No pueden quemar nuestros sueños!

I'm sitting in the normal coffee drinking spot. The Beatles are playing on the stereo. For this I am thankful. My friend Bryan is doing homework nearby on incredibly bright fuchsia paper. It is a rainy and cold day. I woke rather early today, as I went to bed before 10 pm last night. This week wore me out. Today finds the author hiding indoors, defiantly in a short-sleeve shirt but pragmatic woolen socks and hat. The socks are pure Icelandic. The hat is Canadian, and homemade. Both are grey, and just itchy enough that I never forget that I am wearing them but not so itchy that's they are at all uncomfortable. A perfect balance such as this is a rarity. I would like to summarize my life metaphorically as I do my socks and hat, but I don't think I have quite reached that level yet. But I'm satisfied.
Recently, however, a disaster occured. On Thursday night the Stone Soup Community Center here in Worcester suffered a serious fire. I was en route to work, driving down May St as two or three fire engines roared past. Every time I see emergency service vehicles with lights & sirens on I hope they reach their destination in time. In this case it was perhaps too late for them to keep our beloved building from sustaining massive damage throughout all three floors. Even more upsetting is that Coco, resident Stone Soup kitty, perished in the blaze. RIP, Coco.
The next day, everyone who loves and cares for Stone Soup came together in a beautiful way to assist in the preliminary clean up. I for one picked up shards of glass with a broom and helped relocate the contents of the library(thankfully not touched by flame) out of the building. Many people cleaned the soot off of the books and boxed and sorted them. The radical, local, sustainable, and social justice communities won't be stopped by a simple fire, no matter how structurally damaging. The rebuilding begins!

If you can donate time or money or want to learn more, please check out the link above. XO.

30+ hours of sleep deprivation

I am home from Iceland. It strikes me as funny, how it is actually colder here in Mass than it was just a stone's throw from the Arctic Circle. I have been awake and generally active for approximately thirty-two hours now. After landing in Boston, Megan(my life-saving ride home) & I ate T-Sam's and talked about the last year and so. It's hard to wrap my brain around that the last time I saw her was 15 months ago, oddly enough she was my previous post-Eurotrip ride home from Logan as well. After dinner I hit home for about an hour and headed to work. Awful, awful. It wasn't as painful as one might imagine, but it was far from optimal, to say the least. It's so unfortunate that our lives are wasted away making companies far more money than we are compensated for. At least that is(thankfully only partially) my reality, perhaps it's also yours. You have my back, if so. We shall persevere, if not overcome.

"you try too hard"
-- I was thinking about these words. I realize that I try very hard sometimes to project myself not as the rather awkward introvert that I probably am, but instead as a rather awkward extrovert who tells ridiculous and bad jokes/puns for cheap laughs. When I think of this it feels like a flick to the forehead. The one time I was told this outright it was like an elbow to the gut. I am my father's son.

I write the worst travel blog ever.

Things afoot

Will I ever adequately prepare myself for anything? I am a chronic procrastinator. I have never packed more than a couple hours before any sort of travel, and I have never finished writing a paper earlier than the day before it is due. Can I chalk it up to laziness? I'm not sure that both of my two examples fit neatly with that descriptor in a similar sense, because I indeed loathe writing papers and I rather enjoy condensing items and gearing up for adventure. Hmm. Right now I haven't been asleep in what feels like forever, and struggling to keep my head above water in terms of syntax, tense and general articulation. Hopefully this will not be too painful for the reader or the author.

I have been off-the-wall crazy these days, trying ever-so-valiantly not to become a big ol' stressball. My days have been filled with fun activities and my nights have been filled with work. Sleep hasn't factored into the mix to an extent that I'm happy with, but, I have been managing. I don't know where my energy comes from. I suspect bagels. SOMANYBAGELS.

Blastfest happened in Cambridge. I was a big mess that day, I was running on three hours of sleep and I was the SMELLIEST PERSON EVER. I usually tend to be on the pungent side of the spectrum but Jesus Christ what happened? It was my first show playing with the Woodrow Wilsons. We were rough, but people liked it. Not bad for two hasty rehearsals. The energy felt great. The Points North set was also good, also sloppy. Sloppier than it should've been, but these things happen. I hope to dig up some pictures from the show because the theater and the stage set-up were beautiful and such a nice change from the same old living room or bar thing. I will share some, in time. Please don't hold me to that.

Last night there was a surprise birthday party at the Worcester contradance, which happens every second saturday. It was my first time attending this dance. How nice! So many friends showed up. SO MANY FRIENDS! I loved how I felt.

