Teacher Supplies: Goodbye to another Long Beach tradition

As part of our Long Beach renaissance since returning from our road trip, Mike and I have been spending time and money in parts of our city we'd like to see return to glory. Topping the list is Belmont Shore, that part of Second Street that used to be home to independent shops and eateries, became a dumping ground for expensive boutiques and chain stores, and is slowly getting its identity back. When I was a kid, my family used to go down to Belmont Shore most weekends, eating lunch at Hamburger Henry's (best burgers EVER), strolling down for dessert at Grandma's Sugarplums (chocolate-covered everything!) and spending untold hours at Dodd's Bookstore (the whole front room was Dover classics). There was a random restaurant that had fake snow on the roof, and my dad would always lift me up to touch it. All of these landmarks are gone now, of course, replaced many times over by cafés and clothing stores that appeal to the tiny dog owners (syntactic ambiguity!) the BSBA courts. I'm not bitter, I just miss it.

Regardless of the changes over the years, including the closing of Hamburger Henry's doors, which was apocalyptic for our family, all of our trips to Belmont Shore– every single trip– included a visit to the Teacher Supplies store. If you've spent time in this charmingly wood-shingled store, you know what I mean when I say it's magical. In one corner of the store is an extremely satisfying collection of toys, puppets, and board games. In another, an extensive library of children's books, ranging from the newest Caldecott winner to books that were old when my papa read them to me twenty years ago. The rest of the store is populated with all the oddly-shaped, fantastically-colored odds and ends that are endemic to classrooms, this store, and no where else. Blocks that teach addition, maps of California missions, cardboard designed to hang on peg-boards, and countless other tools of the profession designed to delight and encourage the student imagination.


All of the above hopes to serve as explanation for why, on November 1st, about two months into my teaching credential program, I was dismayed to see "Going Out of Business" signs in the windows that peek into this extraordinary store. Retirement Sale! Up to 75% off! These are not banners you want to see hanging on a treasure like this, one that has endured and endured since 1971 as the rest of the street has changed, morphing into something a little less magical.

Stephen and I went in last week to look around and say our goodbyes. As I meandered through the children's library, I noticed how many of the books were dog-eared and well-loved by children like me over the past thirty years. Next to the ones that, judging from their age, were very likely the same copies of the books I thumbed through as a kid, there were new books addressing today's children: books about Obama, books about gay parents, books that should be discovered and browsed through in just such a city as ours, in just such a place as this.

The signs outside had led me to believe that maybe, after almost forty years of operation, the owner had gotten tired of running a retail store and had decided to travel, or to otherwise enjoy a well-deserved retirement. I was sad to see Teacher Supplies go, but I understood that change comes, even to places we most want to remain the same. But, as I stood in the store I overheard a conversation between a woman buying an extravagant marionette and one of the store's familiar long-time employees.

Puppet Purchaser: You're going out of business, hm? Don't you do good business here?
Friendly Face: Well, the toys do very well, but the teachers just don't have any money. We can't afford to make the store all-toys, so we have to close down.

Ouch. "The teachers just don't have any money." No money for foil-adorned #2 pencils (in bulk), no money for bright cardboard strips to border bulletin boards, no money for the boxed set of Jataka Stories lesson plans I found hidden on a top shelf, and no money to keep a Long Beach treasure in business.

I went into the store to buy something symbolic to put in my own classroom someday, as a relic of this place that meant so much to me as a child who loved to learn. I saw that the stock of the entire children's book section was on sale, along with the fixtures, for about a thousand bucks, and I almost gave Mike a call.

Taylor Mali on what teachers make

Danfriend showed me this video, and it's pretty much great. I thought I'd share it with you.



I have a feeling I'll be watching it many times over the next few years...

More Sub Days, and More to Come!

Hiya-

I think I'll have a real blarg in the next few days, but here's a tantalizing hint: today, in the mail, I got a package of letters from a 7th grade homeroom class apologizing for their collective behavior when I subbed for them on Wednesday.  I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it's definitely weird.

Also, I hope everyone had an astonishingly good Halloween.  I, for one, am Chicken Hat.

Sub Days 2 & 3: It's a Learning Process

Last week I subbed two half-days at Garfield Elementary in West Long Beach. I can definitely say I'm getting better, though some of that confidence obviously comes from being able to tell the students that their teacher will be back in three hours. But it turns out that a lot of being a competent sub (and, remember, that's what teachers are hoping for. If you're actually good, that's just being an over-achiever) is pretending you know what you're doing. You know, act like you've been there before, even when you've got something called "recess duty" and you have no idea what you're supposed to be doing.

I mean really. They're playing some version of kickball that makes no sense to me.

Here are some things I've learned. Future educators, take note!

1. Bring a water bottle. For serious, this has been my number one difficulty so far. It takes a lot of spit to constantly ask kids to sit down and be quiet, and when all the little childers have their ice cold Sparkletts sitting unappreciated on their desks, wasted condensation dripping onto folded paper towels, it's almost too much to bear. My first day I cupped my hands and gulped faucet water from the back of the classroom during recess. On Friday, I seriously contemplated taking some birdie sips from an abandoned Aquafina while its owner was at lunch.

2. Wear reasonable shoes. Last week I felt that my status as an authority figure was undermined by my Converse sneakers when I had three separate second-graders comment that we were shoe twins. For Tuesday's gig, I wore these slip-ons (I think Sarah Jessica Parker would call them "flats"?) that I'd gotten from Target but never worn. By Friday, my pinky-toe blister had gone down enough that I could wear my comfy four-year-old boots. Besides the fact that a first-grader asked if I'd been born in Texas, by the end of the day I could barely stand up. So. I need shoes that are comfortable, are appropriate in every situation, and won't make me look like a Texan. I've already got them, but they're against dress code.3. Pick your battles. During my Tuesday gig (in a fifth grade classroom), I was teaching a lesson on sequence words. I started with the sentence "I got picked for kickball," and invited the students to add words to the sentence and, eventually, add sentences to the story. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for making up the lesson on the fly, and the kids were pretty into it. One girl in the back corner just couldn't stop talking to the people in her group, most of whom seemed to want to participate in the lesson. I called on her to add a sentence to our story.

Girl in the Back Corner: I kicked a home-run.
Me: Okay. Can you add a sequence word to that? Something that tells us when it happens in the story?
GitBC: Oh. I kicked a big-ass home-run.

Ugh. What do I do here? I don't want to give her the satisfaction of stopping the class and making everyone focus on her while I reprimand her. So I don't react. I keep pressing her until she gives an appropriate answer, and then I move on and finish the lesson. Success, or close enough.

4. Read the signs. Not in a mystical, crystal-bally kinda way. In a "check to make sure you're not parking in a Tuesday street-sweeping zone" kinda way. Nothing like losing two-thirds of your day's pay ten minutes after walking into the job.

5. Don't let it get to you. On Friday, I was a "roving sub," spending 45 minutes in each of four different classrooms. My last assignment was in a Kindergarten class, which I limped to in my boots, bending all the way down to a knee-high drinking fountain on the way. The kids were returning from recess in a single-file line, and I followed them into the classroom. Halfway there, the last five kids in line stopped, turned around, looked at me, and busted up laughing. Busted up! Inexplicably!! It was. So. Weird. That is all.

I might spend this next week doing some more classroom observation, so I'll have some time to let these life lessons marinate before I try and convince my feet to get back into their shoes. Substituting is odd, folks, but I think I might be getting the hang of it a little bit.

