Pictures of Success

They say California is a recipe for a black hole.
I say I've got my best shoes on-- I'm ready to go

Spring has sprung

Spring is full of light. Green grass. Budding trees. Warm air. Hazy evenings. The look of the National Mall with people strewn everywhere in crazy quilt patterns. Coming together. Rolling down roads with no friction on your bike wheels. Eating outside in the pleasant breeze. The feeling that everything getting better every day. The music of the new season.

April Excitement

This month is full of surprises and return engagements. The mead is in the jug. The wild yeast is bubbling. Fermentation holds so many possibilities. Cycling continues to improve my commute and I now look forward to it every day. Jennifer, JD, and my mom are all scheduled for visits. Shipping up to Boston for a quick weekend on Friday evening. So much going on!

Baseball

Days when I would have been hanging on every pitch of the baseball season have gone by. I would not have foreseen this at age 15, with ERAs filling my head and Pedro Martinez at the top of his game. Baseball is not compelling in the same way. I feel that I have seen through the pseudointellectualism of its culture at last. This is sad, in a way.

Simple

The joys of a wet Easter day. Westminster, Maryland for brunch and a show of marshmallow Peep art. It was just fun.

The scientists say it'll all wash away

We went dancing last night. It was a great time. The floor was a little packed by the end of the night and one's feet will hurt from 3 hours of dancing without a break, but we had so much fun. A good thing to remind myself that it's good to get out of the house, now and then.

I'm sitting in the basement office now, enjoying the sonic experiments of Atlas Sound. It's good to feel different sensations, to leave the comfortable routines of every day. I feel like an explorer in my little basement room.

The smell of New Jersey

Listening to New Jersey bands as the bus transits New Jersey:

Bands/artists (and their most NJ-emblematic song)

-Saves the Day (Always Ten Feet Tall or Shoulder to the Wheel)
-Titus Andronicus (Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ or My Time Outside The Womb)
-Bruce Springsteen (Open All Night)

What is it with New Jersey and producing great music? These are three artists whose music I haven't gotten over. They all have reams of really good songs across multiple albums. New Jersey is an idea to me, raw and unfiltered, symbolizing everything good and bad about America. The music reflects that.

New Jersey in the morning like a lunar landscape

Live blog:

Sudden trip to NYC
Alex has business at the consulate
Solid bus with internet and power
New Jersey Turnpike
Rifling through iTunes favorite for Bruce Springsteen
1 Box of Whoppers already down
Radio relay towers won't you lead me to my baby
Raw Bruce of Nebraska days is wildly powerful
Sometimes you have to just drop everything and go to New York with a friend
Head full of patent law; excellent social science research papers downloaded from the web
Still very young

Capturing Moods

The joy of discovering an entire Rilo Kiley live album that I had never heard before. Includes the transcendent 'I Love LA' and a cover of 'Rock n' Roll Suicide. It did feel right. My attempt at capturing the feeling of having seen a band that broke up 5 years ago.