Monthly Archive for July, 2008

The National and Denali

Laura and I went up to Richmond, VA a couple weeks ago to see The National at… The National Theater. Our tickets said “The National” on them like 8 times. Weird.

We spent some time discovering Richmond. As the capital of Virginia, it’s an old city with tons of crusty architecture, history, and a major university right downtown. I bet it was a great place to live 30 years ago, but now, most of the buildings are abandoned and crumbling. Signs from department stores and restaurants that closed their doors decades ago are still hanging on, reminders of what used to be. Sad, really. This town had (has?) potential but somebody threw it down the drain to build Wal-Marts and Best Buys out by the interstate.

On the upside, The National (the theater) was beautiful. It’s apparently from the 1920’s and has been (what looks to be) almost completely restored. Nice place. The National (the band) rocked hard and did a double encore. What more could we ask for?

The National

The National



Two weeks later I went to see Denali play a reunion show at the same place. Incredible. Got to see my wonderful friend Kerry too!

Denali

Denali - Maura

Here are my photos on Flickr: Denali Reunion Show

Somebody (not me) took some video of the show and put it up on YouTube: Denali 7.5.08 Reunion Show

Since We Last Spoke

I’ve been busy lately and haven’t had too much time to update this thing. Here’s a rundown of the past month.

We bought a Toyota Prius. Barcelona Red. Love it.

Laura and I have been doing lots of planning for our house. Learning about concrete foundations, suspended concrete decks, solar power, standby electric generators (and the fact that ALL of them run on fossil fuels), rainwater harvesting, low power refrigerators, split ductless air conditioning, induction stove tops, composting toilets, water tanks, ceiling fans, doors, windows, and UV water sterilizers. Whew! Eventually we are going to write about it all over at Our Farm Adventure, which is just getting off the ground.

We’ve also been working on a year-long road trip through the U.S. and Canada that we’re going to take when I graduate in 18 months. We going to start in Georgia, go down and up Florida, across the Gulf Coast through Texas to Big Bend National Park, then up through New Mexico to see caves and desert, north to Denver, west to Salt Lake City, south to the Grand Canyon and Phoenix, west to San Diego, meandering north through California, Oregon, Washington, and B.C… and then… to Alaska! After Alaska, it’ll be back down through Alberta to Yellowstone National Park, northeast-ish to Winnipeg, east over the Great Lakes, to Toronto and Niagara Falls, then back north again to Ottawa and Montreal, south to Burlington, VT then east to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, north to Québec, northeast along the south side of the St. Laurence river to the eastern peninsula at Parc National Forillon, then south through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, then back towards Maine and finally south down the Atlantic coast home to Georgia. Fun! Got any ideas of specific places we should go or things we should see? Let us know.

A few weeks ago, we went to Georgia to check out our land and see family. Laura learned to use a machete. I got chiggers (sorry, no pics). Maybe next time we’ll make more progress on the land… because we’re never coming in the summer again (too many bugs). Hello, October! But we did discover that Toccoa has a beautiful downtown (even if it’s kinda sad in a historical context, like most small towns). One thing we do love? The Amtrak station. While we were down there, we saw my dad, my PaPa and MaeMae, MeeMa, Aunt Nina, and brother Whit.

I got a writing gig over at Accidental Hedonist. I’ve been reading Kate’s food blog for some time now. 3, 4 years? I forget. Anyway, my articles go up every Wednesday until the end of December. You can read the introduction to get a feel for what it’s about, or check out the first entry on Okra




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