Sub Day #1: "Are you a teenager?"

On Wednesday I strapped my shoes back on and took the plunge back into the world of the working: my very first substituting assignment, in a 2nd grade classroom at Emerson Charter School. Whoooooo boy.

First, let me just clarify the phrase "strapped my shoes back on." I literally mean that I put on the same clothing I used to wear to work at Borders: Target polo shirt (with a tank top underneath so as I don't bare my midriff), my only pair of jeans without holes in them, and my trusty Converse. The problem with needing to buy work clothes, see, is that you need to work to get the money to buy them.

The first thing I realize, walking onto the Emerson campus, is that I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know where the office is, and I have only a vague idea of what I'm supposed to do when I get there. I've also shown up 40 minutes before school starts, and every one I pass in the hallway knows exactly what they're doing and exactly how they're doing it. The secretary hands me a time card and I have no idea what to do with it. Um.

The second thing I realize, walking to my classroom, is that oops! Maybe I don't really like children! It's been quite a while since I've had to deal with them directly, other than making faces at them while their parents aren't looking. Kidding. Except for those Mormon kids on the plane back from Hawaii that one time, about whom I have no regrets. Again, kidding.

When the bell rings, the children line up on the red line outside. "Are you our substitute? Where's Mrs. W--? I'm supposed to be in the front of the line. Did you know there's a small person in our class? Are you a teenager? What are we going to do today?" They are seven years old and they are hopping with energy. They aren't mean-spirited or defiant, they are just second graders and they can't stop talking, can't stop moving, can't stop asking questions. Ever.

By the end of the day, three children have sobbed at (or under) their desks. A girl got a paper cut, and a boy accidentally poked himself in the eye with his finger. One boy, who is apparently a grade or two more advanced in math and reading than his classmates, spends all day really bored and keeps trying to take a nap on the floor. When they come back from lunch, another boy won't stop singing the Freddy Kruger song: "One, two, Freddy's coming for you..." At the end of the day, it takes an extra 5 minutes to get everyone settled, and a mother is annoyed.

But! During storytime they all sit in enraptured silence as I read the Chinese Little Red Riding Hood story, Lon Po Po. It's something I'm good at, and it's pretty cool. And the teacher next door is really excited to hear that I've just joined the fraternity of educators and, impressed by my "pedigree," adds my number to his sub list.

Also, I found this hiding in the back of the classroom:


I walk out of the office to my car and I'm utterly exhausted, but, by golly, I did it. What's next?

QOD #4: It's all a bit overwhelming

EXCELLENCE
"Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible."

One of the requirements for my Intro to Teaching English class (in addition to a massive amount of incredibly daunting paperwork, in triplicate) is 45 hours of classroom observation. Last week I started sitting in on the classes of the 8th grade English teacher for GATE classes at Stanford Middle School. For those of you who are wondering, yes, he was my English teacher an astonishing 10 years ago, when he was but a lad of 29.

Mr. Tate is ridiculously energetic, constantly launching into cartoon voices, dropping terrible puns, and generally refusing to let his 12 and 13 year olds zone out. Here's one I particularly liked: acting as a paperweight in the box for late papers is a statue of a dragon. Why? "Because if your work's here, you must have been draggin' your feet."

Har har.

Generally, Mr. Tate is fantastic. Therein lies the difficulty, from my point of view. I can very easily look at his teaching style, especially after the third hour of sitting through the same prep, and see what it is he does that works and why. Certain jokes he makes entirely for himself, just to keep himself entertained. If a particular example or explanation or punchline worked well one period, he'll do it again the next period, and better. He's good at talking to middle school kids on exactly the right level: friendly, but not yielding a bit of his authority. It's really quite cool. And the whole time I'm sitting there thinking "Crap. I can't do this."

Now, I know I'm still a long way from being in a classroom. And Mr. Tate has been doing this for 16 years. But that doesn't make it any less terrifying. Maybe if I'd been observing a teacher who was less capable it wouldn't be so daunting.

Anyway. The quote at the top of this post was the Quote of the Day for today's class. Mr. Tate took it from an inspirational poster he saw advertised in an in-flight mag. (Reminding me of another gem. When giving the background for this quote Mr. Tate said, "I'll tell you where I got this. Here's a hint: I was 30,000 feet in the air." To which the first audible response was: "Africa!") Students had 5 minutes to write their reactions/reflections on the quote. Most of them seemed to be responding to the implied prompt "What does excellence mean to you?" than anything else, but there were a few who got into the nitty-gritty of what the prompt was actually saying.

One of the girls raised her hand and asked, "What does it mean: 'caring more than others think is wise'?" My first response was wonder at the gap in life experience between this suburban gifted pre-teen and others in her city, her classroom, and her gender. Mr. Tate's answer was interestingly Buddhist in its gist– people die, things break and get thrown away, and everything disappoints eventually. Some might say it's easier not to get attached.

The expected response, of course, being that that's not how you change the world. Prof. Bartchy and I had a number of arguments about this in relation to Buddhist views on social justice. His view was that "not being attached" equals "not caring." Mine was that the relationship is subtler than that, and it includes the analogy of a child in a pet store. If he hasn't already picked out the puppy he wants, he won't be upset when one gets goes home with another child. But he also won't be able to walk away if he sees a puppy getting beaten or neglected– he can't say "at least mine is safe" and leave happily.

I've got stuff going on in my family that's left me reeling a bit and, when coupled with the stresses of Becoming A Teacher, I've gotten a bit overwhelmed. I'm sitting on my couch right now and I so don't want to go to class. I want to stay home and worry about all the other things I'm worried about.

But, as sappily cheesy as that quote is, I guess I haven't stopped caring yet. So I guess I'm going to keep working.

Who Educates the Educators?

So. I've started the teaching credential program at CSULB. Single subject, English, to answer your next question. And when I say "I've started the teaching credential program," what I really mean is that I'm taking the class that will help me compile the requisite folder of paperwork and test results, prepare for the one-on-one interview, and collect my moolah so that I can enter the credentialing program. For how little teachers get paid, it sure costs a lot to become one. On top of the cost of books and tuition for the class, it's going to be about $275 in test fees, $100 in online processing fees, $50 in paperwork fees, five to ten dollars here and there for TB testing, fingerprinting, and etc and etc.

I'm guessing this will get a lot frustrating before I come out the other end. And then is when the real work begins.

My teacher was very upfront in the first class meeting: one of the purposes of the class is to help us determine whether or not this is what we really want to be doing. Teaching isn't an easy profession. Summers off are outweighed by the simple fact that, during the school year, there are vere few times in which a good teacher isn't thinking about the classroom. Am I ready to make that sort of commitment? The truth is, I don't know.

I believe absolutely in the importance of education. Whether it's nature or nurture, having two high school teachers for parents means it's a belief I've had all my life. I believe in the power of a teacher to transform the life of a student, and I've known plenty of people who simply never had that teacher. Who grew up ambivalent about reading, unimpressed by history, and preferring not to think beyond what's necessary for every day life. I think that those people have been failed by the education system and by each and every teacher who had the chance to change their lives and instead let them walk out their doors.

Just because I believe all that doesn't of course, mean that teaching is the job for me. But I do tend to have an "if not me, who?" view of the world. It's never been so expensive before, nor involved so much paperwork. I'm interested to see where this path leads me. And I hope you are too, because I think I'm going to start writing about it.

In the meantime, check out LBPOSTSports.com to see what me and the gang have been up to recently. Mike's a bona fide sports writer now, and he's pretty much tearing it up over there. Angie's responsible for the website being so cool, and I helped with a lot of the design-side, as well as providing a few of the pix.

