and a fire

heard a story on this american life about a woman who was living out her dream to live where laura ingalls wilder grew up (here)

seemed about right. what book has or will change my life? walden? leaves of grass?

i don't know that yet. i do know that this box of tea is pretty significant to me, though:



and last night amy said next year at this time we should be surrounded by trees and not be living in these condos. she is right.

BRIAN OUT.

Costumes

Found old pictures from various Halloweens!

Me as a Care Bear, Joey as a honker (1984?)

Me as a Ghostbuster, Tim as a Carebear, Joey as a California Raisin (1988?)

Joey as Dracula, Tim as a Tiger, and me as a dinosaur (1989?)

Me as a Leonardo, a Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle (1990)
(my costume is way better than the Raphael behind me)

Me as Waldo, with my prize-winning look-alike pumpkin. The prize was the painted pumpkin to the right. (1991)

Me as a robot (1992)

I "dressed up" (2005)

Amy as Miss Piggy and me as Kermit (2009)

If I ever find more pictures from other years, I will add them to this entry.

BRIAN OUT.

It's been a very fall-y fall

200 PICTURES, HERE!

Ten of them:





















BRIAN OUT.

Foxes Deserve a Poem

Foxes Deserve a Poem

Jarring my bones
with a desperate grin,
the fox steps into sight.
It's bigger than I thought foxes could be
and has visible ribs.
It is beyond trust.


Wrote this while talking to Tyler about how awesome the cover art is for Brand New's latest album, Daisy:



BRIAN OUT.

Updated Brain Age Data

I am a huge nerd, and yet my average brain age after nearly 250 tests is about 1 year older than my brain's actual age. I'm dumber than I should be, still. See my past results from April here.

So here's the rundown.
My current actual age is approximately 25.84.
My average brain age after 242 tests is 26.5.
My median brain age after 242 tests is 23.
My mode brain age after 242 tests is 20 (the lowest possible score).

This perfect brain age of 20 business is pretty annoying, because that means the game assumes that a brain is in its best condition at 20. There is nowhere better to go below 20, and although this may make sense if you think about the average person's brain and it's abilities over the years, it doesn't mean that taking a test and doing the best possible is different from just doing really well (both of which can result in a score of 20). I've gotten scores of 20 enough times to know that sometimes I do better than other times. Perfection and doing really well are not the same, and this leaves a fault in the game, and I protest this data to some degree.

But on the plus side, I've improved my average brain age by 6 months since April!

Here is a graph for the past 9 months or so (242 tests) of data:



BRIAN OUT.

September so far: Robbed, Mountains, Tweets

OK, update time! it's been almost a month, woops

first headline: WE WERE ROBBED
basically: left the car unlocked in our parking spot (like 15 feet from our front door, mind you), and our stuff was stolen (tomtom, ipod, wallets, other stuff). it sucks, although we are still functioning and seem to be free of identity theft. woo? for the first week we were suspicious of everyone we saw in a half mile radius.

and, thanks to the internet, i have become aware that i'm not the only one getting robbed lately. Mindy Kaling, writer on The Office who also plays Kelly, had her laptop stolen: @mindykaling: Enemy who broke into my house and stole my laptop, I can see a situation where if you returned it to me we could start dating and get married. Think about it

and THEN Thrice retweeted something from Poison the Well, who had ALL of their stuff stolen while on tour: @Poison_The_Well: Well, everything we own was stolen this morning... http://tinyurl.com/oyr8b8

So, I guess we don't have it so bad? Total economic crisis these days. Expect to be robbed and maybe you'll be okay.

Additionally: Amy and I have been climbing mountains
Hey, we went camping in Acadia National Park, did you know that? Whilst there, we climbed Cadillac Mountain. Click these pictures to see more pictures from the trip (each directs to a different album):



The next weekend, we climbed Mount Major, just like we did last year. Same routine for pictures:


And then, the NEXT weekend (also known as last weekend) we climbed Mount Chocorua, which took us almost exactly 5 hours round trip and was crazy awesome. Pictures:


I guess I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. And the captions, heh.


How about some life documentation in under 140 characters?

In backwards order:

• i'm not scared of big animals, i swear [less than 20 seconds ago from web]
• Ahh yesss! radiohead's album, the bends [about 11 hours ago from txt]
• JONAS is my new favorite show [11:49 AM Sep 13th from txt]
• work at the library day [7:55 AM Sep 11th from web]
• i got 999 problems and the date ain't one [11:16 AM Sep 9th from web]
• holy crap tomorrow is important! [4:15 PM Sep 8th from web]
• tron. [4:39 PM Sep 7th from web]
• someone broke into amy's car and stole our STUFF! wallets, tomtom, ipod... what else? crap [7:35 PM Sep 6th from web]
• finally the dogs are asleep. three dogs at once is INSAAAAAAAANE (said like RAAAAAAAANDY) [9:15 AM Sep 4th from web]
• watching rocko's modern life! it's like i'm on summer vacation 15 years ago [8:24 PM Sep 2nd from web]
• ooh give me a good guitar and you can say that my hair's a disgrace [ 8:47 AM Sep 2nd from web]
• so the comcast guy only pretended to put the cable filter on, and thus we still get cable for free. can't decide if this is good or bad [4:16 AM Aug 30th from web]
• it wasnt supposed to rain until tomorrow. it wasnt. [3:42 AM Aug 29th from txt]
• Best chili ever tonight, made at our campsite. also a tasty blackberry peach grunt. also, hiked cadillac mountain. today was a GREAT day [4:35 PM Aug 28th from txt]
• outside the tent its 40... sandals with socks dont fail me now! [3:47 AM Aug 28th from txt]
• 54 deg is a lot colder than i remember... come back hot sun! hooray for socks [2:47 AM Aug 28th from txt]
• I want to live in a town with a cool weird name like norridgewok [4:25 AM Aug 27th from txt]
• First smells of a camping trip: ripe bananas and warm coffee blended perfectly by the fans of the car [ 3:06 AM Aug 27th from txt]
• eating too much tabouleh and spelling it how i want [4:42 PM Aug 24th from web]

See, I document my life, just in various ways outside of this mothership of a blog.

BRIAN OUT.

the next step

i am waiting for the next step, like the dough is rising and it's only a matter of time
it is inevitably going to be bread; warm, perfectly cooked through, with a crunchy and delicious crust
the bread metaphor is the title of this piece.
i'm trying not to rush it
well, i'm glad i don't have to , i guess
it's going to happen when it happens, right?
blah;
start again.
i dreamed a male moose who'd lost his antlers was slowly coming at me
and i backed, trembling, through a vagrant's tent in the meadow
i didn't step on him, but the moose might have
i wondered if i'd have to dart behind trees to keep a barrier between the beast and i
as i was about to enter the woods, i was aware of the dream
and consciously stopped it, despite an inner need to complete the scene
i had to fight to pull away, to enter the bed reality.
i'm glad i did. i was scared out of my mind.
although, even in the dream, i pulled out my camera and started recording a video.

sometimes i want to move away from this country, just forget about all the conflicts and idiocy. really, why do i stay? is it really the comfort? is it really the false sense of security? will i miss my things, my family? or is there actually something i like about this place?
is there?
also i don't really speak other languages confidently. i'm sure i could get by and eventually thrive, but taking the next step is often difficult for me.

BRIAN OUT.