What I Would Have Written About

I would have written about arriving in Massachusetts and being confronted by awful New England traffic and clueless Masshole drivers. I would have written about getting lost in a warren of unmarked state highways less than two hours from home. I would have written about the long and hellish move from Dunn's Bridge Lane to my new place on Central Avenue, and my neighbors who I thought at first were meth-heads, but now I'm pretty sure were just really wasted when I met them, and I would have written about the cigarette ash in my windowsills and the slanting floors and the fact that I didn't have power for the first four days I lived here.

I would have written about building a shelf and tacking up panelboard so I could write notes to myself in dry-erase pens on my walls while I'm working on my fiction. I would have written about decorating my apartment with pages and covers from vintage science fiction pulps (an arts and crafts project! Me!). I would have written about seeing my New Hampshire friends again, and orientation for English 401, and the horrifying heat wave that swept New England, followed by the very disappointing hurricane, and visiting Scarlet and Carl in Boston, and the insane Scottish guy who yelled at us for "keeping the black man down."

I would have written about these things but I no longer have as much time as I did this summer, and, as you can see from the list, I've been busy. I'll try to do better, and you can just imagine those seven or eight awesome blog entries that I would have written. Back to writing now!

Positive Thinking! Positive Thinking!

I leave for New Hampshire in eighteen days, which is very strange. I feel like I just got here. As many of you know, New Hampshire isn't exactly my favorite place in the world, but I am trying to keep the blog-whining to a minimum. To that end, I've decided to talk a bit about things I'm actually looking forward to (!!) about returning to the Live Free or Die State.

• Living free or dying. I intend to live free.

The other option is dying hard. This kind of shit happens in New Hampshire all the time.

• Teaching. Oh man did I miss teaching this last year. I can't wait to have students, to be in front of a classroom again, even to grade papers--Smarthinking has made me realize how awesome it is to grade and evaluate on your own terms.

• Writing and reading. Sure, I'm writing and reading this summer, but it's going to be fun to have myself exposed to stuff I wouldn't pick up on my own, and to have a dedicated writing schedule. Writing over breaks always feels kind of like a dalliance or a hobby, even when I'm really cranking it out; in school it's basically all there is, so it feels much much more important.

• Shipyard Summer. I know this is weird, since I'm in the land of microbreweries, but I have been totally craving Shipyard Summer Ale. I've been enjoying a lot of Northwest summer ales and IPAs (apparently there's a very distinct "west coast" style of IPA, pioneered by WA and OR microbreweries, that has a lot more kick to it than its east coast cousin, which explains why all the IPA in New England sucks except for Smuttynose) but the Shipyard Summer is kind of like liquid crack-beer. It accompanies hot, muggy weather quite nicely. I promise I'm not cheating on you, delicious Northwest brews! It's just a fling.
  

• Having a car. New Hampshire is going to suck a lot less when I can get around it, or leave any time I want to go Boston or Portland or the mountains. Thanks for the car, Kate and Adam! You have noooooo idea how awesome this is. (Fingers crossed the Civic makes it across the country incident-free.)

• My new apartment. I can't wait to have my own space and fill it up with books and video games and brand new kitchen stuff and the things I like. Plus, it's in downtown Dover, right next to an awesome used books store and a bunch of nice bars, coffeehouses, and restaurants. Sweet.

My building. I'm in one of the studios on the corner.

• Fall in New England. We haven't had a ton of summer weather in Washington, which I'm just fine with. I'm already done with 85-degree-plus weather, sweating myself to sleep, sitting in front of fans, etc. (And has anybody else noticed how the red lights in Seattle are one or two minutes longer once the temperature gets to about ninety? I swear I'm not making this up.) I know that once I arrive in New Hampshire I'll have even more miserable weather to deal with for awhile, but then fall will be here, and it will be nice and cool and pretty-colored, and I can eat apples and candy corn and wear coats again. Huzzah!

Yeah, it's pretty there.

• Hiking. I hear the hiking in New Hampshire is great, and they do have lots of woods and mountains (sorry, "mountains"). I'm going to buy a best hikes book and use my newfound transportation to travel the state and walk all over it.
  

• Seeing my cat. I miss her.

Clementine circa early 2007.

See, positive thinking! Maybe I could follow this up with a list of things I won't miss about the Pacific Northwest. It might be short, but worth it.

Settling

Man, it's amazing what putting some furniture and posters up can do to a place. This is starting to feel less like an apartment where I sleep, eat, use the internet, and watch Lost, and more like a home.

The office, coming together.

Let me tell you the story of this desk. I contacted "Gabriel" on craigslist, who told us to come by and pick up the desk at 8:30. We arrived to find not Gabriel, but his two very confused (most probably stoned) roommates. They lived in a crappy, mostly empty college house that reminded me quite a bit of the one on Ellis Street. Their living room contained one falling-apart couch, a giant HDTV on a wooden stand, an XBox, and literally nothing else. The stoned roommates showed us into the basement, where Gabriel had disassembled and stored the desk, along with fifty or so years of cobwebs, mold, and mildew. We left our number on a sticky note, drove home, got a call from Gabriel, and drove back twenty minutes later to pick up the desk. Stupidly, we paid $45 for this. The picture probably makes it look better than it is. We had to wash the mold and mildew and crap off each piece before we assembled it (using only the pictures from craigslist and Gabriel's sometimes cryptic labels as a guide). The boards were slightly warped, the cabinet shakes, it's missing some screws, it reeks of basement, there's a rather large piece we couldn't find a place for and thus left out... it's a POS. But it's our desk, and I, if not Ashley, love it anyway.

I'm getting back into the writing mode. Unpacking all of my books and putting them up on shelves has something to do with it, I think. It's amazing how two months of summer can leave you so dumb and out of practice. I'm reading Creating the Story: Guides for Writers by Rebecca Rule and Susan Wheeler, who used to (and may still, I'm not sure) teach fiction at UNH. Donna gave me the book as a graduation present, and her name is on the inside cover. I'm also supplementing it with some old Borges short stories I haven't read since freshman year of college and the odd story from a Crab Creek Review or a MAR--unpacking everything I realized I've accumulated quite the library of old literary magazines.

Other than that, not much is happening. Still looking for a job, although it looks like I've got my work study taken care of--I'll be working in the HR department at UNH, doing office assistant stuff. Ashley's comp camp starts on Monday, and hopefully financial aid will drop soon, so I can pay off my credit cards, make a budget, and maybe even buy some more furniture (I'm pretty worried about money). I'll keep y'all posted.

Road Trip Day 6: End of the road

We made it up to Dover on the sixth day. I was surprised by how much it resembled Washington—lots of water, some hills, and trees (mostly deciduous, but hey). On our way to the apartment we crossed a bridge and saw dozens of sailboats out in the bay. Very lovely, in a very New Englandy way.

The apartment was nice, but waaaay too hot. Thankfully we have AC, so we cranked it while we lugged everything in from the trailer, hit the grocery store, and began to settle in. I don't want to bore you with all the details of food and furniture and moving in stuff, so I'll keep it short. Suffice it to say, we're here.

Updates on this blog will probably slow down now as I'm updating in real time, not catching up (sorry Chelsea, I can no longer be your ideal blogger), but I'll continue posting my thoughts, observations and ramblings. Keep reading, keep commenting (it's nice to know y'all are out there reading), and I'll be seeing you before you know it.

My new town, as seen in 1877.