Papa-san says: LOL! BRB!

My 73-year-old dad just bought his first cellphone.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

It's a flip-phone, which means that half the time he opens it upside-down. And when he finally does get it right, he usually stares at the screen for a second or two, running through the pattern in his head to make sure he hasn't left anything out: phone rings, open phone, put phone to ear, say "hello." And he usually talks a little too loud, and sometimes his first attempts at answering the phone involve a slapstick of fumbling and grasping like an inexperienced fish-thrower down at Seattle's Pike Place. But he's learning. Yesterday I showed him how to enter contacts (it'll take a while before he's confident with those itty-bitty letters) and he recorded his first outgoing voice mail greeting.

"You've reached Coach Higa. I'm sorry, but I am unavailable to come to the phone right now, as I am either on the tennis courts or on the golf course. But if you leave a brief message and your name, I'll try to get back to you as soon as I'm done having fun. Aloha!"

I laughed and he said, "You know, I might not be doing one of those things. I just thought it was funny. Is that ok? Can I say that?"

I told him he could say whatever he wanted and agreed that it was funny. And people would sure know it was his phone they'd reached. I played the message back for him. "Is that really how my voice sounds? Doesn't sound like me. When I call you, is that how I sound?"

And I showed him how to pick a ringtone (he chose a polyphonic melody straight out of a 70s buddy cop movie), then I helped him determine a proper volume level. We had to walk a very thin line between what was audible to him and what was too loud for innocent bystanders. I think we settled on "Medium High."

I think my favorite moment was when he navigated to and called the first contact he'd entered himself. It was his buddy Smith and, after a little bit of jaunty small talk, he announced, "Well. I'm calling you on my new toy! Yes, Shar is here showing me how to use it."

There were lots of great moments. My big brother and I shared a few looks and, after he'd accidently hung up on someone as he tried to open the phone and then run out of the apartment saying "Hello? Hello. Hello?" to an empty phone line, my brother said: "You know, they make phones especially for people like him." And they do. Big buttons, few functions, easy to master and hard to mess up. But I think I rather enjoy teaching my dad how to use his new toy. And not just because of the entertainment value. If my dad, who 10 years ago decided that he'd rather buy an electric typewriter than learn how to turn on the computer, can learn the fine art of text messaging, then I feel like there's no excuse for the rest of us who sit on our butts, knowing a lot and too lazy to keep learning.

Anyway, the point of this is to tease to you all that I have some ideas about the future of this blarg. And also to share that now, when "Da Cell" calls me, this comes up on my screen:

Acres of Books: a sad farewell & a dilemma

It should come as no surprise to you that I love books. I do. I really, deeply, completely love them. Mike is okay with this. Mike loves books too.

It probably shouldn't surprise you either that I love Long Beach. Not just because I live here, and not just because it's where my hubby lives as well. I love it because it's a beautiful, complex, and flawed city. Beautiful: I have never, no, not in over 11 thousand miles of American roads, seen anything like the El Dorado Nature Center. Complex: in a constant identity crisis, we're the biggest little city there is, and one of the most ethnically diverse places in America. Flawed: well, there's Acres of Books.

Acres of Books, just up Long Beach Blvd. from the hideous mistake that is the New Pike, is one of Long Beach's most beloved landmarks. Established in 1934, it's been in its current location since 1960. In the decades since then, it's given Long Beach residents something to be unabashedly proud of. Ray Bradbury wrote in its back rooms and, in an essay celebrating his time spent wandering there, he writes: "I go there on rainy days for a good dose of this lostness, plus the grand incense of book dust, which I deeply inhale as others take snuff, and clean the booktops with a sneeze."

There's a cat, of course. All good used bookstores have cats. There are rows and rows of oddly-organized bookshelves, each title reminding you of three others you want to search for. There are side rooms to hide in, there is a massive fiction room filled with authors you'd forgotten you loved. There are slightly gnome-ish employees scuttling around, unlikely to approach you, but extremely helpful when cornered. In short, it is a city block of awesomeness, an oasis of culture in a largely ruined downtown, the kind of place that you're glad to know is there, even if you haven't visited as often as you'd like, because you can be assured that its labyrinthine aisles hold all sorts of literary magic that perhaps the unsuspecting public is not yet ready for.

In April, for $2.8 million, the current owner of Acres (the grandson of its founder) sold its land to the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency. It is likely to be condos soon. Soon there won't even be a place to hang a plaque, no where to leave a tattered pulp paperback in sorrowful memory. As Bradbury said, soon they will "cement the whole damned thing over."

Acres has until May of next year to vacate the premises. For a while they were looking at a new location, but it seems those plans have dried up. Their closing sale started last week, and their press release says that everything is priced to sell. I don't know if I can do it.

I don't know if I can go down and look in the faces of the people scurrying through those hallowed catacombs, some just looking for a good bargain but most, I'm sure, mournfully keeping vigil, wanting one last memento from one of the most wonderful things Long Beach has ever been a part of. I don't know if I can go up to the counter with a stack of too many books for too little money, hand over some bills, get my change, and walk out of Acres of Books for the last time. I don't know if I've got the guts.

Day Forty: A daydream believer

Today (as in real-time today, not blarg-time today) I realized that I have left my adoring readers stranded with blarg-me in Monterey. I have left them (you, really) wondering: will Shar ever get home? Will she be forever in northern California, so close, yet so far from her final destination? What, oh what, has happened to Mike-n-SharTours 2008? So, without further ado, my friends, here is the chronicle of the last day of our trip.

Those of you who read Mike's blarg (and I hope for your sakes that that's everyone) knows the story of the morning of Day Forty. We woke up in Monterey exhausted on pretty much every level. We had been thinking of spending a few days with our dear old roomie in San Francisco, but now driving another hundred miles away from home seemed utterly ridiculous. Not when we were so close. So we showered, dug through the car for our least stinky clothes, and called Robyn. We promised to visit her this summer, after we'd had some time to readjust. Then we were off to breakfast.

We caravaned with Val & Whit and their friends to Whole Foods, planning to buy some pastries for breakfast and some sandwiches to take with us to the aquarium. Through happenstance, we ended up sitting alone in a booth while the rest of the birthday party sat at two tables a bit away. We didn't say much, just munched in the comfortable silence of meals on the road. And I'm not sure how we decided it, but when everyone was done eating and Whitney came over to fetch us, he said "Aquarium?" and we said "Yeah...about that..." And, giddy as the day we got married, we said our goodbyes and hopped back in the Blue Hornet. We could see the aquarium another day. We were going home.

Our giddiness was quickly replaced by the first carsickness of our forty day journey. We weren't in the mood for back-tracking forty miles to a major freeway, so we took small and winding roads to the 101, enjoying the scenery because it was California scenery. And, while being homesick and road-weary didn't make us the most objective of critics, you can't argue with the azure sheen of the Pacific on a clear Sunday afternoon. You just can't. And as we headed back home on the same freeway we'd used to drive away, on Day One of the trip a lifetime ago, I thought about what had made me chortle that first day. Mike had said: "Why would anyone even try and argue that anything's better than California?" I had laughed then, and I laughed again now, because he was right. Nothing that we'd seen, gorgeous and mind-blowingly amazing as our trip had been, nothing we'd seen in all those days of driving came close to being as flat out amazing as our home state.

