Another Grad Back Home

gills: this is it this is all i’ve ever needed

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:16:32 -0500

gills:

this is it this is all i’ve ever needed

shes-got-her-smile-on: Bahahahaha Yes.

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 20:44:58 -0400

shes-got-her-smile-on:

Bahahahaha

Yes.

animalstalkinginallcaps: HENDERSON! HENDERSON, HELP ME! THE...

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:41:02 -0400

animalstalkinginallcaps:

HENDERSON!

HENDERSON, HELP ME! THE MACHINE REQUIRES CALIBRATION!

HENDERSON, TURN IT OFF!

Always.

rambling thoughts

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 21:44:00 -0400

I’m not even sure anymore who follows this blog, but this will probably be one (if not the most) very personal entry. I don’t keep a paper journal, and it’s for these types of things that I wish I did. Perhaps I will start one.

But I’m mostly writing this for posterity’s sake. I feel some intense need to mark this day as important.

Let’s start at the beginning…or perhaps the end, depending on how you look at it.

My grandmother died on February 4th, 2012. Yes, it was 5 months ago. I didn’t post anything about it to facebook - hell, I have avoided the subject as much as possible. It’s not that I’m trying to pretend it didn’t happen, I just don’t like talking about it.

My grandmother wasn’t what most people would call a warm person. She cared very deeply about myself and my brother (her only grandchildren) but was never one of those warm, cuddly grandmothers who baked you cookies and stuff. I’m not really sure what grandmothers do these days anyway.

My grandmother, Mama, was a very astute woman. She ran the computer room at the Harvard Coop back in the day when most women were secretaries - running a room-sized computer was way ahead of her time. She went to college with Betty Friedan. She didn’t like Betty Friedan.

She lived in a house on Cape Cod. A house her father built. On land his father’s father or something bought. As of February 5, 2012 that house no longer belonged to my family.

My grandmother’s will was, for all intents and purposes, unfinished. It was a full and legally binding document, but she never got around to some specifics. The gist of it is that EVERYTHING goes into a trust. That means the house, the money and the value of the contents of the house in their entirety. In March the bank (who owns the trust) sent an appraiser into the house to appraise anything and everything. He was very thorough. We were presented with a 36 page document listing pretty much everything in the house and their appraised auction price (based on a buyer with no personal connection). This was very hard to grapple with. We aren’t the Astors, Vanderbilts or Kardashians by any stretch of the imagination. There was nothing in the house that would knock the socks off of anyone on Antiques Roadshow. In fact, the most valuable thing on the appraisal was her car: a 2005 Saturn Vue, beige interior with heavy black lab fur accents - but having every article, memento, family artifact be so scrutinized and diminished to dollars and coins is hard.

So why is today important? Today is/was the last day I will probably ever see that house. My brother and I had to go down this weekend to essentially “buy” any heirlooms, mementos or tokens we wanted to keep from the estate. I use the word “buy” because anything we took was deducted from the value of the trust - because, remember, EVERYTHING in the house was incorporated into the trust. My mother and uncle have already gone through, so all that remained was for my brother and I to take what we wanted.

Everything that remains (and there is quite a bit) will either be auctioned off or sold en masse to a glorified flea market dealer. Both of whom will take a hefty percentage of the selling value.

It’s been extremely frustrating throughout this whole ordeal because there’s nothing we can do about it. My grandmother (either by choice or not, we will never know) essentially made it our job to decide how our story ends. It became our responsibility to go through literally generations of family history and keep what we could “afford”.

So today was that day. The end of our story there. I realize everything comes to an end. But I never thought it would fall (whole or in part) on my shoulders. I found a photo album of my great-grandfather building the house and I couldn’t help but wonder what will happen now? Will I drive by it with my children and tell them the stories of that house, just like my mom and grandmother told me the stories about the center house in Harwich (another family house that I had no personal connection to, but a cousin of my mother sold it and it’s been a source of contention in the family). It feels good to have a connection to a place - to have a history. To have that history have to end with you due to forces out of your control creates a panoply of emotions in me that I’ve been having a really hard time grappling with. My father asked me how it was, going to the cape to gather these tangible memories. I told him I didn’t want to talk about it. Not because I didn’t want to talk about it, but because I didn’t know how.

I honestly don’t expect anyone to read this whole thing, and if you do - congratulations, I guess. Like I said earlier, I think I just need to somehow acknowledge this day.

laughterkey: Nine will always be my Doctor.

Fri, 11 May 2012 20:59:09 -0400

laughterkey:

Nine will always be my Doctor.

animalstalkinginallcaps: WOULD YOU GUYS STOP ARGUING ABOUT...

