in to the episode, I said, “Okay. I admit. I can see why you like this.” Five minutes after that, I was cackling madly and screaming, “You go, Pauly D! Jump on that grenade!” Five minutes after that, the show was over because this is MTV and nothing lasts longer than the attention span of the average 11-year-old, but when the credits rolled, I had to admit that this show, with its cast entirely made up of idiots, is pure genius. I’m not sure why these particular spray-tanned, eyebrow-waxed, Ed Hardy-wearing dillholes appeal to me, but find the show utterly hilarious. Even if its stars take it seriously.

I’m Reading the Bible
I got some good presents for Christmas, but the one I like to talk about most is The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. Crumb, in case you don’t know, is a brilliant, pervy cartoonist, one of the best that’s ever lived. As such, you might expect this book to be blasphemous, but I don’t think that it is at all. Crumb doesn’t believe the Bible is the actual word of God, but says that it is “a powerful text … with layers of meaning that reach deep into our collective consciousness, our historical consciousness.”

I remember a lot of these stories from back when I was about 9, when my brother (?!) gave me a copy of the Bible for Christmas. I took it to bed with me like any other book and started reading it like a novel. I didn’t have the experience or the reading skills to really understand much, but I think I still got through Genesis at least.

I don’t have much to say about Crumb’s Genesis yet. But I can feel some ideas brewing. It’s an interesting choice for him, since the text is actually quite chauvinistic, and his drawings of women are always so powerful. Then again, they usually have their heads cut off or they have bird-heads or whatever. Huh. I’ll have to think about this.

Throughout most of my career, I’ve had to work on Thanksgiving day. People don’t understand this about postal workers, because they think we’re government employees who get every holiday off not to mention weekends, not to mention three days of mourning every time the president gets a case of the runs. No. This is not true. While the people who sell you stamps and deliver your mail get those days off, the rest of us never stop working. Never. Ever. For any reason. Maybe if a tornado destroyed the building where we process mail, we’d get a day off while things were redirected to another building in another city where we’d have to go work instead. But other than that, no. The USPS grinds away 24/7/365, even now.

So a few years back — I want to say this happened in 2005 — I woke up early to go have Thanksgiving with my family before heading to work at 2:30pm. Of course, I didn’t eat anything beforehand. Who eats before Thanksgiving dinner? And of course, I didn’t pack a lunch to bring to work. Like most people, I had always left Thanksgiving at my family’s house loaded down with leftovers. There’d be no need to pack a ham sandwich and an orange to bring to work.

I think you can already see where this is going. See, here’s the thing about working on a holiday: No matter how many times you tell someone about it, it never registers. Everyone else in the universe is in “holiday mode.” They don’t even hear the word “work.” And if you ever should get through to them, they look at you like you just told them you have a boil on your anus or something. Clearly there’s something wrong with someone who has to work on Thanksgiving. Get away. That kind of thing sounds catching.

Anyhow, I get there around 11am to find that the preparations for cooking the meal have not even begun. I’m not really sweating it at this point. What do I know about making a Thanksgiving dinner? Hell, I was a vegetarian for 11 years. I don’t know anything about cooking this kind of food.

But the clock keeps turning, and eventually it dawns on me that I am not going to be partaking in this meal. I inquire about this, and of course the response is all shock and surprise. Yes, I was serious about all that work nonsense. Yes, I have to leave here in like 20 minutes.

Now, normally, my parents’ house was crammed with food. This day, it was no exception. The only difference is, on this day, it was crammed with ingredients. I think I managed to put together a small plate that involved tortilla chips and an American cheese sandwich.

“Oh, well,” I said to myself. “People are always bringing food to work. I’m sure the break room will be loaded with leftovers.”

Wrong. Oh, so, so, wrong.

No one brought any leftovers. What they did bring was tales of how stuffed they were. Of how decadent their meals had been. Meanwhile, my stomach began to consider whether or not it would be a good idea to absorb my liver for nourishment.

Now I’ll ask you to recall the beginning of this post, when I mentioned that I did not bring a lunch with me. Normally, this is no problem. I could have gone to a number of fast food restaurants in the area, which, while they are kind of disgusting, at least would have filled me up. Guess what? That’s right. They’re all closed on Thanksgiving. Who wants to go to Burger King on Thanksgiving, after all? Idiots, that’s who.

My supervisor, about halfway through my shift, asked me if I wanted to forgo lunch and work a straight eight. A lot of people do this on Thanksgiving, since they’re still stuffed beltless from their midday meals. I thought about it for a second, and said that I would. At least that would shave a little time off my total work day, and get me to home to some food a little bit sooner.

Eventually, I made it home, and lucky for me, the landlords upstairs were having a soireé complete with a spread of leftover tofurky and fixings. Let me tell you I ran up there and shoveled. Absolutely shoveled. Within ten minutes or so, all was well with the cosmos again.

What I’m getting at here is that I’m thankful that I learned my lesson that day. These days, I take the whole Thanksgiving week off, and if I can’t get it off, I pack a lunch.

Grape Vine Café in Duluth, Minnesota
11/18/09

Camera: Fed 2
Lens: Jupiter 8
Film: Fuji Neopan 1600

So we’re looking for a house to buy. That’s the latest news. I like having news like that to tell people when I run into them on the street. “What have you been up to, lately?” they ask, and I actually have an answer, other than, “Oh, you know. The usual.”

The funny thing is, we’re actually going through proper channels to do this. We’re actually doing research. Actually comparison shopping and thinking about practical considerations. We have other people involved. Professionals. This is new territory for me. When I talk about how I bought my current car, I usually refer to it as “the time I went to the car store and picked one up.” A house, however, is a much bigger deal. It’s the most serious thing you can buy other than a kid from the orphanage.

It’s fun to walk into someone else’s home and try to imagine what life would be like there. You know you’re in a good place when you have visions of yourself sitting in a corner and reading during a rainstorm. You know you’re in a bad place when you can’t see yourself fitting into the shower without taking a few lessons from a contortionist.

Seriously, this one place we looked at had a shower that would be impossible to use unless you were standing sideways and bending over at the waist. I actually stepped inside and confirmed this.

We looked at a place a few nights ago that is stuck in my head, though we won’t be buying it since it’s too expensive and needs too much work. Still, it’s intriguing because it’s going to be a good investment for whoever buys it. The house is enormous, with a great view. Its size works against it however when you realize that a lot of the windows are shoddy, and think about what the heating bill must be in January. It’s a little haunted. OK, it’s totally haunted, and not in a “grandma hasn’t found her way to the light yet” kind of way either. You’d want to get an estimate and find out how much it will cost to get the walls to stop bleeding.

I’m not sure how it is that you can tell if a place is haunted the moment you walk inside. I could tell from the curb, actually. We looked at another house where someone — a friend of a friend, actually — had just died a week before. The bed was still turned down and the sheets hadn’t been changed. It was creepy and sad, but not haunted feeling. I would live there, except it’s a little too small.

Anyway, that’s one of our priorities. Hardwood floors. Two bathrooms. No demons.

I haven’t lived in a house since I moved out of the one I grew up in, which means I don’t know the luxury of unshared walls. That, I think, is the part of homepwnership I’m looking forward to most of all. No more communal laundry arrangements. No more listening to other people’s television choices. No more fantasies about kicking down a door and smashing someone’s poorly tuned guitar.

Well, that and constructing the bookcase/door leading into a hidden room. That will be awesome.