We listened to "Wagon Wheel" one more time, and we crossed the Long Beach city limit halfway through the last chorus. Yeah, and I cried like a baby.

Final tally: 11,136.2 miles of American road.

Songs: Stevie Wonder's Greatest Hits, Graduation (Kanye West), Incognita (Random Voices), "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show, and the there's-nothing-like-it-in-the-whole-USA click of our key in our lock. Home.

Ask about it: "An inconvenient poop."

Hear us both talking about our trip on Episode 31 of SportsNight, available for download at sportsnight.podomatic.com. Read Mike's journey log at LBPostSports.com. And, of course, his regular blarg is still spittin' out goodies at astoriedyear.blogspot.com. Mike is great.

Day Thirty-Nine: Right (approximately) back where we started from

They say a good night's sleep heals all wounds. Actually, maybe that's not what they say. They say something, and it has to do with all wounds getting healed. I think I saw it in an Aloe Vera commercial. In any case, I woke up the morning of Day Thirty-Nine feeling a lot better. A lot better, and also really, really ready to get going.

First stop was a awesome and a random one. We had originally planned on getting home via a northern route through northern Utah. But when we heard that my dad was going to be in Las Vegas for his (whopping) 55th high school reunion, we thought to ourselves: "Hey! You know what's better than Utah?" So, in addition to the hundreds of California license plates in the parking lots and the streets and other evidence of our alarming proximity to home, we got to breakfast with Papa Higa at the California Hotel. Off the strip in the "Downtown" area, the California Hotel is the go-to stop for folks from Hawaii. The familiar and friendly faces of a casino full of people who looked like they could be my aunties and uncles was a welcome contrast to the patrons who had alarmed me so the night before. And a Hawaiian clientele meant that I could be assured that there would be rice on the buffet. Plus, my Papa-san is freaking rad, so, as he would say, the whole breakfast experience pretty much "hit the spot."

Of course, when we pulled out of the parking garage, we were heading back on the road, and that was another thing altogether.

Day Thirty-Nine was a day of milestones and victories, but it was also one of the more difficult ones of the trip, kinda all for the same reasons. Day Thirty-Nine was the day that we finally, finally, after more than five weeks of driving, crossed that lovely California state line. And it was also the first day since heading westward in Vermont that we made a very conscious decision to drive away from home. We were having dinner and other birthday festivities in Monterey with our unnecessarily wonderful friend Val, her equally awesome boyfriend Whitney, and an assortment of their beautiful friends, including our very own Angie. It was certainly something fun and exciting to look forward to, but it also meant getting to within an hour and a half of home and then turning right and driving for six hours. I think I would've been okay, but there was a billboard right around the state line advertising the local pizza place just down the street from my parents' house, to which I would often walk for lunch on summer days. I admit I teared up a bit, and then we kept on keeping on.

We arrived in Monterey to find our friends relaxin' pool side, giving that gorgeous California sun a good ol' chlorine washing. I'm afraid we may have made a poor impression on those who didn't know us already, as we were more than a little overwhelmed by the circumstances. But we had a blast anyway, exhausted and road-weary as we were, and we were glad to be back with California folk, on California soil, even if it was a little north of home. What does 365 miles really mean, in the grand scheme of things?

We listened to: "California Girls" by The Beach Boys, "California Love" by 2Pac, Californication (Red Hot Chili Peppers), "Winding Road" by Bonnie Summerville, "More Bounce in California" by Soul Kid #1, and the sweet sounds of K-EARTH 101.1 gently rocking us into a Motown Weekend.

Mystery Words: "That's not even a thermometer."

Mike's all caught up!: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Thirty-Eight: If you've ever been a lady to begin with

Day Thirty-Eight was probably one of the hardest of the trip. We woke up in Cassie's house, dragging our feet as we packed and prepared to leave the comfort of a place we could call "home" for the long, long road ahead. We had an eleven hour drive ahead of us, and at the end of it we would be in our own time zone, just a three hour drive from Long Beach. It was almost incomprehensible. As I packed up the car, I made BFFs with an old lady out for her early morning walk. "Going on a trip?" she asked. "Nope," I said. "We're going home." She'd noticed our California license plate, and she confided that her children had grown up in Whittier. I wanted to explain to her that it wasn't what she thought: we weren't a young couple a two-days 'drive from home, staying with a friend in Denver for a few days and then heading back to our homes, just twenty minutes south on the 605 from where she had grandchildren. It wasn't like that at all. But how could I possibly explain how ludicrous it was, how crazy we felt, how we were positive that the Rockies in the distance were an illusion, that we'd be driving forever and never cross them, never traverse those last few inches between us and the jagged line our atlas assured us was the Pacific Coast? I smiled and she wished us luck, and then she walked on.

The Rockies weren't impossible after all. They were, in fact, gorgeous, and the snow on the ground and flurries in the air reminded us of the eleven hour drive we'd taken just one country's-width due north, when we were young and enthusiastic. When we came down out of the mountains it was almost immediately swelteringly hot, and the 60° temperature shift may have contributed significantly to the way the rest of the day played out.

Ryan "Just Call Me a Cow, Cuz I'm Always Tippin" Poohausen earned his nickname by giving us some solid advice on how to stay in Vegas. On his recommend, I booked a room at the Tropicana, which was a great location and great value for a very reasonable price. What we didn't realize was the effect Vegas on a Friday evening would have on us after a day's worth of driving in almost complete solitude. There were way too many people, they were way too loud and way too drunk and they were standing way, way too close to me. We played the slots for a while (and we would've won 49¢ if we'd quit while we were ahead), then got a few minutes into exploring The Strip before it was just too much for me, and we retreated to our room where we collapsed exhausted and overstimulated. Money, baby.

We listened to: Greatest Hits (Nirvana), What's the Story? (Oasis), and our official return to the West as we cheered with a hundred Lakers fans for the close of game 6.

Mystery Words: "Let me refill your water."

Mike?: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Thirty Seven: The skies were blue and hazy...

We tried to sleep in on Day Thirty-Seven. Really, we did. We had breakfast plans with Cassie, but on a "whenever you get up" sort of way. And, after a hellishly long drive the day before, we were expecting to be pushing that deadline for all it was worth. Instead, I woke up at 9 (which was, of course, a more respectable 10 am in St. Louis), unable to force myself back to sleep. Which was just as well, because we had an awesome day ahead.

Breakfasting at a local diner (we were duly warned that the place was infested with old people), we were startled to see hail plummeting from a previously clear sky onto the open patio. Evidently, this drastic weather change isn't atypical for Denver. The previous week it had vacillated from mid-seventies to snow to rain within days. It's just mountain weather, I know, but it felt like seeing our whole trip in fast forward: the snowstorms in Washington and Minnesota, the heavy heat of the South, the earth-shaking thunderstorms of St. Louis, and on and on and on. By the time we were finished eating, the sun was back out and the sky was cloudless.

Cassie left for work (teaching music to 3 year olds, thank you very much) and Mike and I left for our lazy tool-around of Denver. It was Thursday and, since we didn't want to stop in Kansas (for any reason) the day before, our first step was to Mile High for comics. Mile High? More like Square-Mile In Area! More like Mile-oh-My It's Big! We were utterly dazzled, and we wandered through row after row of trade paperbacks, memorabilia, shirts, and posters with mouths hanging open. Hopefully Janet Pym didn't fly in.

