summer in rhinebeck

it's now officially summer in my world. i'm pretty sure that's a good thing... my 4 am train on monday left at 7:15, and incredibly, i still made my connection in new york, with only a moment to spare. that moment was stolen by an amtrak employee who apparently did not know her left from her right, but nevermind that-- i made it, i'm here, and i'm hoping to stay. monday night i slept and begged the pain in my shoulders (from "sleeping" on the train) to go away, and then tuesday C took me to stock the fridge and apply for a few jobs. alas, as i suspected, i'm a week or two late to have the best pickins, but in our wanderings we saw a 'help wanted' sign on a place called firebird grill & lounge. if i want to stay more than 2 weeks, i've got to get a job. period. as it seems many places in town are, they were closed on tuesday, so i couldn't apply right then, but i'm going this afternoon. according to this review i found on the web, looks like the closest thing to my kind of place that i'm likely to find around here... some live music, pool tables, light on the teenyboppers... and i saw on the sign that they do "biker sundays." so, 5pm today, send me good job hunting vibes, eh? tuesday night we were planning on shopping for this weekend's party-slash-bathroom remodel, but on a whim, we drove to new paltz to visit with a friend of his. it's a cute little college town (home to a branch of SUNY)-- i had no idea, will have to go back and explore. C's friend has a small spread just outside the snappy looking area... we grilled out & chatted & met his daughters & threw sticks for the animals. THAT'S what summers in the country are supposed to be about. i was impressed that C sat still for so long. meant to take a pile of pictures, but only got one of the cat watching us from the woodpile. speaking of wood & fire and whatnot, i had an unpleasant surprise when i arrived monday and found out that C had to demolish the firepit, which was one of my favorite things about this house, in order to get the cars into the garage for the winter. however, a pleasant suprise balanced that out when i wandered down to the basement to turn the hot water on... frosty's here! wednesday was lost to pain and laziness. i was hoping for pure, unadulterated laziness, but i'll take what i can get. C wanted to leave me T2 as transpo, since the fairlane inexplicably won't start and Truck is in the shop getting a new muffler, but that would've required me to drive to the city to fetch him today, and, well, see "laziness" above. i forget that i have to remind him constantly that my habits are the exact opposite of his. i've got to get a little something done, though, to earn my keep. today i'll put together the 2nd heater for the patio, which will come in handy for this weekend-- it still gets quite chilly here at night-- and, at C's request, investigate joining the local gun club. click here for summer photos. i'm determined to use this damn camera i bought!

leaving on a late train...

i am SO not ready to leave town... the "indefinite" part of the trip is what's tripping me up, i suppose. what does one pack for "either two weeks or three months?" roomie just paid me for june rent, which is a load off, financially and mentally, but still. i love having the job flexibility to do things like this, but i still don't have the mental flexibility not to be paranoid about it, the way i used to when i had seemingly unlimited credit. (plus, this means i'll be carrying about a grand in cash on the train, since i forgot to make a deposit yesterday. not smart, since i plan to sleep the whole way.) amtrak.com says my 4am train is scheduled to leave an hour and a half late (oof!) but arrive in the city 15 minutes early... huh. i actually wouldn't mind if it arrived late, since i have a three hour layover in the city and will be saddled with an as yet undetermined number of bags (depending on how many pairs of shoes i decide to take)... but i'd really rather it departed on time, since my love for that particular route is dependent on 4am being my usual bedtime. C offered to pick me up in the city, as he's headed up to rhinebeck tonight too, but he'll have a couple lawyers in tow, and i'm thinking the train might be more relaxing, especially after having been traveling for so many hours. we'll see how bored i get at penn station. in other news, for some strange reason i cannot access anything google-related. no gmail, no random searches. so when i come home and put on some loud music to help me get motivated to pack, but have the tv muted on baseball tonight, and i see a fistfight at a game but can't hear the details, i can't hit google to find out what happened. the only other search engine i could recall was "dogpile"... i put in "fight, mlb, home plate" and the best i got was news from a brawl in 2004. seriously. anyone have alternate worthwhile search engines? i was so close to signing up for mlb.tv, but if i'm going to be in new york indefinitely, there's no need-- there's always a game on tv up there. (and yeah, i caught the replay and know it was chicago. and it was saturday-- day late, dollar short, etc.) wait, now the train is 3 hours late... sigh. might be time to put on a pot of coffee. plus? getting a cab in this town at 3am, no problem. the last time i had to get one at 6am, i ended up being late for surgery, and i nearly got into a fistfight with the cabdriver on the way there, after she yelled at me for not knowing specific directions to the address i'd given her-- after she was 20 minutes late arriving to pick me up. i'm sorry... are you a cabdriver? is this reality? did i ask you to take me to "yonder dirt road past the dumpin yards," or a major medical facility just off the highway? i later heard the doc yelling at the sweet anesthesiologist for not having me ready on schedule, but the dope had already started to take effect & i couldn't properly defend him. maybe i should just head to the station now and wait it out there. or: maybe i should finish packing. an hour after my train was scheduled to depart seems like a good time for that.

prom, mom

well, i survived mother's day. woo! the good news is, it actually wasn't as bad for me as prom saturday, which i don't even want to talk about. the bad news is, my next-to-last table was a pair of my absolute favorite regulars... only it was the father & son w/o the mom. i barely said hello before i asked after her absence, on mother's day no less (i assumed she was just running late), and the dad told me that she'd had surgery this week. i didn't want to pry-- they come in several times a week, but still-- so i fed them and that was that. at the end, the father apologized for not having any cash-- a minor part of the reason they're favorites is his insistence on paying w/a credit card but always tipping (very well) in cash, though that pales in comparison to the fact that his voice sounds just like hunter s., and the plain fact that they're just damn nice folks, nevermind the results of my subsequent googling & finding out they're also fine community-supporting folks-- we got to chatting, and it turns out she was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. honestly, i barely know this woman, but it really hit me. we talked for a minute about stupid cancer, and i shared that my mom went through drama and such, and told him that soon it would be just another story that she could tell to her grandkids. and i hope that's true. hey there, universe? take good care of mrs. B, dammit. i've officially picked up next sat/sun for the cafe. so that means i leave for NY on monday. 4am. one more night at my sunday bar. sadly, tonight my current drinking buddy decided she didn't like my bartender (for exactly the same reason that i DO like him), so it may be pulling teeth to get someone to go with me, but oh well. it's a shame, really. but i'll live. roomie is still on the fence about whether she's leaving june 1, but the honda money will cover full rent if need be. though it won't cover much else other than the back-owed. bah.