Happy 30th Holly!

back to me. ha, ha! i finally updated the pictures section on my webpage. the newest gallery is from this spring, so i'm a little behind. but it's a new album format that shows bigger pictures while still being nice, i think, to those folks who are still in the 800x600 resolution dark ages. so check it out:
http://josh.homerlane.com/pic_toc.htm

My new bedroom is finally coming together. yes, there is a twin sized mattress laying in my new full-size bed. and yes, a corner of my closet is piled high with miscellaneous junk that doesn't yet have a place to call home, but the floor is visible and mostly uncluttered. i guess i need another piece of furniture to store and hold things like a small stereo, architecture models, and stuff, but there's no huge hurry for that. and just ignore that giant piece of flattened cardboard box that's mostly covering the window; blinds of some sort are in my future. but first i need to find some that cover seven-and-a-half foot tall windows.

the living room bookcases have been assembled. now we're just waiting for appropriate mounting brackets and a few moments in our busy schedules to put them "up."

so pretty soon we'll have it together, and we'll have you over to see the beautiful place we call home.

We just went wireless yesterday. It was either WiFi or mounting a network cable across our living room walls and ceiling. My room mates already had wireless cards from their summer of using free internet, so all we needed was a new router and a card for my computer. Sunday after church i stopped into CompUSA (on my way to the grocery store) to check their prices against some internet options like newEgg.com or eBay. i was handed a flyer on the way inside that advertised wireless stuff on sale--just what i needed. so i plunked down a wad of money, and now we have G-speed wifi. Aren't you jealous?

As i was about to get ready for bed last night, i decided to put together my new bed. i don't have a mattress that fills the frame yet, but i knew i could use my twin mattress until i get a full sized one. Assembly was quite an ordeal, really, especially since i had to clear enough space in my bedroom to do it. so i stayed up a few houres later than i planned... at least i did laundry between church services. (which were really good by the way.) Now we just have to assemble another bookcase, mount a few things, and we'll be well on our way to moving in. Anyone know a good place to find short bar stools or a slim coffee table/ottomans?

i'm back online! whoo-hoo! but i'll have to post later, because it's time to go to church again.

I moved! And now I can barely move. I had to pop a few aspirin last night to fall asleep because my legs were throbbing, and my hands are raw, but it's all worth it.

Moving on a tuesday is not good; everyone is working. but I managed to get a friend who's not working right now to help us move into the new apartment, and that made a big difference. Christina stayed back at the old place to scrub it spotless, or maybe take a nap, but Ryan, my friend Dalcy and I managed alright. thank God for a giant elevator and a dolly. Because we had a really long hallway to walk down once we got up to the fourth floor. There's nothing exciting to say about the move. i'm sure you know how they go; there's a lot of sweat and stairs and stacking and setting down. And then you have to do it all over again.

The funny thing about this move is that we hadn't seen the new place finished until we carried up that first load of stuff. sure, we saw walls and doors and stuff before we signed a lease, but the kitchen wasn't installed, the bathroom wasn't done, not all the lights were in, etc. so our first impression came yesterday. I have to tell you, the place is beautiful. And everything is new. unfortunately, everything is covered with boxes, and none of them are in the right rooms. but we'll get it sorted out eventually. i'll try to post some pics once we get internet up... Which isn't until sept. 11.

tonight will be my final night in LAPRN, my current neighborhood. it's been quite a run, but i won't be sad to leave. Tomorrow is the big move... almost 12 blocks away, but what a change those 12 blocks mean. the noise, the litter, the shadiness (if that's a word) will not be missed.

we have high hopes for the new apartment. Everything is new, and we really don't want to live with the same college furniture that we have been accustomed to. we'll have to see what we can afford to buy. and we'll have to agree on what to do with the place. I was living in our current place for a while before my room mates moved in, so i think it always felt like it was MY place, and not really theirs. But this time we're all on the lease, so it should be equally ours. Let's see if three architects can choose a color together... or a piece of furniture.

if we make it through the move (we have a LOT of stuff), i'll let you know how it goes.

finally, it's friday. i think i can make it through. besides, i have only four more nights in my current apartment. that's been getting my excited recently. which reminds me--I need to see if i can set up my electricity yet. (pause) nope, still not ready. But I'm doing pretty good with packing. I've done a lot already, and most of the rest can wait until the very end.