From there, we drove to downtown Denver, to the site of what had been, four years ago, the site of my favorite dinner ever. I'm pretty sure the place has changed its name, but the idea is the same: a buffet of raw meat and veggies with a giant wok at the end. It's Mongolian BBQ at its best, and it's only (I think) in Denver. As we walked in the door we saw on one of the many TVs tuned to news channels that California courts had just overturned the ban on gay marriage in the state. We can't wait to get home and celebrate... we've never been prouder to be Californians.

A delicious dinner with our lovely hostess at a small and slightly awkward Thai place, and then we were eating Klondike bars in Cassie's kitchen, staying up way too late talking about old friends, real estate prices, and Cameron Diaz.

Today we listened to: Cassie and me singing songs from "Ragtime: The Musical" and remembering 8th grade.

Mystery words: "So... you know about what happened, right?"

Mike, Mike, Mike: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Thirty-Six: Gonna have ourselves a time

Day Thirty-Six started out cool and misty in St. Louis. Mike was angelic and woke up first, so I could steal an extra few minutes cuddled under the covers, dreaming of mornings spent sleeping late in our own bed, with suitcases stored away in the garage and both cars parked outside our apartment. I'll admit I've taken to drooling over Google Streetview, which has extended to our street. But I digress. The point is, we woke up this morning in St. Louis. As I type this now, we're in the basement of the lovely Cassie B.'s home in Denver, CO. Over twelve hours of driving, and we're now just a time zone away from good ol California.

If you're wondering what it's like to drive from St. Louis to Denver, let me just say this: it's long. It's really long. About a half hour after pulling off the curb in front of Holly's house Mike looked at me and said, "Well, I guess we'd better have a stimulating conversation." We tried it for a while, with me asking "If you could choose..." and "What one thing..." questions that quickly (i.e. in an hour) disintegrated into silliness as we discussed which historical defensive line would have the best chance of sacking Batman. Acknowledging, of course, that no one would actually be able to. Two hours down, ten to go.

The crawl across Kansas and Missouri was just like you've heard. Flat, flat lands with no end in sight. Sometimes place names were amusing, but there just were too few places. We listened to the last 3 hours of The Great Gatsby and reminisced about great English teachers we'd had. Denver was only a half page of the atlas away, but it's those last three hundred miles that kill you. And, when an early evening haze is obscuring the Rockies, you begin to doubt whether Denver wasn't all just an elaborate hoax, whether there's any end at all to the journey.

There was, and it was in the form of a ridiculously awesome dinner at Casa Bonita, which is just as amazing as Cartman made it out to be. A man dressed as a gorilla juggled and pushed a garishly dressed woman off a cliff into a pool below. There was a piñata. There was a fire diver. All of this cleverly distracted from the way below mediocre Mexican food (think nacho cheese enchilada). Our spirits lifted, we drove to Cassie's house in the ever-so-familiar sounding suburb called "Lakewood."

Cassie is, though I hadn't seen her since ninth grade, just as great as I'd remembered her to be. We got to meet her lovely fiance, then set up shop in her basement, where we watched the basketball game and trundled to an early sleep with a gorgeous kitty snuggled between us. Ah. I could get used to this.

We listened to: The Great Gatsby, The Pride is Back (David Cross), The Clarence Greenwood Recordings (Citizen Cope), Songs from an American Movie, pt. 1 (Everclear), and a roving mariachi band singing a birthday song to at least a third of the hundreds of tables at the Beautiful House.

Mystery words: "The Cathedral of the Plains"

Mike is more daily than I: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Thirty-Five: One More Day

Day Thirty-Five started out loudly, with house-shaking thunder jolting me awake at around seven. The rain was torrential, and lightning flashed distantly, then not so distantly. I shivered under the blankets and was grateful for the cozy weight of Ricky, the handsome cat, at the bed's foot. But at nine I forced myself out of bed, exhausted though I was, because we had to get back on the road.

Hours later, we were still at Holly's, having whiled away the morning enjoying our first ability to both waste time online simultaneously. Around eleven, Mike finally decided to go down to the car for clean clothes, so we could start our long and dismal journey across Missouri and Kansas, away from the warmth and comfort of St. Louis. He had almost made it to the door of our room before he proposed that, instead of walking all the way down the stairs, we stay instead an extra day. The benefits to this plan were many: we could spend another day with Aunt Holly, relax and enjoy the city for a while, and save ourselves the horror of spending a night in Kansas. So it was decided and Mike was able to avoid a clean shirt for another few hours.

We walked down to Delmar Circle, which is a really cool little district that holds the charm I think we all hope for every time we visit Second Street in Long Beach. We ate a leisurely lunch at a restaurant that serves noodles of different variety (I had stir-fried udon, Mike had mac & cheese), then hopped down a few more stores to Star Clipper, which was nice enough to supply us with all of the comics we'd missed since leaving DC. The thunderstorm of earlier this morning had turned into a beautiful, sunny day, and yes, we were glad to be enjoying it at less than 65 mph.

No "hooky from hours of driving" day is complete without a trip to the zoo, so Mike and I hopped over to the St. Louis Zoo, proclaimed (by a banner at its entrance) to be the #1 zoo in America. We aren't in a position to disagree, but our position may be biased: we spent our entire hour there surrounded by real live DINOS!!!!!!! They roared at us, clawed the air around us, and even spat neurotoxins at us. And all this was even before we went into the motion simulator, 3-D documentary of the trip to (and subsequent escape from) Dino Island.

We ended the day with delicious Mexican food (I know, we were surprised too) with Holly, basketball with the cats, and the realization that our awesome day was photodocumented entirely on a camera for which we have no USB cord. Tomorrow we make up time by driving for 12 hours. I'd say: utterly worth it.

Today we listened to: purrs from Ricky and stony silence from the other two cats, and the unmistakable roar of a T-Rex about to make you regret the day you ever set foot on Dinosaur Island.

Mystery words: "Spa or kayak?"

Mike!: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Days Early- to Mid-Thirties: Why I could never have a storied year

So, I'm way behind on my daily blargs, as I'm assuming the few of you (Mike) who checks this URL compulsively several times before lunch have noticed. Partly this is because my good ol' lappy has been out of commission since her power cord lost the ability to conduct "the juice" from the wall socket to the battery. I blame this on Conor, and he, I'm sure, knows why. Rather than try to write twice a day in a Sisyphusian struggle to catch up, here is a quick overview of the days leading up to today (Day Thirty-Four) and a hearty entreaty for you to read Mike's blog for the rest of the story.

Day Thirty-One; Niagara Falls proves to be powerfully awesome, despite our fears that it will be powerfully underwhelming. This is in stark contrast to other large American tourist attraction which shall remain anonymous for the sake of preserving the dignity of the four huge-headed presidents for whom said attraction may hold special significance. We also visit the Buffalo campus of the University of New York where Mike goes into that Joyce-induced drooling trance that only Laurel has had the pleasure of seeing in person.
Day Thirty-Two: We decide to skip Cleveland, much to Drew Carey's disappointment, trading it for five hours at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH. This proves to be an excellent choice, and we spend our half day hob-nobbing with the bronze-encrusted greats. I wish I had brought my Jeffy G jersey, but as we test-drive next season's Madden game, I quarterback scramble him into the endzone, so all is as it should be.

Day Thirty-Three: We drive into Indianapolis and spend a couple hours finding some important Vonnegut sites that will, in a few years (at most), be stops on a pilgrimage route and home to societies and museums. For now, it took a lot of Googling to find them, and we seemed to be the only ones to have been looking. I want to write more about this later, so hopefully I'll get a chance. Suffice it to say, I'm glad we did it. We spend the night with Mike's famously awesome aunt in St. Louis.

