"I Had A Job In The Great North Woods"

Went home yesterday afternoon for a visit, laundry, food, and a favor for Scott (he needed me to take a few pictures for him with the ol' digital camera). Anyway, while I was there, I was put to work, which wasn't quite what I was expecting.

My parents are thinking about moving again. Before they do that, though, they need to go through all the stuff in the attic and sort it into stuff to keep, stuff to sell at a garage sale, and stuff to just trash. Well, it's difficult to do that up in the attic, y'know? So dad recruited me to help take stuff out of the attic and put it in the empty garage spot so mom could sort things. It really does take two people to do, because it's easier to hand boxes down from the attic than it is to climb down the ladder carrying them yourself. Faster, too.

So I spent a couple of hours last night helping dad with that stuff. Found a bunch of my junk up there, actually--stuff from when we moved back at the fag-end of 2000 (so just barely over four years ago, for those of you keeping score at home). I went through the boxes this afternoon when I got home, and found some neat items--old books from my childhood, pictures, birthday cards, hats, poems and notebooks (including the elusive Arkansas History notebook I thought I'd lost four or five years ago--no, it was just in a separate box from the rest of my college notebooks)...all manner of things. Even a few t-shirts (like the old Cross-Eyed Yeti iron-on t-shirts Adam made back in the spring of 2002 for our shows at Ozarks). It was fun going through that stuff.

But I brought home more than just stuff that was mine. My dad gave me a few things of his--first of all, his old Fender acoustic guitar. He got a new Martin acoustic a week or so ago, and doesn't really need two acoustic guitars (I mean, if you've got a Martin, that's really all you'll ever need--just ask Clif). So he just gave me his old one. It'll be a good instrument to learn to play on (and I really do want to learn to play...I figure I might actually have the free time for it this semester). He also gave me all of his Beatles collectable plates. They're these eight plates with Beatles pictures painted on them. Very nifty things. Of course, I should really amend myself here--dad meant to give me the plates, but accidentally only gave me the boxes for them. The plates are, according to mom, in the hutch back at the house, wrapped up, because she didn't want to stick them up in the attic (not that I can blame her--I mean, as soon as I have them and some display brackets, those things are going to be out on a shelf for all the world to see!). I was rather flattered that dad felt I deserved these things, really. Both the guitar and the plates. Feels like...validation as his son, I guess.

Saw Bubba Ho-Tep this afternoon with Ev, and damn if that wasn't a funny movie. It's a low-key sort of humor, though (I mean, aside from the idea of a mummy that's sucking the souls out of the elderly via their assholes). Fairly subdued. But Bruce Campbell does a brilliant job as Elvis, and the movie manages to even make a few clever comments on the way we treat the elderly in American society and the way we think about people. Very cool.

Anyway, tomorrow I've got something of a lunch date with Audrey. That ought to be fun. She's a wonderful person to spend time with, though I always get the impression that I'm not a decent-enough person to be around her (if that makes any sense. And it's not anything she does or says. It's just that I feel there are certain people that I am literally not a good enough person to really deserve to have anything to do with them). Ah well. Maybe some of her decency and virtue will rub off on me, eh?

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Ben Folds, "Doctor My Eyes"