The Hulabaloo

I love The Week. It's a thin magazine that shows up in the mail every seven days, containing most of the relevant stories from the States and around the world, summarized in the words of different journalists from several sides of an issue. It is extremely well-edited and always gets me about as up-to-date with events as I probably need to be. In our house it is referred to as 'The Crack.'

Yesterday was a fine one. I began by heading over to Brad and Keri's house to check out some new Raleigh's Brad had purchased on EBay. Brad is a collector of Raleigh bicycles, most from the 60's and 70's. He is particularly fond of the Sports model, which he usually purchases and then re-sells to his friends. I bought one off of him upon arriving in Nashville last year, a bright yellow specimen that came in very handy before and after I was able to bring the Honda down from NYC. Yesterday, I intended to buy a smaller gold model for Liz, who has coveted mine for quite awhile (and is out of town this weekend), but it turned out to have some previously unnoticed problems in the gear hub that Brad wanted to address. In the meantime, I noticed another yellow model that he had recently acquired. It was in even better mechanical condition than mine, with more aesthetic points intact, not to mention a rack and leather saddle bag. I had to buy it. Oh, what a beautiful morning; say hello the the Twins.

Upon returning home I was picked up by Lindsay Jamieson and his brood, Walker, Rainier, Schaeffer and Emerson. We had an excellent late breakfast at one of the 73 local Cracker Barrels, then attended an open house for a film school for which Lindsay had done some branding work. After that we met his wife Molly and a few of her friends at a residential salt-water pool, the loveliest I have ever seen or jumped into. After trouncing Lindsay at water polo we left and I was deposited back at my house. Our roommate Rachel arrived home soon after and she and I went to Shintomi for for Sushi. We stopped by Blockbuster on the way home and got some movies, one of which turned out to be a BBC television series called State of Play. Talk about The Crack; we watched four straight episodes. I began falling asleep during the last one and had to retire.

Which was a good idea as today dawned bright and early. Stan and I took a stroll to Portland Brew. I finished a bagel at home while reading The Week, started this and then hit the road to White's Creek to work at Bob Workman's farm. He and I moved a refrigerator, then drove to another rental property he owns on Clarksville Highway, where I proceeded to spend the rest of the day mowing grass on a nifty little tractor. It was nice to pass seven hours outdoors in a field with a powerful piece of machinery underneath me. Cut grass and open expanses of country landscape make me feel tiny, in a good way.

I was pretty tired by the end of it so I grabbed a salad on my way home and promptly hit the couch to watch more of the TV series. I took a break after two episodes and rode the new bike to Blockbuster to return some movies, then looped back to the Circle K for some cigarettes. There is something surreal and circular about riding a bicycle through the empty streets of your hometown on a Sunday night. Combined with the dog walk and the day spent in the country, I feel as if I have spent the past 14 hours being eleven years old.