Day Thirty-Four: We take a day trip to Hannibal, MO, which is Twain country, in case you haven't noticed. Their vending machines have his face on them, every business in Historic Downtown is named after his characters, and there is the constant threat of living history actors. We hop on the Mark Twain Riverboat, which takes us on an hour-long tour down the Mississippi, then grab some delicious treats at Becky Thatcher's Ice Cream Parlor. It's all fun and games until my camera falls out of my lap, Mike gets a speeding ticket, and we get lost on the way back to Holly's house. But we have an amazing dinner, frozen custard for dessert, and Holly even loaned us a handsome kitty to sit on the foot of our bed. What a lady.

We listened to: Joshua Tree (U2), Whatever & Ever Amen (Ben Folds Five), The Great Gatsby, Songs for Tomorrow Morning (The Bobs), The Essential Vonnegut Interviews, Good News for People Who Love Bad News (Modest Mouse), The Essential Mark Twain, Roll On (The Living End) and Mike and me singing the Monday Night Football theme all the way to and from Canton.

Mystery words: "Niagara Falls: a mob front?" Although it's not really a mystery, because the answer is yes.

Mike turns his drools into pretty words: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Thirty: Back on the mooove.

Our first day back on the road after a refreshing multiple-day oasis, Day Thirty was exciting and rejuvenating even as it was blearily sad to put a place with family and familiarity into our rearview mirror. We started out the day with a delicious breakfast at Seven Stars Bakery, a delightful Providence favorite stocked with locally roasted coffee and freshly crafted artisan pastries. Stephen purchased two sourdough baguettes for our trip (something which, I'd like to point out, my mother once refused to do, even though I was starving to death in a dream I once had). We had put 6,749 miles on ol' Blue Hornet since March 31st, which meant we had a third thing to look forward to that day: hitting seven thousand miles since we first turned left on Los Coyotes Diagonal.

The other two items on our list for Day Thirty? Well, the first proved to be a milestone in itself, because it was where Mike and I learned just how much ice cream was, you know, probably enough for today. We drove through Massachusetts, cut through New Hampshire, and found ourselves in Waterbury, Vermont just a few minutes before the start of the half-hourly tour of the Ben & Jerry's factory. Oh, and it was much awesomer than you might think. The only damper on the fantastic was a mother who could not keep her three-year-old from bashing into everything and everyone around, and who could not keep his poopy pants from wafting through the observation deck and mingling forever in association with Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Karamel Sutra. But it was nothing a few samples of Strawberry Cheesecake couldn't fix. And, when you throw in a couple scoops of our favorite flavors from the adjoining shop and a jaunt through the third- or fourth-coolest graveyard we've seen so far, it was all in all pretty darn cool. Hehe.

As we left Ben & Jerry's, we achieved our second objective for the day, one that, I'll admit, got us a little emotional. We started our long southwest diagonal towards home. Driving through the gorgeousness of Vermont, it was hard to take road pictures because the setting sun was illuminating all the bug splatters on the windshield for the first time in a really, really long time. And, when we unpacked our bags in the parking lot of our hotel in Rome, NY, we imagined that maybe we could kinda sorta see the Pacific Coast in the horizon. Of course, this was just the lingering effects of that famous Vermont sugar high, but we had a bounce in our steps nonetheless. It's like Ryan Poohausen's ringtone says: "California, here we come!"

We heard with our ears: "Wagon Wheel" (twice), The Cool (Lupe Fiasco), The Great Gatsby, Death to the Pixies (Pixies), and the assertion, from our B&J's tour guide, that milk stools have only three legs because AND I QUOTE: "Someone stole the udder."

Mystery words: "Horse and Buggy Xing"

Mike is hungry for ice cream again at: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Days Twenty-Six thru -Nine: Home (far) away from home

Me: So... is this house haunted?
Stephen: No.

I realized as we drove towards the interstate on Day Thirty that it had been years since my big brother and I had slept under the same roof. It's one of those landmarks that comes and goes unnoticed: I don't remember my last day sleeping at my parent's house. I don't remember the last time Stephen coming home for school vacation meant me waking up to the sounds of oddly shaped stringed instruments humming through the wall between our rooms. I'd knock on his door and he'd be standing with his lute or banjo or guitar in his arms, branches borrowed from the front yard covering his ceiling, random bits of art cluttering shelves overstuffed with books that, after years of coming home in May and going elsewhere in August, he'd had to leave behind. There would be a kitty looking up at me from the bed, unsure of whether she was enjoying the music, but definitely enjoying the attention. For countless years, these were my summer mornings. Afternoons were for walking for food or for books. Evenings were spent singing and chatting until we couldn't stay up any longer. When we'd begun planning this trip, I hadn't realized how much a half-week in Providence was going to mean to me.

Stephen lives with eleven other college students in Finlandia, a co-op a few blocks from Brown University and the Rhode island School of Design. The residents are friendly and delightfully odd, and they clearly think my big bro is as cool as I do. Mike and I slept in a little guest room on the top floor, under a blanket that, through some cosmic coincidence, had the same slightly sinister print of Kermit the Frog strumming a guitar as Stephen used to have on his curtains at home. Downstairs, the walls of the kitchen were covered with amusing and incriminating quotes from over two decades' worth of Findy residents. On our first night, a fellow offered us some home-brewed ginger beer. We spent a couple hours late one night discussing odd finger formations and the ability to clap really, really fast. It was pretty much awesome.

Mike gives a good day-by-day for what we did while we were in Providence. Let me add to his account by saying that, between eating well, sleeping plenty, meeting new people, exploring a beautiful little city, and lunching in Boston with the delightful Tina, these were some of my very favorite days of the road trip. Plus, I got to see my brother perform in concert for the first time in four years. As I watched him with his medieval music group, Resonanda, as they blew the socks (and Birkenstocks) off the audience that had overflowed the mausoleum in which they sang, I will admit my eyes watered a bit with actual human emotion. I was so glad to be exactly where I was, sitting next to my hubby, thousands of miles from home, watching my big brother be freaking amazing.

We listened to: Mitch All Together (Mitch Hedberg), Cantigas de Santa Maria as performed live, in concert, by Resonanda, and the unique cacophony of five people trying simultaneously to demonstrate their fastest clapping.

Mystery words: "the Hitler of saints" and "Amasa Sprague"

Mike's blarging again: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Twenty-Six: So many Providence puns...

The first thing I noticed when I woke up on Day Twenty-Six was that the breakfast we'd ordered the night before as a congratulations for Mike (aka "I just wrote 366 stories in 366 days") was not, in fact, waiting for us outside our door. On the floor in its stead was our copy of the (absurdly high) charges for the room. Not nearly as delicious as an English muffin would have been, but we ate it anyway. On principle.

Our trip up to Providence was quick and expensive: the total cost of tolls on roads and bridges was over $20. That's over twenty dollars for about 4 hours of driving. I hope New York, New Jersey and Connecticut understand that they just robbed us of 3 matinee showings of Iron Man.

Two excessively geeky detours (a stop to see the Long Island area where The Great Gatsby was set and a drive through Stamford, CT, the site of the kick-off for Marvel's Civil War comics series) and we were in Providence. A mere half hour of driving haphazardly lost through the one-ways and diagonals of this tiny capital city, and then we were pulling in to Finlandia Co-op. And it's got its decidedly co-op-ish feel, but it's friendly and there's a guest room on the top floor. Not to mention a tea house on the corner where Mike and I sat for a few hours today solving the world's problems with greater and greater efficiency as we grew more caffeinated. And not to mention my big brother downstairs. It's going to be an awesome next few days.