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:15:00 -0400

animalstalkinginallcaps:

WOULD YOU GUYS STOP ARGUING ABOUT POLITICS AND FEED US! OR AT LEAST OPEN THE BACK DOOR! WE HAVEN’T BEEN OUTSIDE ALL DAY! REGARDLESS OF WHO WINS THE ELECTION WE’RE STILL GOING TO BE STARVING AND MISERABLE BECAUSE OUR OWNERS CARE MORE ABOUT BICKERING WITH EACH OTHER THAN THEY DO ABOUT TAKING ACTION TO ENSURE THE SURVIVAL OF THOSE WHO DEPEND ON THEM!

IN THAT WAY, WE CLOSELY RESEMBLE THE WORKING CLASS.

Artiiiiieeeeeee. I miss my little buddy.

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:04:20 -0400

Artiiiiieeeeeee. I miss my little buddy.

museumofusefulthings: Saw this here. Desk lamps made from...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:49:41 -0400

museumofusefulthings:

Saw this here. Desk lamps made from plumbing pipes and beer bottles, by ZAL Creations, whose work we’ve mentioned previously here. Steampunk-like!

Awesome.

becaolivetree: Also, YES. Oh my god. Two of my favorite...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:57:22 -0400

becaolivetree:

Also, YES.

Oh my god. Two of my favorite things. No wonder I like Martin Freeman so much. It’s all clear now.

Photo

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:51:56 -0500

Photo

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:29:49 -0500

tastefullyoffensive: Tumblr Reblog if you like donuts[via] So...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:35:39 -0500

tastefullyoffensive:

Tumblr Reblog if you like donuts

[via]

So helpful.

animalstalkinginallcaps: HELLO, I AM A HIP YOUNG DUDE LOOKING...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:07:44 -0500

animalstalkinginallcaps:

HELLO, I AM A HIP YOUNG DUDE LOOKING FOR A GOOD TIME. I WAS WONDERING IF I COULD BUY $20 WORTH OF DRUGS, PLEASE. THE GOOD ONES.

… WHAT? NO, I’M NOT A POLICE OFFICER. I LIKE CIGARETTES AND MAROON 5 AND THINGS LIKE THAT. EDGY STUFF THAT DRUG PEOPLE INTO. BECAUSE I DO SO MANY DRUGS ALL THE TIME.

animalstalkinginallcaps: MARIOUS? Yes, tiny baby kitten...

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:07:12 -0500

animalstalkinginallcaps:

MARIOUS?

Yes, tiny baby kitten friend?

I LIKE YOUR GLASSES.

Why thank you.

CAN I HAVE GLASSES TOO?

No, tiny baby kitten friend. You have the eyesight of a compact and furry eagle. Glasses are for people who cannot see so well.

BUT ALL THE KIDS WHO SHOP AT THE URBAN OUTFITTERS DOWN THE STREET CAN SEE JUST FINE AND THEY ALL HAVE HUGE GLASSES.

We don’t associate with those people, tiny baby kitten friend. Nobody should.

CAN I AT LEAST GET A BOW TIE?

Of course. If we could somehow harness the love people have for kittens in bow ties we could solve the energy crisis.

Fact.

animalstalkinginallcaps: DO WE ALWAYS HAVE TO DO THIS...

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:37:19 -0500

animalstalkinginallcaps:

DO WE ALWAYS HAVE TO DO THIS CHARGING-THROUGH-THE-RIVER THING? IT’S ANNOYING, AND KIND OF LABOR INTENSIVE, PLUS WE’RE JUST GETTING MUDDY.

LOOK AT US, GARY. RESPLENDENT. SYMBOLS OF DETERMINATION AND FEARLESS PURSUIT OF GOALS. WE’RE CHARGING ACROSS A RIVER. THAT’S WHAT WE DO, AND WE LOOK LIKE BADASSES DOING IT.

I THINK WE JUST LOOK LIKE A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES WHO WERE TOO LAZY TO WALK THE EXTRA THIRTY FEET TO THE BRIDGE.

NOBODY EVER TAKES A PICTURE OF THE BRIDGE, GARY. THINK ABOUT THAT.

I saw a picture of this a few weeks ago, this move by Tesco was...

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:32:22 -0400

I saw a picture of this a few weeks ago, this move by Tesco was genius! Talk about knowing your target market - busy people who are only stationary when they’re waiting for the train. Brilliant. I’d love to see something like this come to Boston or NYC.

Ugh doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:04:00 -0400

Ugh doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Talk about experiential.

