In the Land of the Buckeye Eaters

It has been a hell of a couple days.  My interweb waves come to you from stolen wifi at my old house.  I traveled across the country and brought some west-coast sickness with me.  That’s right, Ohio, I’m diversifying your immune systems.  You’ll thank me later.

Let’s backtrack a little.  The house in Riverside has been empty since Monday.  I helped my fellow Ohioan move out for most of the day and was paid in food.  Found out I’m stronger than I thought–was pulling a bookcase out of the van when the housemate asked if I needed help, and I just slung it up and took it around, said, “apparently not”.  All of this being undercut by the cold that fell on me hours after and has been an annoyance since.  Thanks for all the food, Kelly.  I ate most of it already.

I made sure I had everything packed Wednesday, cleaned things up a little.  Noel drove me to my reading in LA, at Avenue 50.  The Splinter Generation folks put together an excellent event, I thought.  There was beer and wine and a little food.  Kate Durbin, who graduated a few years ahead of my entrance to Riverside, read, and was very good.  Lisbeth Prifogle read this, and I read “My Wakeup”, making the prose readings very war-centric.  To pat myself on the back, at the end of the evening I went up to Lisbeth and shook her hand, thanked her for serving.  She thanked me for serving, too.  I told her I hadn’t.  There were some musicians, and some poetry read by Scott Miller, who’s the poetry editor for Splinter.  Some great, fun stuff from him.

Nico showed, with some friends.  He proved to be every bit as cool as expected.  He fed me waffles and we played Geometry Wars.  We went out to a bar called Footsies and had whiskey, met up with some of the heads of Splinter and one of the bands.  Talked a little lit.  It was a great time.  We headed back to his place after and Nico played his guitar for I don’t know how long, just fiddling, and it was really soothing.  The man is skilled.  We went up on his roof and looked at the lights of town, saw a surprising number of stars.  He also exposed me to This Will Destroy You.

We listened to them while heading to LAX.  Probably the most stirring and fitting music for leaving a place like California.  All the lights and the buildings, the curves of the 101.

Most of the rest is a blur.  I slept a wink or two on the plane, got delayed in Denver, caught about an hour of sleep there, and flew to Columbus.  Sick flying, stress, no sleep.  Weird looking out my old window.  A little strange seeing bare trees.  It’ll be good being here in my old room.  I’m writing a story that’s nearly non-fiction.

Go submit something to Splinter.  More later.