and so it begins...

so, i just woke up at 6:30 and am prepping to leave the house before 7 am for the first day in a long long line of days where this'll be my life... snoogens...

LAST DAY

ah, my last day of freedom. don't get me wrong, the official first of of school doesn't happen till the first week in september but i start orientation on monday and my weekend is booked moving my lovely soon-to-be-sister-in-law. did you get my sarcasm on the lovely part? no? alright, whatever. i actually don't mind spending the weekend doing heavy lifting and being bossed around by my pseudo-sister, but she lives in baltimore and man, it smells kinda funky up there. at least she can't hassle me about never being mentioned in my blog anymore...

in any case, for what it's worth, this is my final free weekday of the summer. today i'm focusing on working out a good cd situation for my upcoming commute. i got two albums this morning: miles davis's the birth of the cool, and frampton comes alive! by peter frampton. i was looking for purchases that like, you couldn't argue with, and i think i succeeded. plus, birth of the cool falls into the "acceptable for playing in class" category which makes it double-clutch. frampton is probably a little out there for my second graders, but i think it'll soften to blow of my ass-long commute. currently i'm working on the sweet first day of school mix. i'm having some issues though... hmmmm......

later on i'm going on a lengthy bike ride which will start out with visiting caroline at work for lunch. from there: who knows. i do know it's probably one of my last chances this season to just take off on the bike and not come back for a couple of hours. ah, fleeting freedom.

so batista is shedding for the second time this summer which is incredible because he's never shed this frequently before: his last shed was like two months ago. it's a good sign, it means he's growing fast. here is a photo of his current shed, i know last time i kinda ripped y'all off:


now there's one handsome lizard

outside of my sitting in front of batista's tank staring at and contemplating the process of reptilian shedding yesterday i also created my first ever facebook album just because i found some embarassing photos of my cousins and i at a younger age, and i mean, damn, isn't that what facebook is all about? in any case, it's an addictive activity and i soon found myself obsessivly scanning in prom photos from high school and posting them. urge to post fading... fading... RISING... gone...

finally, yesterday was the 30 year anniversary of elvis's death. not a lot of people how big an elvis fan i am, but yea, the elvis 30 #1 hits album got me through my student teaching. i busted it out yesterday and got all nostalgic. all hail the king.


awesome

mega zombie coffee

so, possibly one of my biggest problems this summer was my inability to fully relax. through most of the summer i scrambled to make sure i was making the most of my time and eliminated activities that could be deemed a waste of time. so, in honor of my last week of summer vacation, i'm indulging myself. yesterday, for instance, i spent all morning listening to white zombie, playing the original mega man, and drinking cup after cup of coffee (it makes you better at mega man... really....). my original goal was to beat the game in the time it takes to listen to astro creep 2000, but, as i learned, the cd clocks in at only 40 minutes and that is just not enough time. ultimately i get to enjoy the original game soundtrack (so classic) before becoming stuck at that orange cyclops thing on the last stage and calling it quits. overall, this experience helped me realize how truly wicked it would be to have sons named mega man and zombie. here is a graphic commemorating my morning of robots and zombies:


somebody call capcom, mega man battles white zombie at starbucks

afterwards i biked down to georgetown and kayaked on the potomac which probably marks the last of my great kayak trips for the summer. going out in style however, i saw a family of ducks, an incredible heron, and was buzzed by one of the lowest flying helicopters i've never witnessed (still my favorite thing about dc: low flying helicopters). also i brought out a falafel from quik pita. mmmm quik pita falafel.

to top off the day, caroline and i finally beat god of war which we started played earlier in the summer. great game, if you're still holding onto your ps2 and haven't played this game, get it! currently i'm going around and playing classic games for the ps2 and gamecube to dely my purchase of a next generation system. i mean, god of war was only 20 bucks! next on my list is resident evil 4, not that i've played any of the other resident evil games, but recently i've noticed that it keeps topping off lists of must play games for the gamecube and ps2...


