Summer not in the city

My dad's land at Georgetown doesn't have anything except a driveway built on it yet, but it has some pretty nice scenery.

Here I am, blocking it:


Back yard:


View from across the street:


Wish you were here!

Competition

If I were going to rank us according to who drove the farthest* in the oldest truck** this week,*** I would probably rank me first and you last.

*2,286 miles
**1987 Toyota pickup
***Sunday-Friday

Traveling cat

Small has been cycling through the stages of Road Trip.

1. Panic

"AAUUUGH WHAT IS THAT NOISE WHERE AM I WHAT IS THAT SMELL I HATE THIS WHY AM I LOCKED IN THIS !#$^$@%$ BOX LET ME OUT AAAAUUGH!"

2. Despair

"Heeeeelp me pleeeeeease let me oooooout I don't liiiiiiike thiiiiiiiiiis"

3. Denial

"I am closing my eyes and counting to 50 and when I wake up I will be somewhere normal where it is quiet and not vibrating"

4. Resignation

"Well, I guess we live in this stupid truck now. God damn it."

5. Nap

"zzzzz"

Stage 1 really only happened for a few minutes each on the first two days. Today was nearly all 4 and 5. Tomorrow's the last day! Things are looking up, buddy.

Weather report

Oh hey internet. Where you been, you slacker? I haven't seen you in ages!

I'm in Cleveland. I'm en route from DC to MT: today was Day One of a projected Six Day Road Trip. DC was hot when I left. Maryland was lovely. Pennsylvania was rough going (full of rain and irritating other drivers) but as soon as I crossed over into Ohio everything was lovely again.

My truck is holding up quite nicely, thank you for asking, and I'll politely pretend I didn't notice the incredulity leavened by disapproval at my choice of conveyance. That truck is a tough old lady!

Tougher than the cat, at any rate. The cat (also doing fine, overall) spent the first hour yowling and the rest of the hours sulking with her face in a blanket with sporadic additional yowls and glares. Whatever, I turned my hearing aids off and she seems to have forgiven me now so she can yowl and glare all she wants tomorrow too. Maybe by Tuesday she'll have gotten used to the routine.

Okay, see you in another 3 months! Just kidding. Maybe.

Winter break

Now I'm in Missoula again until mid-January. Missoula is full of old friends and brothers and drinks and pets. It is quite nice. Except for how sore my legs are from when I went skiing yesterday. POOR POOR ME.

Gonna be a Dental Floss Tycoon

With my tweezers gleamin' in the moon-lighty night.


lyrics

Soon = Monday. See you later, Constitution City!

Breizh

The workshop was very good. The presentations and discussions were interesting and the interpreters were excellent and there was plenty of coffee and eating delicious food in French restaurants.

There were lots of interesting different languages being used at the workshop. There were many different native-spoken-languages (English, German, French, Turkish, Italian, Dutch, and maybe others?) and many different signed languages (LSF, BSL, NGT, LIS, DGS, TİD). TİD wins for having the most fascinating alphabet to try to learn (I can't find any good videos, but it has exciting ways to do diacritics). There have also been all kinds of interesting linguistic things to notice related to what signs and menus say around here: Brittany (French Bretagne, Breton Breizh) has lots of Breton (Breton Brezhoneg) going on.

Now it's over and everyone else left to go back to all their homes in various places. Everyone (including Kyle, who flitted off to California) except me: I'm sitting around Kyle's apartment in Vannes drinking coffee and slowly moving towards maybe doing some work. It is very nice, and I plan to keep doing it for two more days. Then, Tuesday/Wednesday: back to the terrible heat swamp of Constitution City, and the terrible tribulation of having to do productive things all the time.

Foux du fa fa

I'm going to France to do linguistics and drink wine with Kyle. Je voudrais un croissant. Où est la piscine? Splish splash! La discothèque, c'est ici, bébé.

Au revoir.

postparty depression

I got back from a college-reunion-type trip to Portland Oregon yesterday. This reunion was hard work! And a lot of fun. There was mostly dancing and drinking and a carnival and old friends and new friends and relatives, and not very much sitting in front of a computer. I slept for 13 hours last night. Now I feel pretty much the way I did when I was 14 and had just returned home from bagpipe camp, all forlorn and nostalgic about the past week and disgruntled about having to start writing my dissertation again. Stupid dissertation.

My state is prettier than your state

While I was in Montana I drove to Billings. It was a very nice drive. Now I am back in the good old District of Constitution, daydreaming about mountains and open roads.

I been to wild Montana

I'm in Missoula. It took me 25 hours to get here, counting from when I left my house yesterday. That wasn't very fun, and now I'm kind of sick, but I'm sitting on the couch amidst many parents, siblings, and hangers-on, and somebody is probably going to build me a fire and bring me a beer any minute now so overall I'd say things turned out okay.