Right now I'm just about passing out on the semi-couch. The St. Patrick's Day parade is a couple blocks away and in about an hour, so I'm planning on checking that out. I need to take a nap. I need to take a shower. I need to pack. I'm going to Iceland tonight, right? I think it's going to be really nice. The plans exist in name alone.

I've been thinking a lot about my life plans and I want to explore that via this medium soon. We're talking LONG TERM. This was spurred on by a couple brief conversations with friends. Oh my goodness, I am so ready to go to sleep right now. See you in Iceland.

Saving daylight, but at what cost?

I guess spring has been cancelled this year after just one pilot weekend. The(read: my) world has reverted back to slush and freezing rain and snow. How demotivating! Gross. I think today I'll just aim a pinch lower. I've been reading In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck lately, and it has me hooked. I'll work at that.

REALLY GREAT THINGS HAPPENING IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW:

• The Points North album is just about finished!
• I've been playing drums with the Woodrow Wilsons lately, as well
• Oh my goodness sometimes it feels so good to just live and be
• Bike riding? Again really soon?
• Blastfest, big music festival in Cambridge next week, featuring both PN and WW!
• Leftover spring rolls in the fridge
• I really love my family
• Worcester contra-dance next weekend!
• My brain tells me the ice shall soon thaw. Does this mean the Elizabeth Bishop will make her maiden voyage?
• Oh my goodness music music music
• Making friends out of acquaintances
• April shows and an eight-day tour with Manners!
• A hastily prepared and perhaps absurd trip to Iceland- this weekend! Oh my goodness.
• A CRUSH ON A GIRL? I'm not sure if this qualifies as a really great thing. A little confusing, perhaps. These things are really infrequent, I feel. Therefore special? The theory of scarcity at work?
• Living as a human should: with other humans.

One of the biggest internal challenges in my life is trying to determine how to live as a human should. I promise I will not elaborate on this, today. I will spare you sophomoric philosophical rambling for the time being. However, it is high time for one of those spring rolls I've been hearing(read: eating) so much about.

Too much beer and a rather boring blog.

London Fog:

Steamed milk (soy or rice or whatever)
Vanilla shot
Earl Grey teabag

Delicious. Make it a "London Smog" by adding espresso. I coined this term myself, and a close confident tells me that it's wonderful. I hope that both drinks gain popularity.

Right now I'm working on staying awake after a lovely day of bike riding and a lovely evening of friends and homemade food and wine at Duck Yao in Worcester. I finally have steady internet access, which might actually be a bad thing in the long run. We'll see.

It is March 1st and Snow is Falling.

So, it's Sunday morning and roughly quarter past nine. It is cold cold cold outside, and light snowflakes are coming down in dozens. I'm locked out of my new apartment, oops. I tried a window and a reluctant cellphone call, but they were to no avail. So, instead of sleep it's back to coffee again. And blogging.
I'm back in Worcester after my trip to Victoria, BC. I enjoyed enjoyed myself. I can appreciate life there, despite the tourism, high prices and general fanciness. Not every city needs to be a dirty post-industrial underdog to be worth anything, remember? I need to tell myself this on occasion.
I moved to a new house. It's a messy apartment with friends. People and seemingly hundreds of mice inhabit this apartment, unlike my previous place which was in essence only occupied by memories, artifacts, and two cats which I feel awful about being such a bad friend to. I'm so so so glad to finally have escaped the eerily quiet and dark squalor. I returned after an epic cross-continent trek via van, airplane, another airplane, bus, train, and foot and found the apartment half-empty and half-gutted. My housemates have fled, and I haven't spoken to either of them since. I began to triage my sundry items and determine any worth, but in a hurried, curiously panicked way. I had been yearning to relocate for months, but at the moment it all felt so overwhelming. The electricity was shut off for no discernable reason and one could find the author sobbing in the dark, trying to pry posters off the walls and feeling utterly cut off from the world. Far from a graceful and tactful strategic withdrawal into a new living situation like I had hoped and expected, this felt as disorganized and pitiful a retreat as possible. I gave up and spent the rest of the day aimlessly outdoors, tail between legs. I popped in to M. Fox's place and he made me feel better. I tried again and got everything situated over the next few days, and 12 Vale Street is as good as buried as far as I'm concerned, and for the better.

The snow is coming down in hundreds. My bottom lip is chapped and cracked. Sister Hazel is playing on the radio. Remember that song? I recall being infatuated with it and the album it was featured on when I was in middle school. Guitar solo. I guess it's a CD as it's skipping. Or it's a weird, terrible remix. The girl working is complaining about her high school English class rather loudly. Boring poetry assignments, right? I suppose that I can relate.
I do love Sunday mornings. The quiet of the city is of a very comforting sort. I can find some peace in it. I feel that that is what I may need the most. Perhaps I've simply been looking in the wrong places.