farewell, kratos

biking/peaches

so, my trip to philly was full of surprizes, most of them happening during my transit. on the way back flash flooding in nyc delayed my train an hour, THEN a bomb/terrorist/spooky package alert shut down the dupont, and surrounding, metro stations, so i had to walk ten blocks to catch my bus. the biggest surprize of the visit though is that somehow i managed to schedule my wedding on the the weekend of the cali bar exam. alex absent from the wedding? up till now, only grim fiction...

when i got back, caroline and i saw the simpsons movie. it was alright, about half way through i was like "damn i'm definitely going to see this movie in the theaters again!" but by the end i had changed to "eh, netflix." i understand why they took the movie outside of springfield and the established simpsons universe, but i just wish some of the secondary characters had gotten a little more play. i mean, i watch the simpsons to see moe, krusty, monty burns, principal skinner and the rest just as much as i watch it to see homer, marge, lisa, bart, and maggie. sure, many of these characters got their one liners but somehow i felt a little short-changed by their general absence from speaking roles. i also would have loved to have seen some references aimed specifically at long time viewers and diehard fans, like a visit from the ghost of bleeding gums murphy. at the end of the day, however, the twins reference alone justified the price of MY ticket. it was overall, a hilarious movie.


"only their mother and tell them apart"... hilarious

on friday i went on a crazy bike ride. i had been brainstorming alternate routes for my impending morning commute because my school just so happens to lie smack dab in the middle of a notorious traffic corridor in the dc metro area. sometime i came up with the idea "hey, why not bike it?" of course, most people would probably answer, "well, because it's fifteen miles and are you really gonna bike fifteen miles at 7 am AND THEN teach a full day of school?" i agree, it's not really a feasable commuting option, but i wanted to do it once, just to see what it was like. in any case, i went out with no map and didn't stop once to ask directions. NO SLEEP TILL OAKTON! was my motto. it ended up taking me two and a half hours, but i probably could have shaven off at least 45 minutes if not for getting lost and taking an overall, crazy route in a failed attempt to find a short cut. here is a map with my route:


i've also put a pink star where my old school is (notice the drastic change in commute) and a green star where caroline works.

on saturday caroline and i went out to homestead farm. to do some blackberry picking. we used to only go out to homestead farm once a year for apple picking and the corn maze but since we got our own wheels, caroline has gradually been increasing the frequency of our visits. when i visited caroline at work today i noticed that she had the harvest schedule posted in her cubicle. yes, the lady is obsessed. peaches are also currently in season so we got a ton of those as well which i have benifited from in pie form. of course, i really only get the spillover after pies have been distributed around pbs. prioritization of pbs peach pies? "preposterous," i pronounce! (sorry, just gearing up for life in second grade)

so, today starts my final week of freedom. i'll be closing out this blog at the end of next to avoid students/parents googling me and discovering my secret identity. hopefully i will include three or four more posts chronicaling the build up to next school year. for those of you who are interested (yes, i'm assuming people are reading and taking interest...) i'm keeping up the blogging in e-mail form because my first few months of teaching will definitely produce some totally hysterical stories. if you'd like to be IN THE LOOP, shoot me an e-mail, goehrke@gmail.com.

chocolate rain

so today i'm visiting alex on account of his annual, but brief, pilgrimage to his motherland. i can't remember the last time i took the train anywhere but i'm feeling nostalgic about my days of bus and train trips between dc, ny, and philly already. before i go i'd like to give you the gift of tay zonday and his amazing song, chocolate rain.