Linguistics Road Trip

Lindsay and Kyle came to town with their foreign sign languages and their foreign friends. Then we all drove to Indiana for a conference. Lindsay and I had big plans for our Linguistics Party Van, involving duct tape and fireworks and a keg, but Kyle is such a killjoy good influence.

Later, Lindsay and I will make a video for you, in which she tries to explain things and I make fun of her for not knowing which words go to which language.

The government stole my weather

I'm in Montana, where it has been freezing raining for DAYS and the skies are cloudy and gray and the weather guy on the teevee is very full of discouraging words. NOT LIKE THE SONG SAYS AT ALL.

Meanwhile, everyone in stupid DC gets snowball fights and hot cocoa and camaraderie. And they don't even have any mountains to ski on! I hope the Constitution Gods get their act together real quick like and put the snow back where it belongs, or about 50% of my packing will have been a total waste.

But who would bring a SADDLE on an airplane? Come on, Delta. Don't be silly.

I'm getting ready to leave for Missoula, and since Our Dear Overlords keep changing up the rules for air travel, I went online to see what I could see.

It turns out that if you want to check any "Fragile/bulky items" on a Delta flight, you have to tell an official ahead of time.

Well, this seems reasonable! (I may or may not have said to myself,) But I wonder what type of item would fit into this somewhat vague category? Never fear; Delta has a handy list of examples of fragile and/or bulky items:

- saddle
- antlers
- Hawaiian pineapples
- military duffle bags

as well as a more comprehensive list including

- Ornamental Bric-a-Brac

and

- Meters

both of which are a little confusing to me: the first seems extremely unhelpful as the name of an "item", and the second, I have no idea what the referent might be. Parking meters? Yardsticks?


Anyway, I'm hoping if I stick the Hawaiian pineapples on the antler points, and then stick the whole thing into the military duffle bag, I can get away with a single charge.

Montannesotigan, here I come

Big Northern M State destination of the day is Minnesota. That is the one in the middle, of the three, for those of you who have trouble keeping track. It is also the one with Chris and Kate and Trisha and Emily and this guy. Hooray! Friends!

I'll be there all week. The weather is supposed to be much less gross than DC, which is a surprising but pleasing turn of events.

jiggety jog

We're all in DC again, me and Jocelyn and Ben. Man, I am bored of jet lag. I have spent way too much of the past two months having no idea what time of what day it might be, or where I am, or why I am still awake.

Good night!

Some Families Play Cribbage

This family plays Bridge.

Sometimes when we play Bridge, there are cards and bidding and tricks.

Sometimes, there is just Bridge. Or, you know - a lack of bridge, and some earthworks to fix the situation.



































The brave vehicles waiting for their "road".














(note from Jocelyn: the events pictured took place on the way to the beach, after the trip with the rowboats but before the trip to Kruger. I am a lazy blogger, hence the delay. Also this post is written from the Johannesburg airport and there are problems uploading pictures; so the pictures showing the triumphant success of the vehicles crossing the earthworked bridge will have to come later.)

Here are some photographs of fauna and megafauna that we have recently seen

That's right, I said MEGAfauna. 'Cause they're BIG.

all photos: Mark LoParco















more are at flickr now, and more to come.

Oh internet, I missed you so

We spent the past five days at Kruger National Park, just over the border in South Africa. The same Kruger as in this famous piece of internet:



We didn't see anything quite as exciting as this. We did see lions and water buffalo and crocodiles, but not all at once and not doing their behaviors in such a dramatic way. Also there were a lot of warthogs and hippopotomi and elephants and monkeys and baboons and guinea fowl and kudu and impala. And so many birds.

My favorites were the little baby warthog piglets. My least favorites were the Go-away birds, who sat in the tree over the deck and screamed at me and threw things at my head. Until eventually I went away to drink my beer and glare at them scornfully from a safer vantage point.

Now we're back in Maputo; pictures eventually.

see you later alligators

We're going to the beach for a few days. Maputo, where we are currently, is on the beach but you can't swim in the ocean here because of pollution. And we all know that the only thing I care about is swimming in the ocean. People have been telling me stories about alligators, but I'm not scared because I know the trick of punching the alligator in the nose and then running in a zig zag pattern. Because alligators won't chase you out of the water, and running in a zig zag pattern is more hilarious for the onlookers.

We'll be back on Saturday so that the more energetic members of the group can run the hash. This is the same thing that Lindsay did in Rwanda, here and here and here. If we get back in time, this will be the fourth country in which I have attended, but not participated in, a Hash event. I'm excited for that.