10 Exciting Things

Tonight's post is a list of things about which I'm currently excited, in no particular order:

1) Richmond, VA. Without getting into a lot of detail, I'll just say that it came up a month or two ago that it's been...a while...since I've been to visit my sister Laura. I spent a little time at the end of this week planning a trip down to Richmond for the end of the month. This is going to be insane. Super-condensed itinerary:

- 7/30: Fly (yeah, fly - I love you, Amtrak, but suck it - I'm going Big Time for this trip) into Richmond, hang with Laura, torment Storm the cat.
- 7/31: Road trip with Laura down to NC to meet Dad, Pam, and a boatload of Devendorfs at the beach.
- 8/1: Rock Dad's 60th. Own it. Descend on the beach. Destroy it.
- 8 /2: Drive back to Richmond. Resume Stormenting the cat.
- 8/3: Fly back to NYC.

2) My new table. At the end of a lengthy late morning/early afternoon walkabout in the Slope, my last stop was to check on a table that's been for sale at the 7th Ave flea market for a couple months. I wanted to see if it was still available and if the price had come down at all from $750. I ended up seeing a different, real nice wooden table with two removable leaves for about 1/6 the money. I came home, measured my existing table and the space available for a new one, and went back and measured the one for sale. The guy selling it came up to me and I said, "so, this is a hundred and twenty dollars?" Right away, it struck me as a stupid question:


But he surprised me by saying "one ten." He also said he'd deliver it this afternoon for free, so I said "deal."

Out with the old.

In with the new.

First meal at new table.

Remind me to buy or make a set of coasters. The rubber potholder got the job done, but I don't know that it puts out a vibe of classiness. I don't want people to come under the impression that I'm not a real damn classy dude.

If either of you readers know of any good places to buy chairs, you know who to tell. Not that the rickety stool and three crappy chairs that I found in the basement aren't awesome, but I'm in the market.

2)a) The first-ever Gord Report poll. It'd be pretty sweet if the poll were located right here:

POLL GOES HERE, RIGHT?

But I don't know how to make that happen. So if you want to vote on where the old table should go, I think you have to look at the bottom of this page. Here are some helpful digital photographs illustrating the options:

1. Put it in the living room like an end table.

2. Put it in the bedroom, near the dresser.

3. Put it near the fireplace.

4. Just get rid of it. You should be able to visualize this without benefit of a photo.

If you're reading this, make sure you vote. I wasted a lot of time and risked a lot of back injury hauling the damn thing around my apartment; you can take two seconds to vote. I'll go with whatever option wins, unless you vote like a bunch of jackasses. I see this being very closely contested, with one of the choices winning by about a 1-0-0-0 margin.

3) The Mets 8-game winning streak that has them within half a game of first. In the last five games, they've allowed 3, 3, 3, 3, and 1 hit(s), respectively. I'm sorry, I can't hear you asking who they've played in that span.

4) The baby Jones. I know she's 15 days old and getting her third post worth of substantial attention and that some of you aren't happy about getting zero ink about your own 27 years, but this is an instant classic. Turn up your speakers.

5) The Garden. Here's where we're at:

The string beans went nuts the last couple days. These were nothing at the start of the week. Since the beans themselves blend in with the stalks, I used my advanced photo manipulation skills to write the label "Bean." in red at the bottom of each bean. I've got my eye on the big fella in the center of the foreground there. I'm gonna eat that shit soon.

A friend told me last weekend that a nice thing about lettuce is that you only need a couple leaves, just enough to put on a sandwich. I guess she's not a big salad-eater. Anyway, if what she said is true, then I'm close to harvesting a bumper crop of two sandwiches worth of lettuce.

This is my most advanced pod of peas, so far. I'm watching it closely and really hoping it fills out a little bit the next couple days. I've never studied one specimen of produce more than I've watched this one the last couple days. This pod could very well be the only food that I harvest out of nine pea plants, which is why I'm so attached to it. If other peas are on their way, they're really far behind the curve.

I like this picture. This is one of a bunch of little jalapenos that are starting to show up. The other peppers haven't really started to flower yet.

Finally, here's the whole operation as of this morning. The yellow tomato plant is now as tall as I am (about 6'4"). The new pole in the middle of the garden was the handle of a broken rake, now re-purposed to give support to a vine that had grown off the main stem and grown long enough that it started to break under its own weight.

So yeah. That's the garden. I'm excited about it.

6) The Dan Gordon Party. Believe it or not, I am not the one who named or who is hosting this event. With a friend or two, including but not limited to the great Mel C., I'll finally be getting down to Berwyn, PA on the weekend of August 8-10 to visit my friends Kate and John Murphy and meet their no-longer-a-baby, Sally. If this picture is any indication of how these people know how to party, this is going to be epic:


7) Partying as Shitty Slash. One of the highlights of every summer is the birthday party that Stefan throws for himself. If you weren't able to attend Stefan Rules!, the Tiki Party, Sexy Farm, or Beach Party, you probably at least heard the stories.

This year's event:

Just as I was starting to get frustrated about having no ideas to compare to the brilliantly shitty costumes that my more creative friends were putting together, my plan came together last night. Here's a special sneak preview:

"Shitty Slash"

It's going to be a busy week, what with crafting a guitar out of cardboard and wrapping my cowboy hat in electrical tape so it looks like a black top hat, but this should be pretty hot. And if you know one thing about me, you know that I pounce on all opportunities to wear my sleeveless GnR t-shirt.

8) New tunes on my iPod. Other than happy memories of Lyla shitting on Trevor twice, my favorite takeaway from last weekend was a bunch of new music on my iPod. Since losing my first iPod under dubious drunken circumstances, I've been without a lot of old favorites. I've been needing to plug my new iPod into Trevor's and Anne's computer for a while to get them back. It made for a real nice week, being re-united with music from the likes of OK Go, My Chemical Romance, Built to Spill, the Sheila Divine, and Op Ivy. I also got the new records from Counting Crows, Weezer, Wyclef, and Coldplay.

Reading that list now, I see there's a major "not like the others" thing in there...

9) My new fan. I'm on a semi-environmentalist kick right now and I felt that I should make an honest effort to get through the summer without using air conditioning. On one hand, I believe that they may use freon and produce something called "greenhouse gases" which might deplete some sort of layer of ozone, thereby contributing to global warming, or else not. I won't bore you with more details that I don't know than that. On the other hand, who sweats more than me when the temperature goes above 65?

My conviction on this matter is further tested by the fact that my landlord pays my electric bill, so dropping a few bucks on an air conditioner would mean free A/C for as long as I live here. That's tempting.

Anyway, the kitchen isn't too bad because it has windows and a ceiling fan. I have additional windows in the bedroom, and a small oscillating fan. But the middle of the apartment can get pretty hot. Having a guitar in said middle has provided no cooling effects at all:


So I tried something new and bought a fan. It seemed to have all the features that I require:


I was able to assemble it in just a few short hours, and began enjoying the benefits immediately. This must be what it's like to have a swimming pool.


10) Losing five pounds. There are starting to be a lot of pictures on this blog of me without a shirt on. There's every possibility that I don't look like a fat fuck in many of them, but I'm working really hard at sucking it in for the camera. When I don't make the effort, I look a little more similar to these 8-month pregnant friends than would be preferable:


I should be able to take off five pounds pretty easily, so I'm going to try to make that happen between now and the end of August. Great. More nights of turning myself into a sweaty wreck trying to drag myself around the park and then eating healthy food and drinking water afterwards. Awesome.