so worth it

Last week I lifted an air-conditioner at least four times my weight and set it in my windowsill, four feet off the ground.



You would think I'd be in pretty good shape, since in high school I took a table tennis class. But you would be so wrong. Using the boxes of fragile items Paige has entrusted in my care for the summer, I built a stairway up to the window ledge, so I could lift the air conditioner up a couple inches at a time.

My plan was working out great until I finally lifted the beast one last time onto its wooden stand, which suddenly collapsed. Then it was just the two of us, the air conditioner and I. It was too heavy to set down, and way too heavy to lift the rest of the way. So instead I was stuck there, propping it up against the wall and wondering how long it would be before my arms gave out and I was flattened by 400 pounds of metal.

I thought of all the good and bad things that had happened in my life. I thought of the time I went to get some M&Ms out of the vending machine, and instead of one package, three came out.

I thought of when I was ten and we went to the zoo and there was a snake you could touch, but I was too scared to do it even though I really wanted to. I thought of when the same thing had happened when I was 23.

I thought the afternoon Bryn and I went to Coldstone to cheer me up because I was having a horrible day, and on the way out my ice cream cone fell on the ground.

I thought of one time when I was little and me and my dad were at the doctor's office because I was sick. And while we were waiting for the doctor to come in my dad said "Do you want to leave?" and I said yes and we ran.

I thought of the one day in summer that I decided to install an air conditioner by myself, but ended up being crushed to death by its weight. And how they couldn't untangle my body from the machine so I had to be buried with it.

After about 5 minutes someone saw me across the apartment complex and came over to help.

And now we have air conditioning! I love it.

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used not used to this
business of adventures."

three cheers for not spending a year surrounded by cows

Since Sean, the only reader of this blog, already knows this news I don't know why I'm writing it but, here it is anyway. I have some Excellent News! I got my school assignment for next year, and I'm going to be teaching at an elementary school in downtown Marseille.





The school actually very much downtown. It's a school for at-risk kids with non-so-great behavior, which should scare me. But how scary can 10-year-olds be? They're just little kids. In a couple months I will look at this and laugh about how naive I was.

Another good source of amusement in a couple months will be remembering how back in June I thought my level of French was going to be passable. Listening to French slang podcasts has For Sure adequately prepared me for life in a foreign country.

Come October it will be non-stop laughter. Right now I'm so excited I have trouble sleeping, and I have du pain sur la planche (so ready!), with visas and plane tickets.

why I'm going to start wearing sunglasses

it's about time

How I walked for 23 years without TubeFlops will forever be a mystery.

new project:

Take a picture of my nose every day for 5 years.

Day 1

good news

We have an iPad and it has a sketchpad on it.



I think the things I use the iPad for are the same things I would have used it for 15 years ago.

packaging slave

Is it bad that 8th Continent's new packaging is so cute that I've almost bought it about 20 times? I don't even know what soymilk tastes like. But to look at these I imagine it tastes like frosting.




brand new
the dieline

Mr Postman

A letter telling me exactly where I'm going to eat cheese, make a fool of myself, get lost all the time, and not know how to talk to doctors for the next year is on its way across the ocean.

And since it's going to my family's address instead of mine, they get a phone call every couple of hours asking could someone please go check the mailbox again. Even if the mail already came, maybe the postal service has a new policy where they deliver mail twice a day. Maybe the mail carrier forgot to put it in the mailbox, but the wind delivered it to our house by magic. Who knows how it got there, but just check.



I should probably go call them right now.

my family rocks

In other news I got a Flip camera! I can start making all the movies I want.

on running

Every morning at 7:05 when I'm running toward the park from my house, I run by a woman running away from the park, toward my house. I good fit for this paragraph would be a sentence that says I don't usually remember all the people I see when I'm running, but that would be a lie. I obsessively remember everyone I see, and this woman especially, because every morning she's running with a different breed of large dog.

I know it's the same woman every day, because it is the same woman, and also because she always wears the same running shorts. How many different large dogs does she own? I'll probably never know, but I like to imagine her getting ready for her run. Opening the door to her walk-in closet and choosing a tank top, running shoes, and a Doberman Pinscher. But always the same shorts.