Mich(again).

So, I'm out of Maryland, and in Michigan for a little while.  The internship was quite an experience.  I can't deny that I learned a lot, but I also can't deny that it wasn't quite what I expected.  Positive experience, for sure.  I know a hell of a lot more about the financial side of landscape design and construction than I used to. 

It was really sad to leave Dave and Mary's house.  They were tons of fun to hang around with, and couldn't have made me more comfortable and welcome.  Dave has been my brother for twenty five years, and I got to know him better in the past two months than the rest of it combined.  It makes me wish that we had done more in the first place.  Spilled milk!  That being said, at least we spent some time together now, and I will do my best not to lose it.  Dave is an awesome dude.  Mary is an awesome lady.  Maggie is an awesome kid.  I will miss the three of them a ton.  Especially Maggie. 

I stopped in Lexington for a couple days so I could take care of our yard, eat some falafel with my friend, Clay, and watch a couple movies.  It was all right.  Now the yard will grow freely for a few weeks while I hang out in Michigan.

It's awesome to be back here.  This is my favorite place, and most of my favorite people are within an hour of me.  Crashing with my parents is always great, and relaxing.  I went swimming in a pool today for the first time in a long time.  I LOVE POOLS.  I'll probably be sunburned later.  Farmer's tan forever. 

My little sister gets home from Canada today, and I'm really stoked on seeing her.  Tonight, I will probably go act a fool somewhere.  I could definitely use a drink or forty after the past two months. 

ALSO I'M HAPPY TO HAVE IZZY BACK.

She's my best goddamn friend.

Do this.

Our friend Anthony in Lexington is very sick.  He found out a little while ago that he is in a pretty bad stage of cancer.  He's a great guy, and doesn't deserve it. 

A bunch of bands put some songs on a pretty ridiculously great compilation to raise some money for things he has to pay for, and if you're a fan of music, or you fucking hate cancer, you should take a look.

Click here.

God Damn It, With You Things Are Perfect

Nicola visited me this week, and it was phenomenal.  She just got a job as a flight attendant, and she's leaving for Houston tomorrow.  I won't see her for another six weeks.  That sucks a lot.  I get back to Lexington in a little over a week, and I will be on my own.  This is an awesome thing for her, though.  It's what she wanted to do, and she finally gets to do it!

Anyway, enough of that shit.

She flew in Wednesday night, and we stayed at Dave and Mary's, which was great.  I really wish that we could have all hung out more, because I really like Dave and Mary (and Maggie, duh), and I'd like for Nicola to get to know them.  There's always the future, especially with motherfuckin' free ass plane tickets.  It was a nice night, though.  We had some sushi and got to sleep in the same bed for the first time in a long time.  The next day, Nicola drove in to work with me and she spent the day exploring DC while I hung out in the office.

Thursday night, we went to Nicola's Aunt Monica and Uncle John's house.  They made us some bad ass veggie kabobs and then we hung out by a bonfire, drinking a few beers and gabbing.  It was pretty nice.  Nicola played all my old bands for them, and then we listened to John's old band, too.  Fun night. 

The next day, I only worked til eleven, and then we got to hang out for the whole day. 

We hung out by Chesapeake Bay for a while.

 

WE'RE ADORABLE.

Nicola made me do this.

After that we went and had lunch in Annapolis with Nicola's cousin and her fiancee.  That was really nice, too.  They're great people.  Really funny and interesting. 

Friday night we stayed in a hotel in DC on MOTHERFUCKING CAPITAL HILL.  That was cool.

Fifteenth floor.  We got money flying out our shorts.  PRICELINE.COM, SUCKA.

Then we went out in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.  That is a pretty fun area.  We had a delicious vegan dinner at Asylum Rock and Roll Lounge (which is a fucking awful name for a restaurant, but pretty excellent).  Then we drank a bunch and walked around.  I had a really great time.  I love that girl way too much.