Today we listened to: the very last words of On the Road, and a string quartet version of Maroon 5's "Secret" playing amidst equally random selections from the speakers in a cafe.

Mystery words: "Turn right at the blinking hand."

Mike's taking a break today. But catch up & comment on some of the 366 stories you may have missed: astoriedyear.blogspot.com (there's some real goodies in March)

Day Twenty-Five: Page 148

So it's the end of Day Twenty-Five, and we're sitting in a nice hotel, in a beautiful king-sized bed, between beautiful king-quality sheets. There is a little balcony to our room that opens out to the inner courtyard of the hotel where, even now at midnight, there are the happy splashes of handsome young people in an expansive pool. Things here are nice. How nice? Well, sure as hell not nice enough for the room to cost twice as much as our room last night, that's for sure. But we're paying for location and, insanely, our hotel is located right across the bridge from Manhattan.

I happened to flip open the front cover of our trusty road atlas today to that helpful map that tells you on which page to find the roads and cities of which state. For some reason, that's when it really hit me: we are a full country away from home right now. What the heck are we doing here?

I haven't really had cause to look at that front cover page guide, because we haven't been jumping from state to state, we've been crawling mile by mile to the end of pages and then on to the next page. Most days I track our little car onto three pages (or more, depending on our trajectory). And now, suddenly, we've arrived in Newark, New Jersey. We're in that famous metropolitan area that's not Los Angeles, and we earned our way here bit by bit. It's kinda incredible, and I'm torn between really really wanting to be back on a familiar page and really really wanting to keep going, to see what happens when we drive off the end of the last page in the book and don't look back.

Today we saw a couple hours' worth of Philadelphia, which we soon learned isn't the way it's meant to be seen. Everything in Independence Hall National Historical Park either required a ticket (which were sold out), a ridiculous fee, or a place in a line wrapping around the building. Maybe it would've worked for us under different circumstances, but as two weary travelers who had just spent three days cavorting around DC's abundant and free and very awesome museums, we weren't buying it. We snapped some pix through some windows, took in some of the free sights, and got back in our car with our eyes set on the New Jersey Turnpike. (We've all come to look for America...)
Tomorrow, we see my awesome big brother and enjoy frustratingly chilly New England from the comfort of his co-op for a few days. Then we start the long and detour-ridden trip homeward. Page 52, here we come!!

Today we listened to: On the Road, The Essential Simon and Garfunkel (with a double-play for "America"), The Grey Album (Jay-Z/The Beatles), and the theme from Rocky playing in our heads as we ran up the stairs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fo reals.

Words to mystery by: "And one of us should hold her hand in case there's violence."

Mike! Read his thoughts on the trip & congratulate him on his 366th story in 366 days!!!: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Twenty-Four: Well-fed, well-rested, and a little tanner.

Okay. Okay. Pheeeeeeeew. It's Day Twenty-Four, and I actually have enough energy to move my fingers across my keyboard. We're leaving DC tomorrow morning, and, after three full days here, I think I am finally prepared to give the thumbs up to our nation's capital.

Wednesday & Thursday mornings, we took the Metro train from our hotel in Rockville, MD into downtown DC. We learned, from a series of very intense and very brow-furrowing internet research sessions, that only raving lunatics actually stay in the city. Hotels are either super divey or super pricey, most all of them charge for parking, and traffic in and out within two hours of "rush hour" is crazy. So we opted instead to stay a little further away and ride the half hour each way.

When we arrived in our downtown station, we were quickly swept into the herd of people swarming up the comically tall escalators and onto the streets. With this herd we were pushed onto the street and were sometimes several monuments down before we even felt solid ground under our footsies. No matter how much we planned and how painstakingly we shaved "must do"s from our lists, there were always far too many things to do each day. So we rushed from place to place, our happy hipping and hopping becoming wailing limps of despair by the time the Smithsonians closed at 5:30.

Ah, but friends, it was worth it. I can say that now, after a day in sandals and a tank top, back in pajamas by 8 and happy to have seen the Atlanta Hawks take the Celtics to Game 7. I can say that because our last day in DC was the closest we could come to relaxing while still seeing something with the first name "National." (Surname "Zoo" if you're curious).

If you've been to Washington, you know how much awesome there is in every category. We got to see a Gutenberg Bible, a Shakespeare Folio, and the Supreme Court in the span of two hours. We were breathless at the Lincoln Memorial and solemn at Arlington, and then we were eyeing dinos at the Natural History Museum. So. Rather than try and enumerate all DC has to offer (which is much more than we were able to see anyway), here are some things that stick out (for better or worse), in no particular order.

* The Smithsonian. Yesh, I know. It's the first thing and already I'm cheating. The Smithsonian Institute is responsible for almost all of the non-governmental buildings in DC. That runs the gamut from the Natural History Museum (which, as previously mentioned, has dinos) to the National Zoo (which has naked mole rats) to the National Portrait Gallery (which just got one of Vonnegut's self-portraits). Mike and I are nerds, so the museums totally blew our socks off.

* Qdoba. If you've ever eaten at Chipotle, you may walk into this "Mexican" "restaurant" and think you might have found a good match. You will be wrong, and you will regret it. It is far better to go hungry.

* The Shakespeare Theater Company. We say Antony and Cleopatra last night, and it was amazing. A tip for travelers: most other patrons of this theater will be dressed in suits and dresses. If you arrive in Converse and road-dirty jeans, you may be looked at askance. But that's okay, because you don't need their approval anyway. They're eating veal paté from the snack cart in the lobby, so what do they know?

* Caterpillars. I don't know what their deal is, but they seem to think crossing the sidewalk is a safe and fun activity. They are wrong, and you can tell this because the pavement is littered with their failed experiments. If you don't want to be the enforcer of natural selection, for God's sake watch your step.

* Of course, I lied about the whole "no particular order" thing. By leaps and bounds the #1 most awesome thing about DC was Freakin Iron Man, which we saw today in Uptown in between being lost on the way to the National Cathedral and finding the giant pandas. To be fair, if you play the classic comic geek's game, Iron Man would definitely beat every other Washington DC attraction in a fight. Yeah, bear sloth. I'm talking to you. Ben Franklin statue outside the Old Post Office, you're next.

There's obviously a hundred more amazing things about DC, and I'd love to talk about them when we get home. But all of a sudden it's one o'clock in the morning and we've got to pack the car back up in the morning. Oh, that freeway's a-callin' our names!

Today we listened to: the sweet, sweet sounds kicking off the greatest summer movie geek-fest of all time: "Back in Black" by AC/DC.

Mystery words: "They look like chicken wings."

Mike's almost done. Show him some love: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Twenty-Three: *snore*

It's quite late (Eastern Standard Time), and Day Twenty-Three has been over for 2 hours.  I'm going to bed and will return to blarg about it soon.  Apologies!

Day Twenty-Two: Always check the scale of a map before starting to walk

It's Day Twenty-Two, and my everything hurts. We spent the day not taking advantage of public transportation and, instead, walking an estimated 15 miles around Washington, DC. My toes, stuffed back into shoes after two and a half weeks of freedom, are in pain from being squashed up to their neighbors. My legs are so heavy I fear that if I put step down off this bed they'll crash through the floor, plummeting me through to the center of the earth and beyond. My eyes burn with the pain of being open, my brain is over-stuffed: we saw and did far too many new things today.