I got a little side gig measuring this giant apartment and drawing up the existing conditions. So maybe i can buy myself a new bed for my new apartment. It's an hourly wage, and the apartment is huge! Through the streetside door, there's a foyer, a large dining room, kitchen, pantry/rear entry, and maids quarters (two bedrooms and a bath). then upstairs, there's another foyer, living room parlor, library, three large bedrooms with walk-in closets and two more bathrooms. Put it this way, the apartment was formerly a small school. that means it ain't small, and that a lot of the rooms have been carved up into many smaller rooms. but i'll get it done.

and... happy birthday keith.

oh yeah, I saw Alien Vs. Predator this Weekend. ha, ha! too funny. some of it was pretty enjoyable, but there was too much lead up and background on the humans, and not enough A. vs. P. But it was a good time, I guess. I just thought you might get a kick out of that.

After the movie I saw an exhibit on skyscrapers at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The neat thing was that the projects had huge models to look at. Most were at least 6 feet tall. They were amazing! most were lazercut plexiglass, metal, or wood models, and the projects were from all over the world. and my room mate made a big chunck of one of them.

After MoMA, we headed to a Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens. It was like a normal bar and restaurant inside, but throught the back door was a huge park with towering trees, a band shell and dance floor, and row upon row of tables. it was surrounded by a ring of roofed tables, which is where we sat because of a slight drizzle. But it was all authentic Check food. I had some great beef Goulash.

okay, i really need to do some work now.

Mondays are so.... Well, you know.

something I was going to post a while ago: My walk home from the subway brings me past a school. On a few occasions in July, usually Sunday nights after church, I found a bunch of twenty-something in the schoolyard (blacktop) playing dodgeball. They had a bunch of red playground balls and everything. It's pretty dang funny. They invited me to play once when they were about to start a new match, but I just counted down to start them off instead. I love my neighborhood.

well, actually I love my neighborhood-to-be. And it appears that I will actually be moving in just over a week. Not that we've started packing yet. Oops. Better get on that.

I might get a little side job doing some as-builts for an apartment. Maybe that'll pay for a new bed!

I'm all paid up for my choir trip to Zambia. I can't wait. I also started my shots, so I'm well on my way. If you want a souvenir you'd better speak up or you get nothin'.

I guess I'll sign off. I really thought I had something to say here, but I can't think of anything right now.

wow, i'm eating a red plum, but it tastes like a pear. I hope it doesn't kill me.

moving on. i visited my car this weekend, but the autumn weather precluded any beach bumming. on the other hand, i got a lot of errands done, and went home early... and cleaned my kitchen. Thankfully no one noticed that my car reqistration was expired.

oh, i also saw "I-Robot" with my cousin Yuko [YOO-koh]. it was pretty good. i wanted to just do a movie marathon; there are so many that i want to see. speaking of which, Kill Bill v.2 came out on DVD this week. hmmm.

i received bad news yesterday. my apartment move-in date got pushed back AGAIN! Supposedly it's only one additional week. But we're still trying to find out if we can stay in our apartment that extra week, or if the landlord has already rented the place out. [TIME PASSES] okay, i found out that we must vacate the apartment before our next place is ready. so i guess i'll be homeless for a while.

there's nothing quite like a subway system to get around... unless it's not working. construction isn't so bad since they plan for it and put up signs in advance. and i religiously check their website to see what's not running that weekend.

but it's those unexpected shutdowns that really mess you up. case and point: running to church last night, i was already on the late side, but not really. after a ten minute walk to the subway that i had used that same morning, i found it closed. no reason given, no time frame.... so i had to trek over to the next stop where i could catch another subway. (note: it was 100% humidity and in the upper 80's.) so another ten minutes to get there, and then a long wait for the train. four stops later i saw that my connection wasn't running, which is fine because there was another, but that wasn't working either. luckily there was a thrid train i could take, but it meant that i had to switch again once i got to manhattan.

so, i did manage to make it to church in the nick of time but probably only because i prayed a lot in transit. i got into my robe and on stage before the curtain went up. (a little sweaty.)sometimes i love the subway, but sometimes i'd give anything to drive (and have somewhere to park).