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:59:16 -0400

So I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple days now, but I guess now is as good a time as any.

Not sure how many of you were familiar with Dodge’s “Find a Journey” campaign (www.youtube.com/dodge). Well, the gist of it was that they had three scavenger hunts for their new model, the Journey. They hid 3 of them around the country - one on the west coast, one in the midwest and one on the east coast - now, mind you, to Dodge, the east coast is anything east of the Mississippi. Chris and I found out about it after the west coast and midwest journeys had finished and they were going to release the clues for the east coast search on the 24th. I told Chris that if it looked like it was anywhere in New England that we’d have to go look for it.

Saturday comes and I’m at work until one. The first clue is released at noon. I call Chris and he watches it and it looks like it’s heading towards Vermont. Awesome. I’m thinking this might end up being an interesting day. I never do anything spontaneous or crazy like this, so randomly driving to Vermont seems like a pretty wild thing for me to do. At one another clue comes out and it’s basically backtracking and showing where they drove through to get to VT. I’m home before the 2 oclock video clue comes out. They clearly are heading into VT. By 2:30 Chris and I have a full tank of gas are are roaring up I-89 North. By 3:15 Chris has figured out that the clues are leading to an intersection just over the southern tip of Lake Champlain - across from Fort Ticonderoga. The 5th and final video clue released at 4 pm doesn’t help us much more. Just after 4:30 we made it to the intersection from the clues. We were joined by New York, New Jersey, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and North Carolina (to name a few). Clearly word had gotten out. Defeated, we start driving (slowly) back towards Rutland to regroup, re-examine clues and get some food. (Adrenaline does a good job at dampening hunger pains) The whole time Chris is watching the live feed on his phone (well, as long as we have service). The host guy hanging out with the car puts up a chalkboard and writes “join us for a slide show of where we went next”. We’re glued to the phone. The photos start showing up and we’re frantically googling the subjects and finding out the car went down the road we came up. With every new photo we realize it’s heading down the EXACT road on which we came up from New Hampshire. WHAT. This car is CLOSER to us?! So we’re driving back towards home/towards the car. When it smacks me in the face, they’re going into New Hampshire. Of all the places Dodge considers to be in the East coast, they’re going to Freakin’ New Hampshire. NOTHING happens here. Anyway, the adrenaline is starting to course though my veins again and we get three slides into NH when the host guy writes on the board “thanks for playing, we’ll pick it up again tomorrow at 9” I’m in awe. So many people came from so far away to find this thing, they can’t stop now! But hell, we have the upper hand, the home field advantage. It ends only 30 miles away from my house, so I figure we’ll be ahead of the game tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I have to work. The clues start up again and it cuts down I-89 south. The car drove seriously 5 miles away from my house. Through concord. Still heading east. I have to go to work. Chris thinks there are too many people looking for it now so he doesn’t go chase it even though I said he should. It continues east. I’m calling chris from work to see if anyone’s found it yet. Nothing. I get home, it’s still there. By this time we know it’s in Maine, but not sure where. North. It’s still there. We could drive out there, no problem. It’s only like 4 hours away, that’s NOTHING!

Someone found it at around 5 pm Sunday. Some girl, from Maine. good for her. I was a bit frustrated because I had diluted myself into thinking that if I hadn’t worked Chris and I could have won it. But that wasn’t what it was about. The whole time Chris and I were driving around VT like crazy people I had a huge dumb grin on my face because I was having so much fun exploring. That was the point of it. Even Dodge knew that. They wanted people to go ON journeys, not just to FIND a Journey. I think that is a type of experiential marketing that is way overlooked, but very specific. Yes, people enjoy experiences that deepen their relationship with a brand or product, but brands and products very seldom support experience for experience’s sake. I never would have done this if it weren’t for clever people at Dodge, but even though I didn’t actually end up with the product it didn’t diminish my experience. I had so much fun regardless, and that is what the point of it was. I was impressed and fulfilled both as a consumer (or not?) and as someone who thinks about these kinds of things more esoterically.

*golf clap in Dodge’s direction* well done.

Ahhh pick your own apples. A classic new england fall pastime....

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:10:49 -0400

Ahhh pick your own apples. A classic new england fall pastime. Also, a very interesting business model: “charge them twice as much for the “experience” and do no actual work at all. Seriously, the pre-picked apples were half the price of the empty bags for PYO. Oh well, I guess they’re taking into account the apple-eating whilst in the orchard. Yum.

Love this. typeverything: Typeverything.com ⌘O wax seal.

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:26:23 -0400

Love this.

typeverything:

Typeverything.com

⌘O wax seal.