I'm not going to blarg about it. Instead, I offer you two vignettes which hopefully give an incomplete picture of what our day was like, why we are exhausted, and why we completely lost control of our sanity at the end. There will be more tomorrow, and even more the day after that.

* Mike and I step off the tall, tall escalator and look around. Everything is made of stone. Everything is big, and everything is at least a little bit famous. Most things start with the word "National." These buildings stretch for miles in all directions, and all around us people in business gear rush, rush, rush to get to their crucially important destination. "There," says Mike. "That's something over there."

* Can you see the Washington Monument from space? I myself have never tried it, but I can't imagine being so far away from D.C. that the gigantic white obelisk is not looming somewhere in your view. If we knew what we were looking for, I'm sure we could see it from our own patio. Everywhere we walk in the city it is there, taller than we can believe. We finally give in to its gravity and climb up to put our hands on it, to look up and to be glad we have feet firmly on the ground. A woman in the crowd gasps "There it is!" She had, I suppose, not noticed it before.

Today we listened to: "Umbrella" by Rihanna blasting from the speakers of a supposedly world-famous ice cream shoppe. Simultaneously, the sound of our brains coming unhinged.

Mystery words: "Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, WWII Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, National Museum of Natural History, National Archives, Smithsonian Castle..." and "She's a witch?"

Mike didn't blarg today, but read his 363rd daily story. The experiment is almost over!: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Twenty-One: Ghost stories

If Day Twenty-One had ended up being particularly unlucky or ill-fated, I would have to say that we had plenty of warning. Uneasiness and questionable omens plagued us from the moment we woke up, an hour late. Down in the lobby, the continental breakfast was lacking in appetizing foods but overflowing with fruit juices that managed to (through some sort of witchery, no doubt) to be both watery and pulpy. Entering the lobby at the same time as us was a group of three loud and jovial Middle Eastern men speaking in Arabic. The icy silence which filled the area that, mere moments before, had been a clutter of hardy Southern laughter, made us shiver and shrink into a corner.

Then, when we walked outside, we realized that we'd left the beautiful, balmy weather of the deep South behind. It was cool and it was windy, and I would not have been surprised in the least if these all had been portents of a wretched day ahead. Instead, our day was mostly average, with the bright spots being, in fact, poorly lit and a bit creepy.

Watching the interchanges roll by on the map is a principal pleasure of mine. I chuckle at ridiculous town names, marvel at the "attractions" that somehow manage to rate little red boxes on the atlas pages, all the while calculating miles left till state borders when I'll attempt to take a picture of a state welcome sign. It is difficult to do all these things while also enjoying the real life geography streaming by the window and, of course, feeding the driver. Every once in a while things come together and I manage to notice an actually interesting attraction with enough advance notice that we're actually able to navigate to it.

There are times when this works out. There are times when it backfires horribly. Ask someone who came on our road trip to Nashville about the "Lincoln Log Cabin" and I'll bet they'll make you blush with their litany of profanities. Today was a lucky one. Though, again, lucky and creepy. We hopped off the freeway in Richmond, VA to find the Poe Museum.

The Edgar Allen Poe Museum is located in the oldest house in Richmond. This is not a house with which Poe has any particular connection other than that he knew of it. But the Poe Museum does the best they can with what they've got. The result is a little bit odd, a little off-putting, and utterly a-Poe-priate. They've taken bricks from houses Poe did live in and used them to pave the garden walks. In one wing, a staircase going nowhere is a transplant from his foster parents' home. Assorted furniture from his childhood stands in a corner, and one display case is dedicated to the contents of his pockets on the day he died. The face of this museum is a plump middle-aged woman who brags that, although other Poe museums have more of a connection to the famous American author, theirs has "the most stuff." This "stuff" includes a clipping of some Poe-corpse-hair pasted to a letter by a friend of his. Worth the $5 student ticket in, but ye gods it was weird. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the buildings, so imagine these bright and sunny pictures darker and drearier and insider.

After navigating the trafficky freeways around our nation's capitol, we checked in to a motel in Rockville, MD. Just so happens to be the final resting place of F. Scott Fitzgerald. So, after dinner, we drove over to St. Mary's Church, parked in a corner of the lot, and scuttled over to the graveyard. Under the cover of a towering tree and the deep Maryland night, we hopped over the fence and, using Mike's cell phone for a flashlight, combed through the graves until we found the Fitzgerald family plot. We think Scott and Zelda would have approved.

So that's it. That's what the signs this morning were pointing to. Two vaguely creepy encounters with two heroes of American literature. Also, a big fat spider in the corner of the ceiling of our room.

Heard: "Wagon Wheel," "Fall on My Knees," and other Old Crow Medicine Show songs, Blues on the Bayou (B.B. King), On the Road, and the meaningful silence of an old graveyard after dark.

Mystery words: "Cigar girl"

Mike! Mike Mike Mike! Mike Mike Mike! Mike Mike Miiiiiiiike: astoriedyear.blogspot.com

Day Twenty: Maybe Jeffy G could give me a lesson?

After yesterday's incomplete appreciation of two great and vastly different cities, Day Twenty saw us doing things a bit differently. We left Savannah this morning and got on scenic Highway 17, having decided to take in the Atlantic Coast by getting off the interstate for the first time in quite a while. Besides taking the long and winding road, we also decided that, for the first time since the California Redwoods, we were going to give ourselves the option of stopping along the way. What would've been a short 6 hour drive ended up with us pulling into our hotel parking lot ten hours after we left. But we made absolutely the right decision.

Ever since we first decided to head south from St. Louis to Savannah (lo, these four days ago) I've been counting down to our first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean. Not that we hadn't already proven ourselves on this trip. We hit five thousand miles of driving yesterday. We've crossed the Mississippi River probably a dozen times. We've driven through snow, gorgeous and alien rock formations, and the Illinois city of Metropolis. It's not like we weren't already far from home. But I knew that when I saw the ocean disappearing into the horizon in the east, and felt the water that touches England touch my feet, that it would be something different. We would have gone as far away from home as we could. That's it. End of the continent. One whole direction knocked off the compass.

I was right. It was awesome. And my toes enjoyed it immensely.

After walking along the surf for a while, we got back in the car and headed to Myrtle Beach, SC, which was wonderful and strange. Besides being a vacation spot for old white people of all ages and colors, it's also the miniature golf capitol of the world. Seriously. We passed a dozen highly intricate and humongous courses before we decided that we obviously had to stop. We almost played at some random pirate themed one, but I suggested we drive a little further before deciding. Which is lucky, because on the next block was Jurassic Golf. With animatronic dinos! Aaa!!!!

Truly the best thing ever (though I did lose by two strokes, tying our relationship-spanning series at 1-1). On the way out of town we passed some more extravagantly designed courses, and some that were inside a volcano. But none of the other "adventure golf" courses had a real live T-Rex that roared or a Dilophosaurus that actually spat. So we clearly picked the right place.

Now we're about to go to bed in Wilmington, NC. Our bellies are full of delicious, delicious Ruby Tuesday steaks. Our energy is high because we just watched our Atlanta Hawks beat the Celtics again. And tomorrow we head to Washington, DC. Things are good, my friends. Things are good.

Today we listened to: Big Iron World (Old Crow Medicine Show), On the Road, and the unmistakable sounds of an animatronic Velociraptor about to strike. Clever girl...

Mystery words: "NHOP"

Mike's thoughts on today's route (root?!?): astoriedyear.blogspot.com & (posted soonly) LBPostSports.com