Escalators are fun.

 

I OWN THIS CITY.

Asylum.  Cheap PBR.  Booyah.

 

Look at these nerds.

 

We found a bar with Bell's beer from Kalamazoo.  IT GOT THE JOB DONE.

 

They have long escalators.

We woke up this morning and laid around watching cartoons for a while, and then had lunch downtown.  We went to Arlington to visit a friend of Nicola's grave.  That was really sad.  It's very strange to see a name on grave that you recognize amongst that massive graveyard.  There was a funeral going on, as well.  It was really interesting and very formal.  Bugle, bagpipes, and doves. 

I dropped Nicola off at the airport a couple hours ago.  I'm pretty bummed.  I'm excited for her, though.  She's got a really great adventure ahead of her, and I'm really proud of her that she's going for it. 

Now I'm gonna listen to Alkaline Trio way too much til she comes home. 

Babes and Boats.

Hey, I bet you want to know what I've been up to lately. 

Still rocking the internship in DC.  Not actually in DC, but near there.  Annapolis area.  Wasn't Cuba Gooding Jr in a movie called Annapolis?  I think I hate Cuba Gooding Jr.  But Annapolis is pretty solid. 

Anyway, the internship has been up and down.  Some days I help repair fences and frame walls, some days I file bullshit in a basement, and some days I organize computers and answer phones.  I'm not very good at answering phones.  Fuck if I care about that, though.  Everyone who calls is looking for the same two people, so why don't they just answer the goddamned phones?  Oh, right, because this is the real business world and that's what receptionists and interns are for.  This is sounding more bitter than I intend it to.

Some awesome stuff that's been going on:

I've been getting to spend some time with my older brother, his wife, and their incredible daughter.  The three of them have been the best part of my time in the area.  They live about an hour from where I'm staying, and I've been hanging with them on the weekends.  I haven't spent enough time with my brother in the past, and it's been really great to get to do it now.  He's a construction manager around here, so I got to go see his new job site, which is a complete overhaul of an elementary school.  That was pretty interesting.  He is an awesome dude, and pretty rad to hang around with.  His wife is great as well.  She's really funny and she works with horses.  I had a skewed perspective on horses from living in fucking Kentucky where everyone bets on those poor bastards running around while wearing white suits, stupid hats, and carrying umbrellas for some fucking reason.  Visiting the farm that she teaches lessons out of was a good look at a side of that scene that doesn't eat dick.  I think I like horses.  Anyway, she's awesome, and a pretty lady, so I'm glad my brother's married to her.  Not that I wouldn't be happy if she wasn't pretty.  It just seemed like an appropriate observation to make?  It's true, anyway.  I think they make each other happy, and that's what matters, right? That, and..

THEIR DAUGHTER IS MY CURRENT FAVORITE HUMAN BEING.

LOOK HOW CUTE SHE IS.

She's also hilarious.  It's so funny to listen to a tiny person repeat words she hears until she figures out what they mean.  And she actually seems to like me, which is not commonplace for a person of her age.  I like kids a lot, but I tend to terrify them.  I love her.

In other news, I went to Baltimore earlier tonight.  Look at these pictures.

Pretty cool city.  At least the part I saw in the few hours I was there.

I climbed a hill and two crazy girls told me they loved my outfit, which made me proud because I JUST BOUGHT IT THE OTHER DAY.  I resisted the urge to immediately tell them I was engaged because that's how I normally react to compliments and it just makes people think I'm an asshole, when really, I'm not an asshole.  I'm just awkward.

Speaking of being engaged, I still miss Nicola.  I love that girl.

Tomorrow I'm helping the family I'm staying with lay some stone in their backyard, so I'll try to get some pictures of that and show them to all of you.  By "all of you" I guess I mostly mean my mom, aunts, uncles, and other assorted family who look at this blog with any frequency.  Yet, I still use foul language.  The human mind is a mystery.  A goddamn fucking mystery.  Sorry, Mom.

