well if the 'boss is doing it, must be time. back back back.

in the last month and half, i too helped some friends get married; got a driver license; used it to transport my worldly possessions out of nolibs in a borrowed pick-up with an ornery stick-shift; set up comfy temporary digs on the third floor of friends' recently-purchased west philly home; continued to develop a (still coalescing) plan to move, in a month or so, to austin, tx. in the meantime i've been basking with my family around the northeast [rochester, wnkn, state college, columbia md], sharing notes, singing songs, talking about god. also i succumbed to facebookland, i biked back and forth around philly ushering for and taking in as much of the fringe festival as humanly possible, and i slew a slew of dj gigs, maybe more than i've ever had in month.

this, f'rinstance was the flyer i made for an engagement the other night; it didn't end up getting used (in favor of somebody else's design with rodney dangerfield and "schoolgirl" which i'd left tacit), but it was fun to discover how many school-related fonts are available ("chalkboard" not included). nobody came, nobody danced. nobody's really been dancing at any of my gigs lately, which is sort of a drag. booker/promoter kate hawk [at work], whose idea the whole school thing was, came as a schoolgirl, and that's about it. no matter.

it was good to talk to the other dj about traktor, which i'm currently trying to acquire. i've been monkeying around with the demo, and it seems well enough suited to most of my purposes for the time being. am slightly afraid it will make mix-making too easy and hence boring, but i'll figure a way around that i'm sure. 21st century dj zeitgeist here comes love.

also, fall started. yesterday officially, a week after i declared it to be fall and made my first autumn-colored (carrot, yam, ginger) soup. tonight i made a butternut squash and tomato curry, and apple pie, and an outrageously rich caramel-swirl ice cream. most days i'm inside too long, or else i'm out all day - that's my busybody layabout lifestyle - but one thing about fall is that (unlike summer) you can enjoy it almost as much through the windows. the trees outside mine are still green, but orange flecks are emerging.

(best windows moment in this room: a kid, probably 8 or so, whose window is less than ten feet from mine, cheering me on and giving me thumbs-up as i played some mountain goats and miracles on my rusty acoustic. then he said: "pause that, my show's on.")

i'm slowly settling into (old, new) west philly and into this (new, old) house - both of them lovely, luxuriant places to be living, especially during this most lovely and luxuriant of season shifts. (they say that autumn won't arrive in austin 'til november, so i may get to have it twice in a row!) the first two weeks here i was so (pre)occupied with the fringe festival that i was barely home. last week i shopped at mariposa, sat in clark park, watched a video with bonnie & clyde, took a class at wake up west and shared a magic bagel after with rebecca at the satellite, checked out the dock street brewpub (the new face of westward baltimore yuppification, and it looks pretty darn nice) and rearranged my gloriously sunny east-facing bedroom for enhanced yoga space.

and now i'm on a push for establishing increased livability on the first floor, all three rooms of which are (or were until recently) filled by a substantial amount of clutter. today i spent all afternoon scrubbing cleaning and organizing the recently-exterminated kitchen...really all i did all day except for baking that pie and reading about bonus failed presidential assassins on wikipedia. oh, and trying to register for the printmaking (paper lithography) class which was going to perfectly fill my remaining time in philadelphia and give me a versatile and relevant new skill and which was supposed to start tonight...only to find out it had been cancelled due to underenrollment. damn!

will attempt to think of some other worthwhile thing(s) to do with my next six weeks so as not to feel wholly unconstructive. (not proving the easiest thing to do. i've made a couple inquiries into temporary internships and such, with no luck yet.) well anyway. so today's been low-key (though the kitchen venture was a good undertaking), but it's a nice counterpoint to an excellent action-packed yesterday. i couldn't have planned a better first day of fall if i'd known that's what it was!

sara and i went dogwalking and kayaking on the schuylkill in the morning, and joined in for thirty or so (the counting was fairly inscrutable) out of 108 sun salutations in fairmount park (for me this was the culmination of a big yoga week that included three classes and some home practice - my hamstrings, triceps, and very-famous upper-mid-back are still feelin' fresh from it, and here comes another!) later on i wound up stranded in old city, so i said hi to rodney and checked out julie taymor's surprisingly non-cringe-inducing aquarian nostalgia spectacular (the visuals do not disappoint, the beatles interpolations are fun and effective, and who cares about plot anyway?), before meeting first rebecca and then mali and rafa for another couple of thoroughly enjoyable spectacles - one theatrical, one culinary.

(last week was no-restaurant week - and it really was too, at least until friday when i skipped kol nidre and met mr. heidi and mr. heideck at nodding head for a pint and a bacon-cheese-burger...and then i joined sarah mac and co. for weekly post-yoga saturday brunch at cafe lift - mmmm lemon ricotta pancakes with figs and honey.... but this is restaurant week.)

and so, forth.

i'm excited for next weekend's camping trip. i'm looking forward to deejaying a couple-few philly house parties in october. i'm hoping to visit boston before i split west. i'm glad to be writing here again even if it still takes too long to feel like a reasonable accomplishment.

i've got a birthday coming up - my 25th - i think i'd like to figure out a good way to spend it with my friends and family in the big apple, something appropriate to a dignified number like that and an undignifed number like me. any suggestions?

stay up super late tonight
picking apples
making pie

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation