a certain man went out on a sunday

for a stroll to escape the four dim walls of his messily empty room. on his stroll, at the place where a dead end street exploded from its isolation into a wide, empty park, he saw a man, head down, pushing a lawnmower on a lawn that could have been covered by the three cars packed beside it in a tiny driveway. the brown grass behind his droning mower was the same height as the brown grass in front.

the wandering man teetered between the empty park and the dead end street. the lawnmower roared on behind him. the park with its bright red slides and yellow monkey bars and blue ladders and green castles and four empty baseball diamonds was eerily quiet in front of him. the lawnmower ground on behind him. a rabbit munched on the grass, near grafitti-covered padlocked bathrooms. the rabbit turned his nose to sniff the air. queen-anne's-lace and thistles and cedar trees turned and rustled in a new-sprung breeze. the scent of coming rain quickened in my nose and the rabbit bounded away as i stepped in.

in the words of the great lindsay musser

GOOD LORK! I have amazing friends!

I moved into my new apartment/house/room situation Thursday and have been "offline" ever since (I never realized the extent to which the last few years of my life have become wired...) So today I am checking my email and smiling in great relief for all of the wonderful people. But smiling very quietly because my nieces are sleeping in the next room and their mommy and daddy are off shopping, so I have no one to pass them off to should they awake unhappily. my nieces leave for Africa Friday (their parents are going, too) where they will live in Moshe, Tanzania and no doubt terrorize the nieghborhood on their new, bright pink bicycles and squeals of glee. Anna drives like her dad (and her uncle dan) and this is not necessarily a good thing.

I have a some pictures and a few good stories and a great many thoughts on solitude and change, but i foisted my cameraphone on the wandering parents in the off chance that I need a lifeline...

With hope, I will be able to wander down to Houghton sometime next week and snag my computer, purchase a snazzy wireless card, and get connected with the house network (I live with a group of "students" and internet is, of course, not optional).

I have discovered the cure for urban cabin fever: urban expeditioning! I set off towards the setting sun yesterday to discover fields, a playground, an old quarry, and a crumbling football stadium with trees growing up through the old concrete bleachers (of course I trespassed!). Then I proceeded to pick up my mountain bike from the shop, run my favorite mixture of Bill Cosby routines, Grits, Redemption Songs and Maroon 5 through my headphones on random, and terrorize the park paths, small ratdogs, curbs, piles of dirt, hills, and other potential jumps and speedy patches of the city. I only incurred several small scratches in the process, and an unhealthy, unabating urge to attempt to ride down those wide stone park stairs at top speed while dodging strolling senior citizens and lovebirds and avoiding the "lake" (it's a duck pond with pretensions--I grew up on the Great Lakes, baby!) at the bottom. Life went from miserable to 20 mph in four seconds flat, and I have the next three days off!

the stories i don't have time to tell....

because i have a test tomorrow :) now it was my impression that i had graduated...


so here's the weekend in brief:


a beautiful intersection. a flat tire. the intersection decreases in charm with time. time for the Vera the Verizoid to do her work. she does. Dave Lilley responds to the call in the red chariot of justice (it's a toyota).


dan waits. he practices calm in frustration. this becomes very handy later on in the week as dan tries to cash a check in order to begin renting an apartment...a check he cannot cash because he cannot open an account because he does not have a permanent address because he does not have...an apartment. dan curses the modern world (but that's later in the week...and with a zen-like calm).


who would have thought heroes did so much paperwork? i'll bet superheroes don't have to do all this paperwork. that's what Alfred is supposed to handle in between buffing the Batmobile and fixing my morning latte. as least i get to listen to Dave's Sufjan Stevens CD collection.


dave lilley is a pancake making fiend. i am a fruit-slicing fiend. together we make pancakes. we eat them. we are unaffected by poor lighting. we even make frozen coffee/ice cream drinks and drink them. and watch movies with British accents in them. life is good in spite of paperwork.


dan visits houghton (ah! breathe the fresh air! see the mountain views! feel the mist wafting through the air! smell horses, not buses! greet people on the sidewalk!) to pick up a bicycle. in the process, Vera makes a friend with Frawley's Fone and pleasant conversation with understanding individuals levers a load off of dan's shoulders. he squares them and faces monday once more...

to be continued...

the dan in the mirror

the dan in the mirror,
originally uploaded by reifiedbean.

hey everybody! it's dan! with not-orange not-dyed hair! at Becca's house! looking at his fine self in the mirror! and next to him...it's his new buddy [as yet unnamed...suggestions?] through whom you can talk to an actual, real, live, conversant and incredibly mobile (we're working on the upward) dan. that's right. you could talk to dan. if you had his number. you don't. very few people do. do you want to?

ps--dan's little friend is a verizoid; if you're little friend is a verizoid, they can become verizobuddies and can talk and swap pictures and text messages to their little hearts' content. otherwise...it's best to find dan's expensive little friend on free days like nights and weekends, when he's not marshalling his 450 monthly minutes like a fat hamster guarding his little stash of green pellets. :)

city livin'

0630 up an' at 'em--breakfast of granola
0700 out the door and on the bike with pack:
uniform, lunch, and ubiquitous three binders
0730 arrive Rural/Metro Buffalo. Shower. Shave. Assume uniform.
0800 Documentation training: why exhaustive documentation ensures important things:
successful billing
liability avoidance
more successful billing
more security from trial lawyers and TV-miseducated juries
because patient care is the bottom line
1000 HIPAA: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(why you don't talk about confidential stuff to anyone. ever.)
(except, under certain occasions, the cops)
(or, of course, those directly involved in patient care)
1200 lunch. an apple. two. i have decided to go back to string budgeting.
(everyone else is eating out....)
1230 Map Reading 101: welcome to Buffalo. the map is usually right when it
indicates a one way street. except, of course, when the street is one way
in the other direction. in the winter, half of them are impassable.
(now i long for home. in Detroit, there is a grid of mile roads.
the east-west ones are handily labeled, 5 through 27 mile
the south-north ones are sometimes tricky--they change names
but NEVER directions. and they rarely just dead-end.
Buffalo, on the other hand, has no such reliability. or common sense.
this could be fun.
1400 Epinepherin Auto-Injector protocol/skills training. Albuterol "peace pipe"
preparation and protocol. Mass-Casualty Triage, with chipper, black tags
with "dead" in big white letters for those we give up on after a thirty-
second assessment. we are cheerily told that after arriving on-scene and
triaging twenty patients (going through an entire SMART tagging hit) we
will be not assist in patient care because we will probably need
counseling. or at least a coffee break.
1530 Confirm schedule with Chief Field Training Officer: a month of 12 hr. shifts,
four days on, four days off.
1600 embark on semi-intentional bicycle tour of Buffalo, including two major
hospitals (ECMC--D-Zone, Level 1 Trauma Unit, Burn and Psych Ward; Buffalo
General--E-Zone, General Emergency with Cardiac Center and Psych Ward).
tires on bike need repeated pumping--need new tires. scratch. need new bike.
1900 "home"--Becca's apartment. T minus three days 'til Robin gets back and i have
no bed. humidity awful-shirt soaked-shower necessary.
2000 Mac 'n Cheese for dinner. Email. Read homework. Write piteously to friends
hoping for solution to housing dilemma. ponder fiduciary limits and weigh
the convenience of car ownership verse ever paying off my college debts.
2100 Read more homework. Documentation and billing and Medicare requirements and the
fine line between...
2300 Test finished. At least it's open-book. Bedtime.

No wonder I feel so satisfied, so fulfilled, so stinkin' tired. looking forward to: Thursday, 0800, driving an ambulance. :)

so do you know anyone in Buffalo?

because I start work Monday and I'm living on a friend's couch until I can find an apartment. :)

cheers for me!