It is a cool summer evening in Seattle. The sun is setting over the Puget Sound, its reds and oranges dancing across the large glass windows of the Starbucks by Westlake Center. The clatter of dishes and the low din of conversation fills the room.

ME: Hello, stranger.

YOU: (cooly) Hello, yourself.

ME: Hi. Look, I'm really sorry I haven't written much in my blog lately. It's just...

YOU: It's just what? You've been too busy?

ME: Well, yeah. I had some friends come stay with me the other day, and I've been reading this article that compares Donkey Kong to Matthew Barney. It's really interesting...

YOU: Don't give me that! You've been messing around with that camera again!

ME: Look, you knew that I would be working on photography this summer...

YOU: Yeah, but I didn't think you'd ignore me completely!

ME: I'm not ignoring you! I tried to keep you involved - I keep posting pictures for you. Remember the one with the dog on Cara's neck? You like dogs, right? OK, I admit that T-Bone riding on a neck is no Mrs. President, but still...

YOU: That's not the point! The point is that ever since you got that camera, things are different between us. We just don't talk like we used to. I'm worried that we're...

ME: What?

YOU: ...growing apart! (sniffles)

ME: No, that's not true! This photography thing will wind down soon, I promise, and then I'll start posting more.

YOU: You've said that before! I just don't know if I can believe you anymore.

ME: It's different this time, I swear!

YOU: (warily) You promise?

ME: Promise.

YOU: When will your next post be?

ME: How about right now?

YOU: Really?

ME: Yeah, sure.

YOU: What will it be about?

ME: Well, things are going pretty well right now. Why don't I give you a recap so we can get caught up?

YOU: Well...OK.

ME: Let's see...the reasons things are going well are:


· I went on vacation


YOU: Wait, a bullet list? You're going to make me read a bullet list?

ME: Well, it's been a while. Give me at least one post to ease back into it.

YOU: ...

ME: (clears throat) So like I said, the reasons things are going well are:


· I went on vacation.
I rarely ever go on vacation. I often go on trips, but I'm always going for a specific purpose, and it almost always involves very long plane trips, and it's almost always stressful. It's recently been brought to my attention that vacations are for relaxing. So when I was making plans to go to Kerry and Steve's wedding in Santa Monica, I decided to go a couple of days early and take it easy. The reception was at a nice hotel so I decided to stay there and live it up. "Living it up" meant relaxing by the pool, buying too-expensive clothes on the Promenade, reading on the gigantic bed in my room in my complimentary white bathrobe, getting a massage, watching the ocean from my balcony while listening to soothing music from my iPod (which I cleverly hooked up to the stereo in my room), and repeatedly going to the hotel restaurant for breakfast in my pajamas.

I was extremely successful at relaxing, I must say. I was so successful, in fact, that I completely forgot to call my friend Mark, who lives in LA. Sorry about that, Mark! If it's any consolation, let me point out that seeing me in a bathrobe really isn't all it's cracked up to be. You might have dodged a bullet.

Oh yeah, and there was a wedding. It was very fun to hang out with my friends and watch Steve and Kerry get married. By the way, one of the sure-fire signs that you're really good-looking is that the priest mentions it during your wedding ceremony.

Here are a few pictures from my trip:

I probably could have used a couple more days, but that's always the way it goes, I guess.



· I have my car again.
A few weeks ago this girl backed into my car, denting the left rear quarter panel and scratching the bumper. It was one of those accidents where both people share some of the blame, which of course means that it was totally her fault. Seriously. I'm sure the insurance company won't see it that way, but it's the truth.

Anyway, I took the car into the body shop last week when I got back from LA, and they just finished the work today. That means I've been driving a rental car for the last nine days. Apparently the intermediate-sized car I signed up for had a cracked windshield, so they gave me a free "upgrade" to a Chevy TrailBlazer SUV. No offense to those of you who may own a TrailBlazer, but I found it to be sheer torture. I actually used to drive a Blazer when I was in high school, and I don't remember it being nearly as bad as this thing. Maybe I'm just not an SUV person anymore, or maybe I've just gotten used to my nimble little sedan. Whatever the case, driving this thing was like walking around in a pair of soggy sneakers. I could sort of move around in it, but everything was all mushy and slow. I had absolutely no confidence in my ability to pilot the thing in traffic, and given the size of the vehicle and the lingering memories of my recent backing-up-into-people incident, parking it was a minimum 17-point affair. It was therefore with a sense of unrestrained glee that I handed the gooshy TrailBlazer back to the good people at Enterprise this afternoon and slipped back into my own personal car.

Oh, it is so nice. It fits me like a glove. It turns when I tell it to. It stops when I tell it to, and when I press the accelerator, it responds. Bliss! On my way home I took a wrong turn onto a particularly twisty bit of road, and I was having so much fun I kept going for about 5 miles until I turned around. Sometimes you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone.



· I have new music.
Over the last few weeks I've acquired some new CDs. First I bought The Propellerheads, an album that I borrowed for an extended period several years ago and never got around to buying. I have it now, and it's as good as I remembered. BTW, does anyone know what happened to them? They put out a kick-ass album 5 years ago, and they haven't released anything since.

Next I got a CD from a group called Cinematic Orchestra, and another from a group called Dzihan and Kamien, which I happen to be listening to right now. (Thanks to Charlie and Warren for the recommendations.) These two are sort of mellow jazz, not unlike Tortoise, which I like a lot.