After the yard work, I'm gonna try to hang with my brother and co again because that is an awesome thing to do. 

Going out on a date.

Missing Nicola pretty bad again, so I thought I'd treat myself to dinner, a movie, and a drink or two.

What's really nice is that I don't even have to wear pants.

Glory Days, Yeah They'll Pass You By.

Still in DC and missing Nicola a pretty gigantic amount, so here's an old story to cheer myself up.

My friend Jimmy and I used to get annihilated and do the dumbest things possible.  We set fireworks off in our sleeping housemate's room, crashed college parties to drink free beer pong beer by losing on purpose (most of the time Jimmy would get his penis out), and caused a general ruckus at any available moment. 

Jimmy had this old laptop that died and could not be fixed.  Naturally, we decided that we should find a way to blow up its battery, under the assumption that it would be some sort of insane display of destructive force.  We tried setting it on fire.  It wouldn't work.  We tried lighter fluid.  It wouldn't work.  We ran out of available materials. 

We decided to go get some gasoline. 

We walked to the gas station (obviously, driving was not an option, so at least there's some amount of responsible thinking going on here) with a gas can and filled 'er up.  Upon return to our house, we realized that we really only had one shot at this, and we needed to ensure the maximum amount of guaranteed fuckery possible.  We found a cooler, and placed the laptop battery inside.  We poured a healthy amount of gasoline in.  Standing back and staring at the situation we'd prepared, we realized that neither of us was willing to reach a hand into the cooler with a lighter and start the conflagration.  Eyebrows are important.  So are arms.  Doing as any reasonably intelligent couple of early 20's middle class males would, we make a trail of gas from the cooler and stretching about ten feet away, and balled up some paper to light on fire and toss at the gas.

At this point, some scene setting is necessary.

We lived in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Not in the country.  We had neighbors whose houses could be touched by stretching an arm out a window.  We shared a driveway and parking lot with our very cool and super nice neighbors on the south side of our house.  There were eight cars in the parking lot, lining each side.  The cooler and path of fuel were placed equidistantly from the two lines of cars.  We were really drunk, so give me a break.

We lit the paper and tossed it.  Have you ever seen gasoline on fire?  It's dramatic.  The wet line of gasoline on the asphalt immediately became a ten foot high inferno racing toward the cooler.  When it reached its destination, a ball of flame exploded into the air, and the flames from the cooler hovered fifteen feet above the ground. 

We were at a loss.  How we expected something else to happen is beyond me, because if we'd really thought it through, I think we'd have realized that gasoline does not fuck around with fire.  That's how people die in car crashes sometimes. 

Jimmy ran inside and filled a bucket with water, which he threw at the chaos.  Guess what?  Water spreads gasoline.  The flames, now much closer to the cars, did not recede, but stayed the course.  After panicking for a few minutes, I ran inside and grabbed our fire extinguisher, which I didn't know how the fuck to use.  After arguing and slapping each others' hands for a minute, we figured it out and put out the flames.  We then ran inside the house and turned all the lights off, convinced that someone had seen a massive amount of flames at 1:30 in the morning and reported it to fire department (you know, like you're supposed to.)

No one came.

No lesson was learned.

Also, we told our landlord someone stole our fire extinguisher so we wouldn't have to explain why it was used. 

I don't do this kind of thing anymore.

Scotty on American Idol Can Suck It.

In other news, here are some pictures of things that have been going on in DC.

 

My face got dirty.

 There's a town in Maryland called Friendsville.  I NEED TO LIVE THERE. 

Trees are pretty.

 I stay in this bed.

 Hey, another tree.

 I've been working on this thing.

 This will be a phenomenal patio in a month.

 STAIRS.

 This house is awesome.

 Real awesome.

 There's a bunch of my pee in there.

FIRST PAID SKETCH BOOOOOYAH.