oh, and i went sailing this weekend. we won our first race, messed up the second race, and then i purged my lunch as we were about to start the third race! i felt better and ready to sail again, but we headed in for the day. the moral of the story: don't wolf down a greasy cheeseburger just before you sail, and for goodness sake, don't get onions on it. that's really why we had to come in... that smell! sorry, i guess i should have kept that to myself.

random info: my ups guy just brought in my business cards. yeah.

no beach this past weekend, but i did manage to throw my back out. so i've been trying to stay mostly horizontal. heck, last night i slept most of the night on the floor. if i sit too long, then i can't stand up straight, which means that i have to waddle around. it looks funny, but feels not funny at all. i blame it all on too much slouching at a workstation with poor ergonomics and a bad night on an under-inflated air mattress. actually, a nice day at the beach would be the perfect thing for my back.

In other news, my roommate should be coming home today. He was supposed to be back earlier, but they wouldn't let him back in the country. oops. we need him in america! he pays half my rent!

my car was putt-putting along just swell,
then one fine day in PA it all went to hell.
okay, after a while it wasn't all that bad,
but it got me nervous, and it made me sad.
see, it was running really rough.
was it the spark plugs, a bad tank of gas, or some other stuff?
i didn't know, so i brought it in for a look-see
but when they called me today, they said it was as fine as can be.
what the crack? i thought something was wrong with it?
aww, who cares; i got back my Altim8.
 
by Josh, the unpoet.

Maybe this blog should be called the The Weekend of Homer, since all I do is blab about what I did the past weekend.

so... This past weekend was a road trip, and it began on Thursday - whoo-hoo! I left work about 2:30ish, walked to the only parking spot I could find that morning after 40 minutes of driving around, and left the hood at 2:45. I zipped over the bridge to Manhattan, wound my way through the city to the west side highway and over the George Washington bridge. I was well into new jersey by 3:15. But the roads in jersey were pretty full and eastern Pennsylvania was jammed with road construction. At one point, two lanes of traffic just stopped for about three minutes. It wasn't too fun, but it was better than sitting on my duff at work!

I stayed at my grandpa's house... home to three people and near a dozen cats. I also saw a family of skunks on my drive in as well as a raccoon another night; there was plenty of wildlife. But the farm is beautiful, and it was great to walk around it with mom and dad and plot the future. On Friday, grandpa took me for a walk around the farm. (this means that we took his four wheel drive subaru and drove through the fields and into the woods, just hoping that we didn't hit anything or fall into anything hidden in the tall grass.)

Saturday was great. Well, bad because my car was acting up, but the Amish Byler reunion was fun. I drove up with my mom, and she went in with all the women preparing the food, which left me to head over to the cluster of men outside. I went around using the Amish handshake to say hello to all my uncles, and I met a few cousins and a bunch of second cousins that I swear I never saw before. But who can keep track, really?

so we had a lot of fun. The food was great, and the desserts were amazing, as always. We played a bunch of games of "washers" outside throughout the day, and topped off the afternoon with hand-cranked, homemade ice cream. They were all vanilla this year, but each tasted different. I LOVE the stuff. I don't think this was a full reunion, so there weren't as many people as some other years; maybe 80? I think I heard something like that.

late in the afternoon I took off with my dad to get back to the farm to pick blueberries. I try to bring a bunch home whenever I get out there. It's worth going just for them. soooooo good.

but now I'm back at work. I stayed late last night to finish something up and get it sent out, but now I ran out of work... hmmm.

what a relief! it's like i got rid of the elephant on my back. see, last week i had to share the devotional at choir practice. i had something like three weeks to worry and stress about it. even though i didn't really dwell on it much until the final week before, it always weighed heavy in the back of my head. and now that it's over, i fell like a new man... guy, whatever. you'd think that being the 'son of a preacher man' would mean i had better oratory skills. thanks for nothing, dad! aww, i'm just joshing you.

i hope to visit the beach this weekend - whoo-hoo! last saturday was a bust. it was kinda cloudy when i left the house in the morning, but down on the south shore it was completely cloudy and foggy and cold. they weren't even charging to get into the state park because no one was there. and it rained on and off all day. so i just drove around all day. a day of driving cannot not be fun, if you know what i mean. well, if you love driving like me but hardly ever get to do it. i visted port jefferson on the north shore and ate my beach lunch in my car overlooking a gigantic harbor filled with boats docked out in the middle. it was sunny by then.