Then, a couple of days ago, I was listening to NPR and they had a review of an album by someone named Matthew Shipp. Apparently he's a leading force in an emerging type of music known as "jazztronica", which seems to be a combination of all the CDs I've bought in the last few weeks. I really liked the stuff they played, so I ordered the CD yesterday.

One of the reasons I like these new CDs is that they're mellow enough for me to listen to while I work. I have a really hard time writing to music that is too upbeat or has lyrics, so this new stuff is perfect. Hopefully having all of this music will encourage me to post to my blog more often.

YOU: Will it also encourage you to write paragraphs without bullets?

ME: Anyway...



· I'm reading about pirates.
In the wake of the overwhelming popularity of Johnny Depp's drunken swagger, my book club is reading a book about the history of pirates. It's called Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life among the Pirates . It was written by a man called David Cordingly, who, according to the author bio, "is the world's foremost expert on pirates". The bio ends with the teasing sentence, "He lives by the sea in Sussex," which I assume is meant to leave open the possibility that he might actually be a pirate in his spare time, on account of his living so close to the sea and everything. If you were the world's foremost expert on pirates, wouldn't you be just a little tempted to go out and do some casual plundering? It's kind of like film critics who go on to make their own movies; you read about it all day, and after a while you just get the itch to try it yourself. From the back of the book it also appears that the author looks a lot like former British Prime Minister John Major, so maybe that's a deterrent of some kind. I can't really see John Major walking around wearing an eye patch and carrying a parrot on his shoulder.

What I've read of the book so far has been fairly interesting, although the writing seems to be a little scattershot. Parts of it feel like it was written by a college student who spent all term playing video games and then had to write the entire book the night before it was due. At one point he is discussing the role of blacks in the ranks of pirates and says: "What is not clear is the precise status of the black men on these pirate ships." Then, exactly nine sentences later, he states: "That the slaves did not carry weapons is an indication of their status as servants to the rest of the company." I dunno, Dave, but it seems to me that you just gave pretty strong evidence as to their precise status. I think this book was written before Mountain Dew Code Red was invented, so maybe his all-nighter wasn't as effective as it might be today.

He makes up for these shortcomings by using the word "piratical" every three pages, which is a delightful word that I always assumed was made up. Apparently it's an actual word used by actual pirate experts who may or may not be pirates themselves. Also, the skull on the front cover of the book has a metallic gold-colored front tooth, which I think we can all agree is fairly spectacular and drowns out any criticism of the book's quality. I bet if Jayson Blair's byline had included a skull with a gold tooth, he never would have been caught.


· I went wakeboarding this morning.
In case you didn't know, I've taken up wakeboarding this summer. Wakeboarding is basically snowboarding behind a boat. It's a fun sport that involves walking around in a wetsuit and helmet like a huge goober and occasionally falling face first into a lake at 20 MPH, causing water to jet into your ears and underneath your eyelids. At least, that's what happens when I go wakeboarding.

No seriously, it is a lot of fun. I've been seven or eight times now, and I'm finally starting to feel like I know what I'm doing, at least a little. I'm riding with people who are a lot better than I am, so they're teaching me the ropes. (Rope #1: Wear a helmet, even if it makes you look like a goober.) We had some really good water this morning, so I was able to make some progress on my jumps. Here are a couple of jaunty pictures of me wakeboarding:

My big goal for the summer is to complete a wake-to-wake jump, which involves launching yourself off of one side of the boat's wake and landing on the other side of it. It's about the easiest thing in the world to do, unless you want to be alive when you land, in which case it is somewhat more difficult.


· My house is clean.
My friends Steve and Amy came to stay with me Monday night, which meant that I had to clean the house so that they wouldn't call the Board of Health and have me evicted. As someone who is a major slob, I must say that having a clean house is pretty nice. It makes it much more enjoyable to hang out at home when you don't have to clear away a swath of dirty clothes in order to find a place to sit/stand/walk. I may look into adopting this cleanliness thing on a regular basis.


· I have porn.
This one is throwing me for a bit of a loop. For reasons that remain unclear, a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) took it upon himself to order a porn DVD and ship it to my house. Quite frankly, I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm assuming that it's a present, but he is coming to visit in a few days; I suppose it's possible that he wants me to hold it for him until he can pick it up. He's bringing his girlfriend, though, so I guess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

What's the etiquette when one receives porn as a gift? Does Miss Manners cover this? Am I supposed to watch it and let him know what I think? Am I supposed to wait until he gets here so we can watch it together? With his girlfriend? I'm no prude, but that seems a little weird to me. If you have any advice, please send it my way.



ME: So there you have it - a nice long post about how things are going with me. Do you feel better now?

YOU: Seriously?

ME: What?

YOU: You're ending our make-up post with a discussion of pornography?

ME: Well...I mean, it's just something funny that happenened...I didn't...

YOU: It is SO over. (storms out)

ME: Damn.

  This woman can write. I like her so much that she's now in my blogroll. Those of you who are missing Sarah Hepola might think likewise.

Here's a funny article she wrote for Salon:

Strangers in paradise


Also, note that my blogroll has also been expanded to include JZ, who has started a photoblog. Check out his cool pictures. Do it! Do it!

I swear I'll have a real update for you soon.