**I move away from the blog to breathe in

enjoy...

dance, magic, dance

so, last night we went and saw the labyrinth on the BIG SCREEN at the landmark e street cinema which was my first time ever going to the theater. it was pretty cool, although the experience was enhanced by the entertainment of sitting between nate and caroline, who both apparently know the entire movie by heart and had a difficult time stifling themselves throughout. also, we drank foster's oil cans during the movie, those are some damn big beers! of course in recent days i've found it impossible for me to view the film without imagining, what would have happened if joe pops was cast as the goblin king instead of david bowie?

in other weekend news, caroline and i went out to the bethesda second story books (used book store), which is currently going out of business. i highly suggest taking advantage of their 65% off sale going on until the 16. i got a least 25 children's books for like 8 bucks, my most notable aquisitions being several choose your own adventure books. i've been exploring star challenge: the exploding suns which is turning out to be a lot more trippy than i ever could have imagined. my first time through i teamed up with an evil alien hive mind to navigate an avatar made up of stellar energy into an alternate dimension of light and darkness. of course, i died over there and later discovered that you're supposed to kill the evil alien hive mind, not cooperate with them, i guess hence the evil part. i still have yet to achieve the rank of "space ace" or battle the huge blue space eel on the cover:

phew

so, yea, i'm a bum, and i wimped out of blogging for a while, but i'm figuring that i'll give it one last shot before the summer is over and i close up the blog to avoid my kids' parents coming up to me and being like "uh, i saw a picture of you slobbering on a big piece of ham and holding a beer on your blog, is this what you're teaching the children?" you know, something like that.

in any case, i'd like to update you with some notable things i've done since my last post:

we threw caroline's hawaiian themed birthday party which featured a double barreled diet coke/mentos volcano, decorated while drinking beers directly before explosion. and yes, there was fire, nothing but the best for my caroline.



i completed my sullivan's reunion tour which was a week where i went back to the old art counter and peddled pencils and paper all day. thankfully the spirit of nostalga negated the day to day monotony that can be sullivan's during the summer (our slowest time of the year).

i secretly learned sweet caroline for my truimphant return to the world of karoke (for pauly's birthday), only to be cock blocked by the dj who played it for someone else. dammit.

caroline's maid of honor and bf stayed with us and they acted mildly amused by my propensity for acting like a cheesy tour guide with out of towners. "did you know that fort reno is the highest geographical spot in all of dc?" we also played horsehoes and drank champagne.

i finally finished reading one hundred years of solitude!! it sufficiently satisfied my need for non-teaching books, now i'm onto teacher man by frank mccourt.

girl talk changed my life.

caroline and i celebrated our -1 anniversary, yes, we're less than one year away. we celebrated by going to a caterer's tasting. mmmm free food in name of wedding, sweet.

i dragged a bunch of the "the boys" up to our wonderful hometown of armonk where we hung out with a bunch of my relatives and watched planet earth on my father's unusually large hd tv. it was good times, a little metrosexual, but good times.

we went to a vegan bastille day party.

i rearranged my living room and set up some speakers connected to my computer down the hall. huzzah for radio shack.

in the garden, our peppers prospered while our cucumber, zuccini, and squash were defeated by a leaf fungus. i generally force visitors to taste a sampling of different flavored leaves from the garden because i find the strong taste of certain leafy plants amazing. my favorites this year have been the citrus flavored geranium and the, now deceased, arugala. rip tiny arugalas, you were so oddly irresistable. also, we got a fig tree.

i talked endlessly about the whole chris benoit thing. what was the deal with that?

caroline and i went on week vaca, three days in kiawah island, south carolina with the in-laws, three days in miami for george and carly's wedding, and two days in mertyl beach for the goehrke family reunion. photographic documentation of our week of beaches can be found here

and of course, i've thought a lot about my the now, rapidly approaching, FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. wow, it's really actually hard to imagine. i have already seen my classroom and i've been taking a course on reading education at the school, but since i don't have keys yet, i'm forced to shove my face against the glass and drool in anticipation every time i pass it. it has a lot of chalk board space, i'm going to need a lot of colored chalk...

so, what else is in store for the rest of my lazy-ass summer? well, alex kargher, of kargher chocolate fame, is coming to the east coast, and aside from a visit i'm planning on biking biking, kayaking kayaking, repeat repeat.
who's up for a labor day cook-out?