nude highway driving

Just returned from a kick-ass beer nap on an empty beach (except for some groovy pelicans) and now it’s time to start drinking.

Happy hour occurs every day between 4:30 and 5 at the house of Sid’s grandparental units. But today is special. Friday night is always “Martini Night.” I’m about to hit the shower and Granddad’s already preparing drinks and whispering “vermouth” across the top of the glasses (he likes them dry).

I hope your week is ending with an equal amount of celebration.

Made it down to the beach in record time — there’s something very satisfying about driving out of D.C. at 80 mph as everyone is backed up trying to come in for work. Maniacal laughter was present.

Got to the grandparental abode at noon. I was tipsy by 1. (Pulled in just after my grandfather and his retired dentist neighbor left for their weekly lunch & beer at a local dive. Apparently they saw me coming down the road, cause they turned around and picked me up.)

Overheard during lunch:

Retired dentist neighbor: “There’s a lot you can do with a good hacksaw.”

Later, after the beer was running out …

Retired dentist neighbor: “This was one of the worst winters ever. I froze my balls off!”

My grandfather: “That’s OK, he doesn’t use them anyway.”

I love these visits.

Just had to post something during my first WiFi moment. Am sitting in my car with de vogel outside Common Grounds coffee house in Arlington (it’s closed). Wondered if their signal was still going after-hours and it is. I’ve read about all the fun wireless stuff for years now, but never personally played with it. It blows me away to actually surf the Web and get e-mail in my car. We’re giggling like little kids.

I know, I know … I’m sooooooo 2001.

Last weekend I finally took the leap and got a beautiful little iBook for my new life in confined quarters. This little 6-pound guy replaces a G4 AGP tower, a heavy-ass 17-inch monitor and a noisy LaCie CD burner. I never was a laptop person before, but already am addicted. The PowerBooks are nice, but they are steep and Tom had a great point (in some comment somewhere) about saving some of the extra cash you’d pay for a PowerBook to upgrade with groovy things such as AirPort Extreme card and extra RAM. Plus, this thing has more character. It’s a friendly little computer and it smokes my 400 mhz tower on everything.

I might even forgive Apple for upgrading all the iBooks one week after I bought mine. Grrr.

I’m in the process of loading all my CDs either onto the laptop or my external hard drive. I figure I’ll take a few hard copies of super favorites with me but store the rest with my vinyl. It’s hard to part with music, but I have faith in the stability of my hard drives. I struggled with the decision of whether or not to take my records and a turntable with me, but “minimal” is the dominant theme of this move. The records will get an extended vacation at my parents’ house. I will miss them and send them postcards. If I can figure out what kind of cords I need, I might just try to use Sound Studio to digitize my vinyl before I go. Any fellow Mac geeks have advice on this? (Thanks to another Tom for the friendly advice on digital music formats and which I should use for importing.)

Everything in my apartment soon will be identified as “ship,” “store,” “sell” and “give away.” Anybody wanna buy an 8-track player?

I know I’m behind everybody, but I finally got the new book by our favorite punk rock curmudgeon the other day. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet — it definitely will be part of the 14-hour plane ride lineup if I don’t devour it before the big trip.

But I already can say that any style/reference book that quotes the Meat Puppets should be a staple of every news desk in America. (And now I have images of Bill cold chillin’ with Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott.)