The Return of ME to... here.

apparently i decided to just take the entire summer off from blogging. but now i'm BACK.

a brief synopsis of the summer: Went home to Soldotna, worked half-timey at Kaladi and did some temp work at the orthodontic office Lisa works in... mostly just had a lazy last summer at home, which was nice.

August 3rd we went up to Anchorage to see Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. They were un-fucking-believable. SO GOOD. (be forewarned, P&J, you will be dragged to see them if and when they come to seattle.) The only rivalry for best-concert-ever it has in my mind is that amazing Bobby McFerring and Savion Glover concert four years ago. nothing else even comes close.

From the concert, we went directly to the airport to hop on a plane to NYC. We stayed there for 3 nights, letting (ordering) Clyde to show us the city. Needless to say, we watched a lot of films. (The Ten, No End in Sight, Sicko & Rocket Science- Sicko being my favorite of the four, i think. the ten was a bit on the lame side, but it had some really funny shit in it, too.) We also went to the Whitney Museum, where Lisa got to enjoy her late-youth all over again in their Psychedelic Art show, and MoMA, which was very cool. But COLD. compared to outside, where it was very very HOT.

oh yeah, did i mention that? New York City is HOT. not in a pleasant, kind of way. in a hot MUGGY yicky i feel sticky kind of way.

we also ate great indian food, saw blonde redhead for free - very cool - and ate at yummy cafes and cream-puff shops. Subways are cool, but they still confuse me - i missed the simplicity of the Metro... but Subway cars are air-conditioned, and metro cars arent, so thats definitely one-up for the states.

We left clyde then to go up to Maine to spend four nights with Lisa's dad and his wife Jane in the cottage they stay on in the summer on Chebeague Island. Its a really nice island, and the weather there was much more .... my style. :) Unfortunately, i didn't get to see much of it as the first night we were there, i tried to emulate a twist move from Hairspray in the living room and re-sprained my left knee. So i holed up the next day in bed, and basically just limped around until it was time to leave. But i still enjoyed myself a lot, talking to my Grandpa and actually reading (three books in three days! granted they were very small.... but still! Heinlein and Asimov are cool!), and finally venturing down to the beach a bit. The day we left my step-uncle and his family took us sailing on their gorgeous 34-foot yacht... we watched the beginning of a sail-boat race, then just baked in the sun for a while before heading back to Portland. It was nice.

Our return trip was a bit crazy. We flew to NYC first, spent our 12 hour layover venturing back into the city to hang out some more with Clyde and his friend Tom. Then we got back on a plane, had a stop in DC for a couple of hours, then took another plane to Atlanta. We had a 4 hour layover there, so Lisa's sister Marilyn and all my cousins and my uncle came to have lunch with us in the airport. I haven't seen any of them in 7 years or so, so it was nice to see them all, and see how much different my cousins look now. Most frightening perhaps, though, was the fact that my youngest cousin Tucker who is 11 looks remarkably like Ben (now-ben, not 11-year-old-ben). Weirded me out a bit. But he's a cool kid - puts up with his 3 sisters well.
Then Lisa spent the entirety of our 7.5 hour flight back to Anchorage with my leg up on her lap (still elevating the knee for the sprain), she was mostly sleeping. I was watching the 3 movies they showed: Spider-man 3, Blades of Glory, and Fracture. One little more hop to Kenai and we were finally done. It was a long-ass trip, but a good one, as we did a lot of visiting between flights.

I think i'll leave a further update on what is actually going on now for a later date, as this post is already ridiculously long. But i have lots of fun news about Now, too - so that will go up tomorrow or the next day.